Controlling your emotions

This edition of Mind Games looks at one of the hardest things to overcome in the sporting field, that of your emotions. Emotions can be wonderful things, when positive they lead to a wellspring of positive energy, which can lead to super performance. Super performance often leads to achieving your goals. However when they become negative the opposite occurs; frustration often sets in and negative energy ensues. Achieving your goals with negative energy is near on impossible, so the question is how do we control our emotions so that we can make use of the positive and minimise the negative?

Firstly let’s clarify what are meant by positive and negative emotions. A positive emotion on the sporting field is anything that spurs you on, whether it is a fist pump, yelling out in excitement or just smiling. Dropping your head, slouching, anger and obviously crying shows negative emotions. Now that we know this know that the opening paragraph is a generalization, most people translate positive emotions into positive (and thus good) play whilst negative does also normally go with negative (and bad) play. However it can depend on the individual. Some people just require some sort of emotion, good or bad, to spur the on and fire them up. John McEnroe thrived on getting angry; he liked to let his emotions out and mainly always played the better for it. Marat Safin is opposite; he loses the plot when he gets angry with himself. Having said that I remember watching an interview with John McEnroe earlier this year about how he’d lost the plot in the French Open one year and as such promised himself that he wouldn’t let his emotions get the better of him during Wimbeldon two weeks later. He held true to this promise, restraining himself and staying calm throughout and won the tournament comfortably. He went on to say that that was the best tournament he’d ever played. So did he in fact need to let his emotions out to play better or was that just the easy route for him? I guess we’ll never know definitively as he went back to being the same old McEnroe afterwards. This then begs the question, are emotions needed at all to achieve super performance?

... To see the full article become a Brutal Training Member today for US$50. Click here to go to the Brutal Store and join.