Dan Travis

Barcelona - Sanchez Casal Tennis Academy "Mental Toughness" Day Three

The last three days was pulled together by Lorenzo Beltrame with the 'importance of rituals' session that started on court this morning. Looking at the 'between points' situation that makes up for around 90 per cent of a match, Lorenzo and colleague at the Human Peformance institute Jessica. The development of rituals between points is seen as a process that has for components. The intergartion of the routine into the match is taken very seriously by the HPI and is seen as crucial in developing the Ideal Performance State. The between points ritual has to be rehersed regularly if it is to become habitual.
We spent the rest of the morning revisiting the course as a whole and looking at the most effective ways of introducing the programme to our players.
The importance of writing in the whole IPS process is one that was stressed repeatedly. The thought that is written by hand rather than typed or spoken, is said to be far more powerful in both changing the thought process and for memory. Will be very interesting to hear Rob Clowes take on the primacy of the written word. It is certainly the first time I've heard it introduced in sports coaching. Looking forward to seeing some results by trying this out over the next year.

Barcelona - Sanchez Casal Tennis Academy "Mental Toughness" Day Two

The second day with the coaching elite of Spain saw Dr Loehr and his assistant J establish the need to identify the main barriers that your students have in reaching IPS (Ideal Persformance State). It was discussed at length what the IPS might be and consist in. In summary, IPS sees the individual able to establish the ammount of energy they have at their disposal prior to engaging in competition or training. This is done largely assessing the quantitive and qualitive nature of nutrition, sleep, hydration and exercise the individual has partaken in. This having been established the building blocks of an IPS are in place.
The coach initiates and the student follows, a candid assessment of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy. The assessment consists in examining the energy managment habits of the individual in an attempt to identify the blocks on energy flow that are occuring.
It was Dr Loehr´s assertion that the block on energy flow is a barrier that is accomopanied by a voice, the result of a rationalisation that contributes to the perpetuation of the barrier. Compounding this problem is the formation of habits. Dr Loehr emphasised that if the barriers to energy flow are not dealt with then they will become habitualised.

The most powerful way to intervene in the unblocking of energy and bringing down the barriers is changing the destructive 'voice' that speaks to us when we are competing and training.  To do this one first has to recognise it.  The voice can take many forms but is most likely to be parental, particularly if the host is a child or teenager.  Around the voice a story has been constructed that needs to be changed from old to new.  Constructing a new story by hand writing/journal writing is claimed by Dr Loehr to be by far the best way to change the story and in fact to confront any of the blocks on energy flow.  The first phase of rescripting in this way was said to take up to 17 days, at least to begin the process. 

Tomorrow am looking forward to the conclusion of the Instututes work.  There have been some intrestiing concepts raised by Dr Loehr's research.  I will highlight a few tomorrow and look forward to putting theory into practice.  Just to warn you in advance you'll like the process of 'mylinisation'. 

Barcelona - Sanchez Casal Tennis Academy "Mental Toughness" Day One

Dr Jim Loehr introduced the concept of IPS (Ideal Peformance State) to an international group of coaches and players. Dr Loehr claims his system will help augment an already dominant Spanish position in world tennis.
Drawn from his life's work observing and working to improve the performance of both top flight sportsmen and those aspiring to be so, Dr Loehr introduces his concept of 'Energy Management'. Managing energy is fundamental to our achieving what we ourselves set out to achieve. I hesistate to use the term 'Success' as this is somewhat contentious as it is referred to by Dr Loehr as as an 'external' motivation and can be misused with negative consequences.