How to Improve Confidence in Sport through Body Language Part 1

one of the most essential skills

athletes report that is needed for

success at any level is confidence

the difficulty is confidence is easy to

talk about but how do you get it and

there's a lot of things we can do to get

confidence for example stay positive be

able to reframe those negative

statements to more positive ones to use

your motivational Q words when when the

going gets tough you can do things like

that but a lot of people forget that

part of confidence in sport is physical

Sport is a physical activity alright

we're moving around how we look how we

present ourselves has a lot to do with

our performance especially in sports

like gymnastics and figure skating but

all sports we're going to do a little

exercise here now to help you with your

confidence and I've asked Erica

volleyball player to come in and help us

hey Erica good now Erica has played

volleyball and she's got pretty good

confidence already but she wants to

further improve her confidence she wants

to be a really mentally tough player

that always sticks with it so what we're

going to do in this exercise is we're

going to do something with physical

confidence and I've asked her to do a

little acting for me so I want her to

think of you know there's a you're

serving and you're up there and you blow

the serve and you could have won the

game and now the game goes on and they

win that game and you go to additional

one you know not a good situation for a

volleyball player now you've played

volleyball a lot of years I want you to

think back to volleyball players you've

seen in that service kind of situation

that were not very mentally tough they

didn't handle it well they kind of lost

it they didn't show a lot of confidence

and maybe just act out for me I move off

to the side a little bit here but act

out for me what that player might look

like after she serves and doesn't make

it in and how she might look you know

going to the next part of the rotate

that makes sense to you good let me just

move over here a little and let you do

it and you can just go the serving okay

good well what happens there is Erika

did a nice job of what a lot of us do as

athletes it's hard in sports we make

mistakes mistakes John wouldn't call

them the building blocks of success the

trouble is they're not fun you don't

feel good she did a great job and I

think very typical you beat yourself up

I'm no good I can't do it

her shoulders kind of drop - her eyes

are looking at the ground she wasn't

feeling very good about herself

now you take a second think of your

sport think of an activity where you

faltered and maybe didn't feel very good

what do you look like close your eyes

and imagine what your shoulders look

like what do you feel like what emotions

do you have take it a second or two to

do that