Sport Psychology – Mindset

While training as part of a sports team, there will regularly be times of hard work and intense effort which can be demanding for the players both physically and mentally. During a tough and demanding training session it would be normal to have internalised thoughts such as “This is so hard”, “How long do we have left?” and “I hate this”.

During these tough sessions there may be encouragement provided by the players to each other such as “Keep going guys”, “Let’s go!” and “Great work boys”. These comments help the players to stay motivated, persevere and complete the sessions.

Now I want to highlight another comment that players could encourage each other with that could improve motivation, enjoyment and ultimately performance at both an individual and team level.

The comment is ” WE LOVE THIS”.

This comment means:
We love the hard work of training because it is helping us to achieve the goals we have set.
We love the process of getting better as a team.
We love supporting each other.
We love pushing ourselves and each other to get the best out of ourselves and each other.
We love doing what is going to help the team succeed.

Adopting this new comment amongst the team is essentially adopting a new mindset. This new mindset is likely to lead to the hard training sessions being embraced and enjoyed, rather than simply endured. Players are less likely to dread tough training sessions, but rather be excited by them.

Try to remember this comment when you next train with your team and things get tough.