Hello, and welcome back to Brain in the Game. Brain in the Game is a podcast that's been specifically designed for athletes, coaches, and parents who are out there looking to do their sport just that little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is a real and sustainable balanced development of athletes, and I'm your host, Dave Degle. In this episode 44, we're going to look at consistency, or rather, inconsistency in performance. Now, many of you who know or follow me on my Facebook page or through social media or actually attend any of our trainings, well, now I've spent a lot of time in the last few months working with the motorsport industry, and in particular, motor racing drivers. What I've been doing is looking at creating a sustainable programme that enables athletes, specifically in this case, drivers, to be able to perform under any circumstances, be it in undesirable conditions, undesirable pressures, internal, external pressure, that approach. Now, I've We've just come back from China where we worked with a young driver who's not been in this series before. I spoke to you about him in a couple of podcasts before where we took him into a brand new vehicle.
He'd never been in, and he went out and he won that stage of the Series. So what we've done now is gone out and try and back that up, make sure that we can go out there and replicate that performance. I'm pleased to say that we did. We got two firsts and a second in the last round in China. So what that tells is we know how to not only get athletes to be able to perform at their best, but we can also replicate that performance, creating a sustainable programme for the athlete to go out there and replicate that performance, keeping them in the game. Now, one of the things about travelling with an athlete, you get encased in their world. So obviously with the motorsport and being in Asia, we were there at the same time as the Singapore F1. And a whole group of us were sitting down having dinner and we were talking about, obviously, motorsport. And for my money, the greatest driver on the circuit at the moment is Lewis Hamilton. When I was talking to these other drivers and coaches and engineers is the huge debate sparked up about why isn't he winning more than he's winning?
And so we looked at the reasons why. For my money as a mind coach, one of the things I look at when I look at consistency and sustainability in an athlete is three key areas of how they approach their race, their competition, their performance, whatever it is. I look at three key areas. So what I'm going to do through this podcast is initially Address it to Lewis Hamilton. Lewis, if you're listening, and I'm sure you are, these are the three key things that if you were working with me and I got the opportunity to get you into a position where you're consistently performing, the three key areas that I'd focus on. Now, don't be disheartened if you're not Lewis Hamilton out there or you're not into motor sport. These three key areas are consistent with any athlete in any field. So number three is to trust your own judgement, not only in yourself, but in your team and in your approach. When I watch the F1 racing circuit and I listen to the onboard commentary between the drivers and their engineers and the mechanics and their mechanics and their coaches. Although the rules have changed in F1 now, you can't actually coach over the intercom, you can still give them technical data.
So when I listen to those different athletes who are driving and the way that they interact with their team, their entourage, it tells me a great deal about the commitment they have to the structure or the programme or the process that they're applying. So when I talk about Lewis Hamilton, as I say, I have a great deal of admiration and respect for the guy. He's a brilliant athlete. What he isn't is consistent. So when I listen to him talking to his entourage, he's always second-guessing not only his own decisions, but the decisions of those team around him, the people giving him information. And so that doesn't give him the right place to be consistent in his performance. It doesn't allow him to go out and go, You know what? I've got 100% trust in what I'm doing. I'm just going to apply it. What's going on in his mind by second-guessing is looking for the reasons why it's not going to work. And we know we get what we focus on. So if we're focusing on looking for what's going to be broken, then we're going to find it. Even if it's not there, we'll find something to justify that it might be there.
And as athletes, when you go out, if you've been training for weeks, months, even years for a competition, and you go out to do that competition, then you get there and you start to look for what's broken, all that time you spent preparing for that competition is wasted. Because the only thing that you're focusing on is what's broken, what can I hang my hat on and say, That's why it didn't work. So when I listen to Lewis Hamilton communicate with his team, and they're telling him to do something, or they're telling me he's got enough time in his tyres, or he can go and go hard because the tyres are going stand out, and he's going, No, I don't think they are. That communication model between the two of them is broken. No longer is he saying, Okay, you're telling me my tyres are good. There's enough pressure in them. There's enough life in them. I'm just going to go and do what I do best, which is drive. He's having that battle, not with the other competitors, not with the other drivers, but with his own team. This doesn't allow for consistency. This doesn't allow the athlete to go, I want to replicate that performance.
Even though Lewis Hamilton went out and he won in Singapore, I guarantee when he goes out to race next time, he won't be referencing that and saying, Wow, that was a great race. What do I need to keep from that? Because he spent so much of his time questioning the decisions that were going on around him. Number two is boundaries. And this comes back to the same aspect with communication. What are the boundaries between the driver, in this case, and the team, the entourage, what do you want to know? Have you ever sat down with your team and gone... I'm talking to Louis here, of course. Have you ever sat down with your team and said, These are the key things I want to know. So we take this back to my young driver at the moment, the guy I took over with me to Asia. When he races at the moment, he doesn't like to use the onboard communication. We've taught him at the moment to be very, very focused on his input, his decisions, his process. And that's allowed us to be very effective with the communication internally for him and get that consistency in performance.
However, we know going forward as he goes up the categories, he's going to need to have that communication with his team. And we started that already. The way that he communicates with his mechanic, the way that he communicates with the engineers, the way that he communicates with the team owners, is geared to allowing them to understand what the key things that he needs to know at what key times. So it's pointless telling someone like Lewis Hamilton that something's going on in the pit when it doesn't really make any difference to his driving, or it doesn't make any difference to my driver if he knows who is or who isn't still in the race, because at the moment, he's focused on his race. As he gets further up the ranks, however, he will need to know that because his decisions and the mental chess game that he needs to play may need to be altered during mid-race. It's all about embedding with your team what it is, specifically, you need to know at what times. If you're into taekwondo, when you go out there and you're on the mat, the last thing you want is your coach screaming directives at that don't necessarily support the mental focus you've got or the approach you've got.
The communication between you and your coach needs to be specific before you get on the mat. The same if you're a gymnast, the same if you're a runner, the same if you're into mixed martial arts, the same is if you play cricket, baseball, soccer, or football. All of these sports, it doesn't matter what sport you play or you compete in, you need to have an effective communication model so that the coach and the team know exactly what you need to know. And you need to be able to communicate that with them, not just on the day, but well and truly in advance so they know when and where and how to communicate with you. That communication boundaries and strategy is a key aspect to allowing you to focus on what you need to focus on and not be distracted or be side swiped by something that you don't need to know at that particular time. So my athlete, I know that when we do move up into him using the microphones, a lot of other drivers, his category, use the microphones and use the communication with their team. And it supports our decision not to when I watch them come back in and they have their screaming matches about, You told me this, you didn't tell me that, I didn't know this was going on.
It doesn't allow those young drivers to focus on what they're supposed to be doing. However, I know that when our driver goes in and starts to utilise that next step, the communication model, that he's going to get key information because his team already know what and where and how he likes to be communicated with. As an athlete, you need to drive that. You need to tell them. You need to tell them and say, You know what? At this point, these are the things that are important to me. At this point, these are things that are not important to me. So don't even worry about telling me those things. These are the things I do need to know. Number three was trust in your own judgement and that of your team. You got to have that communication style that you trust them. They're there for you. You're all bought into the same outcome. Number two is boundaries with your communication. Know exactly what you do want to know and what you don't want to know, and communicate that in such a way that there's no second guessing. Your team know what to tell you, when to tell you, and how to tell you.
Number one is purely and simply about consistency. Have an approach that works specifically for you. Now, again, coming back to Lewis, when I watch Lewis Hamilton, there's such an inconsistency in the way that he approaches his driving. Again, don't get me wrong, this guy is a phenomenal driver. He should be winning far more races than he is. He should have such a lead over the rest of them that he doesn't currently have. It's his emotional approach, not his skillset that needs the work. From a mental perspective, from a mind coaching perspective, clearly there's nothing I could teach Lewis Hamilton about how to drive a car. What I could teach him about is how to manage his emotions. To get the most out of him, to get the best out of him each and every time that he gets behind the wheel, to make sure that his structured approach is so consistent that enables him to be a consistent performer. Because at the moment, his his emotions that are his biggest weakness, not his skill of handling an F1 racing car. Let me ask you that question for you. Of those three key areas, the trust in yourself, the communication model, and your consistent approach to your performance, how would you rate yourself with those?
How would you look at your approach to those three key areas and evaluate yourself? Are they working for you? Are they consistent? Are they fantastic one day, the next day, completely off the mark? I know that most athletes, and as a previous athlete myself and an elite coach, and now a mind coach, I know a lot of the focus always draws back to the physical and technical development of an athlete, and to a certain degree, rightly so, because if you can't compete, then you can't compete. You need to be able to be competitive to be able to compete in the environment. So you got to have those skillsets. You got to have that talent. You got to have those core skills that enable you to perform. However, if you want to lead your field, if you want to be the number one, if you want to be that consistent performer, then you've got to look for a consistent strategy that works for you. And there's no generic one size fits all. It is purely and simply what works for you. And there is nobody who knows you better than you. Ask yourself those questions. How good am I at my judgement?
Do I trust myself? Do I trust my team around me? And if I don't, what do I need to do to correct that? Are there people on my entourage that I don't trust, who I know that aren't giving me the right information? Do I need to communicate better with them, or do I need to replace them? Are they people that I can't replace? So Therefore, what do I need to do to put somebody or something in place to balance that? Do I have key boundaries? Do my team know what I need to know when I need to know it? Do I need to communicate better with them to tell them what specifically, at what point I need what specific information? Do I need to have visual keys? Do I need to have audible keys? Do I need to build better triggers? Am I consistency? How consistent am I? What do I do when it works? What do I do when it's not working? What's the difference? How do I replicate performance? Because if I can perform it once and I can perform it again, surely. But if I'm not continually performing, then it's not a skill set.
It's purely and simply a mental and emotional behavioural trigger. You've heard me talk about this many times before. All that performance is patterns and triggers. If we have a pattern that we've performed before we want to replicate that, when we need to understand the right triggers that fire that pattern. They're just accumulation of chemicals that go off in our brain that makes us do certain things in a certain order. The simplistic side of that is, if we have the right trigger, then we fire the same chemicals. Lewis, if you are listening, make sure that you understand that your performance or your inconsistency isn't a matter of skill. It's a matter of mental and emotional balance. If you're not Lewis Hamilton, what are you doing to make sure that your performance is consistent each and every time? How do you approach? Do you use the funnel process? Are you seven days before you race, compete, swim, run, jump, whatever it is, you're building that snowball of emotional confidence right up until the race day. So you tick all those boxes. So when you get to race day, you know that you've done everything you possibly can.
So when you go out, you're confident. You have that confidence in yourself. You trust yourself. You know what you need to do. You know the people around you know what you need to do. You got that trust in your team. You have a reliable, structured approach, that consistency and sustainability in preparation. Are you using behavioural triggers? One of the things that I use with my racing car drivers is I use smell. Smell is the greatest mental stimulant that we have. I remember when my nan used to cook Sunday lunches, and if I smell a certain smell, it reminds me of my nan. Utilisation of smell can be a great trigger for a behavioural pattern. I've built in with a lot of my drivers that use of smell, meaning certain things, certain desired outcomes. Are you Are you using triggered words? Are you using specific actions? All of these can help you trigger the same behavioural pattern that you're desiring. So I'll leave you with that. I hope you enjoyed that look at not only the elite end of sport and how that's relevant to not only the top one or two percent, but also how it's relevant to every one of us who compete.
Making sure that we have those three key, key aspects: trust in your own judgement, the boundaries of communication, and consistent structured approach. Until the next episode of Brain in the Game, train smart and enjoy the ride. My name's Dave Diggle, the Performance Mind Coach.
