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- Prepare Yourself To Perform
Would you ever send your team out to play without warming up?
I doubt it.
Despite dubious evidence about static stretching, aimless skill drills, and zig-zag running around cones, we still agree that our players give themselves the best chance of success if they’re physically and mentally primed for performance.
What we forget is that coaching is a performance, too.
You are a performer.
And you need to warm-up so that you’re physically and mentally primed for your performance.
While the idea of the coach-as-a-performer is a modern concept, it’s also not.
Much of Bill Walsh’s coaching success with the San Francisco 49ers took place forty years ago, in the early 1980s.
Tucked in the back of his book The Score Takes Care of Itself, Walsh detailed his pre-game ritual at that time - what he called his Gladiator Mindset.
Step 1: Priming
To get ready for battle, Walsh went through his own ceremony in order to achieve a state of coaching readiness.
Visit his locker to finish getting dressed
Walk through the locker room, taking the exact same route every time
Sit in his office and watch 5 minutes of another NFL game
Shake hands with every player
Enter the field of play
Walsh described this as a grounding process that helped him systematically narrow his focus to the point where he was able to concentrate exclusively on the game plan and its execution.
“It’s like a high-performance car going from zero to sixty, the gears shifting seamlessly and without notice,” he wrote.
As the gears shifted up, his worries shifted out. He continues: “I sought to eradicate worry, excitement, stress, distractions, hopes, fears, and all personal issues”.
Not only were Walsh’s teams painstakingly prepared to play you, the coach himself was primed for prolonged tactical warfare.
And he wasn’t even finished his mental warm-up.
Step 2: Mental Rehearsal
Bill Walsh never sung the national anthem.
Rather than an act of protest, for Walsh, hearing The Star Spangled Banner became one final cue to centre himself, gather his composure, and visualize the performance he was about to give.
In this instance, now that he was on the field with all of the sounds and sunshine and stimuli around him, he was able to mentally rehearse inside the competitive cauldron.
This time, with even more intent than before:
“It was during this brief moment that I would remove myself mentally from the activities and considerable energy around me on the sidelines. I visualized that I was looking at the football field through a big plate-glass window, removed, in a sense, so I wouldn't get overly involved emotionally and could stay with what I had prepared prior to the game. Clear thinking and overly charged emotions are usually antithetical.
I actually think my heart rate may have gone down as kickoff approached. A sense of calm came over me. If a person can be extremely intense, extraordinarily focused, and completely composed all at the same time, I guess that's the state I achieved through not singing the national anthem.
By kickoff, I had blocked out crowd noise and all the crazy energy and activity on the sidelines, which are disruptive to good decision making. It may have been as pleasing a sensation as any I ever got as a coach.
The state of mind I could achieve as a game was about to begin was pure, so free of dissonance - it was just the best. The ritual created it. It was the gladiator mindset, free of stress, distractions, and emotionalism, that got me ready for the competition and allowed me to work at my highest level."
Bill Walsh believed that achieving excellence in a hyper-competitive landscape required superior planning. In his mind, being prepared helped alleviate a lot of the anxiety that can cripple performers during games.
He also knew that those same anxieties and worries that could destroy his players had the potential to derail him. So he prepared himself for possibility.
What is your routine to mentally prepare yourself to perform?
Cody’s Notes
Walsh’s pre-game process isn’t extraordinary. He attached intent and meaning to regular activities, like walking through the locker room.
By acknowledging the natural feelings that arise from doing hard things (excitement, stress, distractions, hopes, fears, worry) you get to choose how you respond to them. In Walsh’s case, he parked them for 3 hours every Sunday afternoon.
This type of mental preparation requires conditioning. You cannot merely do it once and expect to have razor-sharp focus and full control over your mental state.
I recommend practicing in the practice environment. Have a similar priming and rehearsal ritual every day at training.
If Bill Walsh can make time for this process before coaching an NFL game, you can make time for your own process.