Whether you are a card-carrying member of the John Birch Society or you start your days off eating borscht and reading The Daily Worker, you cannot deny the success of the former Soviet Sports Machine! Many folks attribute the success of the former USSR to advanced methods of physical, tactical, and technical preparation; others play it off as simply pharmacology. One factor that seems to be unmentioned is the psychological preparation of the soviet athlete. Avksenty Tcezarevich Puni (1898–1986) is considered by many to be the father of Soviet Sports Psychology. Puni’s work helped athletes psychologically prepare for competition and be at their best when it counted!

Puni broke down psychological preparation into a general component and a specific component. General psychological preparation included developing goal directness, determination, courage, persistence, self-initiative, patriotism and the learning of self regulation.

Sport specific training works from general to specific; a general base is needed before more sport specific things can be done. Dr. Fred Hatfield once said, “You cannot shoot a cannon out of a canoe.” Puni coached athletes starting with general psychological preparation then moved to specific. In other words, they built a psychological base and once the foundation was built, he narrowed into more sport specific psychological preparation techniques. Think about football, golf and marathon running. All require an athlete to be mentally prepared but not in the exact same mindset. In layman’s terms, a linebacker on 4th and 1 looking to solidify a goal line stand against a full back running an isolation block straight at him will need to be mentally prepared but have a different emotional state and level of aggression than is needed in a friendly game of croquet.

Once the psychological base was built, Puni focused primarily on specific psychological preparation, which was the acquisition of an optimal performance state. In other words, your best performance will be in a competition or a game! Puni referred to this term ‘boevaya gotovnost’ or the readiness to fight. It was orchestrated from the following five principles:

1. Sensible Self-Confidence- Having realistic self confidence to performance come game time, you have prepared properly, time to reap the reward. Believe in yourself and believe in your training plan! A 2009 study published in “The Perceptual Motor Skills Journal” showed that when athletes believe in their competition training plans, they are more likely to be successful in their given sport. We all know you have to believe to achieve, people who believe are confident.

2. Uncompromising Effort And The Willingness To Compete To The Very End Of The Competition- An expression that comes to mind here is when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Adversity, majority of the time, produces cowardice. If your athletic goals aspire no higher than winning a game of beer pong at the local fraternity house, don’t stress on this one. If you want to be the best at what you do, repetition is the mother skill. Human beings are creatures of habit, when things get tough in sport or life, see them through and do your best. Do not form the habit of being a quitter or coward.

3. Optimal Emotional Arousal- Jack Nicklaus stated many times that he believes that golf is 90% mental preparation and only 10% skill. He prepares for tournaments by visualizing problem putts and mentally rehearsing how he will execute each drive. When Jack gets on the course, he is just going through the motions. Jack has rehearsed himself playing over and over and has a calm, cool approach. This is the right amount of emotional arousal for his golf game. An inside linebacker needs to be aggressive but not to the point of reckless abandon; this would result in excessive penalties, over pursuing the football, missed reads and premature fatigue! Instead, controlled rage is the name of the game; linebackers must be mobile, agile and hostile. Different sports require different levels of arousal.

4. High Tolerance For Stress And Distraction- You, as an athlete, cannot focus on external factors, the focus is on the task at hand! Think back to your best performances. Many times it was like you were in a different zone, almost semi conscious; if you have experienced this, you were falling in line with how elite athletes report to feel after extraordinary performances. Whether it be MMA, boxing, or any combat sport, fighters frequently express a lack of event consciousness when knocking out an opponent. Think about the basketball player who has a chance to win the game if he makes both free throws with thousands of opposing fans screaming and hoping he misses, how many football games are dependent on whether a kicker comes through in the clutch?

The “Australian Psychologist” in June 2010 showed a peer reviewed piece entitled ”Emotions in sport: Perceived effects on attention, concentration, and performance”. This showed that athletes identifying negative environmental stimuli, generally narrow on this threat/stimuli and conversely, their ability to respond to peripheral stimuli is compromised. In other words, if you are a running back and you run scared, you will not see the whole field. Cognitive activity will increase with anxiety and in turn, information processing becomes extensive and is greatly slowed down.

Concentration on a perceived threat drives ones’ thoughts toward feelings and personal concerns. This encompasses working memory and will redirect your attention toward your personal concerns, leaving less attention to devote to the sporting task. The uneasy feelings associated with anxiety can also lead to a conscious effort to actively control sporting movements to ensure success. Do you think Mike Tyson threw a knockout upper cut after giving an extensive biomechanical break down in his head on how to throw the punch correctly? Of course not!!! This will kill performance in sport.

It is hard to succeed with both hands around your neck, if you cannot master this principle, you will choke! “Clutch players” retreat to their own inner mind, where there is no pain, no discomfort, and where only positive forces loom.

5. Self-Control- As you can see, these ideas are interrelated. You are not born a winner or a loser, you are a chooser, and you have the ability to control your actions, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This can apply to the football player who is punched and has to exercise restraint by not hitting back. The official always catches the person who retaliates; if you are caught you are ejected and are no good to your team! Setting aside time to properly prepare your mind for athletic competition is a choice that requires discipline.