Mindset in Sport: Lessons From A Career In Banking - Steve Griffiths

The Progress Theory

Hello and welcome to The Progress Theory where we discuss how to implement scientific principles to optimise human performance.

In this episode, we have Steve Griffiths who has taken his experiences from a career in banking and trading and applied them to his ideas on developing mindset, which he now teaches to developing and elite level athletes. Steve has a 10+ year career working on the trading desks at international Investment Banks and has a degree in Maths with Economics from Royal Holloway, University of London and a Masters from Imperial Business School.

Steve comes highly recommended to me by close personal friends, all of which have said working with Steve has completely changed their ideas around self-belief, intentions, trust and worthiness. In this episode, we touch upon how our beliefs determine our intentions, and we have the ability and free will and choose what our beliefs are and how to act on them. I loved this episode as it allowed me to realise just how much control we have in shaping our future. If you enjoy learning about mindset this is the perfect episode for you.

In this episode, we discuss:

2:46 - An introduction to Steve Griffiths

4:36 - How Steve’s background has led to his career as a mindset coach

7:40 - The importance of setting your intentions early

11:32 - Is going off-track from the direction of your goals a good or bad thing?

15:25 - constructive vs destructive beliefs

19:19 - Should we view our beliefs regularly and objectively?

23:20 - Using perceived ‘negative’ emotions may not be such a bad idea: Tennis example

28:41 - Sport is chaotic. Practise harnessing your emotions in training to improve how you react to your emotions in competition

30:31 - Trust and worthiness

34:06 - Do you need to feel worthy in order to trust yourself?

37:06 - How to distinguish between facts and beliefs

40:33 - Allowing deconstructive beliefs to limit your potential

44:03 - 3 pieces of advice for anyone struggling with deconstructive beliefs

49:03 - Steve’s choice of progress theory guest

Mindset is a topic that is incredibly popular at the moment and can often feel diluted. However, when Steve talks about his ideas around beliefs, worthiness and self-reflection, everything becomes clear and just feels so simple.

I love the idea of having a reference point. It is the perfect opportunity to self-reflect on your beliefs and provide clarity around what your beliefs are and how you have the choice to impose your beliefs onto your experience.

I also liked how Steve provided clarity around how we have a tendency to see deconstructive beliefs as facts, which stops us from acting on them appropriately. It’s crazy to think of all the untapped potential in the world just because people saw deconstructive beliefs as fact when in reality it is just their perception. And perceptions can change, but it is up to you.

And finally, how asking and telling are the same thing. I’ve never heard it framed that way before, and when you do it just highlights just how much free will you have. So use it wisely.

Anyways I hope you enjoyed this episode and it has sparked some creativity around your own ideas on mindset.

We’ll see you in the next one.

FOLLOW OUR PODCAST

Follow our Host / Guest

@theprogresstheory

@thepricep

@s.x.griff

Explore these Resources or Items Mentioned in the Show

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

The nature of your personal Environment

Mentioned in this episode:

The Science of Hybrid Training

It was originally thought that you could not effectively train for both strength and endurance at the same time because they required different adaptations which were not compatible with each other. It was claimed that ‘an interference effect’, blunted the adaptations for strength if you simultaneously trained for endurance. However, recent developments in sports which require both strength and endurance have really challenged this idea, with hybrid athletes producing impressive performances in both strength and endurance sports together. This had led scientists, coaches, and athletes to rethink what is humanly possible and suggests the interference effect is not as influential as originally thought. But what is a hybrid athlete? What is the ‘interference effect’? And how can we maximize our training to improve at the same time our strength and endurance performance? In this book, Dr Phil Price provides insight into the misconceptions surrounding strength and endurance training by distilling the past 50 years of research and drawing on the conversations he had with great scientists, coaches, and athletes on The Progress Theory podcast. This book is essential reading for hybrid athletes and coaches who are looking to understand the key training variables and their effect on the simultaneous development of strength and endurance performance.

Book