Yes, it’s been a hard football watching season for Minnesota Vikings fans. Why couldn’t this team turn it around and win more than 3 games? This week’s Star Tribune Exit Interviews article ponders this question.

Several players chime in, but linebacker Chad Greenway explains the disappointing season well. “To me, I think the biggest thing was the way this season started.  Those first three games. The way we lost them sort of creates the negative momentum, the negative mentality. Winning and losing is a culture. I think when you create that early on, you create a bad culture about, in your mind, can we do this? Can we not do this? How do you overcome that? You overcome that by getting a few wins and getting that confidence back. We just weren’t able to string that together and overcome all that. I’m certainly proud of the way we hung together. It’s not easy to do that in the situation like this, the season we’re having when people are frustrated with whether it be a position group or a coach. People can get frustrated because it’s a long season and you’re out there putting everything into it. I’m definitely proud of the fact we didn’t get into that,” says Greenway.

After three loses in a row right off the bat, the Vikings never successfully overcame this culture of losing.  But these exit interviews show the team never completely gave up. Defensive end Brian Robinson says he “fought every game as hard” as he could, and he believes 98 percent of the team did the same thing.

In 2012, the Vikings need to turn this losing culture into a winning environment. Robinson says this is about every single player fighting for every game. However, even when one works as hard as they can, negative momentum and energy in a locker room can become a norm and can be difficult to get past. This is why in the face of losing streaks and negative momentum, it’s not just about working hard, it’s about positive mental coaching for both individuals and teams.

This blog post is Part 4 of a 4-part blog series featuring the work of University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock.

Even a small chunk of meditation practice goes a long way, says Sian Beilock, Ph.D., in a recent interview on the website Brain Science Podcast. At the University of Chicago’s Human Performance Lab, psychologist Sian Beilock has found that simple meditation instruction helps people perform better under pressure.

In the lab, people underwent a mere 10 minutes of meditation instruction before taking a test. This appeared to make a significant “difference in their score.” Beilock quotes research that shows “as little as 10 hours of meditative practice can change some of the wiring of the brain.”

Beilock says research suggests people can use meditation “even sparingly to really improve … performance.”

Why does this practice work so well? Meditation helps us “let go of information—to not perseverate on it.” This lets us focus on the task at hand without worry taking away “our cognitive horsepower” and our ability to perform well.

If you have never explored meditation as a practice, you’ll be relieved to know how simple it is to learn how to meditate. Try Herbert Benson’s relaxation response method, or ask a sport psychologist to teach you the basics of this simple practice.

This blog post is Part 3 of a 4-part blog series featuring the work of University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock.

In the previous two blog posts featuring the Sian Beilock interview on the website Brain Science Podcast, we’ve been talking about what choking is and the science behind the phenomena. At the University of Chicago’s Human Performance Lab, psychologist Sian Beilock, Ph.D., has studied how people can avoid choking and perform to their best ability in stressful situations. These tips work on your favorite playing field and in the boardroom at work.

To perform well, our working memory needs to be functioning well. So this advice builds “your ability to hold … information in the face of distraction.”

Ten minutes before an important match, write down all of the thoughts and emotions filling your mind. Essentially, this task offloads “your worries essentially frees up working memory so that it’s not distracted by these worries.”

Practice can run better than a tense match because no one is watching. Mimic the competition you fear on the practice field. Beilock points out that the military and the FBI both do this through simulating upcoming situations. Invite friends and family to watch a practice or video tape yourself because knowing “that you might show that to a coach or a friend” creates an “all-eyes-on-you” awareness.

Beilock also talks about icing: the technique of disrupting a player before an important task such as kicking a goal. This works because “it gives the kicker time to think—to dwell on their performances—in a way that messes up what otherwise would be a fluent routine.”

The next tip speaks to icing: Take your brain off the process behind what you are doing. This can be as simple as “singing a song” before a big moment, or “thinking about the outcome” instead of the steps you need to get to your goal. Also, practice new techniques at practice, but also practice these techniques without thinking about the steps. Even “coming up with a one-word mantra that sort of encapsulates the whole movement you are about to do can really focus your prefrontal cortex in a way that is to your advantage,” says Beilock.

Join us for the final segment of our 4-part blog series to learn how practicing meditation (even occasionally) can help prevent choking on the playing field.