Football & Behavioural Science;a marriage made for each other vol. 1
It first started with Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) back in the late 70’s which was traditionally designed to help people treat phobias, get rid of fears and aide top athletics to enhance their skills. NLP was then used by businesses mainly to make their staff more efficient and adaptable… it worked, businesses have made a lot of money from it, NLP was then only used by the elite players and coaches in U.S.A mainly popularised by the famous motivational coach Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins is not a Dr. or Professor but he used it so well that qualified people came to him for help, including ex-president Bill Clinton, Actors like Huge Jackman and sports athletes like Andre Agassi etc. As a coach Tony become world famous and he’d advocate how he’d use NLP and other therapies to help treat his high profile clients and they’d pay him around $1M+ per year for his help.
Pic: Andre Agassi in Toronto
In UK, such things were frowned upon, but seeing the dramatic results in the U.S, top UK football (soccer known in the states) players would use NLP to give them an advantage on the pitch, and it worked so well that others where homing in on this pseudo-science. It is now becoming a norm to use NLP techniques within star performers of football in the UK and becoming more and more mainstream in the UK. More and more football managers are realising that a player utilising NLP has the ability to become excellent, rather than just above average.
Pic: few football managers of 2014
Since the advent of NLP back in the 1970’s, more and more scientific research has gone into this study and many forms of psychology have climbed on the bandwagon, theories such as Nudge Theory, NLP advances on using ‘deep-structure’ and ‘surface-structure’ to enhance what a coach or manager says to the player to bring about optimal performance, equally using the adult mode to bring about the players greatness rather than being in ‘child-mode’ or ‘parent-mode’, this is not so different from the Buddhism theory of ‘Monkey-mind’ where in todays world Dr. Steve Peters uses a similar if not the same concept which he calls ‘Chimp mind’ theory (the human, chimp and computer) that he uses to enhance elite athletes on performing at their upmost including those athletes competing for the world Olympics in 2012.
Pic: Dr. Steve Peters working with two-time Olympic champion Victoria Pendleton
In fact back in the 1940’s Sigmund Freud also came up with the concept of three personalities (Id, Ego and Superego), so there is nothing new to this chain of thought process, it is more so about placing the concept in an area that can be most beneficial i.e. the sport and player orientated. Then there is the conditioning mind, (Ivan Pavlov & B.F Skinner’s behaviourism) to apply and install a new belief within a person. If I was to become technical on these theories and provide you with all the information, this post would become a four volume book series filled with biology, psychology, social science, behavioural economics and linguistics.
People (including some managers and coaches) tend to forget that players are people too, and people have conscious and subconscious minds, that have pre-developed belief systems from their upbringing that can cause serious limitations to their performance, unseen by the untrained eye, a particular personality type can even discourage the players thereby impeding their performance, so one has to be very tactful and articulate in forming a relationship of players, coaches and managers. We also tend to forget that coaches and managers are people too, with the same types of biases and belief systems, many times there are clashes between two different types of personalities that can cause rifts within a relationship, resulting in the player loosing an opportunity and the coach or manager loosing a talented player. This unfortunately happens a lot, but we don’t get to know about it because no one is taking note or statistics on the drop-out rate. As a result of this break-up of relationships opportunity is lost and the club decides to call a player internationally to take part, causing more of a relationship rift, because now the manager cannot get rid of this highly priced player and has to suck-it-up. We would then have a form of constructive dismissal where the highly priced player goes off to another team and the original club and manager has lost out.
Pic: Mourinho and Villas-Boas fall out
I wonder if the Mourinho and Villas-Boas fall out was over a separate set of beliefs or just a communication issue… either way, they might have made a great team if they simply understood the psychology of it all, and it is not rocket-science to understand this if one is willing to learn. I am personally known as ‘A Networker’ type of character, meaning, I get on with everyone because I use my understanding of psychology, behavioural and social science to my advantage, so I am called to mend issues and broken relationships to figure out what is the issue and how it can be mended. Most of the time, the issue is within the minds of the parties.
So much to learn within so little time, so lets start with NLP; what are the benefits and how can we apply them to our players? Better-still how can we install these NLP teachings within football coaches for them to maximise their skills in teaching young footballers to the path of greatness?
The effectiveness of football strategies
Pic: David Beckham - Getty Images
NLP is an art, it identify’s certain strategies that work well for great players and using those specific identified traits to install within other players, i.e. Beckham was/is an excellent football player one of his talents were to swerve the ball by kicking it and scoring a goal, some years later many other players started to carry out this skill, NLP is the art of seeing anything and using the formula to learn and teach others. So you are re-creating excellent results time and time again to the point of perfection.
NLP uses visual, auditory and kinaesthetic areas to promote excellence, imagine getting home after a long days work and you feel like you haven’t the energy to go out to a long awaited social event, you call your friend to let him down as you feel way too tired, but then you hear the enthusiasm in his voice and cannot bring yourself round to cancel, so you go . As soon as you get there, your energy levels start to fire up, you start talking and joking with all your friends and all the sudden you’re firing on all cylinders , cracking jokes and enjoying the atmosphere… before you know it, it’s the early hours of the morning when you go back home to bed… What happened? You were tired earlier but soon you started to project so much more energy than you possibly imagined earlier… how did that happen? Well, the fact is, your mind was telling you something that underestimated your ability, as soon as you turned that music on, jumped in the shower and started to dress up, you were firing off what we in the NLP world call anchors. These anchors are Auditory (the music), Kinaesthetic (the shower) and Visual (you dressing up and looking in the mirror), all these anchors were telling your brain to shoot some endorphins within your body because you are going to need them for the night out you’re prepping for. This way you challenged your limited beliefs and created new ones as you witnessed the night. Similarly, football players all have a comfort zone, and this comfort zone creates limits, but NLP helps you push past those limits and take’s one out of their comfort zone in order to achieve better outcomes from one’s challenging actions creating a new you.
Pic: Steven Gerrad - England Captain 2013
Any athlete will tell you focussed one needs to be in order to perform at ones peak. Incorporating NLP does just that for a footballer, both on and off the pitch. Using NLP creates a new self-belief that passes through old limiting belief and creates new ones… before I was introduced to NLP, I didn’t think I could accomplish 80% of my achievements.
How can NLP boost performance on the pitch?
Pic: virtual view of a soccer stadium before penalty - digital artwork
There’s a principle called the 80/20 rule, we wear 20% of the closes we buy, 80% of beer is usually drunk by 20%, 20% of the roads have 80% of the traffic and 80% of the wealth of 20th-entry England was in the hands of 20% of its noble class. Similarly 80% of the sport is mental and 20% is psychical. A simple penalty kick becomes excruciatingly harder when the goal is a deciding goal and the crowd, fans and team are depending on you. Being in the right frame of mind can boost a football player€?s performance and give them an advantage on the pitch. Those who do consistently score no matter what the pressure are those who have learnt to be in their Zone. Football coaches and managers all know about ‘The Zone” but when you ask them further about it, they start to loose the words to describe it, it’s because ’the zone’ is not within our conscious mind it is tucked away within our limbic system disarming our fear creating Amygdala and placing us in a meditative state just before the deciding kick occurs. This can be recreated by using NLP within ANYONE. That’s why NLP is famous for eliminating phobias and public speaking fears.
Pic: Billy Sharp wheels away after scoring the winner on his Leeds debut against Middlesbrough
Improving communication and team building
NLP in a nutshell is all about communication, not so much externally but internally. Using established techniques, players can improve the way they communicate with themselves as we’ll as each other. NLP also helps managers and football coaches to understand how each player responds to different types of communication and what makes each player tick for them to best tailor their players motivation creating a flow between manager/coach and player. Such communication strengthens football teams for them to perform their optimal as a team.
Pic: A Tribute to Sir Alex
Sir Alex Ferguson is no stranger to communication, first he had communicate with himself before communicating to others. Prof Chris Bones, of Manchester Business School, said the three key lessons leaders can learn from Sir Alex are:
- Set the highest possible standards for yourself and for others.
- Appoint good people around you and delegate responsibility as well as accountability.
- Learn from setbacks and mistakes and use them to make you better.
Notice he’d start from himself, before others in rule one. What many coaches and managers do wrong is the opposite, they set high standards for their players but not for themselves causing a miscommunication between their players and themselves.
The competitive advantage
Pic: Germany 2014 win
NLP gives footballers the competitive advantage needed when they’re out on the pitch. By learning how the mind works, they will be able to read into the way other players communicate and act, including the opposing team. By being able to anticipate their moves, Managers and Coaches as well as Players get many steps ahead of their opponents leaving a better skilled team scratching their heads upon their defeat. Again, it’s not about the winning than it is about the playing that is most important.
Conclusion
Pic: Liverpool and England striker Daniel Sturridge was ruled out of Euro 2016 qualifier with Switzerland following a thigh injury during training
So many times we have put physicality over mind-set, when it times it would have been more of a mind-set rather than further stress on physicality and skill-set, but not enough on mind-set.
There are so many benefits of NLP in football it is no wonder than so many professional football players are using it. The more NLP is used the better the player becomes, that’s why it is important, almost vital to any players professional career that the coaches and managers embrace NLP. The best way I can advise is for them to try it out, for instance I guarantee to make an immediate impact within my NLP classes, I mix behaviourism, social science and psychology within my practice to make an even greater impact.
Football is not just about kicking a ball into a netted goal, it’s about endurance, strategy, foresight and self-development. It’s time to open your mind and allow NLP and other sciences to display it’s mastery within your team, if you’ve selected the right person for the role, then you are certainly in for a treat. All you have to do is request a demonstration and you will instantly notice the effect these theories will have on your players, coaches, managers and most of all…their results. Not only will your club thank you, but your players, your career and your club fans will also thank you.