Agility - The Mental Game

L to R:  Pepper, Lucky Lucy, Maxie

This is part of the quarterly Blog Action Day where agility bloggers all write on the same subject.  See what others have to say here.

The mental game has been at least 50% of the challenge for me in this sport, so much so that I can safely say if it wasn't A LOT OF FUN for me and my dogs to over ride the inertia of "comfort", I wouldn't do it at all.  Fortunately, I can afford the financial cost, so that's one problem I don't have.  But I've never been athletic, so making my body get out there and move, and in distinct ways, provides daily resistance.  EXERCISE (leg lifts, stretches, footwork, etc.) has never called my name, except for walking and swimming, both of which I love.  SPORTS have never interested me either -- I don't care to participate, and don't care which team wins!  I'm somewhat uncomfortable chatting with PEOPLE,  mostly because what interests me doesn't seem to interest them and vice versa.  Also, I find I never have enough time to learn enough, so I covet my private time.  So I'm not particularly suited for the bustling agility "scene"!

What does appeal to me is learning to communicate with my dogs and give them a wonderful life, and since they respond to body language that means I have to move my body.  I do agility for them.
For them, I've left the comfort of my home for classes and trials.  I've learned umpteen rules, which, by the way, I might direct you to my essay in the sidebar of this blog, Tips For The Novice Agility Competitor, to refresh you on how much you've had to learn and how far you've had to come to do this sport.  It's an eye-opener, especially for the seasoned agility instructor, reminding them how much their new students  have to learn in order to compete, and this doesn't even count training the dog!  It's intimidating!  One certainly needs a good mental game to endure it.

I've had injuries and illnesses - torn ligaments, twisted ankles, hip bersitis, pneumonia, cat and dog bites, vertigo, etc.  I've run my dogs with a TENS unit in my pocket and wires running under my pants leg to stimulate my sore calf muscle -- the only way I could endure the pain of the run. I've used and given away KT tape and ice packs to help others function at trials.  I see tons of knee braces, back braces, ankle wraps, etc., at trials, so I'm not alone in this.  Not to mention my eye problems -- my depth perception is way off since my cataract surgery 1.5 years ago.  This has been very depressing, like living with a continuous hangover.


Maxie, giving it his all.

Increasingly, I see people lining their dogs up for chiropractic and massage treatments.  It makes one wonder, why put our dogs through this sport if it's going to injure them?  Are we just doing it for ourselves?  One needs a good mental perspective to develop satisfying answers to these questions.  In my case, Maxie has needed some adjustments and isn't running as fast as before, and it turns out Lucky Lucy doesn't like being in arenas.  That is disquieting.  But . . . my dogs are bored to death if I don't do something active with them every single day.  They both enjoy movement, and I need movement.  They beg me to make them do tricks.  Agility seemed a good solution, so I've put 4 years into it, and loved it.   Truth be told, they'd be just as happy walking through the neighborhood, fetching balls, etc.  But that isn't sufficient for me, see.  I need more mental challenge than that.  I need to teach them stuff, and test their understanding, and occasionally it's nice to show them off.

Another significant part of my mental game has been learning how to tune out the critics and the ambilivants . . . . . just focus on my team.  When I'm at a trial, or even in class, I do my best to be friendly, attentive and supportive, but in the final analysis I'm there to be with my dogs and inch forward in our teamwork.  That's where the thrill is, for me.  I don't really enjoy being with people who aren't there for me.  Everyone is basically preoccupied, doing their own thing.  And then there are the rude people that nobody ever talks about.  The mental game helps provide the shield.

I enrolled in John Cullen's online courses via Cognitive Edge, learning a lot about setting up a Pre Competition Routine.  I've read books (reviewed elsewhere on this blog) about developing my mental game.  I've learned to love watching football games, (LSU and the New Orleans Saints in particular), because it amazes me what these "gladiators" go through to develop their physical skills as well as their mental game. What the human body can do, given proper and regular training and right mental attitude, is nothing short of miraculous.  I still don't know the rules of that game.  I just watch the players give their all -- pass and run and tackle and fly through the air, and arise unharmed after 20 guys have just piled up on them.  I want to be that way.  But I'm not.

I've done Susan Garrett's Puppy Peaks, but when I got my puppy (Pepper) 2 years ago, I didn't do many of the exercises.  Partly because I already train 2 dogs, partly because Pepper doesn't catch on as quickly as the other two and I'm not into the "thousands of repetitions" gig some dog trainers say is needed to train our dogs.  Maxie and Lucky Lucy spoiled me.  They learned quickly.  Not that it matters much.  I adore my beautiful Pepper-Tu, too. His manners are pretty good, and his antics are so funny!  He is very PRESENT and WITH ME in the most important ways.

Looking back, this whole blog has been mostly a chronicle about my involvement in this sport, but it also captures the enormous amount of work that goes into agility -- training, packing, travelling, filling out forms, learning the rules, solving training and other problems, building equipment and relationships, keeping up the training yards, setting goals, analyzing runs, developing a healthy mental game, streamlining processes, cutting losses, and carrying on despite the many disappointments and constant struggles.  Not that I'm trying to discourage anyone else, but lately I've been wondering why I continue when I could stay home where everything runs pretty much smoothly and I don't have to struggle so much.  There are a lot easier things to do.

I'm kinda in that mental space right now, wondering if just taking classes once a week and backyard training would satisfy me, without need to trial and compete for ribbons and titles.  Hopefully it's just a phase.  What did John Cullen's recent article call it  -- burn out.  I read the article -- all the ways to prevent burnout -- but I didn't even want to do those.

On top of that, there's my declining FoohFooh, my first dog for whom this FoohMax agility blog is named.  I never did agility with FoohFooh.    He was so smart, but I was not ready to handle his enthusiasm. I did the best I could. We did many tricks. He wowed our visitors with his roll-overs, hand shakes, fay-do-do's (i.e., bang, you're dead's), and such forth, but I had never heard of Agility in 1998. Nor even Obedience!  I was a highly skilled child trainer, but not a bit with dogs.  I made it up daily, but never caught up as he was so smart, I knew I was lagging right away.  But it wasn't until I acquired Maxie in 2008 that, never to make the same mistake, I began to search online for dog training tips.  Fooh is just as smart as Maxie, maybe smarter.  I failed him in so many ways.  He forgives me, and he's now so old, can barely stand.  We are waiting with baited breath for his last day.  Maybe 3 weeks, 3 months, not sure.  I don't want to leave him behind for a weekend of trialing and miss his passing.  That would scar my soul. So I tend to stay home.  His poor backbone sticks out, his paws curl under, he can barely make it down the steps to the yard, he barely responds to the call to go "outside", which used to excite him so.  We are all feeling kinda low around here, though he still loves his food.  Death sucks.  Is that bad?  Is it wrong to linger with a dying loved one and let them know how wonderful their blip of life was for you? Wrong to lose your mo-jo for awhile?  Wrong to feel depressed, sad, wound down?  Wrong to not respond to the enthusiastic urgings of the yet-healthy ones whose main focus is, without doubt, Me, Me, Me?  Gees, if fading away means nothing, why rise?

And then two weeks ago I tripped on a root after a stimulating class, landed flat on my belly, knocked the breath out of me.  I spit the dirt out of my mouth, got up and drove home, but within 2 days I realized I had re-strained my old knee ligament injury (which had me in a walker for 3 months a few years back), and I think I fractured a rib.  I've been in pain ever since, with NO desire or ability to practice the past two weeks.  Feeding and petting the dogs and letting them out is about all I can muster.  So that's "where I'm at" at this writing.

Hopefully, reading the other agility bloggers' posts will help me get back my mo-jo!  Bring it on.  No doubt, this agility gig has been a life-shifting, motivating, memorable ride and I don't regret it one bit.  Would I love to go to my own grave saying I had a CHAMPION AGILITY DOG?  Of course, I would.  And Maxie's only 7 QQ's from getting there, and we'd have been there long ago if it wasn't for just, every single trial day, just ONE LITTLE MISTAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   

Happy Holidays to you all.  Upwards and onward!

Book Review–WITH WINNING IN MIND

For Christmas presents, I bought 3 books on Mental Management: Freedom Flight, With Winning In Mind, and Finding Your Zone. My son who is crazy about golf, my grandson who loves cross country, and I who finally can say I "have a sport" after 60 years without one, will circulate these books among ourselves as a joint present, hopefully finding common ground and helping us all improve our games.

To help me remember the content of each book as I read it, I am blogging my notes, this time on:

With Winning In Mind - The Mental Management System, by Lanny Bassham

Interviewing hundreds of Olympic Gold medalists and World Champion Atheletes, and being one himself, Lanny found commonalities among these elites that led to their successes, primarily that 90% of their game is mental. Lanny used their imput as the basis of his Mental Management System Seminars and coaching techniques. This book is so full of wisdom and tips, one needs a highlighter for sure to catch them all. Phrases such as "we win whenever we advance down the road to achievement". "Winning and being a winner are two different things." "Who you become is equally important to where you finish". "Best to focus on a winning performance, not finishing on top." "Focus on the next step, not on your final score." And all this on one random page!

Most winners don't even know they have won, only that they did each step in sequence to the top level of their capability. Other factors besides your performance can come into play-- weather, sun, course conditions, luck of the draw, placement.

Your self-image as a winner isn't tarnished if you know you did your best, and will grow despite not winning top placement, unless you focus only on a winning score.

Imprinting:
Thinking "It is like me to win" while training, adds to the likelihood that winning will fall into your comfort zone.

"Great performances require less effort than poor ones!"
 

Balance Of Power:
Maintaining a balance between Conscious Mind, Subconscious Mind, and Self-Image is the goal of Mental Management. When the Conscious, Subconscious and Self-Image are working together, good performance is easy.The goal is to experience this state on demand, under pressure.

• Conscious Mind - we become what we picture. The conscious mind can only picture one thing at a time. If you are picturing a negative, there is no room for a positive. You must train yourself to let go of negative thoughts, and concentrate on positive thoughts only. This requires will power and can only be done for short periods of time - in sports, think only of the next obstacle, the next shot, never about the final score.
• Subconscious Mind - routines practiced so often they are done by rote, without thinking. The subconscious mind can do many things at once. Skills that become subconsious free us to train our conscious minds on more and more advanced skills. This is how excellence is achieved.
• Self Image - Performance and Self-image are always equal. To change your performance, change your self-image.

The Triad State:
When your 3 sources of input are balanced. The trick is to grow all 3 while keeping them in balance. If your self-image exceeds your skills, for example, or your self-image is lower than your skills, you can't win.

Affirmations:

• "I take control of what I picture, choosing to think about what I want to create in my life."
• "What I say is not important. What I cause myself and others to picture is crucial. I am a positive communicator."
• "Let it flow." You perform best when you allow your well-trained Subconscious to do the work. When Conscious Mind overrides the Subconscious in crucial situations, performance deteriorates.
• "I trust my Subconscious to guide my performance in competition."
• "Picture only what you want to see happen. Your Subconscious will obey."
• "I allow my self-image to expect more."
• Be careful who you listen to. When you listen to the problems of others, they will become your problems.
• Be careful not to complain. Do not reinforce errors in performance, or bad days at the office, by discussing them. Discuss what went right, and more things will tend to go right. What you think about, talk about, write about, manifests in your life.

"I choose to think about, talk about, write about

that which I wish to have happen in my life."  

 

Rehearsal:
When you vividly rehearse an action in your mind often enough, neural pathways are created in the Subconscious that allow for more fluid performances. Also called visualization, mental imagery, positive imagery. Very cool, you can do this any time, anywhere, it doesn't cost a thing and while it doesn't replace physical practice, is a great supplement with similar mental benefits! There is no negative reinforcement. Done correctly it is powerfully effective. You can rehearse beyond your current skill level to what you want to achieve, saying, "I do this all the time. It's easy for me."

 

The self-image cannot tell the difference between what actually happens and what is vividly imagined.  

 

Mental Attitude Rehearsal:
Learn to control how you feel. How confident or nervous you feel can affect your performance regardless of your skill level. Practice “settling down” in a competitive environment or in situations that make you nervous.  Identify what calmness feels like to you, learn to summon that feeling at will.  You can even make yourself have a good night’s sleep by rehearsing things that calm you down. 3 Phases to Mental Management:

1. Anticipation Phase – preparation.  Do you have all the equipment you need? Is it in good shape? Is your pre-competition routine set and effective.  Are you ready for all contingencies?
2. Action Phase – the time you are actually performing, varies with every sport (golf as long as it takes to swing a club, agility about 1 minute, running can be several minutes or hours)
3. Reinforcement Phase – praise what you did right, and recognize others for what they did right.  Stay away from negatives. Getting angry at yourself is totally unproductive.

Running A Mental Program:

a simple series of thoughts that, whenever pictured, will trigger the subconscious to perform the appropriate action.  The Conscious Mind, thus busy, cannot think of anything else.  For consistent effect, the series should not vary.

Most mental inconsistency occurs when thinking about what the environment is giving rather than running your pre-programmed mental program.

Criteria for a Mental Program: to act like a switch

1. must start out occupying the Conscious Mind, but in a simple way.
2. must transfer power to the Subconscious Mind as the activity begins and last thru to the end
3. must be duplicable, no variations, to ensure mental consistency

Steps of a Mental Program:

1. Point of Initiation – a physical cue that starts the program (enter the ring, take a deep breath, stomp or step forward with your left foot, clap your hands, etc.)
2. Point of Alignment – in agility, could be positioning your dog, or taking a lead out
3. Point of Direction -  knowing what you want to have happen first.
4. Point of Focus – in golf, maybe a phrase such as “See the line, feel the stroke”, in agility, maybe your release word or “I’m one with my dog”, but some last thought before you take action. Could be a song lyric or tempo, this will be different for everybody, but some one thing, always the same, that triggers the subconscious to begin its routine.

Handling Pressure:

• Pressure is your friend. Don’t avoid it.  Use it. Anxiety/fear is overcome with experience. Tension is required for good performance.  It is normal to feel pressure in competition. Focus on what you want to see happen, not on what is stressing you.
• Have a planned, practiced recovery strategy for whenever you suffer a disappointment, missed weave, poor shot, etc, Something you can control, like taking a deep breath, relaxing a muscle group, visualize something.
• YAWNING, even a fake yawn, dissipates tension. Many athletes use this technique.

#1 Mental Problem – Over-trying

Train well, then trust in your subconscious to do the work.  Champions work hard in training and work easy in competition, focusing on process, not outcome, and having fun.

Guidelines to Building Subconscious Skills -

1. Focus on what you are doing right.
2. Train 4 or 5 days a week while developing a skill, less thereafter.
3. *Wherever you are, be all there.
4. While training, imagine you are competing. Before competing, mentally rehearse a successful performance.
5. If you are having a particularly good training session, keep it going.  If you are having a bad day, stop training.  Rehearse the good feeling times. Don’t practice losing!
6. Train with people who are better than you.
7. Plan your year.  How much training time between each competition?  What will your training schedule be? Training objectives. Make changes in your training techniques long before a competition and practice them frequently until they become sub-conscious routines. How much money will you need for the year?  New equipment, supplies, etc. Get all that organized. Plan some down time after each competition, very important.

“Winning is not an accident. 

You must plan your work, and work your plan.”

Performance Journal:

Keeping a daily Performance Journal is a must or you won’t actually know if you are progressing. Journal records when you practice, for how long, field conditions, what you practiced, what worked. Goals should be written down and worked towards.

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

“Writing has a greater impact on the self-image

than talking.”

Never record your mistakes, only what went right.  Self image is created by the record you keep of progress.

Imprinting:

Self image is changed by “imprinting”. Visualization is “seeing”, but imprinting is “feeling”.  How does a successful performance “feel”.  An imagined clean run can feel about as good as a real run, and can be repeated over and over from just about anywhere.  Rehearse the feeling of success, especially just before and just after the real event.  Even if the event was not a success, you will have 2 successful imprints to override it. The subconscious can’t tell the difference between real and imagined events, nor can it tell time.  Each time you recall an experience the subconscious experiences it as a new event.  You are in control of the imprinting process.

 

If you catch yourself worrying, just rehearse performing well.

Steps to changing the Self Image:

1. Be willing to change
2. Identify a habit or attitude you need to change
3. Identify a new self image to replace it
4. Exchange them.  Whenever the old thought pops up, notice it and run the new sequence.

Directive Affirmations:

1. Write a goal
2. Set a time limit
3. What’s the pay-off?
4. Outline a plan to achieve the goal (what you will do)
5. Restate the goal

Write 5 copies of a Directive Affirmation, on 3x5 cards, and tuck them in key places.  Read them every time to see them.  In 21 days, either your self-image will change, or you will have quit reading them. Once achieved, tweek the DA, or run a new one.

Decisiveness: 

a very powerful asset and self image maker.  To avoid indecisiveness, here are some tips.

1. Novice competitors should treat early competitions ONLY as practice, learning experiences.
2. Discipline yourself to only think about what you need to do, not what you already did. Don’t dwell on errors.
3. Don’t expect perfection, only improvement.

“Perfection is the purest form of procrastination.”

Promotion:

Promote yourself with “I’m getting better at this”, rather than “I’m doing poorly.” Be a promoter of yourself, your organization, your coaches, and others. Be grateful for all the help you are given. No champion does it alone.

Promote others as follows:

1. Make eye contact when you speak to people
2. Remember their name
3. Praise in public, correct in private.
4. Praise twice as much as you correct
5. Never steal a dream or limit a goal
6. Never give up on anyone. People choose their own times to become champions.

Remember, if every attempt was successful and nothing ever went wrong, you would soon be become bored.  Winning is special because it is so difficult to do. We appreciate things in proportion to the price we pay for them.

_________________________________

These notes just scratch the surface of what's in the book.  It's a wonderful read, full of hope, examples and wisdom.

Upwards and onward!

Book Review - FREEDOM FLIGHT

For Christmas presents, I bought 3 books on Mental Management:  Freedom Flight, With Winning In Mind, and Finding Your Zone.  My son who is crazy about golf, my grandson who does cross country, and I who finally can say I "have a sport" after 60 years without one, will circulate these books among ourselves as a joint present, hopefully finding common ground by helping us all improve our games.

To help me remember the content of each one as I read it, I will blog my notes, starting with the one I read over the holidays:

Freedom Flight - The Origins Of Mental Power, by Lanny Bassham
This is a short book but carries a big punch.  Fictitious, it's also a composite of the wisdom of 3 real life people who influenced a real life Olympic champion (the author) to win Gold after many years of struggle to get there.

Synopsis: 
A soldier is captured and held as a Vietnam war prisoner for 6 years, plus spends several weeks in solitary in a 4'x4' bamboo box, without much food or water.  He pares life down to "what's important and what's not", and what he does to keep from going crazy is  to not worry about things he can't control, control what he can, and play golf in his head.  When he gets released back to the US and steps onto the golf course, he's rehearsed so many thousands of great shots in his mind, they come to pass!  He relates this story to the future Olympian on a plane flight, giving him the pearls of wisdom he needs to free himself of his self-limiting fears and attain his goal of Gold.

Summary: 

Here's the list of positive mental imaging tricks imparted:

1. The Lesson Of The Box: Until you get out of the "prison" of your self-limiting concepts, you aren't free to reach your goals and dreams. How do you do that?
   Establish a Plan
   Learn to separate what is important from what is not important in reaching your goals, and let the unimportant things go.
   What you think about AFTER something happens to you shapes the fabric of your future. Don't dwell on unimportant things.
2. It is unimportant what happens to you in life. What is important is what you do about it.  This is how you live a "purposeful" life, rather than be a "victim" of life.
3. Adversity is an effective teacher. Tragedy causes us to separate what is important from what is not.  Shows us we can't control all events, but we can control how we react to them.
4. Everything we experience in life is a preparation for our future.
5.  "To he who has been given much, much shall be required." If you focus less on your personal achievement and more on the good you could do by achieving it, you are more likely to win.  Changing your Purpose this way changes your focus, relaxes you, makes for easier performances.
6. The way you see things is reality.  Your actual environment is not reality. Perception is everything.
7. Focus on solutions to problems, not on the problems themselves.  Change your thought pictures.  Can you control your thoughts?  Do you try?  If your mind starts down a negative path, can you pull it away?  When you are in a situation you can't control, try to replace worrying with thinking happy thoughts that bring you joy.
8. Presets - We have many presets in our heads, like car radios where you press the button and it takes you to a particular station. Learn to identify your presets, and reset them to advantage.  For example, you can learn to step into the ring and all else fades but you and your dog running together beautifully. The mind cannot tell the difference between what you vividly imagine and what you actually do.  Replace "I can't run well" with "I run like a pro" and envision it, you can achieve it.
9. Every life has a purpose.  Everything happens for a reason.  Learning to see the benefits of everything that happens to you is important.
10. Every purposeful life has a God ordained plan. Once your goals are in sync with this plan, good things will begin to happen easily.
11. Even if there are no doors currently open to you, continue to think about your plan.  Doors eventually open to those who are determined.
12. The world tends to only measure accomplishment.  But you can also measure the state of your "becoming".
13. The conscious mind can only focus on one thing at a time.  Focus on what you want to happen and not what you fear might happen.
14. God endows us with weapons to fight through adversity.

Conclusion:

For years after meeting the Vietnam Prisoner on this flight, the author could not afford to train for his sport.  He set up a room in his home as a shooting range, and every day practiced aiming and shooting perfect shots.  Years later the chance came up to join a team and qualify for the Olympics, he did, and won Gold.

Upwards and onward!