Coaching FOCUS
Ah, the magic word. FOCUS. How often do you hear that during practice, on the sideline, and during team talks? How often do you say it? It seems to be an eternal struggle. You even hear it in elite levels of sport. Because it’s hard. Focusing is incredibly taxing on your mental resources. Especially now in a world where everything around you is designed to grab your attention, lock you in for 30 seconds, and then move you on to the next thing. So imagine trying to stay locked-in for a 90-minute soccer game, a 15-minute quarter, a 25 point set, and so on.
Here’s the great part. We can learn how to focus. It’s a skill that can be practiced, honed, and improved. If we can learn it, that means we can also teach it. We, as coaches, can help our athletes develop the ability to focus. This does mean doing more than just yelling “FOCUS” across the field. Let’s explore!
There are lots of different articles that describe focus, concentration, attentional control, all in slightly different ways. I’m going to do my best to summarize and get straight to the point while also giving you some different perspectives. Here are a few different definitions of focus/concentration/attentional control:
“The process of deliberately directing one's working memory to complete an immediate task.” (Boutcher, 2002)
The ability to attend to the task at hand, and minimize the internal and external distractions that can have a negative impact on your performance (Nideffer & Sagal, 2006.)
“The ability to focus one’s attention on the task at hand and thereby not be disturbed or affected by irrelevant external and internal stimuli.” (Wilson, Peper, & Schmid, 2006).
All of these definitions have the same theme: The ability to direct your attention to a specific task (or tasks) while ignoring distractions. This skill of being able to direct your attention to the relevant cues is crucial to learning and performance, from youth to professionals.
Broad vs Narrow & Internal vs External
We can’t talk about focus without talking about the BNIE matrix. Broad and Narrow refer to the width of our focus, while Internal and External refer to the direction. This framework, which comes from The Theory of Attentional and Interpersonal Style (Nideffer, 1976) is really important to understanding how our focus works, where it goes, and how we can develop it to help us learn and perform.
Athletes switch between these styles constantly. A basketball player needs narrow focus when taking a free-throw but a broad focus when reading the defense. A baseball player may have specific physical cues that they repeat as they step up to the plate (body loose, drive forward) and then switch to a narrow external focus as they zone in on the ball after it’s pitched. What does it look like in your sport? What things might an athlete focus on in each zone of the matrix?
Distractions
Sports (and life) are full of distractions. These distractions pull us out of the present moment which is where we perform our best. We can summarize distractions into two areas, internal and external.
Internal - Self-generated concerns that stem from one’s own thoughts and feelings. Getting stuck on mistakes in the past, worrying about what will happen in the future, thinking about what others might say or do, feeling tired, bored, anxious, pain, etc etc.
External - Things in the environment that move our attention away from its intended target. The crowd, the weather, opponents trash talking, etc.
(Moran, 2006).
This is a great question to ask your athletes. If they seem distracted or are having trouble staying locked-in to a specific task you can ask, “Are you distracted by things around you or by yourself?” (however you want to word it). Once they identify the distractions, you can work on strategies to direct their attention to the right cues.
How to Coach Focus
Now that we have some background, how do we actually help players focus?
Specific Focus Points- Give the players something very specific to focus on while they're performing a drill or exercise. This trains that attention muscle to stay focused on a specific task or detail. If you're juggling soccer balls at the beginning of practice, have your players focus on the spin of the ball.
Replicate Distractions- Going into a knockout tournament? Practice the entire penalty shoot-out routine. Line your teams up on the halfway line and have them practice the walk-up. Practicing in a gym? Pump crowd noise through the speakers to replicate an intense environment. We can learn to face those distractions by making them a normal part of our routine. It's not so scary when you've already practiced it.
Add in Focus Cues- Setting intentions can be a great way to get players focusing on a certain action. Have players perform a game or drill with "explosive" or "smooth" as the focus cue. This is a good way to practice internal focus as it gets them paying attention to their body and how it relates to a certain cue.
Breath Control- Focusing on the breath is a well-researched strategy to increase focus, control physical activation, and much more. This topic is worthy of a whole article by itself. Working in breath work into warmups, pregame routines, and throughout practice can have massive benefits.
There are a ton of great ideas in this article by Wilson, Peper, and Schmid.
My Favorite Team Concentration Game
This is, by far, my favorite game to play to talk about focus. You can work in all of the points above all while doing a really fun challenge. It works best when you can have multiple teams of 5-8, but you could do it with larger teams too. All you need is a few balls or something they can toss back and forth (I generally use tennis balls).
Set Up
Split your team into small groups (5-8 players) and give them a number 1-howmanyever you have. I’m going to use 7 as the example.
Organize them (or have them organize) into a circle but they cannot be standing next to a number that is next to their number. (2 cannot stand next to 3 or 4, for example).
Give each group a few tennis balls. You can start with one or two and increase as it goes on.
The Game
The ball(s) is tossed around the circle in number order. 1 to 2, 2 to 3, and so on. The goal is to have the balls zig-zagging around the circle. Start with one to let them find the pattern, then add another to increase the challenge, and so on.
Once they find the pattern, we make it competitive. They have 30-60 seconds to move the balls as quickly as they can. To keep track of points, everytime #1 gets the ball, they count a point.
Coaching Points
“What is your task”?
To catch the ball from X and to throw the ball to X
“Why is it hard to concentrate just on that task?
There are other balls flying around, people drop the balls which slows it down, people start laughing, etc.
Once we started competing, we wanted to go faster and started to panic if we dropped a ball.
Counting down the last 10 seconds of the round made it hard to concentrate on the balls.
“Okay, so let’s do another round. This time, really try to lock-in on your task. If I’m #2, all I have to focus on is catching from #1 and throwing to #3. That’s it.”
Adding Distractions
Next, having one team perform the same game while the other team is trying to distract them. No physical touching, no going inside of their circle, no getting in the way of the ball, no screaming in their ears (learned that last one the hard way). Then the next team goes and the other team is the distraction.
Now we talk about external distractions. What external distractions exist in our sport? Why are they really hard to deal with?
We can also add an internal distraction. Both teams are competing again. This time, direct the players to count backwards from 1,000 while they’re also catching and throwing.
What are some internal distractions you can think of? What happens when we distract ourselves? What are some internal distractions that are really hard for you?
Broad vs Narrow
Same game, but add in a different colored or different size ball. Something unique to the other balls. Direct the players to try to always know where the different ball is while they’re trying to catch and throw.
In this concentration game, a narrow focus is the best strategy to be successful. When we broaden our focus, we are trying to take in more information which can make it really difficult to focus on a specific task. This is why the ability to switch between the two is so important. Explain which tasks in your sport might require a narrow focus and which tasks require a broad focus. If I have a broad focus while taking a penalty kick, it’s going to be much more difficult than just focusing on the ball.
Conclusion
There is so much research and literature on focus that this article doesn’t even scratch the surface. There will probably even be a part 2 to this article. However, it is a really great place to start to have conversations with your team about focus. Remember, focus is hard and our world is full of distractions. Your 11 year-old soccer team is going to lose focus, way more often than they are really dialed-in. We cannot eliminate distractions but we can start teaching our athletes that focus is a skill that we can learn and develop. So stop demanding them to focus and start teaching them how.
References
Boutcher, S. H. (2002). Attentional processes and sport performance. In T. S. Horn (Ed.), Advances in sport psychology (2nd ed., pp. 441–457). Human Kinetics. Kamphoff, C, et al. “Mental Skills That Support Performance.” The Essential Guide for Mental Performance Consultants, Human Kinetics, Inc., Chamaign, IL, 2022.
Nideffer, R. M. (1976). Test of attentional and interpersonal style. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34(3), 394–404.
Nideffer, R. & Sagal, M. (2006). Concentration and attention control training. In J. M. Williams (Ed.), Applied sport psychology: Personal growth to peak performance (pp. 382 – 403). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Wilson, V.E., Peper, E. & Schmid, A. (2006). Training strategies for concentration. In Williams, J.N. (ed). Applied Sport Psychology: Personal Growth to Peak Performance, 5th edition. Boston: McGraw Hill, 404-422.