Why Adam Vinatieri Can't Make a Kick - How to Fix Slumps

Without the proper tools, slumps can drag on for far longer than they have to.

For those that don’t watch sports, Adam Vinatieri is a 46 year old kicker in the NFL who is widely regarded as the greatest kicker to ever play the game. Much to my town of Indianapolis’ chagrin, the last two games he has missed a career worst number of kicks. Out of 8 kicks, most of them being routine kicks, he has only made 3. That would be bad for a struggling high school kicker, let alone the best to ever play the game. 

Most people think that Vinatieri hit some age wall where he suddenly can’t make a routine chip shot - as if his leg deteriorated to the point of being inaccurate from short distances overnight. As such, many think it’s time for him to retire. 

In reality, if you go grab Vinatieri when he is 60, I bet he’ll be able to kick 10 extra points in a row without the kind of problems he is having now. It’s not his age. It’s just a typical slump. Slumps happen to everyone, but when you are a baseball player or a kicker in the NFL, your slumps are obvious, measurable and compounding. 

The real question is - why do slumps happen and how on Earth do we make them stop?

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Unconscious vs Conscious brain
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When you master something, it becomes automatic for your brain and your body to perform. When you first learn something, it’s clunky. It’s slow. It’s all new and foreign. Malcolm Gladwell discussed this in his book “What the Dog Saw” as the difference between explicit and implicit learning. I often describe this as the conscious and unconscious mind. In sports and other areas of life you might hear it colloquially referred to when people talk about “muscle memory.”

Think of the first time you did something you are good at today. This could be the first time you swung a tennis racket. You had to think something like “I put my hands here. I place my feet here. I swing this hard.” After your body practices this motion enough times, you stop thinking about it. Your brain switches this task over to the unconscious mind and you flow freely through the motions that are familiar to you. 

For those of you that don’t have a lot of experience with sports, think of something simple like the first time you drove to your job. You had maps going on your gps. You didn’t know where the traffic lights were. You were thinking about every move you make. After you take that trip a thousand times, you can do that drive while on a conference call without missing a beat in the conversation. Your drive has been automated so your conscious brain can focus on the call while your unconscious brain guides you expertly through your familiar drive - even seeing the traffic lights and having you do the right thing without even noticing. 

A slump is simply when the task gets moved BACK to your conscious brain. You start thinking about the task again and you start performing like you did the last time you had to think about the task - like a clunky, new amateur. This is usually caused by some pressure or traumatic jolt to your system. It could be a big, important trauma in your life, or it could be something simple like missing a kick because the holder held the ball wrong. Everyone is triggered differently. 

So what can you do to get back on track?

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​Find a new memory

Often our slumps are triggered by a bad experience that then takes control of our brain. Your public speaking skills tank after a bad presentation. Your kicking skills go after you shank a kick. This memory sticks and repeats itself like a bad song stuck on repeat. The good news is, you can always change the song in your brain. 

What I instruct my clients to do is pick a specific memory where they were amazing and go deep into that memory. That means closing your eyes and playing that memory like a movie - noticing your posture, your breathing, your intensity and any other positive aspect of it. After watching it like a movie, you then associate with it - that means instead of watching it like a movie you watch it through your eyes like you are there again. Go deeper and deeper into the memory until you can feel it like you were there. 

When you do this, you can recreate your winning state rather than dwelling in your suffering state. All of the confidence, strength, and peak performance are all in you and can be unleashed on demand when you take control of what song your brain is playing. You were the same person on your best day as you were on your worst -you just need to find what pushed you to the next level and access that. 

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Control your triad
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The triad is your ultimate tool for controlling your state. Your triad consists of three things - your focus, physiology, and language. Most people don’t actually control their triad to control their state, but let whatever happens in the world dictate what they are focusing on, how their physiology is, and what language is in their head and in their world. 

Changing just one part of the triad will alter your state. Changing all three will alter it even more. 

If Adam Vinatieri called me to help him tomorrow, this is where we would start. 

As mentioned above, when you mess up, your brain focuses on those mess ups. The brain is tricky in that it fully associates with bad memories so you relive them in vivid detail and the emotions that come with them over and over. That degrades your physiology and often creates negative self talk and language internally. It’s a mess.

I like to start with the physiology. For most of us, we can change our lives by a few physiological tweeks. We can improve our posture, breathe deeply, move around a little bit, dance raise our voices - the possibilities are endless to change your physiology. That’s why if you go to a Tony Robbins conference you’re going to spend a large amount of time dancing to loud music. Feeling good and making improvement is contingent upon strong physiology. 

If not there, what are we focusing on? Our last failure or our thousand successes? Our setbacks or the clarity of our goals? What are we saying to ourselves? “Don’t mess up” or “I’ve done this a thousand times”? 

When you begin to play with your triad, you will begin to see a world of difference. Your state defines your life moment to moment. A nervous, worried clunky kicker is worthless. A strong, confident, or even playful kicker who has mastered their craft doesn’t really miss. The same is true for us in regular life. A nervous salesman who is focused on paying his bills doesn’t make a sale. A fun, confident salesperson makes sales effortlessly. That can be the same person on different days depending on their triad.

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Don't live with your slumps

Slumps and bad performances don’t define us though the world will sometimes try to tell you differently. It’s easy to let bad performances dictate what is going on in our brain, but it will do you little good to let your fear and mistakes dictate how you feel. When it comes to mistakes, you need to have a “short memory.” You see this with top level athletes. Someone like Tom Brady might throw an interception on one play, but come out on the next drive and perform like the legend that he is - this is because of his epic control of his focus on what he can control moving forward and not on the mistake in the past. Other forgotten quarterbacks will fall into obscurity chasing bad mistakes by losing control of their focus and thus of their skills. 

Whether you are Adam Vinatieri missing kicks on television in front of a crowd of 60 thousand people or someone who is afraid to give their next presentation at the office because the last one fell apart. These tips will take you back to your top form and leave people looking silly for suggesting you were done. 


*If you are Adam Vinatieri or another person slumping in your personal or professional life, please schedule a call and we will make a change quickly.