Get Back to Basics

Here’s a pattern that shows up in almost every slump, for almost every athlete, at almost every level.

Somewhere in the stretch before the slump started, something drifted. A fundamental. A basic. Something you’ve always done that you stopped doing quite as carefully. And the slump is, in part, the drift becoming visible.

Not always. Sometimes slumps happen for no clear reason. But often, if you look closely enough, there’s something you stopped doing that you need to start doing again.

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

Examine our ways and test them. That’s a diagnostic instruction. Not a condemnation — an examination. What are we actually doing? How is it holding up under scrutiny? Where has drift occurred?

In athletic terms, this looks like an honest film session or a conversation with your coach about your mechanics, your preparation, your mental approach. Not to find someone to blame. To find where the drift happened so you can address it.

Slumps almost always have one of three sources: technical drift (something in the mechanics has changed), mental drift (something in the approach, the confidence, the self-monitoring has shifted), or preparation drift (something in the quality or quantity of the preparation has slipped).

The path back through each of them is the same: return. Not to something new. To what already worked before the drift. Back to the fundamentals. Back to the preparation habits. Back to the mental approach that was producing good performances before.

You already know how to play well. The slump didn’t take that knowledge. It buried it under whatever drifted. Examine your ways. Find the drift. Return.

Coaching-eye perspective on their own performance. Often surfaces things they already know but haven’t named.