Rob Robson, Business and Sport Psychologist

Developing Engagement, Change and Performance

t: 01926 432 882 / 07739 411383 | Email Rob  

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Post-Competition Review

Why review your performance?

Goal setting can be very useful, but unless you monitor you progress against
those goals it’s usefulness is limited.

For example if you go for a long time in training without any feedback it can
be quite demotivating because you have no real sense of where you stand in relation
to your ultimate goal. Post-competition reviews, however, provide an opportunity
for you to feed back to yourself, with the help of a coach or team-mate, on
how you performed against your goals.

Reviewing will also help you to:

• build confidence, by giving yourself credit for the things you did well
• find ways to adjust training and preparation to improve your performance
• make decisions based on evidence rather than emotion.

When I was cutting my teeth I worked a lot with talented swimmers (teenagers) and between training, competition and school there was very little time for contact. What I did was (starting with review) implement a regular cycle of planning and reviewing competition. I was amazed at what a great vehicle it was for the swimmers development. They became much more knowledgeable, ‘professional’ swimmers as a result.

When to review your performance

It is advised that you always leave time between your performance and it’s review – literally sleeping on it will ensure that your response it not driven
by your emotions. If you review too soon you may overlook points for improvement
(after a successful race) or over-emphasise the negative (after a disappointing
race).

Select the Highlights

One of the important functions of a competition review is to get into the habit
of giving yourself credit for the things that you did well and thinking positively
about your performances.

I would not suggest that you delude yourself into thinking that you did brilliantly
when you know that you did not, but often we are better at criticising ourselves
than we are at giving ourselves praise.

Our real-life experiences of successful performance are our most potent resource
for building confidence so, if you can honestly pick out the highlights from
your performance on a regular basis, it will have a tremendous impact on your
confidence

Try answering some of the following questions?
1) What was the one thing that you did best at the competition under review?

2) When did you overcome a potentially unhelpful or negative influence on your
performance?

Review and goals

The role of goals in performance is important. If you combine process
and performance goals – making the outcome only one of many equally important
goals – you are less likely to make a rash, inaccurate appraisal of performance.

Imagine you come off the field of play after yet another defeat. If you look
at the score, there is no other way of reading this result except as a confirmation
of your team’s failure to perform. You might, however, have set goals
for effort, successful passes, opportunities to score, communication, successful
tackles, tactical positioning, or any other number of performance indicators.
At the end of the match, you may have lost because of one slip-up, a piece of
individual ‘magic’, or bad luck.

If you set measurable goals beforehand, such a result does not have to beat
down your confidence. Instead you can take heart that you are on the right track
and, if you keep playing that way then the results will come.

On the other had, measuring your performance using goals helps you to avoid
falling into the trap of creating a fantasy, that you deserved to win when really
you didn’t, It also provides clear learning points.

Finally, ensure that you refine your goals or set new ones to enable you to
put your learning points into place (in training and competition), then put
any negative thoughts behind you. It is important to learn from mistakes, but
dwelling on them takes valuable time and energy away from the task at hand.

Reviewing your physical preparation

Review is also a chance for you to assess and refine your competition preparation
and planning.

Try asking yourself these questions, in relation to your physical preparation
(e.g. fitness, rest, warm ups, food and fluid intake).

1) How well prepared was I for this competition? Were you able to
approach the competition knowing that you could not have been in better shape,
or did you have doubts about your physical readiness to perform?

2) Overall, how did my race performance compare to my recent training performance?
If you train better than you perform, often it is a sign of competition anxiety.
Bear in mind what stage of the season you are in – are you supposed to
be training hard and using competition as practice, or do you expect to be at
your peak?

3) Did I stick to my plan? If your plan is new, it can take a while to
get used to following it. You will only know if your plan worked well if
you stick to it. If you try out and refine your plan early in the season you
will be able to trust it when you need it most.

4) What worked particularly well? In other words, which parts of your plan
really worked? What helped you to feel more ready or confident to perform?

5) What would I do differently next time? Did anything you did in
preparation hinder your performance?

6) What can I do, starting now, to change? Make sure that you do not
tinker on the day of an important competition. Ensure that you try out new things
in training and, if possible, in a less important competition.

It is worth getting the viewpoints of others to validate your own assessments
to these questions as sometimes we can be either too hard or too soft on ourselves.

Reviewing your mental preparation

Your mental preparation is another important factor in performance, and it
will affect things such as your motivation, confidence and emotional state (e.g.
anxious versus excited.

How well did your mental preparation go for this competition?

You can ask yourself most of the same questions as for physical preparation but also:

1) Did I build any mental preparation into your plan? If you can look
ahead at what you might need to cope with, it can be of enormous help on the
day.

2) What did I do to handle any unexpected or new emotions leading up to
the race? If you found yourself in a new situation, you might not have
known what to do, but at least you can learn from it. If you did handle the
situation, you can take that into future planning and preparation.

Again, if you are unsure of how to answer these questions, who can you turn
to for help and advice?

Summary

Performance starts well before the kick off, tip-off, tee-off or starting gun.
When reviewing your performance, ensure that you take into account the effectiveness
of your competition preparation. Ensure that you have an objective, measurable
way of assessing your performance, and goals will help you with this. Turn any
potential negatives into learning points and put these into practice at the
first available opportunity. Remember, though, to give yourself credit for a
job well done. Finally, ensure that you review your performance in the ‘cold
light of day’.

Remember it is not defeat that matters it is how you react to defeat
that really counts. A post performance review will help you to respond in the
best way possible.