As Captain and Coach for the Genesis Touch Team, I have decided to use sport psychological in order to further improve the team’s and my own performance. The key focus areas are imagery and concentration in order to prepare for the State Finals.
Imagery
First, imagery often referred to as ‘visualisation’, ‘mental practice’ or ‘mental rehersal’ is one of the most important sport psychological skills. Sport psychologist John Silvia defines imagery as, “Using all senses to re-create or create an experience in the mind.” The five key reasons for implementing imagery for my team include. Firstly, confidence building: visualising success in training and performance can subconsciously improve an athlete’s belief in their abilities and as a result
their performance. Secondly, control of emotions and mental strength. Striving to remain confident and focused it will not only help us regulating anxiety and stress levels, but control any potential frustrations (for example if the referee makes calls that we do not agree with or if the opposition ‘trash talks’ us). Thirdly, it will further improve our skill levels: as practice form and sports skills without physical impact and your brain will trigger the same muscle patterns as if you were actually performing the skill. This will also help my team build on our strengths and help eliminate our weaknesses. It will also help to cope with any injuries and speed recovery while preventing skills from deteriorating. Finally it will help resolve any potential plateaus in performance: helping my team maintain a vision of what we would like to achieve, in setting goals, as well as to stay motivated during tough training sessions.
Sports performance is carrying out of specific physical routines or procedures by one who is trained or skilled in physical activity. Performance is usually influenced by a combination of physiological and also psychological. Performance of an athlete usually measured by the goals they set and how hard they are willing to train for the sport they take part in. When thinking of performing a duty to a team most people don’t think about the mental obstacles one might have to overcome to accomplish a goal. When dealing with any athlete there is more to it than just throwing them in a game and expecting them to play well.
Teachers and coaches can use video analysis to identify areas of improvements in their students and athletes. In addition, students and athletes themselves can also learn to use videos to analyse their own performance and perform self and/or peer assessments. They will also learn and apply oberservation skills such as identifying key elements, positioning of video camera, naming body parts involved and even identifying the different phases of a skill. These would help to make them a more self-directed learner who can reflect and improve on their own
The goal of every coach is to create an environment in which his athletes can flourish. Performance anxiety is a coach’s worst enemy simply because it can have a negative impact both mentally and physically on athletes. The mastery approach to coaching is a cognitive-behavioral intervention designed to promote a mastery-involving motivational climate (Smith, Smoll, Cumming, 2007). How a coach handles his athletes is essential for their confidence and ability to overcome any level of performance anxiety. Critical or punitive feedback from coaches can evoke high levels of negative affect in children who fear failure and disapproval, thereby contributing to a threatening athletic environment (Smith, Smoll, Cumming, 2007).
Why do we do what we do? This is one question that summarizes the motive for psychology. The answer to this question is the reason why I declared psychology as my major. Current psychologists and those dating back to the year 1879, strove to achieve the answer to this reoccurring question. “The Father of Psychology”, Wilhelm Wundt, and those psychologists of-age, have been strenuously consulting and researching to truly understand the mind and its effect on human behavior. Over the last 127 years, an accumulation of various answers to that specific question have been made. In this paper, the main focus will be the working memory in athletics; how the conscious movements become unconscious and almost instinct-like, and how coaches can teach their athletes better, using explicit and implicit technique.
I am a young ambitious student who strives to excel in everything I do. I want to study Sport Psychology as I know I possess the right skills to further and develop myself in the career of sports. I have the ability to understand others in sports as I also play sports myself. I have been in high pressured sporting situations which I have used my psychological skills to help increase my performance. What interests me in Sport Psychology is that I can make a big difference to not just my life but the lives of people in sport such as rehabilitating athletes or boosting athlete performance. I am fascinated by how different athletes perform in the same environment and getting practical with the mind, body and brain. Improving performance, consistency and stability in an athlete’s
Visualisation is the most common and effective technique used within mental imagery in sport (Harmison, 2011). To do this you envision yourself executing physical sequences of the sport (Harmison, 2011). It has been shown that visualization helps the athlete to perform at a higher level, through increasing traits of the ‘ideal mentality’. In the process of visualization your must imagine correctly and successfully all aspect of the motion, going through frame-by-frame and using all senses. Studies looking into visualization have shown that mental practice can increase real strength and performance creating an almost virtual iron aspect. This study by ( ) has also proven that visualization activates the same neural circuits that actual seeing does, visual imagery activates the brains visual cortex therefore through the imagining of movement it actives the motor ...
In Psychology, a sub category of the study is Sports Psychology. Many focus in this category to get a feel of how many athletes mentally feel while playing their sport. In the sports psychology the players should have high confidence, high mental toughness, and plenty of motivation. Motivation is having the desire to play a sport. Confidence is believing in yourself to play the game or sport well. Mental Toughness is the ability to not be discouraged when all goes awry and believing in yourself even when you make a mistake.
Suzanne Schlosberg (1998) says that the Olympic athletes have used mental imagery in their sports for years. About 99 percent of the Canadian athletes we...
Sports are often identified to have positive influences on many individuals. The sports industry is growing worldwide, especially the basketball industry, which is regarded in second place behind football. The global prevalence of basketball is unquestionable, especially among the young. Basketball is a dynamic team sport that involves a pattern of alternating, active, and skilled movement activities. There are compound demands that require a mixture of individual skills, team plays, strategies, and motivational aspects.
Strategies: Development and preliminary validation of a comprehensive measure of athletes’ psychological skills. Journal of Sports Sciences 17, 697-711.
This essay is about mental skills, and how applying these skills can help an athlete. The name of the questionnaire is the Mental Skills Assessment Questionnaire, which measures the various mental skills which an athlete can develop, and the objective is to identify and discuss the issues which the athlete is experiencing using relevant theories, as well as recommending solutions to address them.
A lot of times, sports seem like a contest of physical skill― a test to see who is the fastest or strongest, who has the best eye or the most endurance, who can jump the highest or can handle the ball the best. What a lot of people don’t know is that there is so much more to a sport than just the muscle and coordination. In order to excel in a sport, an athlete requires a lot of self-discipline, concentration, and self-confidence. It’s the mental factor that makes a difference. Former Olympic gold medal-winning decathlon runner Bruce Jenner once said, “You have to train your mind like you train your body” (Gregoire 1). Success or failure depends on the mental factors just as much as the physical ones. The training of the mind of an athlete is called sports psychology. The use of sports psychology has a huge impact upon an athlete’s performance. The mental skills of a sport are just as important as the physical skills. All professional athletes use sports psychology. “If they aren’t currently using it, it’s almost guaranteed they’ve used it in the past, even if they are unaware they have” (Davis, Stephens, The Exploratorium 129). It’s hard to find an experienced athlete who hasn’t used sports psychology, because without it, they probably wouldn’t be where they are. The use of sports psychology is a crucial step to becoming a successful athlete.
Improving the performances of athletes has always been of utmost importance to many stakeholders of the sporting industry, such as the athletes’ coaches, sport psychologists, sports scientists. Many factors during a competition can affect athletes physically and mentally and these can negatively affect their performance abilities. Among these factors involved in affecting athletic performances, psychological factors have long been of interest. Many studies have since being conducted to examine the efficacy of psychological skills on sporting performance. Some studies looked into single psychological skill approaches (e.g., Johnson, Hrycaiko, Johnson, & Halas, 2004; Shambrook & Bull, 1996), whereas others adopted multi-modal package approaches (e.g., Hanton & Jones, 1999; Thelwell & Maynard, 2003).
The rationale for the study, The adjunctive role of imagery on the functional rehabilitation of a grade II ankle sprain was to examine dynamic balance, muscular endurance, and functional stability in relation to imagery and its effectiveness on sprains. This study further argued that rehabilitation of sport-related injuries can be affected by ideas or techniques that dominate the mind. Theories talk about the effect of the mind and its role on the body, as shown through the effect of placebos, the mind-body connection, and neural training on imagery having effects on muscular activation. Many literatures have been written about imagery helping physical injury rehabilitation but not many experiments have been done to prove this. As such,
Motivate the motivation, simple words that can mean some much to an athlete, but what is motivation really? In the games and sports, psychological and physiological factors play an important role in determining the performance level (Grange & Kerr, 2010; Schilling & Hyashi, 2001). Motivation also plays an important role in determining the performance level an athlete, but plays a role in the psychological and physiological factors as well. Motivation is more than a behavior or idea, it is an impact on how we interact with others, how we process defeat, feel, and how we play. Motivation will not only help an athlete get the starting position or gain an award but more importantly, help an athlete reach their potential. Motivation like most things