The Practice Group
Nigel & Jenny Heath:-
Address: Jinglewood House Ltd, Lyndhurst Road, Landford. Wiltshire
SP5 2AS
All of Nigel’s other reports:
2004 NLP reports
2003 NLP reports
Nigel’s report for the April 2009 meeting. Cathy Foster
“How to be a better SPORT with NLP”
Cathy has not only coached Olympians, she has been one herself, representing the
GB team in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics as the first woman helms-
The packed and expectant crowd (we had a room full) listened to Cathy’s story of her Olympic debut beginning with the triumphal entry of the British team into the stadium. The long wait in her red, white and blue uniform (she still has the jacket). The frustration at being amongst the twelve year old gymnasts, they went in ranked by size so at 5’ 3” in her socks she was near the front. The sheer excitement and euphoria as the 500 plus strong GB team entered the stadium for the opening ceremony. The noise, the smell, the heat, the sweat, the flies, the dysentery, the nasty little rash. (Oops got a bit carried away there!) Cathy shared with us her feeling of optimism and joy at the prospect of competing at the very top level for her country. Whilst disappointed at the time with her final position in her event the lessons she learnt in terms of ‘goal setting’ and sports psychology helped her later when she was a key part of sail coaching teams at several following Olympics.
Straight into our first exercise, using some technical equipment kindly loaned to
the group by Gavin Meikle (Toastmaster extraordinaire). Dividing into pairs, some
of which contained three people, we got the feel of our ‘equipment’, the weight,
mass, aerodynamic flight response, colour coding, catching apparatus, optimum velocity,
height control and laughter index! This didn’t take long (we’re quick learners at
NLP-
Cathy revealed a flip chart she had prepared earlier on the use of focus and how it relates to winning at sport. I’ve reproduced the chart on the left. Play along at home now. Focus can be internal and tight. For example the inner focus on a visualisation used by many athletes just before their performance, such as tennis players going through their ritual ball bouncing and internal visualisation of the serve leaving their opponent stranded on the other side of the net. Also useful just before giving a speech, going into an interview, sitting an exam and countless other occasions when we need to access inner resources. Focus can be external and tight. Examples here include potting a snooker ball. Jenny shared an example of riding downhill on a mountain bike when the slope is covered with holes and ridges. Wide external is particularly useful in team sports when the ability to know where your team is and where your opponents are can lead to inspirational play.
Lack of this causes much shouting from spectators, at the game, and at home, who
have a clearer vision of the whole game than the players. Wide internal covers a
whole body awareness and can be a precursor to getting in the ‘zone’. Karen felt
this was the state of focus needed in horse riding, especially show jumping. The
general consensus was that we have the ability to flick from one state to the next,
but could probably not be in more than one at any one time, no not even those of
you who claim to be able to multi-
Armed with this new insight on focus we were sent off again in our pairs to see what difference this made to our practice. Handling our high tech equipment with great care we began flinging them about in a totally new way. (The equipment was Juggling balls). I’ve no idea what everyone else was up to but my partner and I had terrific fun attempting to keep the same colour side uppermost, imparting different spin directions, seeing how slowly we could throw, how late we could leave the catching. In the ‘wash up’ afterwards I discovered others had been even more inventive. One pair had decided to always catch their ball with a particular colour uppermost and were achieving 9 out of 10 just by knowing this was their goal. Another team focused on the coloured spots on their projectile and found this vastly improved their catching rate. Yet another went into peripheral vision (wide external) and enjoyed it so much we had difficulty getting them back. There was some interesting modelling going on too. One person noticed their partner had a particular throwing technique and ‘mimicked’ this until it became real and throwing and catching improved until the first person spun the ball. (How mean). There was use of the non dominant hand, allowing for faster and more easily trackable improvements. We were all immensely impressed by this as no doubt you are. (If you must try it now be sure to come right back and read the rest of my report.)
Somewhere around here we took the break
Refreshed and dragged back to the fray from frantic conversation / networking it was time to move the game along. Once Cathy had us all back in hand she took us to the next step and our pairs became ‘teams’. As a team it was now our job to work as a team and compete with another team. First though an important part of being in a team is to create your team identity. Off we all went into the room (good job we have plenty of space) into our huddles to discuss our team personality. Having chosen this we then stepped into a space were we could pretend to be our opposition and look back at ourselves to see how scary, imposing, majestic and terrifyingly pathetic we looked. Back to the drawing board to instil more steel, and other fear inducing stuff. Once happy with our external ‘ball throwers from hell’ appearance our next task was to set our objectives for the forthcoming ‘game’ with the opposition. (They looked pretty scary too). Cathy gave us two ways to set our objectives for the coming affray. 1) One good thing we want to have happen and notice what to add. 2) What are the 2 things our strategy hinges on?
Our opposition were equally matched to our expertise and after the first round of hurling juggling balls at each other we stopped for an analysis of our strategy, a breather and a chance to wipe the tears of laughter from our eyes. A quick conflab and a revision of our strategy and we were off again. Only to discover our opponents seemed to have devised a similar strategy! We renewed our efforts and the balls began whizzing by at alarming speed and sometimes in alarming directions. STOP! Time has nearly run out and we need to check in to see if anyone has been taking this seriously. What did we all find? Setting the team focus had been useful. Discussing strategy and tactics had also given us a sense of being a team not just two individuals. Other teams had set outcomes of ‘annoying the other team by not throwing the ball’. This just served to annoy the other team. Who then found more balls to throw and increased their barrage. One team had seen themselves as the ‘tortoises’. When they looked back at themselves from the opposition position they realised something needed to change, so went back and painted union jacks on their shells. Checking this out from the opponents side they discovered this simple addition vastly improved their appearance and street cred.
What did we learn? Plenty about applying some simple techniques used in sports coaching
to improve our own performance, and it’s not much of a leap to apply this to non
sporting matters. We laughed a lot, always a great pre-
Thank
you Cathy for an instructive and fun evening. To learn more about Cathy, her style
of coaching, her availability for inspirational or after dinner speaking, or to buy
her book on sports coaching mouse on over to her website, where there are also some
pretty awesome pictures.
