Albury Sports Academy

Go Steph, beyond her years. Congratulations we are so proud

Steph Gorman is just getting started Steph Gorman has always held a genuine passion for basketball, but as she has navigates life, understanding why she does is helping her reach new heights.

We are bursting with pride for you Steph Gorman 💃🎉💪

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwnbl.basketball%2Fperth%2Fnews%2Fdream-move-west-continues-for-gorman%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0bvLstCAr5uYm3ag6uv_ZL2UZlk4pBufd0GDBtxcQSwE_oQopABrQP69U_aem_AU9i5HwGXRe2PT_fLREMNWYqTSoaELZlHswruflC6ByMLyCD4-8Iea6AoBhl-ZBOtZg&h=AT2FcEyaPhX2qB79N6OH6qiNSpoGvxlYJFJopvdxRnM_xe3kx1Y0F-Ul1PdmqnvTbE2S-os_O_zZH4nN7euXfQS6hKXsKMAyxCHgsMBh61siNeL01QIzp67AmsDu&s=1

DREAM MOVE WEST CONTINUES FOR GORMAN - Perth Lynx It’s been quite the remarkable last 12 months for new Perth Lynx guard Steph Gorman and now she can’t wait to begin living out her dream of playing in the WNBL.

Woo hoo!!!
Congratulations Campbell Chesser. You so deserve this. You never gave up, you had your eye on the prize the whole time. As Ken would say, hard work and effort pays off 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

A fantastic article on Campbell

“It’s the ethos of maximising potential, not so much developing a champion.” Campbell Chesser's disciplined grounding 'Dragons Tales' is a series of indepth feature stories on some of our top prospects in 2021, exploring their junior careers, their upbringing, the ups and downs of the dealing with COVID complications and more, written by Jonty Ralphsmith. This week we will be focusing on running defender/midfielde....

This will be fantastic

‘GROWTH IS REALISING POTENTIAL’

Miss Amelie gourmet is growing everyday and next week we are moving into the old Hudson’s site!!

It’s going to be AMAZING!!

Come in, relax and join us for Coffee with your friends ☕️
Morning Tea with our delicious, classic French pastries and Sweets.
More lunch options and healthy bowls.
Our incredible gourmet pies 🥧

Grab some dinner whilst your there or something from our cheese and charcuterie fridge or dry store.

It truly is “a world of pure imagination”

🚨 APPRECIATION 👮‍♀️

Just donated a box of hot gourmet pies to our awesome policeman and woman.

Thank you for keeping our community Covid-19 Safe🙏❤️

We appreciate you ✊

Empathy
It can be changed by moods and emotions or our belief systems. We need to take a step back and think a bit.

Without EMPATHY
We kill relationships
We disconnect with each other
We have shallow conversations
We breed self importance
We increase our own position of power

With EMPATHY
We resolve conflicts
We build communities
We can address each others issues
We can build human qualities
We can be involved in gratitude

Tough times for a lot of people

Sports Psychology
I haven't posted on this page for some time. However, I have been recently asked many questions about mental skills and their role in performance. Over the past few years my interest has been in the role of emotional intelligence and the quantum field on general sport psychology interventions. I have attempted to give an overview in the following pages to shed some light on what I think is important in developing mental skills. This is relative both on and off the sporting arena.
Ken Little

I have worked with a number of talented athletes over the years and commonly the questions and focus revolve around, "Are we able to learn psychological skills that will enhance our physical performance?". The simple answer is yes, but there is more to it. Are we looking to fix a few issues? Or are we looking to learn skills that will maximise our opportunities for our performance to be elite and for those skills to endure over time?
We are all aware of the role mental skills play in peak performance and more. It is perhaps unfortunate at times that we practice our physical skills to extremes and only practice mental skills when something goes wrong. We find articles and examples of athletes using mental skills to solve problems and achieve high level performance. We also find a multitude of these documented mental skills to be used. It is a well-known fact that we require the ability to control or negate certain emotions that may influence our performance positively or negatively. Again we are aware of the different arousal levels that are required for gross and fine motor skills. That it is better to focus on process and let the outcome look after itself. That it is better to practice mindfulness because being in the now rather than the past or the future is more productive. Visualisation is an asset, as is verbalising and imagery.
This is all good, however, our minds are extremely complicated and powerful. The mind deals from simple to complex, consciously and subconsciously. Sport is an emotional rollercoaster. If it were a simple process to integrate mental skills into your game and always perform at your best, everyone would be doing it and in the end what would be the difference.
The pathway to accessing and resculpting all of your mental capacities involves more than a regurgitation of mental skills or the control of certain emotional and physiological responses; it is an incredible mixing pot of information processing connected to our physical being. We are not brain dead, robotic or emotionless. The answer is still difficult, neural plasticity does occur but it requires a much deeper understanding.
Controlling emotions through breathing, mindfulness or meditation are examples. What if you learnt that arousal levels were also involved in focus and attention? Your ability to attend to the environmental display is crucial in decision making. Too much chatter caused by anger and frustration makes this very difficult. What if you learnt that an aggressive or conservative or having an aggressive conservative mind set is related to arousal levels and arousal levels are instrumental in the information you process. What if you were educated in the process of engaging and disengaging to allow for mental recovery? What if you learnt about yourself and built a multitude of mental skills around who you are and the human qualities you require to reach your potential. Because at the end of the day sport is a stressful occupation and unhealthy patterns can form the basis of future mistakes. Turning failure into a learning experience can only be achieved with enough knowledge and tools.
Physical skills must be world class and elite talent can come with a cost. Some sit on an edge and produce exciting performances. That edge is a balancing act, fall off one side and retirement can come early, fall off the other side and there may be prolonged stress and subsequent mental health issues. There are a lot of talented athletes out there for one reason or another have not fulfilled their potential. This is not even considering the role of injury.
The road does not have to be a long one. Look at the role of emotional intelligence. Work harder on yourself as a human being and not just physical prowess. It seems such a waste that so many talented sports men and women never reach their potential through a lack of awareness and support. The prerequisite for the journey to elite performance is based on all physical and neurological skills, emotional intelligence and embracing who you are even if you are different. Staying on the edge.
We are aware that elite athletes have certain qualities or talents for identifying strengths and weaknesses, loving a challenge, belief in effort, resilience in the face of setbacks, pushing boundaries and confronting obstacles. They are also aware that mental skills of controlling the controllable, visualisation, process-based philosophy, arousal, developing confidence, setting objectives and so on can be utilised to enhance performance. The question, however, is what controls our abilities to do this with consistency and purpose. There is much more that we need to learn about. We all know what we should practice mentally and physically and we are often left in a quandary when it doesn’t help us.
Emotional intelligence and the immersion in understanding ourselves. This brings a whole new dimension to observing what is happening to our emotions. After all emotions can take control and undermine your best made plans. Understanding your emotions and working hard and then harder on emotional intellect so they do not play a negative role in your sport. How do you learn to counteract these emotions and maintain optimal levels of arousal and control?
The underlying catalyst for reaching your potential, you must have well developed human qualities that allow your heart and your head to function. Then work hard on continual development.
Emotional Intelligence, literacy, competence, call it what you like, forms the foundation to enable your mental skills to function so that full potential is reached. Emotional intellect or mental skills will not be enough. Remember arousal levels and their implications with regard to focus and attention. Your ability to execute the best performance possible requires optimum arousal levels. The link between emotions and arousal is undisputed. By understanding yourself you are better equipped to attend to important cues in the environment and make the correct decisions and be able to deliver excellence in performance.
The effort in reflection underpins learning.
I fully understand that this is not new science as such. But we are all different and require different methods that best suit our own selves. We have all heard players in post-match interviews mentioning, that they took it one week at a time, one quarter at a time, they went out to enjoy themselves, they gave themselves opportunities, they concentrated on the process allowing the outcome to look after itself.
If we look at ourselves as thinking, rational human beings, we realise that it is difficult to do this. We judge situations as good, bad or indifferent. Our whole life is underpinned by judgements. What we judge is driven by emotions, emotions drive arousal levels and arousal levels drive concentration, focus and attention. Since we are all different then how we deal with emotion will dictate our behaviour. Emotional literacy certainly helps and this is all part of the journey. This then needs to be integrated into your life not just your game plan. It requires constant attention and adjustment. If you think you can read a book or do a short course on it, you are horribly mistaken. It requires constant thought and effort and sometimes great change for some. Those human emotions that form the foundation of emotional competence can undermine your best effort. Expectations, placed on yourself by yourself or by others, a poor performance, the importance of the contest or your stats, making the team. Whatever your expectations may be and however they affect you, they must be dealt with in an emotionally positive way. Unfortunately this is a difficult process and harder for some than others. It is the backbone of consistent excellence achieved by the elite. It is also the backbone of developing mental skills to achieve full potential.
I initially thought that emotionally intelligent people would have a pathway to success. That is they would be able to deal with their emotions to enhance their physical capabilities and therefore performance. I found it was a little more complex than that. Dealing with personality, there is no magic pill. It requires constant reflection, scrutiny, deeper thought and understanding. It must be amalgamated into your tool box of mental skills and used to enhance your ability to have your mind and body working together. Thinking and feeling on the same page.
Physical skills don’t disappear overnight or from one game to another. We do our best sometimes to butcher them. I thought many times that there could be a one size fits all and all you had to do was to become a good human and everything would fall into place. Unfortunately this was not to be. It appeared that with the rise in success there is a decrease in emphasis on and impact of emotional competence and mental skills. I believe that is why consistent elite performance is only achieved by a few.
Constant two-way feedback and reflection. Not just when things are going to plan. When things are not going to plan, we learn more about ourselves and our ability to cope and function at a high level. All that success brings can undermine those human qualities that you are trying to develop. Success has to be built around gratitude and humility, amongst other things. There are many in our lives who may intentionally or unintentionally wear down those human qualities we strive to have and develop. Many have their own best interests at heart. Remove those people from your journey but never compromise your own emotional self.
We need to have a number of strategies to support our way of thinking. Not strategies to rely on or help us fix things. But strategies to support and amalgamate all the mental skills encased in emotional intelligence and unleashing the power of the mind and body working as one.

Ken Little
Would love to hear anyone's thoughts and happy to discuss further