A.R.M. Yourself to Victory: a tip from Transcend Mental Training Founder Amy Oliphant

Amy Oliphant is a Positive Performance™ certified Mental Training Coach and Visualization Specialist as well as a trained instructor of Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement and Youth Mental Health First Aid. A mother of four children who compete in college and high school sports, Amy coaches competitive swim teams in the Northbrook, IL area and competes as an Ironman triathlete. Originally from Winnetka, IL, she was active in high school sports and became an NCAA Division 1 college Women’s Tennis player at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As Founder of Transcend Mental Training, Amy passionately coaches individuals and teams in mental training techniques to help them overcome mental barriers and gain a competitive edge in their sports. To learn more about Amy’s coaching services, visit: https://www.transcendmentaltraining.com.

Q. As a mental training coach, you guide individuals in using mental training techniques to overcome mental barriers and renew competitive performance. Your new free e-course, “The Power of Self Talk,” addresses one of the most common mental barriers: negative self-talk. Can you share your insights into why negative self-talk can be so detrimental to a player’s performance and a tip for overcoming negative self-talk?

A. We’ve all been there. We blow an easy overhead, or we blast the short sitting duck way past the baseline. How we respond to our mistakes is going to determine the outcome. My guess is that most of us respond with a flurry of negative self-talk. I know I have found myself calling myself all sorts of names and making claims that I should just quit, because I’m never going to win again. The problem with negative self-talk is that it is never going to help and is a waste of your energy. The more negative you become, the more your confidence suffers. 80 percent of our confidence comes from self-talk. So, how do we stop the negative self-talk and keep our head in the game? I use a technique called A.R.M. Yourself to Victory. It involves awareness, a reset word, a mistake ritual and a brief visualization:

1. AWARENESS.  Before we can change anything, we need to know what we have to change. The next time you step on to the court make it a goal to become uber aware of your thoughts and when the negative thoughts start to creep in.
2. RESET WORD.  Once you become aware of your negative thoughts, come up with a reset word. It can be any word or phrase that has meaning to you and that you will remember. It could be “STOP,” “CALM,” or “FOCUS.” I know someone who says, “Think like Dory,” because fish supposedly have a very short memory. 
3. MISTAKE RITUAL. Now it is time to add an action to your reset word. The intention of the action is to get rid of the negative thoughts. For example, some people will act as if they are flushing a toilet in order to flush their negative thoughts away. Baseball pitchers will often take their hats off and brush their hair back in order to brush their thoughts away. Some people will tug at their ear or use their racket and swat the thoughts away. Again, it really doesn’t matter what the action is as long as it is something you can do consistently.   
4. VISUALIZE to VICTORY.  It is time to visualize the process before you actually take it to the court. Close your eyes and imagine a typical negative self-talk scenario. See the mistake that leads to the self-talk. Watch yourself say the negative thought and then watch yourself take a deep breath, say your reset word, perform the action and move on to the next point.  

The goal is to eventually skip the negative self-talk and eventually go right into this routine after every mistake. Just like you get your stroke reps in on the court and strength reps in at the gym, you also have to get your mental reps in. Make A.R.M. Yourself to Victory a habit, and I guarantee you will see the results on the court.

* Get more tools and exercises for improving your self-talk from Amy by enrolling in her free e-course, “The Power of Self Talk.“