Minding what matters in sports
Rituals are okay if kept in perspective, mental performance consultant says
It’s great to have a certain song on your smartphone that pumps you up before a game or competition, but what if your phone’s not working or you left it at home?
It’s fine if you feel wearing a particular jersey brings you good luck, but what if you forgot to pack it and you have to wear a different one for a change?
It’s good to have a pre-game routine that puts you in a positive frame of mind and makes you feel ready for the task ahead, but what if, for whatever reason, you have to stray a bit from what you’re accustomed to doing?
Tina DeRoo, a mental performance consultant with the Canadian Sport Centre Atlantic in Halifax, says rituals are OK, provided people don’t get too caught up in them or become dependent on them.
“From a sport psychology perspective, we want people to be able to create positive thoughts that are going to help them in performance,” she says, “but we want to connect it to something that is more permanent, (where) they’re not reliant on external circumstances or objects.”
So, for instance, if someone has a song they like to listen to or a video they watch in order to psyche themselves up, but maybe one day they don’t have access to their iPhone, it shouldn’t be a big deal, DeRoo says.
“What we could teach an athlete to do is, over time, just be able to bring up that song in their mind,” she says. “The better I can get at the skill ... the more I’m reliant on myself and my own mind, which is kind of the point of sport psychology, to bring that responsibility (for their performance) back to the athlete, bring it within them.”
Of course, from the world of big-league sports, there have been all kinds or rituals, some more offbeat than others.
Baseball Hall of Famer Wade Boggs was known for his pregame chicken meals. Michael Jordan would wear his University of North Carolina shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform. Another Chicago sports great – goalie Glenn Hall – had a more bizarre routine, reportedly making himself vomit before hockey games.
Here at home, in preparation for this Tri-County Vanguard sports feature, some people shared thoughts regarding their own sports rituals, routines or superstitions.
Yarmouth golfer Phil Mooney, for example, said he always puts four tees in his pocket at the start of a game and makes sure to have four in there for the whole game, replacing some if necessary. Local triathlete Cindy Robicheau uses what she calls “words of wisdom” prior to a race to remind herself to the break the event down mentally into more manageable parts. Keith
Bridgeo – one of the area’s bestknown and most accomplished baseball players – recalls doing everything he could to protect his pitching arm, including sleeping on his left side.
For some athletes, a pre-game ritual might simply entail being the last to leave the locker room before taking the field or the court or hitting the ice.
“That’s all well and fine as long as that can happen,” DeRoo says, “but we can’t all leave last. We can’t all leave first. So there’s kind of the logistical complications of that and there’s no evidence to say that you leaving first or last is going to impact the outcome.”
In her position with the Canadian Sport Centre Atlantic, DeRoo works with mostly provincial-level athletes and sport organizations, teaching them about how the mind works and about how they can use it to help them in competition “because everyone has an example – if not multiple examples – of how their thoughts have hurt them in competition,” she says.
And if you have rituals? Music that gets you fired up? A routine that’s familiar and comfortable? A lucky pair of socks?
“It’s not necessarily problematic,” DeRoo says. “It just depends on how rigid or flexible you are.”
In other words, if your phone isn’t handy or you neglected to pack the footwear that seems to bring good fortune, it shouldn’t be an issue.
“It’s no worries because my performance is dependent on me and my thoughts and I can create those thoughts regardless,” she says.