Here you'll find my opinion regarding some sports stories with a psychological angle.

• How can smart goal keepers can alter their strategy to save more penalty kicks?
• Can you be too mentally tough?
• Tour de France drug scandals: Why do riders do it?
• Tour de France: The ultimate suffering in sport. Suffering begins tomorrow.
• Wimbledon - the mental tricks the pros and non-pros can use to deal with our British weather
• Lewis Hamilton – imagining it happen
• Staying top dog isn’t easy: The case of English Cricket, English Rugby, and Moto GP Champion Valentino Rossi
• Michael Schumacher - what set him apart?

Read how smart goal keepers can alter their strategy to save more penalty kicks

Goalkeepers have it hard. While strikers take all the credit for scoring, goalkeepers only really get attention when they make mistakes. New psychological research has provided some fascinating insight into what goalkeepers do and ought to do when facing penalty kicks.

Azar and his research colleagues analysed 286 penalty kicks taken in elite matches and found that goalkeepers saved substantially more penalty kicks when they stay in the centre of goal, in comparison to when they jump to the left or right. However, in 93.7 per cent of penalty situations, goalkeepers chose to jump to the side rather than stay in the centre.

Goalkeepers saved 33.3 per cent of penalties when they stayed in the centre, compared with just 12.6 per cent of kicks when they jumped right and 14.2 per cent when they jumped left.

This is probably accounted for by the fact that goalkeepers will likely feel greater regret at letting a goal in after standing still in the centre and which is akin to not making an attempt to save it, when compared with choosing to jump (do something about the risk). This view seems to be backed-up by a survey of 32 top goalkeepers: Of the 15 who said their goal position would make any difference to how bad they felt about letting in a penalty, 11 said they would feel worse if they just stayed in the centre.

I also wonder if the arousal and stress in the goalkeeper just before the penalty, which prepares the body to move and in other situations helps us to fight or take flight, ‘tells’ the goalkeeper to move. Evidence for this would be found if goalkeepers who report experiencing greater arousal/stress move to the side more frequently than those who experience less arousal/stress.

There are a couple of implications of this research for intelligent goalkeepers:

1. Stand in the middle more often and you are likely to be in the saving position more often. As long as other goalkeepers don’t modify their behaviour to stay in the middle more often, then your new strategy should pay dividends.
2. If all other goalkeepers started staying in the middle more, with strikers and coaches noticing this, then strikers may modify their behaviour to shoot for the sides more often. If this happens it is time to review your strategy to stay ahead of the game.

Comments were based on research by: Bar-Eli, M., Azar, O.H., Ritov, I. & Keidar-Levin, Y. (2007). Action bias among elite soccer goalkeepers: The case of penalty kicks. Journal of Economic Psychology, 28, 606-621

Can you be too mentally tough?

Encouragement in the media and sporting contexts to show mental toughness, hanging in there, show grit, dogged determination...is common. But is this always a good thing? Sure, being determined and remaining undeterred in pursuit of your goals is a good thing - especially if you are susceptible to being knocked-off track, or find it difficult to get going in the first place. However, I believe that there is a flip-side to this emphasis of rising to all challenges, quitting being for wimps...

Take the example of the runner who runs twice a day according to the schedule they have from their coach. They run no matter what. When they are shattered they don't do less or run at a lower intensity, they push it even more on these days because they fret that if they don't they are somehow a lesser athlete or not mentally tough enough, perhaps reminding themselves that "Winners never quit, quitters never win." They don't ease off on easier weeks, for fear of losing fitness. Perhaps they even get up in the middle of the night and sneak out for an extra one-hour run a couple of nights a week. You may think that this is extreme, but I've seen athletes who've done it.

What's the result? Faster running? Improved performance? Accelerated development? No, or at least not for long. Instead the result will be a mixture of overtraining, colds, aches, pains, injury, illness, a performance plateau or decline.

For other over-motivated athletes risks develop if they persevere during competitions when they should pull-out. They develop an injury or their body gets into difficulty during an event which can risk long-term consequences. Now, I can write from first-hand experience about this as in 2006 I developed gastric problems during an Ironman after 3.5 hours and continued for another 8 hours, then need medical attention (but received the opposite of what I needed), then needed adrenaline, my heart reshocking and 36 hours on a ventilator in ITU.

So what's the solution?

1. To prevent a similar situation developing as the runner's scenario above: (a) introduce regular reviews of training volumes, intensity and progress where honest feedback is received from someone in the know (e.g. a coach); (b) be on the lookout for performance plateaus, injury, and illnesses; and (c) schedule and follow periods of less activity and activities that boost recovery.

2. To prevent a similar situation developing during an event (as in my scenario): (a) have reviews throughout competition where you look at key performance indicators such as intensity, speed, power and low the body is functioning (stiffness, pain, stomach/gut function etc.) and consider if you can receive feedback from someone else at the competition (e.g. a coach, family member etc.); and (b) decide before hand what the likely scenarios will be where the best thing would be to pull-out of the competition in order to look after yourself and be able to have a better race on another day.

More Tour de France drug scandals: Why do riders do it?

Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen was asked to leave the tour after questions over whether he failed to tell the drug testing authorities where he would be during his preparation for this years Tour. It has emerged that despite telling the press for over a week that he was training in Mexico, his wife’s homeland, he was actually in Italy. Suspicion has increased as to whether he purposely deceived the testers so he could take cycle of drugs or other blood doping (e.g. EPO) during this period, and only looks worse now there has been evidence that he may have lied.

Two other riders have tested positive this week for banned drugs and pre-Tour favourite Alexandre Vinokourov displayed traces of someone else’s blood – all three have been kicked out of the Tour. Worse still for British hopes, two entire teams have left the Tour along with their disgraced riders. So hopes of Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins finishing in Paris in less than a week are over.

So why do riders take the drugs or blood dope when the risks to them and others are so high?

1. We are creatures of habit. We do today what we did yesterday. We do this year what we did last year. Riders too will generally follow the same regime and take the same performance enhancing choices as they did before.

2. There is pressure to perform: From sponsors, team management, team mates, and the public/fans. Can you as a rider perform up to those expectations, live with the consequences on not performing up to those expectations, or will you give in to the temptation of taking something illegal to give you more confidence in your performance?

3. There are personal needs to be satisfied. Riders are competitive. Some have a strong need to be successful, gain glory, be seen on TV, beat a key adversary, show that their training has been worth it, that they are as good as or better than before. It’s tempting then to take something that would give you an edge – or level out the playing field if you think the other riders are ‘on something.’

How can riders ride clean?

1. Realise that taking banned performance enhancing products is a choice, your choice, no matter what pressure may be exerted on you.
2. Accept that the probability of getting caught is high.
   Accept that the consequences of getting caught are prohibitive – whether this is loss of face, embarrassment, shame, dent in income, long-term ban or whatever is severe enough to be a deterrent to you.
3. Accept that cycling is being cleaned up and you are playing Russian Roulette if you continue to dope.
4. Choose to be a leader in this newer healthier cycling.
   Have faith that the cheats will be caught.
5. Have confidence that if your performance drops you’ll be able to absorb this and won’t be crushed by it. Your performance is important, sure, but not life and death.

Tour de France: The ultimate suffering in sport.

For the first time since 1994 the Tour de France cycle race starts in England. The riders of this endurance event have to endure as much mentally as well as physically.

The race kicked-off with a 8 KM prologue around our capital. This translated into around 10-minutes of lung-busting effort for the riders, where they ride the latest twitchy, carbon-fibre, wind-tunnel tested bikes on tyres less than one-inch wide. The riders studied the course beforehand learning the twists and turns, using their powers of imagery to see themselves taking the fastest lines through the apex of the corners and accelerating out the other side. They will run through this a dozen or so times during their warm-up – which last for one-hour on their bike as it is held stationary on rollers. During their warm-up they will vary their effort using not just their perception of how their body feels, but also through heart-rate monitors across their chest and power meters attached to their cranks.

For eight minutes the riders are on the limit, when every bit of their body’s screaming at them to slow and make it more comfortable. For some riders, including our own Bradley Wiggins and David Miller, these ten-minutes would be the most important of their season. This one day. In front of their home crowd.

The riders who ride well, need not only a fine physique, trained body and peak shape, but the right mental approach too. Unlike the others, they will not dread the pain and discomfort that is a given, but instead use this as signs that they are at the right level. They acknowledge that the pain is temporary, are willing to experience it. Use their body’s reactions as a sign that they are ready. They’ll soak up the atmosphere and excitement. Enjoy the attention. In short, they will use each element of the day to their advantage.

The Prologue is used to seed the riders, to give an indication to the world of their form, to show who is in condition, a contender. Perhaps more than that, it is the only opportunity for the short time trial specialists to wear the coveted Maillot Jaune – the Yellow Jersey – the symbol of the leader on the Tour, a career highlight for all who are talented enough to wear it.
The next day is Stage One, the first of three weeks of mostly long road stages. In contrast to the prologue’s 8 KM, this stage lasts 203 KM - over five-hours of racing. Some riders will try to breakaway from the peleton trying to get some glory on the road, before being swallowed up by the peleton. Most will choose the most efficient strategy: to ride conservatively, not burning up too much energy so they will arrive within the main group at the end of the stage. Concentration skills will be tested as riders are rarely more than a foot from another bike or rider, often within a few inches, sometimes making contact and occasionally getting caught-up in a crash. Hitting the road at up to 40 miles per hour with only a single layer of lycra or naked flesh is always going to hurt. Crashes happen, bones break, skin is lost. Professional cyclists accept this risk and need to be able to ride relaxed but altert. For the first week of the Tour the peleton is twitchy, crashes happen most days, sometimes several times in a day – especially if there is wet and windy weather.

Day after day, cycling for up to six hours of at 60-95 % of maximum heart rate is tough. After a few days the body yearns for rest. It is stiff and tired – but the daily sports massage can only rub away so much of the fatigue. The body is constantly hungry and it is usually impossible to ingest the thousands of calories required to maintain body weight and power. Eating becomes almost a full-time job.

Mental fatigue can set in: the repetitive nature of riding, feeding, listening to team talks on strategy or other matters, sleeping with an aching body and in a different town each night is difficult to absorb. It’s certainly not a touring holiday.

Then there is the weather: the heat in southern France and the massif central, coastal winds, and thunderstorms to contend with.

Most riders must ride for other members of their team, for all or most of the race. Some will support their team leader to help his chance of winning the Tour overall. Others will help shelter and then drive forward their team mate until they are within the last hundred metres of the finishing banner where their teammate can be released to sprint for the stage win. The vast majority of riders don’t have the luxury of riding for themselves in the Tour, or even at any stage in the Tour. This self-sacrifice and suffering for someone else is tough. How many of us could be so selfless and do so with grace under such punishing conditions?

Every now and then there is a time trial, similar to the Prologue but longer, sometimes lasting over an hour, after days of long stages, when the body is no longer fresh. The riders focus now needs to be on maintaining a high level of effort, an aerodynamic position, the right gear ratio and best speed to turn the pedals, cornering fast, but not overcooking it and ending up in the barriers. All this happens while your manager chases you around the course in a team car shouting at you through your earpiece.

Each year it almost seems a surprise, that the vast majority of the riders - mostly those who avoided a major crash – will finish the Tour in the traditional finish, on Paris’ beautiful Champs-Elysees. Each rider is given a finishers medal and the right be a sporting hero. Surely, they have shown us the greatest powers of enduring physical and mental punishment.

Wimbledon – the mental tricks the pros and non-pros can use to deal with our British weather

It’s June and it’s time for what is arguably our best sporting event – Wimbledon one of the tennis grand slams. For most of us the current changeable weather – showers or a more intense deluge, or if lucky, a moment of sunshine – is an inconvenience, but doesn’t really get in our way.

However, for the professional athlete/sportsperson used to training and competing in pleasant climates where consistent sunshine is the norm, our showery weather can pose significant challenges. This is especially true for tennis. In tennis, rain stops play (as in cricket). This is unlike other sports like football, rugby or track and field athletics where competition continues come rain or shine.

Most tennis players train and practice in some of the more pleasant climates: Florida, Spain or Australia. Many players have access to indoor arenas when the weather isn’t so good. This is great as it allows players to spend more quality time practicing to hone their skills. However, come competition time the interruptions in play due to rain can really rattle a player. It is often said by professional athletes (including tennis players) that the difference between winners and losers is psychological. All the skills and physical fitness amounts to little if the player loses concentration, gets frustrated, develops tension, panics or loses self-belief.

The interruption of play due to bad weather poses the following challenges to players:

• Uncertainty about when they will play (when rain will stop)
• Uncertainty about how long they will continue to play (when rain will start)
• How to regain positive momentum after a restart
• How to manage the time when the aren’t playing

Dealing with the uncertainty of when they might be able to start or restart a match

The problem: If you don’t know how long it will be until you are playing, how do you know what to eat and how much? Do you eat something sugary as a snack or more starchy and that will take longer to digest? This can cause stress and worry. Also, there can be a problem with the prematch routines. The main purpose of these routines is to get ready for the match: to feel physically and mentally ready. Performing these routines several times might be difficult if it seems odd or wrong to do them more than once before a match.

The solution: Proper planning beforehand will help. If you know you are unlikely to play for 30, 60, 90 minutes and so on, then have a plan for what will be good to eat, and ensure you have ready access to these foods (have them in your kit bag). To help with the prematch routines, make sure that you practice doing and visualising yourself doing them several times a day in training or practices. Imagine different scenarios: different lengths of breaks in play, restarting after being ahead or behind before the break.

Dealing with the uncertainty about how long they will play before rain will interrupt play.

The problem: Uncertainty can create doubt and anxiety because factors are outside the players control. This is particularly difficult for the player who likes to believe that they play well when they are in control. Also, if they are playing well they can feel pressurised to win the match before the weather turns, because they might fear that the opponent will bounce back if there is a break in play and an opportunity to reflect on play.

The solution: Peak performance occurs when players are focused on the moment, what they are doing right now (not if 5 minutes), and on things that they can influence.

Regaining momentum after a restart

The problem: It can be difficult to start performing at the level that you left the court. You may have doubts about how you’ve lost the advantage or that your opponent has had time to analyse why they were losing.

The solution: Ensure that you are feeling ready, excited and up for the restart. Imagine coming out to resume play feeling good, confident and playing well. Acknowledge the things that you were doing that were helping you play well. Recognise that your opponent has a challenge on their hands to come out and try to turn things around. You’re ready!

Managing the time when you are not playing

The problem: Worrying about your performance, what you did wrong, the missed opportunities, how you were unable to finish the match with a win before play was stopped, doubting if you’ll be able to restart dominantly will be unhelpful. It can eat away at you during the break, lead to more doubt, worry, tension and burn off too much nervous energy when you could be relaxing.

The solution: Have a sheet of paper with you that you can write down answers to key questions e.g., What will I continue to do after a restart? What should I change in my play that will help? Then set this page aside knowing that you have noted the bits you need to. Then do what you know will work for you to relax. For some players this will be having a nap, listening to music, reading, doing sudoku, or catching up on email on your laptop.

Another tip is to remember that as a tennis player you are a restart specialist. Depending on how you look at it, you could see that you restart after every few games during your down time on your chair, after each game, or even after each point.

Lewis Hamilton – imagining it happen

Lewis Hamilton won his first Grand Prix 2 weeks ago in Canada. (Then again the next week.) There are several remarkable aspects to his win:

• It was his first win
• He now leads the drivers championship standings
• It was only his sixth Grand Prix race (quicker than any previous F1 driver)
• He’d never driven round the track until the race weekend

It wasn’t an easy win – he had to deal with four restarts after a period behind the safety car and rebuild his lead each time from scratch. Also, it is a track with a high crash rate, as seen in the number of other drivers who crashed during the race.

So how did he do it?

• He is very talented
• He has high self-confidence
• He drove the course before he even arrived at the track

Yes, before the race Lewis commented on how he was looking forward to the Canadian Grand Prix because he had only ever driven the course on the MacLaren simulator. I believe this was key to his success. This allowed his mind to run through the race corner by corner, from start to finish. In doing so, he was able to see in his mind how he’d drive the course, find the best racing line, work out his braking points, and so on. By using the simulator, imagining how he’d be and what he’d be doing, he had already driven the race several times before arriving in the country.

Now, not all athletes have the benefit of expensive mechanical simulators for their sport, and indeed, it wouldn’t be possible to build them for every sport. However, we all have the ability to use our minds as simulators to generate powerful images of performance. This allows us to practice many times without the risk of injury or the need to be at particular locations. For these simulations to be effective we need to create images which are not only visually detailed, but also create in our imagination the smells, touches, emotions, sounds and bodily movement patterns that we experience in reality. Once these images are created, we can then use them to imagine different scenarios. Using the F1 example, we could imagine getting a great start, poor start, getting a puncture, losing the in-car radio communication etc. Next, run through each of these scenarios in your mind, ‘seeing’ how you’ll deal with them and come out the other side after coping well with them. Then, should they happen in reality, they will seem familiar, you’ll already have a well thought through plan, which is ready to execute, allowing you to cope with the situation without generating the expected stress and other unhelpful emotions.

Developing effective imagery skills is just one of the skills I help all types of athletes with.

Staying top dog isn’t easy: The case of English Cricket, English Rugby, and Moto GP Champion Valentino Rossi

All sports people strive to be the best that they can be, to perform, and excel. The hungry and motivated athletes will persist in the face of setbacks and challenges. The talented ones, who work hard, will be in a position to win. Winning consistently brings tournament and championship success. Maintaining a winning position is difficult.

Perhaps your hunger and drive go. After all, you’ve achieved what you have likely dreamt of and had as your goal for years. It can be difficult to refocus after this. What do you have to prove? Perhaps you expect that it will be easier next time, or a given that you’ll repeat the success - as often this is the message that fans and the media gives to you. Sometimes the pressure of being seen as the favourite can be difficult to shoulder if you’d rather go about your preparation and competition without the extra spotlight.

There is another, no less significant hurdle to overcome – time. Time brings changes: changes in personnel, support staff, or team-mates, opportunities for injuries to develop (just think of how injuries have side-lined Jonny Wilkinson, the 2003 Rugby World Cup hero), time for competitors to improve, other life events that can detract from your preparation.

As the title says: staying top dog isn’t easy.

Michael Schumacher - what set him apart?

What sets him apart is not that he’s got one facet that other drivers don’t, but that the sum of his skills and abilities are a powerful combination.
What was easy to see on his arrival in F1 was his driving talent and his determination. This determination led him to work harder than anyone else seemed to be doing at the time. This meant that he was testing his cars, reading technical data and working on being the physically fittest driver out there.

But perhaps what sets him apart most of all as a driver, is not his physical attributes, but his emotional control and intelligence. He is able to keep his emotions in check when racing, so his anger and frustrations don’t cause surges in adrenaline that impair performance – through an altered sense of timing or taking greater risks. Yes, there have been some well known gaffes, but I believe these have been a product of his very high levels of passion and desire for competition and winning, rather than cold-hearted calculation.

Schumacher isn’t a machine, selfless and uncaring as he was portrayed over a decade ago. Perhaps he was more like this when he arrived in F1, or just that he was young and learning how to be an F1 driver. He has certainly evolved into a team player. We saw this in how he got the team behind him, working for him and the car’s performance. They see his commitment, hard work and passion and it rubs off on everyone at Ferrari. It is easy to see that this approach works in his favour as it quickens the development of the car.

There is evidence of how he’s a team player time and time again. When he celebrates he does so with passion, energy and hugs his team. In the penultimate round of this year’s championship when his car retired with mechanical problems, in effect putting him out of the drivers’ championship, it was he who was consoling the team when he made it back to the Ferrari garage – not them consoling him.

His emotional intelligence and ability to get the team dynamics working for him developed over his career as he matured. I believe it is this that set him apart and above the other drivers of his generation.

Other teams have great cars, aerodynamic packages, engines, tyres, strategies and drivers. But what they seem to lack at times is the cohesiveness and closeness that Schumacher developed at Ferrari. It is this that helps the whole team pull together and gets results. Other sports are littered with examples of having the best players and skills, but get beaten by other teams who work better as a unit. With Schumacher we saw both - the best driver and the best functioning team pulling for him. With this combination the product was record-setting winning and domination.

Effective · Tailor-made · Professional

Dr Victor Thompson

Help@SportsPsychologist.co.uk