The Integration Process

The Core Skill

 The goal is to go to the centered state and stay there. In my view diaphragmatic deep breathing is the most efficient and effective skill you can use to shift to or consistently remain in the centered state. The deep breathing skill is one of the most important skills in all of sports training and execution.      

The Benefits

There are many benefits of diaphragmatic deep breathing. I want to mention these benefits in hopes that it will further motivate you to become an expert in using this skill.

            1. When you shift the focus of your mind from the normal chatter to paying attention and concentrating on the deep breathing technique, you can with practice and over a period of time train your mind to be more efficient in the skill of concentrating.

            2. It helps your body release the muscular tension that interferes with the execution of your highest skill level. It increases blood supply to the cells, aides in muscular control, balance, and coordination. All of those benefits increase the efficiency of mechanical skills.

            3. It is an excellent shifting device moving the focus of the mind from the distracted state to the centered state. It helps you to maintain momentum at center.

            4. When the mind is concentrating at center, it is most receptive to creating the new brain circuits. It efficiently helps to integrate the centered thoughts changing bad habits into good habits. Being centered in all phases of practice and training will maximize the efficiency of everything you do to prepare for competition.

            5. In sports where applicable, it prepares the mind and body to enter a trance or altered state of mind during execution.

            6. It is a very effective way to relieve stress, to settle the nerves, to move the body and mind into a peaceful, calm, and more alert state.

            7. There are so many different ways to practice mechanical skills and working on mental skills can be frustrating due to the illusive nature of these skills. Deep breathing is a simple, tangible experience that can have a profound effect on the execution of mechanical skills.

            8. During the practice of the deep breathing experience, you will be asked to become aware of what it feels like in your body. This training will help you become more aware of your body which can be in most sports very helpful with mechanical execution.

             9. Any activity in life that would benefit from less muscular tension and a more focused mind can be enhanced by the skill of deep breathing. Think about how many different activities would be in that category.

            10. It helps with the integration process in the use of video training and anchoring. Both of these training techniques will be explained later in this section.

You will be taught the mechanics of this deep breathing technique and given a CD to help you become more effective and efficient at using this skill. It will build your confidence that this skill can have a profound impact on helping you reach a state of concentration and on helping to put your body in the state that maximizes your chances of executing your highest skill level. You will come to know that this skill alone can set you apart from most of the other competitors in your sport and can give you an edge in all phases of practice, training, preparation, and execution.

We will use biofeedback training to help you build your skill level and to increase your confidence that you can use this skill in all the beneficial ways listed above.

Going to Center: The Art of Concentration

There is a reason I listed the skill of concentrating as the first benefit of the diaphragmatic deep breathing. Being able to concentrate is like a portal, a gateway into the centered state and from center, you can consistently execute your highest skill level. It is one of the most important and critical skills in sports. You will use it in every phase of practice, training, preparation, and execution. You will not be able to get centered and reach your potential on a consistent basis unless you are able to master this skill.

A state of concentration is like a daydream. Think about daydreaming. When you are daydreaming, you are focused on the daydream and not consciously aware of anything else. The part about not being consciously aware of anything else around you is the key. Most of the time, a daydream state happens without conscious intention like when you are watching TV, reading a good book, watching a movie, or playing video games. Notice that in most instances, you don’t say something like I think I’ll concentrate and watch this movie or play this video game. You just do it without thinking much about it. When in this state, you will lose track of time; it doesn’t exist at that level of concentration.

It’s a challenge for athletes because there are so many potential distractions. You know that you must focus and concentrate when competing if you want to play at peak in the centered state. So one of the first skills you must learn as an athlete is the ability to concentrate. My guess is that very few athletes are taught this skill and many professionals continue to struggle with this challenging skill.

The goal here is to be just as persistent and determined to become an expert in concentrating as you are in having great skills off the tee, a great forehand, executing a perfect dive, having great skills at the 3 point range, catching a football, throwing a baseball etc. The good news is that building the skill of concentration is simpler than building those great mechanical skills. They do however share one thing in common and that is the requirement for continued and consistent practice and repetition.

We will teach you what you need to do to become a master at this skill.

Personalized CDs

Using your goals and the centered thoughts you have selected to integrate at a deeper level, we will with your help design and create personalized CDs. These CDs can become a powerful tool in the integration process.

We have learned through research and experience that these CDs can be an effective way to integrate those centered thoughts. The critical component of the experience is getting into a state of concentration in the beginning of the CD. This opens the mind to be receptive to the content and enables the mind to absorb and record that content in an efficient manner. The first minute or so focuses on helping you get into that state of concentration as I described in the above section.

The remainder of the CD is designed to address the integration of the centered thoughts and other goals selected by the athlete. These thoughts and goals can be such topics as staying motivated, building confidence, letting go of mistakes, improving consistency, and building mental toughness to name a few. Coaches will also be asked for input and suggestions on the content. The CDs can vary in length depending on the athlete and the desired content and outcome.

Efficient Practice

Efficient practice is an important part of the integration process of mental and mechanical skills. There are a number of important ingredients to an efficient practice including hard work, commitment, dedication, good coaching, determination, and repetition.

In addition to those, there are others that will set some athletes apart from there opponents. A thirst and passion for knowledge and learning is one of those traits. Some coaches can be from what is often called, “the old school”. They are in your face sometimes screaming and chewing your butt.

We encourage our athletes to have a “bring it on” attitude that says, “Chew my butt all you want to because I know you are trying to help me and I’ll take whatever you dish out and use it to help me learn.” These athletes will often come early and stay late at practice and will watch more film than required. An efficient practice begins with a passion for learning. If you have that, a lot of other things will fall in place.

We will be working with you and your coaches on the mental side of practice. The nature of practice varies with each sport but there are some general ideas that apply. Make sure you come to practice in plenty of time to stretch and warm up. We will help you design a 1 minute mental exercise to help you prepare mentally for your practice.

You will not be surprised to hear me say again that concentrating during practice will go a long way to helping your brain efficiently record and store the mechanical skills. Remember how effectively the deep breathing can help you shift into that state. With some mechanical skills, it will be important to be aware of how you breathe before and during the execution of the skill. We will help you find the most efficient way to use breathing.

When your coach is giving you instructions on mechanics, we will help you design an effective way to assimilate that information and execute it in your practice routine. This will help with the efficiency of the brain to record and store the correct data and strengthen what is sometimes called the neural blueprint (neuro-muscular memory).

Repetition is a very important part of integrating mechanical skills. What many athletes do not realize is that the tempo of those repetitions is also an important part of that process. I’ve seen a number of athletes who in their eagerness to learn do too many repetitions in too short a period of time. When that happens, the mechanics can get sloppy and that contaminates the very mechanics you are attempting to store in the brain. We, along with your coach will help you with some ideas on how you can most efficiently build those mechanical skills.

Even though you may learn the skills to have efficient practices, you then face the challenge of moving from the practice area to the area or arena of competition. This is especially challenging for golfers and tennis players and anyone else who goes from practice to competing without much of a break. We will again work with you and your coach to develop the mental skills to take a good practice experience into your competitive experience.

Anchoring

Anchoring is another skill designed to more deeply integrate all aspects of the centered state.

An anchor can be a word, phrase, sound, smell, touch, or a sight that triggers the reliving of a past experience. For example, the smell of fresh bread may trigger the reliving of an experience when Mom prepared homemade bread or seeing the American flag may trigger the reliving of that highschool championship game or hearing a song may trigger the reliving of some memory of aromantic relationship. An anchor takes the individual back in time to relive the experience in such depth that it is almost like being there again. In these cases, an anchor is something developed over a period of time with no conscious awareness.

Most of you have had experiences in competition where you felt centered and performed at peak level. The goal is to establish an anchor or anchors that enable you to bring that past experience back into your present experience. Using confidence as our example, this would be situations where you were confident and centered.

The first step is to teach you how to design your own anchor/s and then how and when to “fire that anchor.” Firing the anchor is like turning on a switch and igniting a powerful energy that can take you in an instant and automatically back to that prior experience of confidence. This type of anchor operates as a shifting mechanism. With your anchor, you shift from the distracted state of poor confidence to the centered state of great confidence.

The anchor can also be used to maintain the momentum of the centered state. The anchor is fired while you have the momentum and in that case the anchor becomes a reinforcing mechanism.

Bill Curry, a former All Pro Center for the Green Bay Packers, stated that he used the word, “explode” as a verbal anchor. He identified traits like power, quickness, agility, and sharpness to describe how he experienced peak performance at center. And over a period of time, he associated the word, “explode” with that performance designing that word to embody all those traits so that in a split second, he could both shift to peak performance or reinforce peak performance by thinking in his mind the word, “explode”.

You may be like Bill Curry and want to anchor that confidence precisely at the moment you are to execute your skill. You might want to anchor that confidence right before you are to execute your skill such as a golf shot, serving in tennis, beginning any kind of race in track, swimming, skiing, diving, kicking in football, pitching in baseball, shooting a free throw, firing a rifle, snow boarding, skate boarding, or bowling the ball.

In sports like football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, and water polo, where there is a lot of action and sometimes no break in the action, you may want to anchor a continuous confidence throughout the contest. This is an example of the anchor as a reinforcing mechanism.

A golfer has just hit a poor shot and is upset and angry and is having difficulty getting back to center. Firing the anchor can help the shift from the distracted state back to center.

This is one of those skills in sports that you have to experience to understand its’ power. We will teach you how to select your anchor/s and how to practice anchoring so it can become a very important skill in your determination to execute from the centered state.

RightBrain Video Training (Highly Skilled Athletes)

Traditional Use of Videos

Some of you have probably been using videos in one form or another for years and have found them helpful. These include but are not limited to scouting, analyzing mechanical skills, and studying opponents. The most popular use is what I call video instruction and there are countless videos available where the athlete is taught and shown how to execute a mechanical skill. The focus of our system is not video instruction, but video training.

The goals are to build confidence and to access and execute more consistently your highest skill level. You can learn how to go from just watching a video to using these videos as an important part of your practice and training.

The Left and Right Hemisphere of the Brain

Traditional sports training and video instruction focus on breaking down each mechanical skill into different parts. This is an important aspect of all sports training, but there is often too much mechanical information for the left brain (the analytical side of the brain) to process. When this happens, the athlete will tend to “over think” the mechanics and lose sight of how all the parts work together. This is why repetition of the skill without much left brain interference is important. During the repetition of the skill, the right brain (the part of the brain that can intuitively process the different mechanical parts synchronizing the muscle movements and nerve responses) brings all the different parts together to execute the complete mechanical skill. Highly skilled athletes have developed through years of practice and training excellent mechanical skills. The goal or objective at that point is to access that highly developed skill on a consistent basis.

The Training Process

RightBrain Sports Training takes training to another level, but it is never intended to replace all the traditional ways athletes learn and execute skills. It is always a supplement to good coaching, hard work, repetition, and a positive mental attitude. The length of the video training is 4 to 6 minutes. The video consists of 2 phases. The first and most important phase is the 1 minute preparation phase designed to prepare the mind to maximize the effectiveness of the training. The second phase is the core training phase designed by the coaches and the athlete. This second phase consists of the athlete watching himself/herself execute their own picture perfect skills in a special format. 

The Preparation Phase

The preparation phase is the most important part of the video training and is a portion of what sets it apart from anything else being done. It prepares the brain and mind for the training experience and this preparation increases the effectiveness of the training video. It helps the brain more efficiently and effectively sharpen your mechanical data and then makes that data more accessible to you during competition. Again, this preparation phase takes about 1 minute.

The Viewing Systems

You can of course view your video on a wide variety of systems. One system you may not know about is called Personal Eyewear Cinema (IMV260). It is like having on a pair of glasses and watching a 50 inch screen about 6 feet in front of you with ear pieces and a built in flash drive to store your video. Check out this system and other similar systems at www.i-glassesstore.com.

General Benefits

1. The most obvious benefit is that it improves consistency of mechanical execution. 

2. Repeated practice using the video helps athletes improve concentration skills.

3. The core of the structure is focusing and concentrating which is a key to execution.

4. The very nature of the experience increases confidence to improve consistency.

5. The success of the training can provide motivation to do other things designed to improve the quality of performance such as having more energy and enthusiasm for hard work, practicing, increased mental toughness and determination.

6. Provides an additional edge over the competition.

7. Helps improve visualization skills.

Situational Benefits

There are many different situations where this training can be helpful.

1. Being in a slump.

2. Preventing a slump.

3. Playing poorly during competition.

4. Rain or unexpected delays.

5. Waiting your turn.

6. Keeping skills sharp during the off season.

7. Keeping skills sharp: waiting for your chance.

8. Making a comeback.

9. Making a comeback from injury.

Videos to Avoid

Videos can be helpful but they can also unintentionally be used to strengthen poor mechanics and decrease confidence. Many coaches continue to show their athletes videos of losses, mistakes, poor performance, and poor execution as a way to help the athletes, “learn from their mistakes.” The brain thinks in pictures and if you look at video of those negative experiences, you strengthen that negative imprint on your brain and mind. This contaminates and weakens your existing excellent mechanical and mental skills.

Those negative videos are for coaches’ eyes only. They serve the purpose of helping coaches become even more skilled at teaching their athletes how to improve both mechanical and mental skills.

To continue, go to Additional Skills for Getting Centered or for additional options, go to THE SITE DIRECTORY .