Theory of Performance Excellence 1.0

Reading Time: 4 minutes

What to Expect:

• A brief history of sport psychology

• An introduction to the 4 cardinal skills of sport psychology

• The start of my theory of performance excellence

Sport psychology has long been a rudderless ship. Though sports has always appreciated the 90% of the game that’s half-mental, the pioneering practitioners for that portion of performance were using skills ad-hoc (though at least they were evidence-informed). The practice was solution-focused - which can be good - but largely without its own theory. Not so good for a scientific discipline.

Part of the initial distaste for sport psychology, in fact, was driven by this absence. Nature abhors a vacuum, and theories from clinical psychology were adopted to fill this gap. Original critics viewed the discipline as too airy-fairy or too focused on problems, and not optimal performance.

But the OGs got a few things right. These professionals believed that we train the mind like we train the body. They figured out that the best way to help people reach greatness was to teach people the psychological tools they’d need to succeed. These tools were things like cognitive restructuring, imagery, and combating negative self-talk, borrowed from cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Much like physical training, the idea was that you could work a set of muscles, get a bit stronger, and that would lead to performance improvements.

The evidence for CBT as an effective set of skills for alleviating psychological distress turned out to be pretty robust. In fact, most early practitioners continue to leverage the 4 cardinal skills of sport psychology practice straight from CBT:

• self-talk (a sport version of cognitive restructuring)

• goal-setting

• emotion or arousal regulation

• imagery

These four skills are powerful. We know, for example, that they can lead to repeatable good performance (Thelwell, 2003). That’s pretty darn good.

We’ve advanced a long way since then. Performance psychology has come to appreciate that performance isn’t one size fits all (but those 4 skills can be a good place to start). To further advance the field, we’ve had to move past traditional CBT, and a few other dated theories (Yerkes-Dodson, anyone?)

We’re entering a fun new era where individual practitioners are working toward establishing their own theories to guide their practice (e.g., Diment, Henriksen, & Larsen, 2020). These theories are attempts to integrate the ever-evolving scientific landscape of enhancing human performance and maximizing human potential.

Sport Psych 2.0

In the last 10 or so years, the field has started to expand beyond traditional CBT. We got creative and started doing things like "flushing" bad thoughts. We borrowed theoretical constructs from "3rd wave" therapies. Mindfulness came to the front. We innovated new ways to train the mind, and started looking at things like eye-tracking and concepts like neuroplasticity with a hope that we’d see an even greater evolution in performance.

I’ve experimented with several of these ideas. But then I realized I too was a bit unmoored. Here’s my first attempt to fix that.

Underlying Assumptions of Theory 1.0

All theories start with assumptions. These are the things we take for granted in our argument and believe should be accepted at face value. Please feel free to critique any of the assumptions I make. It'll make me better.

My first assumption is that no good theory of performance can solely focus on principles for the mind. The mind and body are closely coupled, which means if you aren’t thinking about the interaction of the two, you’re probably missing something. It can't be a simple formula of psychological skills: psychological problems.

This is good news. We can look at processes that help peak performance from the body and mind dimensions. We can resolve problems by changing our minds, bodies, or both.

This leads to my next assumption.

Psychological skills don’t matter. The psychophysiological state that a skill produces is what matters most. If doing something body-focused gets you there, that’s just as important as doing something psychologically-focused. We’re focused on the process that leads to the best outcome.

For example, choosing between "positive" and "negative" self-talk should be a function of which helps more. Positive isn't inherently better than negative. And, it might just turn out that the best thing for a given individual performer is to not worry about self-talk at all and instead just focus on breathing. The tool is only as good as the state it generates.

The next assumption I’ve made is that excellent, repeatable good performance should be a simple (not easy) process. Human brains and bodies are complex, but there are a limited number of valuable psychological states for peak performance. We want to train an arsenal of skills performers can deploy at any time to get themselves into a few, key psychophysiological states. Efficiency is a hallmark of expertise. This phenomenon even shows up in imaging our brains. 

I also assume that these skills are trainable. Believe it or not, some people don't. We won't get into that here.

The next assumption is that the brain is a predictive mechanism. This assumption is guided by strong theory - the kind like the "theory" of evolution. We call it a theory because we're good scientists. We also know it's true.

This assumption is important because it means the skills and states must connect back to better predictions to be useful. High performance is a function of efficient, accurate predictions. If your predictions are inaccurate, you're not at the peak of possibility for yourself.

Finally, these psychophysiological states should be accessible to anyone.

We typically think of peak performance as belonging to a select few at the very top. The reality is that everyone is a performer in their own lives. As a result, everyone should be able to tap into these states with some training.

You're a performer if you're working toward something you care about and the outcome depends on your execution. This means that parents are performers, executives are performers, salespeople are performers... the list goes on.

The theory I put forth in the coming editions of this newsletter applies to this broad swath of performers. Now that I’ve laid out the assumptions, I’ll turn my attention to the starting point of any good performance: readiness.