Goal setting, head shrinking and a good bunch of blokes

I have found this week's adventure at the Elite Motorsport Academy extraordinary on two levels. Firstly, I'm still alive and in reasonable working order.

Second, I didn't think there were any teenagers left in the country that had the manners, decorum, bearing, articulation and sensibilities these nine fine young men have all displayed at all times - so far.

These blokes put just about every other sportsman I've ever met in a myriad of different codes, in New Zealand, to shame.

In fact, in general, motorsport people are quite genuine and humble - bar F1, but that's a place for enormous egos, run by the mad, squabbling over nothing, with a self-importance bordering on psychotic. I would have to say; rally drivers in particular have an easy way about them.

Anyway, moving on. After emerging from the all the torturous physical rigors more or less intact, I have been able to pay closer attention to the mental skills these young fellows are also being taught.

What the Elite Motorsport Academy and the Sports Academy have cherry-picked from Otago University and the area is mind-boggling. To have access to some of the best minds, in the business of minds, will give them all the necessary mental skills to become the complete package.

Even as I'm losing, rather rapidly, my remaining brain cells, those left behind have learnt some valuable lessons that will help me in life in general. And for these young folk, what better skills to learn at an early age in an effort to avoid making basic mistakes. They have been learning how to cope with the pressure of not only racing cars but also all the ancillary guff that swirls around them on race weekends.

One thing I have been pleased to note, is that there hasn't been too much 'goal setting'.

My personal view is that you should only have one goal, not a whole series of them - and make sure it's a bloody big one. A goal is a goal, not a pathway to a goal.

There are some athletes out there who have been told getting out of bed is their first goal of the day (before someone goes off half cocked about the terminally ill or the disabled, pull your head in, I'm not talking about them), making breakfast the next one, arriving at training in one piece is another, being able to finish training another and on and on and on.

If that was me, I'd be bored ridged with getting all those goals during a day and look to get something else.

The idea is to score a goal, or more than one, but it's the end result your after. In soccer the keeper's goal is not to pass the ball to the right back whose goal is to run a bit and then pass it to the mid-field whose goal is to run around the opposition and get it to the forward etc etc. That's their job.

The goal is to get the round white thing in the net. To use a favourite John Mitchell phrase, the ball's 'journey' down the park is just that - not a goal.

What I have noticed with all the mental skills coaching the squad is receiving is that it's good sound, uncomplicated, albeit cutting edge, stuff that'll give them an extra advantage.

For me, it's slowed down my decent into early senility and I can't wait to put it into practice in the wider world. But bloody hell, I've got the mother of all headaches.

- Eric Thompson

 

PHOTO: Motorsport folk - except the F1 ego-fest, of course - are generally genuine and humble. Photo / Tania Webb