Nate Wunderli ‘22
Sports Editor
Training the mind, in today’s age, is what working out was for athletes thirty years ago. Believe it or not, it wasn’t too long ago that athletes didn’t feel it was necessary to lift weights or exercise outside of playing their sport. Athletes like Bo Jackson, the multi-sport freak athlete in the ’80s and ’90s, who was both a running back for the Raiders and an outfielder for the White Sox, used to work out by going hunting, throwing the deer over his shoulders, and carrying it home. Nowadays, it would be absolutely insane for an elite athlete not to work out. Mental training is now undergoing the same shift from obscurity to a necessary part of an elite athlete’s training. It is no surprise that many of the greatest athletes also have the greatest minds. For instance, a test on the greatest home run hitter of all time, Babe Ruth, showed he was able to process visual information 12% faster than normal men, and that his visual perception occurred 150% faster. [1]
Stephen Curry, the greatest shooter in basketball history, not coincidentally has perhaps the best mental game of any basketball player of all time. As part of his training, he performs drills with FitLight and strobe goggles that overload his mind with information and test how quickly he can react. He spends time in sensory deprivation chambers, achieving an effect similar to deep meditation. Curry also has an exact pregame ritual to activate his mind, which includes physical drills as well as visualization techniques. During timeouts, he focuses on his breathing, and he has the ability to lower his heart rate below eighty beats per minute during a single ninety-second timeout.[2] This can be achieved simply through deep breaths, but Curry also trains by lying on his back and placing sandbags on his ribs after a tough workout to overload his diaphragm.
Tiger Woods, the greatest golfer of all time, credits much of his own success to his mental training. As a kid, his dad would often drop clubs or jingle coins during his swing to help him overcome distractions. Tiger also utilized meditation taught to him by his Buddhist mother, hypnosis, and various mental imagery techniques. If you look at Tiger on the course, everything from the way he walks to the look on his face epitomizes relaxed focus.
Tom Brady is another example of the power of the mind. Clearly not the most gifted quarterback of all time, Brady nevertheless has seven Super Bowl rings and is the undisputed GOAT of the NFL. Brady meets regularly with a neuropsychologist, and based on a scan of neurological functions, developed a brain-strengthening program he follows religiously.[3] Everything from Brady’s diet to his sleep habits, brain training, and spirituality all contribute to his ability to play at a consistently high level.
I have learned a lot about the mental aspects of sports from personal experience. While I do not compete collegiately anymore, the things I learned playing golf have helped me in everything from law school exams to dominating pickup basketball at the ACAC. Much of what I’ve learned I wish I had known earlier and had worked on starting in my youth. The following three things helped me achieve greater performance and are things anyone can implement without fancy equipment or trainers.
Pictured: Law Weekly’s own Nate Wunderli ’22 taking home the hardware.
First, perform a self-assessment. Each one of us is wired differently, and reacts differently under different stresses and stimulation. A good self-assessment doesn’t require brain scans like Tom Brady’s, but it does require honesty and sometimes humility. It took me a long time to understand that I naturally get more anxious than my peers in sports. I had to suffer through a lot of competitions where I knew what I was capable but fell short because I wasn’t able to let my natural ability take over. As a proud athlete and young teenager, admitting this was a problem was difficult--but once I did, I was able to figure out ways to manage it. I found it helped to go into a competition and just focus on observing myself, almost like I was a third-party onlooker. This helped me compartmentalize what I was feeling and thinking, so that afterward I was able to understand what triggered anxious thoughts and why they were occurring.
Next, have a mental game plan. It’s perfectly okay for the plan to be a simple one like to relax and have fun, let it fly, or something to get you focused. Oftentimes simple plans like this are the most effective, because the mind can easily latch onto it when a stressful situation emerges. Choose something that goes along with your self-assessment, and it will help you feel comfortable and able to be yourself. Don’t be afraid to experiment a little bit and be creative.
Finally, after you find something that seems to work and feels like you, stay consistent with it. You’re not going to have good days or performances all the time. Not even the best achieve that. Just because you have one bad day, however, doesn’t necessarily mean your plan sucked. It may just mean you have to stick with it longer, and over time the consistency will breed familiarity, which will in turn produce better results. Constantly changing your game plan in response to a single bad outcome may be the very reason none of them are working.
These three simple things--self-assessment, game planning, and staying consistent through good and bad--can help anyone achieve better performance on the field of play, or in other endeavors where there is pressure to perform. The best athletes go even further with various neuroscience-related training techniques. As the field continues to grow and to be embraced by athletes and the public in general, it will be interesting to see what people come up with to train their biggest weapon: the mind.
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nw7cz@virginia.edu
[1] https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2693694-steph-currys-secrets-to-success-brain-training-float-tanks-and-strobe-goggles
[2] https://www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/warriors/how-steph-curry-can-intentionally-slow-heart-rate-during-warriors-games
[3] https://www.feelguide.com/2017/01/15/the-tao-of-tom-how-tom-brady-uses-an-80-20-diet-meditation-yoga-one-book-to-age-backwards/