Sports Psychology – What is it?

Sports psychology focuses on an area in an athlete’s development that is often overlooked. The mental aspect of the individual, sport or team and how they can be developed to help the person achieve the ultimate sports performance. Below are the 12 core areas that a sports psychologist will focus upon to improve the sport performance of that individual. Psychology of sport uses scientific evidence to implement performance enhancing strategies for the person.

1. Goal Setting

A sport psychologist will distinguish between the different types of goals. Optimal sports performance will need to access all types of goals.

Outcome Goals refer to a desired outcome from a competition. An example would be to win a gold medal at the 2012 London games. However, to achieve this goal is also dependent on other uncontrollable variables such as the day of the competition, weather or the abilities of the other athletes.

Performance Goals compare an athlete’s actual performance in relation to their own high standard of excellence. They are controllable by the athlete and would include an example such as to increase successful first serve percentage from 55% to 65%.

Process Goals focus upon the skill, ability and technique performance of the sporting person. Typically they are the goals used in practice or training. An example would be the perfection of the golf drive including the follow through.

Although the outcome goal is very important as we consider it to be the destination, it is the process and performance goals that are within the control of the athlete and the coach and if perfected, improved and achieved will often lead to the success of the outcome goal.  

2. Motivation

Sport psychology will ascertain the motivation levels of the individual and to understand the motivation type that is specific to the athlete. A sports psychologist will try to understand if that style is beneficial both to the athlete and to their success.

Extrinsic Motivation

A motivational style that is totally focused upon the external rewards that come to the athlete by their involvement and success in the sport. An example would be the large pay packets received by premier league footballers. There are many that play in teams that will never achieve any success, but the financial rewards are immense.

Intrinsic Motivation

The athlete performs the skill and engages in sport for the pure fun and pleasure of it and if successful the extrinsic rewards will come as a natural by product of the process. They are not burdened with the anxiety of the fear of failure.

Self-determination theory

Identified as the need to be in relationship with others; to experience competence and to function with autonomy. A motivational climate can be created which allows the athlete to participate without coercion, an atmosphere where skill mastery and learning are the norm and an atmosphere of satisfaction in the engagement of the sport.

3. Intensity

Psychology in sport will take the subject of intensity very seriously. Intensity is the balance and relationship between arousal and anxiety levels.

• The physiological reactions (adrenaline, breathing, heart rate) that sport people experience before, during and after a match and whether they perceive those feelings to be a help or a hindrance.

• The level of intensity will determine how they actually perform.

• Over intensity will produce muscle tension, fast heart rate, shallow breathing and the athlete will have doubts over their ability.

• Under intensity is a feeling of lethargy, poor concentration and low motivation levels.

• Intensity levels are personal to each individual and must be determined.

• There are many strategies to raise or lower intensity levels.

4. Concentration

Psychology of sport understands the need for clear focus at critical moments. Concentration levels can wane if the athlete is tired, injured, distracted or just over confident. Below are some areas that a sports psychologist will investigate.

• Focus is an understood contributor to peak sports performance.

• Athletes have the ability to focus on and perform multiple tasks at the same time but the capacity is limited.

• The focus must be on relevant cues and ignore distracting cues.

• Athlete can attend to internal or external cues and relevant or distracting ones.

• There are many concentration strategies that can improve the athlete’s ability to focus better.

5. Mental Rehearsal

Sports psychology consultants will have differing approaches to their work and athletes. One of the sports performance improvement techniques is the ability to learn and practice mental imagery for enhanced sports performance. Mental imagery has been found to be beneficial in physical, psychological skill enhancement and perceptual areas prior to, during and after competition. Individual imagery scripts can be produced that take into account the uniqueness of the athlete and the particular nuances of that sport.

6. Team Cohesion & Group Dynamics

Our Sport psychologist consultants are aware that mental skills training of the individual has to be in congruence with the needs of the team that they are a part of.

Role Clarity

Each individual team member has to be clear as to what their role is in the team and the roles of their team members. Problems in this area will create conflict and lack of confidence.

Role Acceptance

This area highlights how satisfied players are with the role that they have been given. They may demonstrate a clear understanding of the role but not happy with the choice. A lack of role acceptance can have serious effects on team spirit and the ultimate success of that team. One thinks of the squad rotation in premiership football.

Substitution

This can be a huge blow to the athlete’s confidence leading to poor motivation and attitude problems. The emotions from this decision have to be considered and dealt with professionally and swiftly both for the individual’s benefit and the benefit of the team.

Team motivation

If the team is not motivated along with the individuals then sports performance will suffer. Sport psychology will assess team goal setting, team profiling, open channels of communication, understand the differences of each individual and make a commitment to positive thinking.

Team Spirit

Also known in the literature as cohesion. We as sports psychologists look at areas of social cohesion (the extent to which players get on with each other on a social basis). High levels are experienced by teams which spend time together off of the field and engage in non sporting activities. We also consider task cohesion which refers to the extent that all team members agree on the goals and strategies of the team.

7. Professional Attitude

Psychology of sport considers 9 areas that an athlete can enhance to have a fully professional attitude towards their sport.

• To exhibit a strong desire to succeed.

• To always stay positive.

• To control the controllables and ignore the non controllables.

• To have high commitment levels but with a balanced attitude.

• To carry a high level of self-belief.

• To show a positive body language at all times.

• To show respect, empathy and kindness to peers and colleagues.

• Have the ability to overcome failure and to learn from it.

• Introduce and practice mental preparation into your life.

8. Emotional Control

Sports performance can be affected both positively and negatively by emotions. However, emotions affect individuals differently like our discussion on intensity. Some emotions hinder performance and some assist.

• The appraisal of the match by the athlete can cause different reactions to the situation.

• Positive and negative impacts on sports performance can be achieved by changes in the emotional state of the athlete.

• The individual is unique and in some cases pleasant emotions can actually harm your performance and unpleasant ones can enhance it.

• Sports psychologists will work on emotional mastery throughout the competition and to ensure performance damaging emotions do not arise.

• Emotional mastery can be achieved through many interventions and techniques.

9. Psychological Preparation

Psychology in sport introduces and implements routines into the athlete’s mental preparation. These routines help the athlete avoid distractions, problems at the venue and leave a clear performance focus for success.

• Routines are most useful for training, pre competition, during the performance and post match.

• Training regimes ensure athletes are optimally prepared for practice by ensuring physical warm up, instilling motivation, building confidence, achieve correct level of intensity and allow effective concentration levels.

• Every phase routines ensures that the sports person maintains the correct level of performance throughout the match or tournament and to help them learn valuable lessons from their performance which will assist them in future matches.

10. Self-Confidence

Any sports psychologist will tell you that in sport, confidence is everything. The best technique and fitness will stand for nothing if confidence levels are low or are falling. We may not appreciate that there are many strategies and techniques for enhancing and re-installing confidence levels. The issue with confidence is that it affects performance directly head-on by not having the belief to perform and also indirectly by affecting anxiety levels, emotions and concentration.

Sport psychology can assist you to build or rebuild confidence levels by including proper preparation techniques, positive strength recognition, having confidence role models, developing social support, using self talk and positive imagery, learning to respond to adversity and focusing on successful experiences.

The athlete’s attributions can also affect their confidence levels. We talk about attributions in this context as to how the sports person will attribute their successes and failures and on what factors they attribute them.

Sports performance confidence can be assisted by developing an optimistic mind set and attitude. We can show you how to achieve this.

11. Positive Thought Control

A cognitive behavioural approach to positive psychology in sport. In this school of thought we believe that our thoughts trigger our emotions which in turn stimulate our actions or behaviour. This then leads us to think that realistically one of our best strategies is to change the way that we think which will then produce positive emotions and behaviours (performance). Our approach will focus on three areas of thought control.

Be aware of your inner voice

Accept that the way we are programmed means that we are continually having thoughts good and bad. Would it not be successful to remove bad thoughts and turn them into good and positive ones?

Use your critic productively

Our mind is there to protect us. We should not dismiss what is going through it as we may need to be aware of an impending problem, solution or action needed. We focus on listening what is in the thoughts and deciding the correct action or changes needed to remove them.

Replace negativity with productivity

Once we have identified what is going on and what needs to be done then we implement thought control interventions. These will include turning negatives into positives, replacing damaging thoughts with enhancing ones, parking untimely thoughts for later and developing a set of personal affirmations.

12. Mental Toughness

Sports psychology identifies the existence of mental toughness but has found it very difficult to define. Many sport psychologists believe that the 11 core areas above when working efficiently will develop mental toughness as a by product. Others believe that performers are born with it and it is their make up and past history that will define their mental toughness. We believe along with a growing school of thought that all the above are correct but with 4 extra areas that need to be specifically worked on.

Reverse Toughness

The ability to turn around a situation when it is all going wrong and meltdown is approaching. This type of mental strength can save the day against all the odds.

Pressure Point Toughness

The critical moment and taking the right decision at the right time. In any game there is that one moment that could define the whole outcome of the match. Mentally tough individuals will be able to identify it and take action as and when it comes around.

Staying power toughness

Mental toughness in individuals will show itself when the pressure is on and things are not always going to plan. The stress will be on the individual constantly and that performer will be able to endure the pressure without crumbling.

Risk Toughness

In any victory v failure scenario there will come a time when a risk has to be taken. It could be on match point, last minute of the game etc. The mentally tough individual will weigh up all the costs and benefits of each scenario and decide when the time is right to take that risk for victory as opposed to the trying not to lose scenario.

I hope this has given you an insight into how sports psychology and a sports psychologist can assist the athlete in developing their mental skills and mental toughness for optimal sports performance. Stage 1 is to become aware, stage 2 is to practice them, stage 3 is to get help with specific interventions and stage 4 is to take forward forever in your life. Sports psychology can make the difference between winning and losing. Visit our video based elearning system.