AFM Home | The Staff Report | Oct 2004

By Jared Wood, M.A.
Sports Psychologist and Assistant Varsity Coach
Lake Orion High School, Lake Orion, MI

The Problem with Emotions

Minutes after a disappointing exit from the state playoffs, our coaching staff was already questioning our own methods, asking the difficult questions: Did we call a good game? What could we have done differently? Did we set up our players for success or failure? We thought we had hammered home a winning game plan; how did victory elude us? Stunned and confused, we struggled to comprehend a situation we thought we had understood. Inevitably, our questions lead us to examine our performance in an important area of the game: the mental and emotional state of our football team.

Traditional wisdom in football seems to suggest that a coaching staff would want their team to come into a game “fired up” and maintain that state throughout the game. Certainly, we have all seen teams who have dominated games, seemingly driven by a fire inside that willed them to win in a decisive manner.

Unfortunately, for those coaches and players who have ever come out as “fired up” as possible only to experience a crushing loss at the hands of a more capable team, the truth is painfully clear: football games are won through execution, not emotion. On the other hand, although few would deny that execution wins football games, any team who has been upset by a seemingly less capable team knows that emotion does seem to be a tremendously important part of the game, and to deny it as part of the game is to overlook an essential element of football.

Given the conflicting observations about the emotional element of football, the problem with emotions seems to center around choosing the correct emotional state for competition. How should coaches prepare their teams emotionally for competition? What is the magic formula for excellent emotional preparation?

The Coaches’ Approaches

In my observation, there are three basic approaches to coaching the emotional element of football:

The first approach takes a stance either for or against being emotional and always prepares the same way. Coaches in this camp have one favorite emotional state, and they always preach it. Coaches who use this style generally fall into one of two camps, fired up or unemotional, and they consistently prepare their players to play with a certain emotional state. Coaches who prefer this style are generally fairly rigid in their approach to the game and have little interest in changing their ways. They are confident in their approach and have probably had at least moderate success at some point in their careers. Their practice and preparation likely varies little from year to year.

The second approach to coaching the emotional element uses coaching intuition to assess a team’s emotional state and adjusts practices, meetings, and speeches to direct the team’s emotional state to match the anticipated needs of the upcoming game. Coaches who use this style successfully are often very talented observers of human behavior, and they use their talent to sense a team’s current state of being and deliver what they think it needs. They tone down or tune up a team’s emotions according to the challenge of the opponent. A team’s success under a coach with this style is often feast or famine: success depends on the coach’s talent as an observer of his players’ needs.

The third approach combines the strengths of the first two approaches and goes a step further to improve upon each of the first two methods. Coaches who fall into the third group take into account the scientific research in sports psychology and combine it with their own observations as a coaching staff to instill an ideal emotional state in their teams. Instead of rigidly instructing their teams to fit their own beliefs or widely changing their preparation from one week to the next, coaches in this style prepare their teams to be flexible and emotionally responsive to the roller-coaster challenges of competition.

The Optimum Emotional State

To determine the appropriate state for a team about to enter competition, coaches need to consider that there are more dimensions to emotional performance than the extremes of being fired up or unemotional. Research in sport psychology has identified certain attributes for optimum performance. Typically, the optimum performance state is characterized by motivation, energy, determination, challenge, positive fight, fun, confidence, focus, and appropriate arousal for maximum attention. Thus, the sum of the research suggests that teams and individuals perform best when they are confident, calm, energized with positive emotion, challenged, focused, alert, automatic (e.g. skill mastery), and ready for fun and enjoyment. Coaches who fall into the third aforementioned group are able to analyze their players’ emotional states in each of these areas, and they have methods for producing and fine tuning the optimum emotional state. Teaching players to play with these attributes will help them become emotionally responsive to the challenges of game time situations.

Instilling the Optimum Emotional State

Ultimately, a team’s emotional state is inseparable from their mental and physical preparation. Emotions, thoughts, and behaviors interact constantly, culminating in game day performance. Knowing that their team’s game performance is linked to their preparation and practice, coaches in the third style focus on infusing the elements of the optimum emotional state into their practices. They fill their practices with opportunities for their players to build confident, automatic, and instinctive execution by providing accurate feedback and opportunities for correct execution. Their practices are energized with positive emotion; they avoid the overuse of fear, confusion, low energy, pessimism, and fatigue. The week of preparation is focused and goal directed: a positive challenge is presented, regardless of the level of competition. Most importantly with young players, preparation is made to be fun and enjoyable, even if it is physically demanding. Intuitively, good coaches sense their team’s emotional state, and they are able to adjust their preparation to maximize the team’s emotional status in each component of the optimum performance state.

Just as coaches analyze various components of their team’s physical play (e.g. yardage, turnovers, completions, tackles, knockdowns, etc), it is possible to devise ways to analyze a team’s emotional status. It just takes asking the right questions. For example, to start analyzing your team’s emotional preparation, pay attention to the vocabulary your players and coaches use. Are the words you use empowering, or do they suggest that the outcome of competition is related to fate? Are your words optimistic or pessimistic? Do your words promote confidence or fear? Do the players and coaches speak to each other in ways that are encouraging or discouraging?

Physical execution of skills is another area that could be examined. Ask yourself important questions: Does your feedback tend to correct mistakes and focus on improved execution, or does your critique lead to fear and confusion? When mistakes are made, is an effort made to instill confidence by providing corrective feedback and opportunities for proper execution of skills?

Analyzing your practice habits for examples of the ideal emotional state also can be beneficial. Do your practices ultimately lead to fatigue, or do they lead to an energetic game day performance? Are practices at all enjoyable, inspiring a high energy level, or are they exercises in drudgery, leading to a loss of energy? Are your practices focused and goal driven, uniting the team toward a common goal, putting them all “on the same page?” Does your team feel challenged to improve at practice, or do they simply “go through the motions?” Do your practices provide opportunities for players to practice poise under pressure? Do your practices provide opportunities for players to practice sudden changes such as turnovers and other changes in momentum, enabling them to learn how to be emotionally flexible and responsive to the challenges of competition?

The Magic Formula

Coaching the emotional element of football is a great challenge for any coaching staff. Being able to manage the emotions of young players can make or break a game, a season. Unfortunately, the interactions of emotions, thoughts, and execution are too complex to be nailed down to a simple formula: understanding the emotional element of football takes more than deciding whether to be fired up or unemotional. Coaches need to use their unique insights and talents to channel players’ emotional energy into proper physical execution. Fortunately for us, the Ideal Performance State sheds some light on an often misunderstood element of the game. By understanding how the elements of the optimum performance state affect our team, coaches can prepare their teams for success and never again have to ask the question: To fire up or not to fire up?

Jared Wood is a school psychologist in the Lake Orion school district (Oakland County, MI) where he also serves as an assistant coach for the Lake Orion High School varsity football team. In addition to his job and coaching duties, he is a self-employed athletic performance consultant. His interest in sports psychology began while attending Albion College and playing football for the late Pete Schmidt. Currently, his studies include work as a doctoral study in sport psychology at Michigan State University. He can be reached by e-mail at jaredwood@mac.com or by phone at (248) 535-5358.