Definition of Excellence in Sport
As defined by the American Heritage dictionary excellence is something in which one excels (2010). Excellence in sport therefore is excelling or showing a superiority in performance over the competition. It is the choices you make, the things that you do, or not do, that will ultimately dictate the level of success you can expect to experience, and level of excellence you can expect to achieve. Orlick literally starts his book In Pursuit of Excellence with the statement “Excellence is a choice” (2016, p.3). The most successful people in society, the ones who excel in their field of expertise are not necessarily ones that are more talented or gifted, but are ones that make a choice to persist through challenges and overcome obstacles in their daily lives. There are very few athletes that have reached a level of excellence and superiority in their sport without learning to deal with and overcome some form of adversity. Your attitude drives your focus and once your focus is working for you, you will be more capable of reaching your potential and excelling in your sport or discipline. Motivation for excellence can come from a variety of sources. Whilst some athletes seek excellence in order to dominate competitors, other athletes seek excellence to improve oneself and have fun (Stahley & Boyd, 2006). Every Olympic champion, world champion, successful leader or high performer at one time made a conscious decision to relentlessly go after their goal of achieving excellence in their discipline.
Halson (2015) was observing similar characteristics between elite level athletes and US Army Special Forces when he recognized that both show a clear determination to achieve excellence in their discipline. He found that they share many similar characteristics which help them reach and maintain a level of performance required for successful execution of their responsibilities. When faced with adversity these elite level performers utilized having a positive personality, intrinsic motivation, confidence, ability to focus and perceived social support to help them through situations that average performers would not be able to cope with. Whilst many could say it is unfair to compare the pressures and adversity that Army Special Forces face to that of an athlete, Cogan (2019) argued that athletes that have committed their entire life to athletic excellence such as an Olympian, face tremendous pressures in competition. Olympians can spend their entire life preparing for an event that can last less than ten seconds. Although the pressures are very different they both have to be able to control and cope with these immense stresses if they are to achieve excellence in performance at the crucial time.
Shields and Bredemeier (2009) explored the relationship between excellence and competition. They were specifically looking for patterns and connections to help recognize if competition helped or hindered an athletes quest for excellence. Their conclusion was that for most athletes true competition should drive excellence “competition optimizes performance because it enables the participant to pursue excellence” (p.299). They did however acknowledge that competition within the wrong environment can actually be detrimental to achieving excellence as athletes may seek immediate success in results over performance improvement. In the correct context athletes should enter a contest looking to achieve excellence and accepting that whilst this level of performance should be enough to earn a victory, if a victory is not achieved success is still achieved through personal and performance growth (Shields & Bredemeier, 2009). Bill Beswick (2016) used the analogy of a vehicle running out of gas to explain how having a mindset of excellence needs maintenance, the same way as a car needs to be fueled with gas. The mindset that is required for excellence is not infinite and the stresses of sustaining athletic excellence is challenging. Even the best athletes need to participate in mental strength and mindset activities or mindset training to maintain the peak mental performance and their athletic excellence.
Excellence can be both controlled and achieved. Orlick (2016) created the wheel of excellence after many years of consulting, interviewing and working with some of the world’s most successful athletes and performers. The wheel of excellence places focus as the central point to six different areas of personal performance that are inter-connected. Only through embracing and improving in these areas can the overall quality and consistency of performance improve towards that of excellence. The six areas that Orlick identified include commitment, mental readiness, positive imagery, confidence, distraction control and ongoing learning (2016). These are very similar to the characteristics that Halson described in his article about athletes and US Army Special Forces (2015).
Defining excellence goals and Sustaining Excellence
When discussing the achievement of excellence there is prominent tension between excellence being defined as winning, or excellence being defined as trying your best (Stahley & Boyd, 2006). What excellence is, can only truly be defined by the person or team that is chasing it. It is possible that excellence can be determined by performance. Pep Guardiola for example may consider excellence as the style in which his teams are known to play soccer. The attractive attacking nature of how he sets his teams up to play with incredible technical skills and spatial awareness of angles and timings. Excellence may be defined by the development of athletes and players for higher levels of competition. FC Espanyol and Southampton FC are both professional soccer clubs that pride themselves on the development of young players over first team success. In fact excellence in youth development is what keeps many of these clubs in business as they seek to develop their own players rather than having to buy players from other clubs. La Masia the youth academy of FC Barcelona is also world renowned for excellence in producing world class soccer players. Excellence may also be defined by results. Jose Mourinho the current manager of Tottenham Hotspur FC is well known for sacrificing his style of play in order to win. He is known as a serial winner and has achieved excellence in his ability to win and get results. Whilst former NBA coach Pat Riley was once quoted as saying “excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better” for the majority of athletes and certainly for individual athletes, self-improvement excellence is typically overshadowed by winning excellence (Stahley & Boyd, 2006).
Some of the best coaches in the world such as Sir Alex Ferguson and Bill Belicheck use the philosophy of chasing excellence, mastery and perfection as a way to reinvent teams and maintain superior performance. Wojciechowski (2006) remembers how Vince Lombardi once told his Green Bay Packers that they were going to chase perfection, and whilst that may not be attainable they would catch excellence whilst on their way. Van Vorn (2020) reiterated the relationship between excellence and perfection when he stated “The notion of excellence is often used in the same conversation as perfection, but the difference is that excellence is possible”. Beswick (2016) identifies an important process which helps athletes sustain excellence which quickly sees them move on from success and celebrations to new challenges, reengagement, refocus and new purposeful preparation. In the next section we will look closer at three instruments that can be utilized to achieve performance excellence.
Three Instruments for Achieving Excellence.
Marginal Gains:
As identified by Van Vorn (2020) excellence is to be achieved through the daily habit of getting better. Excellence can be achieved through continuous improvement, demonstrating a growth mindset, adopting a learning mentality and having the willingness to work harder than those around them. These are all behaviors that were adopted by the All Blacks, (the New Zealand rugby union team) in 2004 after an unusually poor 2003 World Cup. The All Blacks, a team that is very much use to winning, recognized that their performance levels had dropped significantly. If they were to regain the position of the world’s best team they were going to have to re-focus on the process of being excellent. In order to re-reach the levels of performance they had become accustomed to, they adopted the mantra of “champions do extra” which meant identifying all the areas that they could make improvements to, in their lifestyles, preparation and training, to ensure they were doing more in these areas than what any of the competition was possibly doing (Kerr, 2013).
Identifying many areas to make small improvements was also behind British Cycling’s remarkable improvement after 2003 when they recruited Dave Brailsford as their performance director. Brailsford believed in the aggregation of marginal gains, which was to breakdown everything that you do and look for ways to improve it by as small as one percent (Clear, 2018). In cycling this included having the riders wear specific shorts to help with muscle temperature and reduce fatigue whilst riding, painting the inside of the team truck white to help them identify and remove particles of dust, and even determined the pillow and mattress that gave each individual rider the best night sleep. Within the decade under Brailsford being in charge and through the principles of marginal gains they set nine Olympic records, seven world records and won the Tour de France five out of six times (Clear, 2018).
Focus and Distraction Control:
Another skill that is needed to achieve excellence is the ability to focus and eliminate performance distractions. This was outlined by Halton (2015) when he discussed the similarities between elite level athletes and the Army Special Forces. It was also highlighted by Orlick (2016) when he stated that internal and external distractions create the greatest barrier to excellence performance. Positive focusing and refocusing are essential for athletes seeking excellence in their discipline. When pressure rises, or challenges present themselves athletes and Special Forces have to be able to concentrate solely the job at hand. Orlick (2016) says that environmental changes can cause stress and anxiety to high level performers. Athletes need to expect conditions to be different at major events and competitions than those at training so not to be caught off guard when the environment changes. Facilities that are available, condition of field or court, the sheer amount of spectators, or even hostility from competitors can all adversely effect performance. Visualize and plan for the worst-case scenario so that excellence can be achieved under the worst of conditions. This is a technique also used by the Special Forces and even Police force. Plan and visualize for the worse scenario possible, that way when you arrive at the scene, or in the middle of combat you are able to focus on performance excellence without the distraction of environmental challenges.
Athletes also need coping mechanisms to refocus after a lost point or missed shot. Whether a tennis player who double faulted or a golfer who has their tee-shot land in the lake, athletes who are seeking performance excellence have to be able to ensure distractions don’t consume them and compound their error. One mechanism outlined by Orlick (2016) which can be used by athletes is to imagine themselves surrounded by an imaginary bubble which bounces away all unwanted, negative distractions during competition. Another more specific example of controlling and eliminating distraction was described by Olympic diving champion Sylvie Bernier who suffered with the distraction and pressures of the last dive of her contests. She recognized that when she focused on the scoreboard she focused more on the points and score than on the dive itself, and her performance dropped. For two years prior to the Olympics Sylvie taught herself to not look at the scoreboard during competition as she knew this would be an unnecessary distraction in her pursuit of performance excellence. She taught herself to stay focused and not be distracted.
Positive Imagery:
Positive imagery and visualization is another key area for the achievement of performance excellence. Positive imagery and visualization can take place years before the actual performance. Many Olympic athletes dreamt of winning Gold medals decades before they had the chance to actually realize those dreams. In his book The Talent Code Coyle (2009) identifies regions of the world that have produced a dis-proportionate number of world class performers in comparison to the size of their population. Whether Serbian tennis players, New Zealand rugby union players or West Indian cricketers Coyle attributes this phenomenon in part to the belief that their population has that they can emulate their heroes like Jona Lomu and Brian Lara. For prospective elite level performers in these regions their dream goals of reaching levels of excellence are not so much a dream but more a realistic target being visualized.
Positive imagery and visualization also helps athletes during the event itself. In golf visualization helps enhance performance when golfers visualize the trajectory of the ball before taking the shot (Hallet and Hoffman, 2014). In snooker, players visualize both the shot being played and also trajectory of the cue ball after contact to decide how their next shot should be played. Tennis players are visualizing many aspects of their serve and the potential return, as they bounce the ball on the base line prior to throwing the ball up in the air. Silken Laumann placed bronze in rowing at the Summer Olympics of 1992. Laumann had been badly hurt only eight weeks before the event and many thought she would never be fit enough to even compete. She did compete, although with little preparation, and coming into the home straight Silken was exhausted and felt like quitting. She utilized positive imagery and compartmentalization to repeatedly tell herself "just 10 more strokes" over and over until she got to the finish line. Silken Laumann used dream goals to help her get back fit for the Olympics and also short-term focus goals to get through the last stretch of the race.
Long distance runners have to also use these same forms of visualization to ensure they pace themselves appropriately during a race as poorly managed split times can result in inferior performance. Middle distance runner Billy Mills (2012) visualized every step of the 10,000 meter race four years before he ran in the final at the 1964 summer Olympics in Tokyo. Mills knew he would have to beat his own personal best by nearly two minutes, to have a chance of success in that race. Mills described visualizing down to the exact second how he was going to record a 28:25 in that final race. This would require Mills to trim 4 seconds per lap, for 25 laps, off his previous personal best time. Mills ran that time, broke his personal best and won the Gold medal in that 1964 final after four years of telling himself exactly what he was going to do literally step by step. As Mills stated the brain doesn’t know the difference between fiction and reality, if you tell it enough times you can do it eventually it believes you.
References
Beswick, B. (2016). One goal. The mindset of winning soccer teams. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits. An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. New York. NY. Avery. https://jamesclear.com/marginal-gains
Cogan, K. D. (2019). Coaching Olympic athletes with sports psychology. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. 71(2) p.86-96
Coyle, D. (2009) The talent code. Greatness is born its grown, here’s how. New York. Bantam Books
Hallett, M. G., & Hoffman, B. (2014). Performing under pressure: Cultivating the peak performance mindset for workplace excellence. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. 66(3) p. 212-230
Halson, S. L. (2015). When failure is not at option. Creating excellence in sport through insights from special forces. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. 10. p.137-138
Kerr, J. (2013, November). The All Blacks guide to being successful (off the field). The Telegraph. Retrieved at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/10427619/The-All-Blacks-guide-to-being-successful-off-the-field.html
Mills, B (2012). Billy Mills how to visualize one vision board. Retrieved online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=Fx1GBrQEzjw&feature=emb_logo
Orlick, T. (2016). In pursuit of excellence (5th ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Schlessinger, L. (2006). Personal excellence know your limitations and defer. The Magazine of Life Leadership. 11(8)
Shields, D. L., & Bredemeier, B. L. (2009). True competition: A guide to pursuing excellence in sport and society. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching. 4 (2) p.299-302
Stahley, B, M., & Boyd, J. (2006). Winning Is(n’t) everything. The paradox of excellence and the challenge of organizational epideictic. Journal of Applied Communication Research. 34(4) p.331-330
The American Heritage Dictionary. (2020). Excellence. Retrieved online: https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=excellence&submit.x=23&submit.y=20
Van Horn, J. (2020). Athlete. Work toward excellence, not perfection. Athlete in Action. Retrieved online:https://athletesinaction.org/playbook/11/work-toward-excellence-not-perfection#.XkrdXi2ZNDM
Wojciechowski (2006). Lombardi turned packers into winners. ESPN Online. Retrieved online: https://www.espn.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&id=2318158
Comentarios