Be focused on the performance and not the outcome

I often wonder if it isn’t repetitive to keep talking about thinking about the performance rather than thinking about the result.

Nevertheless, I still find myself talking about this topic with the young people I work with, for the reason that they bring it up. Some says: “I always think about the result of the match, since the day before so I get tense and nervous and this doesn’t help me” or even “I think about the most important match even if it is in a month and not about the ones that come before”. A tennis player: “Before I was always thinking about the point, now I think more about pushing”.

Let’s just say that most athletes are not trained to think about performance, which concerns the behaviors to put in place to achieve the result goals (win, do your personal best, get into the final) but they think more easily of the result of their actions, I won/lost.

Many young people still think that the result should be their main thought.

Athletes must be aware that the mistake is always technical, if a shot in soccer goes out instead of into the goal it means that the ball has been hit badly, but this is only the effect, the question that the athlete and the coach must answer is:

  • the mistake is technical because the young has tried a shot that he/she does not yet fully possess due to some technical limitation.
  • the mistake is mental because he/she had to pass the ball, since from that position he/she would never have hit the goal.

The same mistake can be caused by different factors, if the coach continually puts the emphasis only on technique or tactics, the athlete will develop a mentality in which every mistake is always technical and therefore he/she never think to train the mindset.

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