La la la la la!
La la la la la!
La la la la la!
La la la la la!
Life
Life is life
When we all give the power
We all give the best
Every Minute of an hour
Donāt think about a rest
When you all get the power
You all get the best
When everyone gives everything
And every Song everybody sings
Then itās life
Life is life
Life is life
ā¦
Life is life
When we all feel the power
Life is life
Come on stand up and dance
Life is life
When the feeling of the people
Is the feeling of the band
Life is life
Life is life
Life
Life is life
Life is life
And you call when itās over
You call it should last
Every minute of the future
Is a memory of the past
'Cause we all gave the power
We all gave the best
When everyone gave everything
And every song everybody sings
Life is life
No i am totally on that page with you. I recommend a sports psychologist to people reasonably regularly. I read alot of the ābetter thinkingā books and all that. Robbins is itter nonsense compared to that though.
This is different though. this is instant gratification. Walk out the door buzzing. Back to struggling a week later, remembering nothing he said.
A few of my mates went last year, they got very defensive when i laughed at them spending that kind of money. I said to one of them, a real go-ahead type of guy as it is but also a stress bucket, āwhy are you going to this?ā āhe is supposed to really motivate youā was the answer. To which i told him to take the picture of the kids out of his wallet. Job done.
I know FS too and listen he is only making a bob. Supply and demand and all that.
Varied in terms of who they are. Its usually when in normal coaching has hit a wall or maybe somethi g like heavy parental involvemebt which is having a negative effect. its purely a political move then. I did that with a high level Tennis Player who might make it to Pro. His father and Tennis coach were extremely old school and extremely difficult in ways. But a Sports Psych would have a very clever way around all that. I can play the game to a large degree, but i am quite black & white as well if i think someone is having a negative effect. If i said what needed to be said in this case i would almost certainly have lost the athlete, and thats absolutely nothing to do with the kid himself. Thats 65 a session. Once a month, few goals, few minor adjustments and that kinda thing. The psych is very emotionally involved with anyone, so he went and watched the kid play off his own back. I do the same.
For talks/presentations/team work its 200 a session. I have been involved in these as a coaching member at Intermediate club, Senior Club and Inter county GAA. I have also passed on their (2 different people i would reccommend) details to MSL teams, Hockey and another county team.
Paul o connell speaks about it a fair bit in his book.
He scoffed at it for much of his career and had an unbelievably negative approach to match prepā¦a lady who was doing a thesis on it contacted him one day to see could she interview him for her own purposes, she was working with Tyrone at the time. She challenged him a bit and something clicked and he started meeting her and made massive changes on back of it . Loads of it is common sense IMO and stripping away bad habits but it has a huge part to play
Ya Rugby is still quite old school on that front.
I asked last year on a friends whatsapp group, which included former Munster staff, had they any psychologist (Zebo and Keatlys attitude was being discussed) and i got laughed out of it. Noticed alot of talk around Anthony foleys passing about great speeches. OāConnells speech against England is scoffed at by many in the Sports Science game (even though i thought that was appropriate as it happens). But that āoggi oggi oggiā mentality is still there.
As you say so much of it is common sense. And as well simply a process, a set of habits.
It also about giving people skills in terms of language to articulate things and to notice behaviours.
We did a lot of work with business psychologist where I work. One on ones. Have some group sessions coming up. Some people just donāt buy into it and everybody thinks they are an exception but in any team or with any individual there are usually same issues.
How you communicate with people is at centre of it and being aware of your affect on people.
Agassi line about being the thermostat and not the thermometer is a good one. Most people react to energy already there and struggle to establish mood they want to create.
One guy i worked with made us āLove the planā. We were having issues with some older players (its nearly always the older ones) buying into the way we play. So everything became about āLoving the planā. Its was effective. We could throw out the line anytime one of them reached towards criticism with their own confirmation bias based on some failure of the plan. No plan of course is fool proof or perfect.
On a somewhat related note, thereās a good film from this year called āThe Phenomā about sports psychology that delves into some of the stuff above, especially on bad influences.
I saw OāConnell do a guest speaker slot in UL four years ago. He mentioned that he had not paid any attention to the mental approach side from early in his playing days but what got him was the story of feeding the white wolf/black wolf.
