Today it has been announced that Micheal Yardy has left the ICC Cricket World Cup due to suffering from depression. Following comments from some public figures it would appear that there is a clear misunderstanding of the prevalence of the condition within sport. One common theme that is emerging is people questioning how these sports people earning x amount a week and playing / winning at the top level can succumb to the symptoms of this mental illness. But being successful, earning large amounts of money and playing sport for a living doesn’t mean that these individuals are immune to depression. It has been noted by some individuals that it is Yardy’s poor form that has caused this depression. This is not how depression works. When you have depression it affects all part of your life. It is a mental illness and it can affect you in any circumstance whether you’re playing in a World Cup for your country or not.

The symptoms of depression not only manifest themselves in an individual’s demeanour but also in changes to the brain. Numerous studies have now shown that there are changes in hormones and to the physical structure of the brain in sufferers of depression, proving that depression is not just about being “down”.

Image of  positron emission tomography scans comparing a normal brain with that of someone with a depressed mental disorder, demonstrating physical differences in the brains of sufferers of depression.

I work with a couple of young athletes who suffer from a varying degree of the illness and it is indeed hard to manage their expectations, demeanour and general functioning. It is a challenge to help them develop techniques that can help with their sporting performance. Considering they are in a high pressure environment I take my hat off to them as to how they deal with the condition.

Just because top athletes require a mental strength to compete at that level does not mean depression is less prevalent in sports people. Instead, prevalence is likely to be just as high in other groups as in elite sport.  As soon as the public can understand that top sports people are not immune and it is no longer a shock when an athlete admits they suffer from depression then the more support sports people and others can receive to help them deal with the illness.

Best wishes go out to Micheal Yardy who’s decision to leave the World Cup early must have been very difficult, to his family and to all other individuals who suffer from depression, also.

England choked. No doubt about it. After beating Wales, Italy, France and Scotland, they just needed to secure one more win to take the Grand Slam in this World Cup year. With a history of choking on the last game England have failed to take the grand slam for 8 years.
This year however, England may have been playing within their comfort zone for too long. Out of the 9 fixtures they have played this year, England have played only two away fixtures; one of which being the game in Dublin last weekend.
“Fortress Twickenham” has often provided that invincible feeling for England. The crowd are vocal, the team know the pitch well and nothing beats that atmosphere on match day. But travelling to Dublin for the first match they had played in the new Lansdowne Road, on St Patrick’s day weekend, for the Triple Crown, the Grand Slam and the Championship provided England with an entirely different set of circumstances.
The likes of New Zealand, Australia and South Africa can deal with this type of pressure as they demonstrated well during their summer tours, but England will need to step it up if they are going to have a chance of making the final of the World Cup in New Zealand this year.
England have three warm-up matches (Wales home and away, Ireland) before they travel to New Zealand so Martin Johnson will have to find a way to ramp up the pressure so that these games feel like world cup games in themselves. With this in mind, they’ll begin to understand the huge pressure they’ll be under and how to deal with it to produce a fantastic performance in a very rugby proud nation, in the biggest event in the rugby calendar. Good luck England!

Does expensive valuations, high profile transfers and huge amounts of financial reward affect subsequent performance? We saw the same pattern emerging when Wayne Rooney secured his new wage packet of £250,000 a week, with poor form dominating much of his current season. So what’s the reason behind this?

A number of psychological studies have shown the effect of extrinsic rewards on performance and motivation. Extrinsic rewards are rewards that are tangible in some way; this would include prize funds, wages, goal bonuses and trophies. Intrinsic rewards however, refer to intangible feelings such as satisfaction, pride and enjoyment; something individuals experience when they achieve something of note. The problem that develops however is that as extrinsic rewards increase the amount of intrinsic feelings experienced reduce. This leads to a decrease in motivation, satisfaction and performance.

A story I once heard is about an elderly gentleman who suffered an inconvenience during one summer. A group of young school children had taken to playing a game whilst kicking a football against his garage. The sound of the football hitting the metal door produced a terrible noise and often disturbed the man from his afternoon nap. He came up with an idea which initially sounds quite contrary; he decided that we would actually reward the kids from playing football against his garage. He went and spoke to the kids he told them he would give them twenty pence each every time they came to play. Indeed the children were surprised, but they took the money and continued to play against the garage every other day. After around three weeks, the man spoke to the children again; he told them he would like to reward them for playing and said he would now give them fifty pence to play ball against his garage. Another three weeks passed and once again the elderly man went outside to speak to the children. However, this time he told them that he was unable to carry on giving them money to them as he couldn’t afford to. The children told him that they weren’t going to bother playing against his garage anymore and ran off. They never returned and the old man was able to nap in the afternoon in peace.

This story describes how the expectation of extrinsic rewards often overrides the satisfaction of intrinsic. Whether this can explain the poor form of the premiership’s most valuable assets is too hard to tell, but it certainly does make you wonder about the enjoyment and motivation of these players when playing when receiving such large financial rewards.

Practice games should be incorporated into your everyday practice to help you consolidate both new and old skills into situations that are similar to a competition.

Here are some key ideas to get you to create a practice game of your own..

1) Choose the skill you want to practice e.g. long putts, short putts, uphill putts, bunker shots, flop shot over danger etc.

2) Create a scoring system.. e.g. 5 points to hole it, between 0-6inches from the hole= 3 points. Obviously this scoring system should depend on the skill in hand and your current ability.

3) Work out how many different situations you need to practice. E.g 5 locations on the other side of the bunker attacking the chipping area. These locations should be ones that you can locate again the next day or the next week. So try and make them vaguely memorable.

4) So say you have 5 locations, and you get 5 points to hole it. That’s a maximum of 25 points. You can now get your first score. Carry out the exercise. 1 ball from each location. Then use your book/or something else to write down your score.

5) Practice the same drill the next day. It is important that you only practice the game once a day. Therefore it makes it feel more important.. and you can’t just write off a poor attempt and give yourself another chance. Remember to write your score down!

The trick here is to spend some time PRACTICING first. For instance if your golf pro has given you some advice on chipping, spend some time practicing what he has told you. Practice it from a variety of locations.. perhaps even the ones that are in your practice game. Once you’ve practiced for some time it is now time to see if you’ve improved by now playing the practice game. You’ve then mapped your progress for the day.

As much as it’s great to play games against the other guys it is important to also play against yourself. An ideal practice session would go as follows.

1. some time working on a particular skill. Vary locations.

2. A few games against friends/colleagues.. pressure.. but fun

3. Your own practice game at the end of the session

This style of practice is psychologically the best way to develop your skills. It will help with your confidence, your decision making, your ability to deal with pressure, your skill acquisition and of course your ability to perform the shot.

How refreshing to see a group of players and staff feel so passionately about winning a competition, not for money.. but for pride.

Congratulations Europe!

One interesting thing did pop up  and I feel it  flags up the importance of thorough needs assessment and the consideration of specific differences between individuals. I have a biofeedback tool which measures an individual’s physiological response to stress and I use it whilst running workshops or teaching at schools. The great thing about it is that it provides a visual display of how cognitive anxiety can have an effect on the body and its responses. Each time use it, I ask a kind volunteer to come and wire up to the machine and I then challenge them to succeed in some sort of target task – be it golf, hockey or darts. Providing them with the age-old stressors of a reward (chocolate or wine goes down well) and peer evaluation I ask them to hit the target x amount of times whilst wired up. The visual display of their physiological response to the stress become apparent on the projector screen and helps provide a great visual aid for the rest of the room.

What has been very interesting is the variety of responses to this task. The first time I used it the participant showed a constant increase in physiological response to stress, another showed an increase whilst addressing the ball, but a dramatic decrease during the backswing and the participant last night showed some great routine training as a negative response only became apparent after the result of the stroke became apparent.

Just from the three above cases, it is plain to see that the use of any intervention with these individuals would have to consider the timing and the target of the stress reduction strategy. Attempting to use an anxiety reducing strategy that was successful on one individual is not necessarily going to work on another.

The point here is that although research is the backbone of all interventions, it is important to remember individual differences before prescribing the well validated intervention. Even if it is clear that an individual suffers from anxiety it is no good flying in with standard strategy to reduce anxiety, instead it is vitally important that the practitioner spend more time assessing when, where and why the anxiety is occurring as well as how much. Although this may take more time, if the client is aware that the practitioner is trying to pinpoint the exact issue then they may not be so concerned with a timeframe to see results and be more concerned with the quality of results.

Why our media loves to elevate certain talented individuals just to lead them down the garden path for the proverbial beheading is something I can’t quite understand.  Danny Cipriani, once dubbed ‘the next Jonny’ is undoubtedly a talented young rugby player, however, he has fallen foul of his elevated perception of his own status granted to him by the British media. Public belief in him has dwindled and a few years on, dropped from the England squad, he has publically admitted to seeing a counsellor for depression¹ and has fled to Australia with the ‘Melbourne Rebels’ to escape the goading of our media.

Danny Cipriani epitomises how the pressure put on athletes leads to unnecessary discomfort and often choking in performances.  One would hope that our media would support the athletes through their development, just like much of their performance training, to help them achieve their full potential.

This type of reporting has developed a certain persona of the British public, one that provides commitment to  minority sports whilst they are successful, but as soon as the hype is over attention reverts back to our favoured ‘national sports’.

Lets hope our gold medal winner Amy Williams does not suffer from the same media frenzy that has hurt previous athlete’s enjoyments of their sport – because what we saw last week was a raw emotion that inspires future sportsmen and women.

Talking of national sports, notwithstanding the poor behaviour of some of the English footballers, the media are absolutely crucifying them as well as the entire English team – is it also crucifying our chances at the World Cup this summer? Take one minute to think – Is it really necessary? If we did win the World Cup would the public even think about the pre-cup scandals of John Terry and Ashley Cole rather than dance in the streets to celebrate the achievement we have been waiting so long for?

But that’s a different story, certainly one with a number of moral issues to deal with!  What I’m trying to get across is that  British media continually takes steps to report on the successes of our athletes,  providing of course that they can justify reporting in great detail a fall from grace, be it performance, expectations or off-pitch shenanigans.  Do our talented athletes deserve this? Do they deserve to feel the full pressure of the media and the British public?  Jonny Wilkinson once said that the happiest he had ever been was the second the referee blew his whistle at the 2003 World Cup.  After that, he realised what a celebrity he would become – something he just did not want.

With the Football World Cup this year, the Rugby World Cup the next and of course the Olympics in 2012, I hope for our athletes sakes that they do not buckle under the endless assault from the media.

Any comments would be welcomed..

¹ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/rugby_union/article7034971.ece