THE INNER GAME JOURNAL - STEFAN MAUK

I've been posting a fair bit on the psychological aspect of performance lately and 1 thing I say a lot is that don't just think thoughts, but write them down to make them "real".

I can almost guarantee that by writing it down, which obviously takes way longer to do then to simply think it, you will unconsciously dive deeper into those thoughts and you're more likely to come up with more and/or better solutions to them.

In fact a lot of my posts is me simply trying to organise my own thoughts and research and then putting a framework together for that particulaur subject.

AFL players do a heap of work in this space with Scott Pendlebury and Harry Taylor being 2 of the biggest proponents of journal keeping before and after each game, using them to go back to when they play those team's again.

And this brings me to The Inner Game Journal.

This is the brain child of current Adelaide United Soccer player Stefan Mauk who you can also follow on twitter.

It starts off with ample space for you to think about what your real goals are, what they look and feel like, and who inspires them.

It forces you to dive deeper then basic superficial goals like "win my team's best and fairest this year"and to actually look at the tactical, technical, physical and psychological processes behind what will drive those kind of results.

After that, on a weekly basis you'll lay out a basic plan, log your data into the daily pages and then reflect on everything at the end of each week.

Over time as you fill in more and more and weeks you can then go back and try to find positive and negative patterns that start to emerge, allowing to fine tune your preperation for each week's game so you can be at your best more often.

I have an excel spreadhseet that has every single training session I've performed since 2015 - journalling is essential for consistent performance over long periods of time and takes zero resources to complete, except 5 - 10mins per day.

"You don't need more time, you need more focus".

I think a lot of players avoid goal setting for fear of not reaching them but journalling is different - it's the process, not the result.

Journalling is the map from where you are now to whatever your goal is and needs far more attention then simply coming up with your end goal.

It takes away the absolutism language we hear a lot of in local/amateur football (must, have to etc) that really sets everyone up to fail because if we don't acheive the must or have to, then we deem it as a fail and a negative experience.

All these relatively small isolated failures do add up over the long term and can wreck complete havoc with players and teams confidence levels and is probably a huge reason as to why team's drop games they shouldn't at various times of the season.

You can check out the Inner Game Journal here where they currently have an end of financial year 30% off sale!