You score every goal with your head

The 2018 World Cup season kicked off with a totally open book. Who could tell how far any team could go? We totally expected unexpected things to happen in Russia, right? And they did. I must thank our gracious hosts in Russia for providing every facility and space imaginable, and more, for our players to enjoy privacy and peace during training and rest periods. Croatia placed higher than anyone expected; a credit to the immense talent and commitment of the players and staff towards getting their mindset focussed on the right things. 

Eat, sleep and prepare.

Coaching the mindset is challenging to do when schedules are so full up. Traditional models of training leave the mindset to chance; it is as unfortunate and simple as that. Players sit alone with their thoughts and expectations; they have no guidance on what to actually do to bring out their best mental performance. Every player instinctively knows that his performance depends on his mindset. For the player who pays attention to this, they can- and did- defeat giants. We are proud of what we achieved; the world saw us in our true colours. 

Confidentiality issues notwithstanding, one common issue was how to deal with the immense pressure of expectations when playing against Goliaths of the game.  Players need to inhabit their own space. This happens fine in most international players once the game gets going.  The time when the cracks appear in the psyche is when exhausted, at the end, especially when the weight of performance hinges on a single movement: the dreaded penalty shootout.

The key to many mental journeys is to create a space where you can work on yourself.

Where there is no physical space, visualisation and mindfulness create a vast virtual one. Imagine and know this: you are on a vast planet sized rock, pushing down on it as much as it pushes up on you. This is true no matter where you are on Earth.

Once we are able to create that mental space, we can undertake journeys and exercises as intense and revelatory as a man hiking alone in the mountains of Yosemite, or as encapsulating as when you feel alone, uniquely hearing the sound coming from the stage, as if it isn only there for you to hear. And yet you are in a stadium full of music fans. This method inverted the prevailing metaphor of the situation: instead of feeling that everyone was there to judge them, a player felt uniquely able to distil exactly the feeling that they needed to feel: they were just alone, practising in a stadium that may as well have been as empty as a practice day. Performance was not only restored, but sharpened. 

 Insights come when we are alone with ourselves. Using those insights allowed our players to access their primal motivations and train them toward the ultimate goal.

Tired and dirty, we finally made it back to civilisation.