In my early years as a coach I was influenced by Abraham Maslow, Tim Gallwey, and Michael Murphy. Each had a profound impact on my learning and eventual teaching. Yet as the years passed, Gallwey’s “Inner Game” concept proved to be the most influential. The essence of the Inner Game is to acquire and maintain a “quieted mind,” which may then allow an athlete to perform at his or her highest level. Most of my coaching has revolved around enabling players and teams to achieve this state of mind.
The only competition that matters is the one that takes place within yourself. It isn’t about external factors. Tim Gallwey and his Inner Game approach to performance has had a huge impact on how I look at the challenges of coaching. Specifically, Gallwey wrote about how human beings tend to enter a state of doubt when faced with the unknown or uncertainty. When that occurs, he wrote, we instinctively “overtighten.” Physically, when we doubt our ability, we will tend to overtighten our muscles. Mentally, we fear failure and can become emotional and distracted.
This seemed so obvious when I read it, but until Gallwey, nobody had pointed it out. Examples I immediately thought of were about a basketball player failing to follow through when shooting a timely three-pointer, or a wide receiver short-arming a pass across the middle when he senses a safety bearing down on him. Gallwey’s illustration of overtightening was a golfer who doubts his ability on a short putt; he tenses up as he makes contact with the golf ball, and misses a shot he could have made if only he had been playing loose.
Gallwey says that the concept of overtightening is nearly a “universal principle,” and it certainly happens in football. Like any other sport, football presents physical and mental challenges. It is our job as coaches to prepare players in every regard possible. When players know that they have mastered the rigors of training, whether on the football field or in the weight room or classroom, then their confidence leads to an unusual focus, free from distractions, doubt, or fear. This attentiveness, also known as a quieted mind, clears the way for athletes to perform to their highest potential.
Think of young children playing. They don’t worry about being judged, and they are only concerned with having fun. In those moments, it’s easy to observe true, uninhibited play. We witness a level of concentration where the children are totally immersed, unaware of the world around them. This fascination and ability to be supremely focused are essential for their development, much like an athlete.
An athlete’s immersion in and focus on performance allows for a lost sense of time in much the same way. When we have confidence and allow ourselves to become fascinated, the world seems to move in slow motion. It is an altered state of consciousness that comes from an extreme level of focus. Some performers describe this as resembling an out-of-body experience.
One of the first times such a moment happened to me was in the batter’s box at a northern California high school baseball field in the spring of 1968. We were having a disastrous game against the league leader, and I was at bat in the final inning. As I stepped up to the plate, an odd thought came into my mind: Whatever you do right now, there’s no way you’re going to change the outcome of this game. A pessimistic thought, sure, but instead of depressing me, it was liberating.
As I settled into the batter’s box and prepared for the first pitch, everything seemed normal—until the pitcher, a gifted athlete who was known as “Big Mike,” began his windup. I remember it like it was yesterday. He’d been pitching a spectacular game, and as he shifted his weight, brought up his arms, and lifted his left leg off the mound, his form was picture perfect, just as it had been all night, with one important difference: Mike seemed to be moving in slow motion. His hand released one of the most perfect-looking sliders I had ever seen, and everything seemed like it was taking forever. As the baseball hurtled toward me, it appeared to be rotating so slowly that I swear I could have counted the stitches. Even before I started my swing, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to clobber it, and sure enough, the ball came off the bat with a sweetness that was nothing short of dreamlike. The ball flew straight over the pitcher’s head, then the center fielder’s head for an inside-the-park home run.
The point here isn’t that I was liberated by the fact that my team’s situation was hopeless but rather that I was freed up because I wasn’t worried about the outcome. All I had to do was “let it happen,” just watch the ball, and swing the bat, with nothing else going through my mind. As expected, that great shot didn’t change the outcome of the game, but it was the slow-motion magic of that homer, and not the final score, that has stayed with me for all this time. In that moment, I had the experience of fully being a natural, instinctive athlete, without concerns or worries.
That is the mentality that we, as coaches, want to re-create for our players.
We want our players to be free of distractions and totally absorbed, ideally just like a child, fascinated with the game itself and not necessarily the outcome.
One of my most vivid illustrations of the Inner Game in football was back in 1997. It was late in my first season in New England, and we had barely survived some staggering ups and downs. Jacksonville was next up on our schedule, and they had been on a tear, particularly at home, where they had won thirteen games in a row. My team was battered after losing our top running back, Curtis Martin, our top receiver, Terry Glenn, and our top defensive lineman, Willie McGinest, to injuries. Our chances of repeating as division champions, let alone making it to the play-offs, looked slim. We needed this game to stay alive in the race, and all the odds seemed stacked against us. Jacksonville’s fans were notorious for being loud and raucous, creating a definite home-field advantage, and they had thirteen straight wins at home to prove it.
It was Saturday night at the hotel in Jacksonville, an hour before our last team meeting prior to Sunday’s game. I was racking my brain for some pearls of wisdom that might give us an edge as we approached this daunting challenge. I have always valued this meeting as my final chance to impact the players. The tone would vary depending on the circumstances we were facing and what I thought the team needed to hear. In the case of Jacksonville, I wanted to neutralize everyone’s concern about their home-field advantage. We needed to enter the game with a single shared mind-set. It was a real competitive challenge, with the local and national media absolutely convinced that Jacksonville was going to win.
Realizing we had a great challenge ahead of us, I went back to the principles of the Inner Game and decided to introduce the players to the concept of creating peak experiences, or playing in “the zone.” I also pulled out a favorite teaching approach of mine, the Socratic method, where you enlist participation from your students by asking questions to the entire group. I asked if anybody in the room had ever pitched a perfect game or a no-hitter. I had already confirmed that strong safety Lawyer Milloy had done so in high school. Sure enough, Lawyer took the bait, raised his hand, and told us all about it. I made sure he told us about what it felt like, in great detail. He remembered feeling “invincible,” and I made him describe it. He had never felt so “powerful” and in such “total command” of a game as he had felt on that day. Of course, he was proudly telling us about his conquest, and we were amused with his story and delivery, as the seed had been planted. I asked others to share events in their background where they had felt similar sensations of extraordinary powers and invincibility.
Quarterback Drew Bledsoe told a story of his feelings prior to the Patriots’ game against the San Diego Chargers in 1996. He told us that he saw the game in his mind before it happened. He knew that he would play one of his best games ever and that the Patriots would roll over the Chargers. As he played in the absence of fear, he felt that supreme confidence, and knew that he would perform extremely well. He did just that.
As the stories flowed, the energy of the night was well in order. The beauty of the Socratic method is that as you pose a question to the group and pause to call for a response, everybody in the room is thinking of an answer. They were all recalling their most perfect moments in sports, what we referred to as “peak experiences.” I took the opportunity to define “peak experiences” and used the phrase “being in the zone.” The team was collectively sharing thoughts of their most memorable peak experiences, and everybody seemed to be engaged. I made sure everyone in the room had an idea of what we were talking about, fielding questions and observations. When I felt we had come to something of a common understanding of “the zone,” I posed another question. I asked the team, “Do you realize that every time you take the field you have an opportunity for a peak experience?” I told them that the zone doesn’t have to be something that just mysteriously happens and that, with the right collective mind-set, we had the opportunity to create our own zone in our very next game.
First and foremost, we had to know that we were capable of winning this game. If there was any question, we were probably going to wind up as Jacksonville’s fourteenth home win in a row. It was everybody’s job to get his mind right by game time. I reminded them of all the ways we were going to outplay the Jaguars. It was their job to first believe it and then go out and execute the plan precisely. If they could ultimately trust in their ability to win, they could take the field with the “knowing” that would allow us to play instinctively with supreme confidence.
Second, we had to find total focus in the midst of one of the most difficult settings in the NFL. I directed them to acknowledge that the field would be the same size as always, 100 yards long and 531⁄3 yards wide, with two end zones, twenty-two players, seven officials, four quarters, a normal halftime, and sixty minutes to play the game. The only difference from playing at our home stadium would be the decibel level of the Jaguars’ loyal following. And it was going to be extremely loud. So in reality, the only thing that was going to challenge our ability to totally focus was the potential distraction of the noise, which might affect our communications and our ability to concentrate. Earlier in the year, at Buffalo, we had established a way to quiet an otherwise hostile crowd. We played well early and gave the Bills fans nothing to cheer about. We won 31–10. I reminded the team that the only thing we wanted to hear was the silence of the crowd.
The meeting had created a great feeling. The players had connected with one another by sharing their stories and baring their souls. They also had fun contributing to one of those special meetings that teams sometimes experience. So the scenario could be summed up simply: We needed to trust, we needed to focus, and we needed to get off to a good start by playing well early. I ended the meeting by focusing our attention past the outcome of the game. I proclaimed that someone was going to experience the zone on Sunday and that the weekend would not officially be over until we returned home with a win, and with one of them sharing their zone experience at the Monday morning meeting in Foxborough. All we had to do now was play the game.
Everything went well leading up to the game, and the stage was set. At kickoff, the crowd was crazed, the air was perfect, our will was strong, and our hopes were high. We didn’t know it yet, but we were just about to witness one of the best starts to a game we could have imagined. A common assumption is that rookies don’t always pay attention in meetings, especially toward the end of the season, but our rookie linebacker from Florida State, Vernon Crawford, was not only attentive that Saturday night, he took our message to the field on the very first play of the game.
Jacksonville won the coin toss, and we were poised to kick off. Our kickoff team, like others in the NFL, was basically manned by young, inexperienced players. This was a typical bunch of half-crazed headhunters hoping to do the right thing but always fearing they were just about to screw it all up. Vernon was about to become an instant hero, at least in my book. As our kick-off team raced down the field, Jacksonville’s returner started to turn up into the left side of our coverage team, only to run head-on into Vernon Crawford. What resulted was a colossal hit that sent the football rocketing skyward. Vernon had made the hit of his life and forced a fumble on the opening kickoff of a huge game. A scramble for the football ensued, and we recovered it! The referee had barely signaled our recovery of the ball when Vernon Crawford came sprinting off the field screaming, “I’m in the zone! I’m in the zone! I’m in the zone!” Vernon really was paying attention!
The game started on the highest of notes and continued to crescendo from there. We delivered a tremendous upset, considering the circumstances. On that day we were invincible, and we performed with great precision and power. We played like we were in the zone, and the feeling affected us throughout the remainder of the schedule. One of my favorite sayings comes from the famous coach Lou Holtz. He preached that “the best players don’t always win, but those that play the best most always do!” This certainly held true for the Patriots on that Sunday in Jacksonville, Florida. It fueled a very strong finish to an AFC Eastern Division Championship season that didn’t end until the second round of the 1997 play-offs.
This may be my single best example of using the Inner Game concept in a team setting before a game. However, it is certainly not the only time I have used the concepts of total focus and supreme confidence to boost performance. It is a supremely confident athlete who will have the best chance to perform up to his or her potential.
With that in mind, I have always felt it is my duty to show my players exactly how they can develop their confidence. They have to prepare in a manner that will promote their skills. They have to be in great condition in all areas. They have to know the responsibilities of their positions. They have to know how they fit into the overall scheme of the team’s design. Basically, they should leave no stone unturned in terms of preparation and readiness. All of these factors contribute to an athlete’s feeling of supreme confidence and the ability to perform with a “quieted mind.”
It has been an ongoing pursuit of mine to weave the principles of the Inner Game into developing individual and team performance.