Often in sports we hear about “mental” mistakes, but what exactly are these types of miscues? Mental mistakes are things every coach tries to mitigate, and often the outcomes of games (especially with two evenly matched foes) come down to the team that has fewer mental lapses. With so much importance placed on the mental side of sports, it is important to specify the things that qualify as mental mistakes, why athletes make mental mistakes, and how to coach athletes so that they experience fewer mental mistakes in the future.
Defining mental mistakes
A mental mistake is defined simply as errors caused by lapses in focus and decision-making. These kind of mistakes are most likely to be made when athletes experience pressure, fatigue, over-confidence, complacency, and over-thinking. Regardless of skill, age level, or type of sport, no athlete is immune from making mental mistakes, thus making this an important aspect of sport competition — and often the difference between success and failure.
Below are examples of mental mistakes that are commonly witnessed in sports:
- Daydreaming in a game. Athletes can zone out from time-to-time, especially in lopsided games.
- Miscommunication with a teammate. Playing on a team requires that an athlete work in synchrony with teammates, requiring focus and communication.
- Game awareness issues. When athletes tune out they often lose sight of play on the field, the score, and time remaining in the game.
- Unnecessary risk taking (low percentage play). Unfocused athletes will often take long-shot plays, or engage in other risky actions on the field that could lead to penalties and/or ejections.
- Simply not being prepared to play. Athletes who arrive at the field with other things on their mind not only struggle with mental mistakes, but they place themselves in harms way by means of increased chance for injury as well.
Applying these kinds of lapses to actual plays on the field and you are likely to see the following occur in specific sports:
Football – Jumping off sides, or not stopping the clock with enough time remaining to score.
Basketball – Not boxing out an opponent for a rebound, or failing to get the ball across half court in time.
Baseball/softball – Running on a fly ball and not tagging up, or forgetting the number of outs in an inning, or the count during an at bat.
These are just three sport examples, but all athletes — regardless of sport — have to overcome factors that leave them vulnerable to losing their focus and attention.
How to minimize mental mistakes
As you now know, mental mistakes can occur for a variety of reasons. Coaches, therefore, are left to their own when it comes to addressing mental mistakes, and helping athletes overcome these lapses when they occur. It is important for coaches to normalize mental mistakes, and talk to the team about times when athletes are their most vulnerable (i.e. when they are over-confident, or complacent). Coaches can also mitigate some mental errors through sheer repetition, and drilling basics until they become automatic. And finally, often we see mental breakdowns in predictable situations (i.e. when looking past an average team for the next big game), allowing coaches to literally get in front of problems before they occur by providing the team direct warnings about possible lapses.
Final thoughts
Mental mistakes happen all the time, but by understanding the nature of mental mistakes the odds for experiencing them decreases dramatically. Work on your mental game as much as you do the physical and technical aspects of your sport, and by doing so you will experience far fewer avoidable breakdowns. Developing pre-game and pre-play routines can also help, especially as this applies to focus, attention, and concentration.
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