We reflect on what we have done regularly in our lives whether we know it not. After a
night out you might say; “What was I doing last night?”; waking up tired for work we
might say; “I want to get to bed earlier”; and even in sport we might say something like;
“Wow, I was so poor today”. These are all reflections. We are looking back on
something that has happened or that we have done and summing it up.
This is a vital process in improvement - if we can use it in a helpful fashion. It’s okay to
look back on a performance and say this is what happened. But we want to dig deeper.
We might ask questions like:
⁃ What actually happened?
⁃ Why might that have happened?
⁃ Am I happy with this?
⁃ What can I do to continue this or change this?
In many professions now, reflection is encouraged and there is a possibility that a lot of
us perform these reflections in our field of work. If we do we should see the benefits of
it. This might bring the question of why we aren’t doing this for our personal life and
sport. Methods of reflection are varied but you can apply the same method across many
different fields. If you reflect in one field of your life it might be worth applying this to
others and taking these benefits into other areas.
Engaging in meaningful reflection around our performance allows to develop actionable
steps to build upon in order to improve. A detailed reflection framework to follow that
might be useful, albeit quite lengthy, is the Gibbs (1998) Reflective Cycle which covers
6 stages:
Description of the experience
Feelings about the experience
Evaluation of the experience (good and bad)
Analysis to make sense of the situation
Conclusion about what you learned and what you could have done differently
Action plan for how you would deal with similar situations in the future, or
general changes you might find appropriate.
Gibbs’ practice of reflection is quite useful especially as it allows for continued reflection
of events and allows us to see if any changes we have made are helping us. More detail
about Gibbs’ reflective cycle can be found here.
Research looking at reflective practice in sports settings has allowed for improved
performance as athletes build self-awareness thus allowing them to develop their game
(Hauw, 2009; Jonker, 2012). Moreover, research has shown that knowledge of former
positive experiences and clear objectives help individuals direct themselves towards
their goals (Neil et al., 2013), and the process of self-reflection can increase one’s
motivation (Faull & Cropley, 2009) towards future performances. So we can see that
looking on what has happened in the past can help us as we look towards the future.
There are many ways to reflect and there is no real right or wrong way of doing, but it’s
good to be aware of the reflection that you already carry out. There’s a good chance
you do it in an informal way – it might be worth thinking about how you can utilise it to
your benefit.
A big thanks to Eddy @sportsperformancethoughts for the piece. Eddy has recently released his GAA Performance Planner & Journal which can be purchased here
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