Controlling Your State as a Tactical Athlete

For the tactical athlete there is always a great deal of stress present.  It starts in the preparation or training phase and continues into ‘live’ situations.

Unlike sport athletes that have an off-season, the tactical athlete doesn’t have this luxury, so state management is even more critical.  If state is not controlled, in a positive manner, it can cause the tactical athlete to react both physically and mentally in a manner that will negatively affect their performance abilities.

They may become tense, their heart rates race, they break into a cold sweat, they worry about the outcome, they find it hard to concentrate on the task in hand.

This has led to books like “Warrior Mindset” by Michael Asken, Lt. Col, Dave Grossman and Loren Christensen.  My intent is to break the complexity of state control and other warrior mindset attributes into information that is easy to understand and can be used right now.

My friend, Steven Mosley (Combat Hard Training) and I are putting together a book and workshop that will go over the mental and physical aspect of readiness as it relates to tactical/combat athletes, first responders and to some extent self-defense, self-protection and martial arts.

These series of posts can be looked at as an outline for the seminar and book. I started last week with a personal SWOT assessment and today I’m going to discuss sate management and control.

We’re going to going to focus on techniques that the tactical athlete can use in their practice situations to help them maintain control and optimize their performance. Once learned, these techniques allow the tactical and combat athlete to relax and to focus his/her attention in a positive manner on the task of preparing for and engaging in live situations.

Mental strength training to develop a warrior mindset is yet another weapon in the combat and tactical athlete’s arsenal in gaining the winning edge.

The 4C’s

There are many components to state; here are the Big 4 – Concentration, confidence, control and commitment.  These are generally considered the main mental qualities that are important for successful practice and operation.

• Concentration – ability to maintain focus
• Confidence – believe in one’s abilities
• Control – ability to maintain emotional control regardless of distraction
• Commitment – ability to continue working to agreed goals

Concentration

This is the mental quality to focus on the task in hand. If the tactical athlete lacks concentration then their abilities will not be effectively or efficiently applied to the task, and this can have deadly effects.

Research has identified the following types of attention focus:

• Broad Narrow continuum – the athlete focuses on a large or small number of stimuli
• Internal External continuum – the athlete focuses on internal stimuli (feelings) or external stimuli (the threat)

The demand for concentration varies with the situation:

• Sustained concentration
• Short bursts of concentration
• Intense concentration

Common distractions are: anxiety, mistakes, fatigue, weather, crowd noise, teammates, superior officer, opponent, negative thoughts etc.

Strategies to improve concentration are very personal. One way to maintain focus is to set process goals for each practice session. The individual will have an overall goal for which they will identify a number of process goals that will help them focus on specific aspects of the task.

For each of these goals the athlete can use a trigger word (a word which instantly refocuses the individual’s concentration to the goal).

Here’s an example from sports, a sprinting technique requires the athlete to focus on being tall, relaxed, and smooth and to drive with the elbows – trigger word could be “technique”

The tactical athlete should develop a routine for practice and live scenarios.  These may include the night before, the morning of, pre-engagement and post engagement routines. If these routines are appropriately structured then they can prove a useful aid to support and enhance concentration.

Confidence

Confidence results from the comparison a tactical athlete makes between the goal and their ability. The individual will have self-confidence if they believe they can achieve their goal. As Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or if you think you can’t, your right.”

When a tactical athlete has self-confidence they will tend to: persevere even when things are not going to plan, show enthusiasm, be positive in their approach and take their share of the responsibility in success and fail.

To improve their self-confidence, an individual can use mental imagery to:

• Visualize previous good performance to remind them of the look and feel
• Imagine various scenarios and how they will cope with them

Good goal setting (challenging yet realistic) can bring feelings of success. If the tactical athlete can see that they are achieving their short-term goals and moving towards their long-term goals then confidence grows.

Confidence is a positive state of mind and a belief that you can meet the challenge ahead – a feeling of being in control. It is not the situation that directly affects confidence; it’s the thoughts, assumptions and expectations that can build-up or destroy confidence.

High Self Confidence

• Thoughts – positive thoughts of success
• Feelings – excited, anticipation, calm, elation, prepared
• Focus – on self, on the task
• Behavior – give maximum effort and commitment, willing to take chances, positive reaction to set backs, open to learning, take responsibility for outcomes

Low Self Confidence

• Thoughts – negative, defeat or failure, doubt
• Feelings – tense, dread, fear. not wanting to take part
• Focus – on others, on less relevant factors
• Behavior – lack of effort, likely to give up, unwilling to take risks (rather play safe at least in practice), blame others or conditions for outcome

Control

Identifying when a tactical athlete feels a particular emotion and understanding the reason for the feelings is an important stage of helping the individual gain emotional control. A person’s ability to maintain control of their emotions in the face of adversity and remain positive is essential to successful performance. Two emotions that are often associated with poor performance are anxiety and anger.

Anxiety comes in two forms – Physical (butterflies, sweating, nausea, needing the toilet) and Mental (worry, negative thoughts, confusion, lack of concentration). Relaxation is a technique that can be used to reduce anxiety.

When the tactical athlete becomes angry, the cause of the anger often becomes the focus of attention. This then leads to a lack of concentration on the task, performance deteriorates and confidence in ability is lost which fuels the anger – a slippery slope to failure.

Commitment

Tactical performance depends on the individual being fully committed to numerous goals over many years. In competition with these goals the individual will have many aspects of daily life to manage. The many competing interests and commitments include work, studies, family/partner, friends, social life and other hobbies/sports

Within the tactical athlete’s world, commitment can be undermined by:

• A perceived lack of progress or improvement
• Not being sufficiently involved in developing the training program
• Not understanding the objectives of the training program
• Injury
• Lack of enjoyment
• Anxiety about performance
• Becoming bored
• Not working as a team
• Lack of commitment by other teammates

Setting goals will raise the feelings of value, give the tactical athlete ownership of the goals and therefore become more committed to achieving them. All goals should be SMARTER.

Many individuals can contribute to the tactical athlete’s levels of commitment with appropriate levels of support and positive feedback, especially during times of injury, illness and poor performance.

Successful Emotional States

 The following are emotional states experienced with successful performance:

• Happy – felt that this was my opportunity to demonstrate an excellent performance. Felt I could beat anybody.
• Calm and nervous – Felt nervous but really at ease with these feelings. I accepted and expected to be nervous but felt ready to start.
• Anxious but excited – Felt so ready to engage but a little nervous. Nerves and excitement come together
• Confident – I remembered all the past successful training sessions and previous engagements

Psychology Skills Training

Mental training for the tactical athlete should aim to improve their mental skills, such as self-confidence, motivation, the ability to relax under great pressure, and the ability to concentrate and usually has three phases:

• Education phase, during which the individual learns about the importance of psychological skills and how they affect performance
• Acquisition phase, during which the individual learns about the strategies and techniques to improve the specific psychological skills that they require
• Practice phase, during which the individual develop their psychological skills through repeated practice, simulations, and actual competition.

Summary

Key Areas to Utilize in State Control

• Sub-modalities
• Anchoring
• Strategies
• Goal setting
• Belief change
• Re-framing
• Association and disassociation
• Acting as if

Key Tips:

• Notice when you’re in a strong positive and resourceful state and anchor it.

• Encourage your teammates to do the same.

• Practice in ‘real-time’ situations.

• Those who can control their state we ‘at cause’ and are therefore more likely to achieve their goals and desired outcomes.

• This is important for everyone, not just combat athletes.

• Controlling your state relates to key sport psychology areas such as: confidence, motivation, and arousal and anxiety control (or for the personal positives such as ‘ready’, ‘in-control, ‘excited’) and concentration – which are all states.

Practice The Following:

• Building resource anchors/circle of excellence.

• Swish patterns to drive new behaviors.

• Collapsing anchors that generate negative states.

• Switching between associated and dissociated states.

• Acting ‘As if’ also helps to develop positive states more frequently.  If you can act ‘As if’ , then you completely experience states like confidence, composure, in control,, powerful, etc. then you will being to ‘know’ how these states feel and it becomes a more familiar state in your neurology and then engrained.

If you would like information about our Warrior Mind Training Workshop, please Contact Me.