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| Creating a Challenge |
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| by Billy J. Carmichael |
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| Coaches should not be worrying about eliminating challenges for their athletes, but instead, creating new ones! |
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| When sports psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi worked on the area of "flow", he found that peak performance was acheived when individuals were faced with a challenge roughly equal to their skills. When faced with a challenge greater than their skills, they became frustrated, and when faced with a challenge below their skill level, they were bored.
Frustration and boredom are a real danger with "volume" work in many sports. Although this type of work is necessary, many athletes learn bad habits by only going through the motions on high volume days.
By identifying and achieving new challenges during the work volume, athletes stay sharper and avoid boredom. Examples of new challenges could include:
- An effort to exactly repeat split times across many intervals in swimming (challenge consists of increased self-awareness, technique control and pacing).
- Attempt using at least eight different techinques in a basketball lay-up drill (challenges are developing creativity, visualizing game situations and quality control).
- Alpine skiing with poles (this forces athletes to consciously focus on balance and footwork).
- In softball of baseball swinging inside out to hit the pitch in a specific location or field.
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Copyright © 2000-2005, TTNL Sports Network |
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