Attention, Intensity, Intention.
Three skills summed up renowned British sports psychologist Dan Abrahams’ presentation on how athletes can achieve their highest levels of performance.
“When we think of mindset, I’m going to suggest there’s three mental skills,” Abrahams said during his featured presentation at the United Soccer Coaches Convention in Philadelphia this week. “I think all psychology can load onto these three mental skills that are absolutely essential, that are constantly mediating performance every single second, constantly mediating technical, tactical, and physical actions.”
Abrahams, the former golfer turned best-selling author and podcaster, gave a passionate push for improving player mindset. While most coaches focus heavily on the technical, tactical, and physical actions in the game, which even Abraham calls the foundation of soccer, he also provides a rationale for how the mental, emotional, and social components influence player performance on a daily basis
Abrahams’ previous books, among them Soccer Tough I and Soccer Tough II, explore how athletes can build championship mindset models, which he believes separates great players from good players.
With nearly every organization and athlete moving toward an analytical approach to assess performance and growth, Abrahams felt the need to quantify the complexities of player mindset and performance into a simple assessment. He developed a player rating scale of 1-10 for performance coincides with his player rating scale for mindset. If a 10 was a complete performance and 1 was a very poor performance, Abrahams uses a similar scale to create a zone of mindset, with an 8-10 considered a high performance mindset, a 5-7 an average performance mindset, and 4 and below a low performance mindset.
“When players are really engaged with, in tune with, passionate about being high on that mindset scale, they give themselves their best chance for their best possible performance.”
The first essential skill Abrahams suggests is the ability to maintain attention, something that is difficult to obtain during soccer’s unique structure. With no timeouts and brief breaks for fouls, goals, or when the ball goes out of bounds, a soccer player’s mind is constantly churning.
“Our brains are designed to rest between tasks,” Abrahams said. “Soccer is heavily action-oriented, constant challenges being thrown at us. It’s this constant metabolic or energetic challenge, and that is why our brains can easily rest. So it’s easy for us to be distracted and disconnected.”
Abrahams credits the techniques of visualization and creating a match script, a strategy he uses with many of his players, which highlights a few key actions to control in a game. In Abraham’s words, it’s not enough to want to win, score a goal, or keep a clean sheet, the actions have to be more specific, for example: win every aerial duel, attack the near post on crosses from the right side, block every shot inside the box.
Intensity is the second skill Abrahams suggests is crucial to high-level performance. While most trainers and physios will point toward heart rate and physical characteristics, he maintains the value of self and peer-directed talk as successful strategies for maintaining high intensity.
“It’s natural to drop in intensity,” Abrahams said, “You’ve probably seen that from your players, and see them switch off, or drop to a lower level of engagement. In the book, I talk about an optimal intensity being alert and ready, alert and ready. To me, that encapsulates what it is to be intense, watchful and vigilant, mentally prepared to respond.”
Self-talk and visualization can be used to both increase intensity or decrease it if the individual is to anxious or excited. And with the number of games increasing for players every calendar year, Abrahams reiterates the likelihood in seeing the level of intensity drop throughout a game or a season.
The final skill Abrahams included in his presentation was the value of intent. In numerous examples, he demonstrated how we as observers can easily recognize when some teams or players are playing not to lose (energy back) rather than playing to win (energy forward).
“I want players to pick their leading action words, the ones that sum up their style in which they want to play, because that’s what intent is,” he said. “Do I want to be purposeful, positive, proactive, or do I want to be hesitant and inhibited?”
Abrahams podcast, The Sport Psych Show, blends a number of topics from leading experts in psychology, physiology, biomechanics, and pedagogy, among others, from all areas of sport, including educators in the physical education landscape. One of the leading figures in sport psychology around the game of soccer, Abrahams has an active presence across social media, sharing key pearls of wisdom for players and coaches to improve their mindset approach.
