Mindfulness and Mental Flexibility in Sports

Mindfulness Exercises

The formula for achieving success in any performance venue depends on the development of the 4 pillars of Mindfulness:
1. Physical Mindful Training
2. Mental Mindful Training
3. Emotional Mindful Training
4. Spiritual Mindful Awareness

Mindfulness Exercises

The second pillar of mindfulness exercises builds upon the physical training exercises.  Once you realize that the goal is not to stop your thoughts from occurring, but rather to learn how to redirect your thoughts.  Think of this as mental flexibility.  Through the physical exercises of breathing and focused attention on a task, you will realize that you have choices and can decide which thoughts to focus on and follow.
As performers, we think constantly during training and competition.  Those thoughts can be extremely helpful or not helpful, and we may not even know how our thoughts are influencing us from moment to moment.  Many athletes hear from their coaches, peers and parents, “You need to think positive!” However, many performers do not know how to move into positive thought.
Mental mindful training is a skill that helps performers gain awareness about their internal chatter.  We often have numerous thoughts occurring very quickly.  Mindfulness training is about utilizing and giving more attention to those thoughts that are typically associated with better performance.
Here is a tool to utilize:

Thoughts: Think of them like a traffic light.

The thoughts in our mind operate like traffic lights, switching from green to red and red to green.

• Green Thoughts: In the flow, present in your workout or competition.

I can, I am strong, yes, the feeling of no thoughts

• Red Thoughts: dwelling on what is wrong, worrying or focusing on things you don’t like.

I hurt, I failed, that was horrible, I can’t.
Awareness is the mindful mental tool that can help you SWITCH those thoughts into something more directive or helpful.

Try Practicing Switch Thoughts:

When you are in a situation where you swing from positive mental thoughts to negative thoughts, imagine a YELLOW traffic light.
Yellow thoughts are:

• Neutral and Action orientated
• Counting steps or foot strikes
• Focusing on a single task or action: breathing, pumping arms, practiced routines.

Here are Switch Thoughts in action:

1. Awareness of the negative thought
2. Accept the thought without judging yourself-simply be curious.
3. Action towards a yellow or neutral thought.

Practicing Switch Thoughts brings forth the following:

• The ability to instantly change your mental state
• Redirecting your mind to align with your body for greater efficiency in the moment
• Switch thoughts quickly bring you into the moment and help identify mental lapses
• Self-correcting mental tool

Click here to read about pillar 1: Physical Mindful Training