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
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).
Practicing meditation daily or before a game builds mental strength. Scientists have proven that meditation improves many cognitive functions not only in athletes, but in everyday life, “Emerging scientific literature further suggests that mindfulness meditation is a productive method for improving self awareness” (David and Hayes 198) Another way that athletes can mentally prepare themselves is by visualizing the outcome that they would like before an event. This makes that outcome seem more realistic to them and closer in reach. This is called imagery. “Imagery has been described as a mental event that recreates actual experience and is frequently adopted by athletes as a covert rehearsal technique to aid both motoric and psychological performance.” (Parker et al. 22) . If you go into a game or match with the mindset that you are going to lose, you will not play to the best of your
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 Psychology Today. Mental Edge Athletics, 4 Sept. 2012. Web. 28 Oct. 2013. Forde, Pat.
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 ...
Strategies: Development and preliminary validation of a comprehensive measure of athletes’ psychological skills. Journal of Sports Sciences 17, 697-711.
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.
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.
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.
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,
Richard C. Thelwell , Iain A. Greenlees & Neil J. V. Weston (2006) Using Psychological Skills Training to Develop Soccer Performance, Journal of Applied Sport Psychology,18:3, 254-270
Sports psychology continues to evolve in order to ensure that comprehensive and evidence-based psychological services are available for athletes and teams. Giving athletes an understanding of their psychological functioning, and building the ability to implement a range of psychological strategies in competition enables athletes to both execute their skills and thrive under pressure as they strive to reach their performance potential.