Rage: the term is thrown around the sports world a lot these days, as cases of parents and athletes taking out anger on each other surface all over the nation. High school athletes are no strangers to the term, as it is the label given to the issue of over-aggression and anger in high school sports, otherwise known as “sports rage.”
While most coaches have seen their share of rage in their own athletes, coach Adam Kotowski, who teaches classes on the mental aspect of sports, challenges it by dissecting the way athletes’ minds work. Kotowski, however, is not your ordinary coach.
Most coaches focus on the fundamentals or logistics of the game, Kotowski looks past what he calls the third dimension (height and width, or the human body), and into something he calls the ‘fourth dimension,’ which keys in on the athlete’s mind and expands his or her ability to improve play.
Kotowski feels the rage comes from a sense of lack, or the feeling of another’s capabilities being greater than his or her own, much like anywhere else in the real world.
“Athletes need to have confidence in their play, as opposed to other short term beliefs in what they may have created. In the time span of when they are playing, it would cause them to play in a defensive way, which could create emotions which can lead to a feeling of lack,” Kotowski said. “When an athlete feels this rage, it really comes from he or she feeling that they lack something, that they feel like someone has something more than them, or that they have more ability, more confidence, more skills, whatever it may be.”
In Kotowski’s classes, where he teaches his fundamentals on the athlete’s mindset, he takes three different approaches to eliminate the sense of lack.
1. “When athletes can come to the understanding that they do already possess those skills, that they do possess that inner state, that it just gets blocked out and diluted by the way we are thinking or doing things, then they can play without emotions or previous thoughts coming in interference. We try to get to the athletes’ identity, to find out who they really are. I created the word ‘extraordinary me’ which some athletes refer to as the ‘zone.’ This is where things just start happening. And you have no idea what is going on you just love the feeling. That being said, people believe that it’s a ‘sometimes state’ or that they can only get in the zone sometimes. The rationale is that you can do it anytime you want. It’s who you are; your identity. If you can find that every time, the athletes will realize that they can’t be lacking anything because they already possess and they already are everything they desire to be. Then they will understand that they bury themselves in their own beliefs and give themselves this sense of lack.”
2. “Another thing we do is teach athletes to center their mind, so that they can find that ‘zone.’ When you center your mind, you can come into this state of no-thought, just of movement, and it can’t be explained, but it’s just this wonderful feeling that draws athletes in. This is ultimately why they play sports, to find that feeling. They want to feel that state of flow. If you can just put yourself in that state, then you can completely move away from that feeling of lack or that something is missing.”
3.) “There is this whole idea that positive mental attitude will get you anywhere you want. I like to think of it like this: Brian Urlacher can be as positive as he wants; a 6” 4’, 250 pound man cannot be a good horse jockey, which is why we have to be careful of that idea. You are given a certain body and a certain skill set and you have to be the best you can be using that. If I was to play Kobe Bryant, I would get slaughtered by him. That doesn’t make me a bad basketball player and it doesn’t make him the best in the world. All it means is he has certain abilities that are greater than mine. In a sense, that is what these athletes are doing; they are comparing themselves to the people they are up against, and that’s how they get this feeling of lack. You have to think: how far did I go with the abilities I had? Then you will realize that all success is, is when you can look in the mirror and tell yourself you did everything to the best of your abilities. And once you realize this, that sense of lack will go away.”