TCU Massive's mental-skills coach uses the gorilla experiment to show how narrow focus can blind you to important details. Athletes need locked-in concentration for specific tasks like striking a ball, but also wider awareness to read the game. Parents are asked whether their sideline comments help or distract their child.
Hello, TCU Massive soccer players and parents. This is your Massive Mental Minute for, for the weekend. I know we have a big weekend of games coming up, as well as the social event happening Saturday night. I am sad I will not be able to be there Saturday night because I actually have a Jove improv show, but I know everyone will have a great time. Shameless plug, next Friday night, the 30th, the Friday before Halloween, we are having a special Jove Halloween show, family-friendly. 8 o'clock at the Jupiter Performing Arts Theater. If you haven't been to a show yet, or if you have, you already know that you need to come. So hopefully we'll see you guys there next Friday night. So what have we been working on lately with the, the mental and the leadership with your kids? So this week we started session 5, a new training on focus and concentration. I've worked with a few of the teams, and again, we're building off of everything we've worked on so far as far as the growth Victor mindset, which is embracing failure through learning, getting outside of our comfort zone, and working on those things that are just beyond our ability until we master them, and then we move on to the next thing. So that's that theme we're going to work on all year. We've also been working on how to make our teammates look brilliant. So thinking of team from that standpoint where it's not about me, it's about, it's about my teammates and us as a collective unit and how we communicate and how we collaborate. And and tell one story instead of telling lots of stories. And that's kind of a theme we've been working on the last few weeks in our sessions. And introducing this week this idea of focus, concentration, and attention, being able to stay in the present moment. And that is a bigger idea that I'm gonna continue to work on with the players throughout the rest of the year. Nothing is ever going on outside of the present moment. That includes wherever you are and whatever you're doing right now. So, our ability as a player to respond to big moments, to hit a perfect ball, or to take a ball out of the air with a volley, is our ability to be locked in and focused on that ball, on that moment, instead of being distracted by anything else. Today's Mental Minute is right now. I'm going to plug in a video, and I would like you to grab your child or grab, you know, however many players you have, and you guys are going to do this together. It only takes a minute and a half. Go ahead and start now.
This is a test of selective attention. Count how many times the players wearing white pass the basketball.
How many passes did you count?
The correct answer is 15 passes. But did you see the gorilla? This video is from research by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris and is copyrighted.
So how did that go for you? Did you notice the gorilla? All right, be honest. Did you notice the gorilla, or were you so locked in on the passes that you didn't even notice the gorilla coming into view? So there's 2 ideas that we can take away From this video. One is if you did not see the gorilla, that can be a good thing. It meant that you were so locked in on the importance of the task to focus on the white people passing, the white players in the shirts passing the ball, that you didn't— weren't distracted by something that really was irrelevant to your task. And during a typical game, there are times where we need to be locked in with that level of focus that we're not distracted by the referees, the other players, coaches, our parents.
Hmm.
That we're not distracted. We're so locked in on what I need to focus in on right now. There's a second aspect of that when we need to actually broaden our attention so that we're taking in multiple information. Staying onside, for example, or marking up your man, for example, is being able to take in multiple dimensions of focus— where the ball is and where my man is and where the offsides are. That's the ability to kind of step back focus on a lot of information and see the gorilla at the same time. So it's understanding when to be locked in, when that ball's coming right at me, I need to be singularly locked in, or having a broader view of having to read the game, read position, and read balls at the same time. Parents, I challenge you. What I'm working with the kids all year long is to be able to stay focused, keep it simple, keep their focus Simple. So as a parent, as you're on the sidelines parenting, you have to ask yourself, is what I'm about to say going to be distracting, or is it going to be encouraging and helping them stay focused, right? So this is not a judgment to any of you. It's a question for you to ask yourself. Is what I'm about to say helping my child stay focused, or is it drawing their attention away to listening to what I'm about to say? It's kind of a big question for you. So that is your Massive Mental Minute for the week. Good luck this weekend, everyone. Have fun at the social, and we'll see you all next week.
