For a club athlete in college a lot of your motivation has to come from your passion for the sport. It does not come with the perks like much of the division one sports which provide incentives for more motivation, as well as the benefit of decent practice times that fit your schedule a lot better than club athletics. That’s why I choose to focus and implement the psychological skills training for our hockey practices, and a couple games because that fell into the week time period in which this was being implemented. The mental skill that I think has fallen off for me the most I think is the motivation, each day at practice gets harder and harder to get up for so I really tried applying Imagery to help improve that. Tackling this hump of trying …show more content…
I would do this two times, once before bed I would watch a couple hockey videos and then right before practice when I taped my stick. Before bed I watched the moments that I thought were or remembered to be exciting and inspiring and were in my mind the most memorable videos. Such videos would include when Ray Borque won the Stanley cup with the Colorado Avalanche, or the top playoff moments to highlight videos of exciting and my favorite players like James Neal, or Tie Domi and Darcy Tucker. Then before practice when I would tape my stick I would try and remember some of those moments and or highlights from those players and try and hit the ice imagining it was those moments or try and copy some of those highlight videos moves. I was hoping that after watching these videos the excitement to compete in practice would increase back closer to 100% rather than the 60% where it is at now. To me practice is a key part to how you perform during games, as the saying goes you practice how you play. But even more importantly in a team sport especially hockey, and as a veteran to the team I think that if my inconsistency in practice continues it could ultimately start to hurt not only my game but the teams especially knowing how well we can play when everyone on the team is committed to the team …show more content…
I noticed that it helped me get up for the early Monday morning practice and really started the week off well. Which I think translated into a more positive outlook on the rest of the week’s practices. It was kind of a tough week to start this program for the fact that despite trying to improve practice performance we had a big four games that weekend so I knew that there was pressure to have a good week of practice to translate it into games. The results of having a good week of practice were obvious from the results from the weekend in which I had three goals and two assists, including a overtime game winner, and along with the success of the team going 3-0-1. So to keep kind of testing this idea that imagery can help increase the performance in practices I have continued it through this week as well. So far I think using this imagery to increase motivation during all times of practice and games has helped a bit, but we will see this weekend if it also helps with increased performance. Despite the good performance during the weekend, most of the success or positivity happened earlier during the week in practice and as the week went on the motivation that was there earlier in the week faded off. This might have been due to everything going on with the week
Originally born in Moscow, Russia, I came to the United States fourteen years ago with my parents along with my unrelated brother as their newly adopted children. Transitioning to a new country can be hard, but not knowing the language is even harder. For the first few years of my life, I struggled to speak, write and read any English. Since then, I have become acclimated to the American culture and state of mind and learned English proficiently, but, lost touch with my mother tongue because I spoke minimal Russian. I have always been proud to acknowledge and tell others that I am adopted from Mother Russia. However, over the past several years my curiosity and desire to learn about my native homeland have increased significantly. My interest in the Russian language reignited last year when I overheard a Russian and Kazakh having a conversation in Russian. I soon found myself listening to anyone anywhere, who spoke Russian.
Smith, R. E., Smoll, F. L., & Cumming, S. P. (2009). Motivational climate and changes in young athletes’ achievement goal orientations. Motivation and Emotion, 33(2), 173-183.
According to Watson and Tharp (2013), remembering a time when one coped well in a certain situation and then transferring that to an imagined problem or situation at hand, one is more likely to overcome or succeed at one’s problem. This technique has been used among “test anxious students,” and has helped them in improving their “grade point averages” (p. 209). The most important thing to avoid here is imagining failure as this will diminish “subsequent actual performance and confidence” (Watson and Tharp, 2013, p. 210). Another newly discovered technique or feature associated with imagined rehearsal is the “third-person visualization” technique which involves imagining self-performance from an audiences’ perspective. For example, before presenting a speech, one can imagine themselves as the recipient or the target audience the speech is meant for.
There are many stresses associated with being a defenseman, including decreasing scoring chances in the defensive zone, creating scoring opportunities in the offensive zone, avoiding turnovers, and effectively moving the puck. Psychological skills training can be helpful in decreasing the stresses that defensemen face, and increase confidence. Confidence involves a combination of believing in your own skills, talent, a...
I have been playing ice hockey since I was seven years old. By age ten, I knew I loved being a hockey goalie more than anything else. I dedicated my time to achieve my goal of playing at the highest level possible. Over the years, I worked extremely hard to learn my position. I took private lessons,
My goal was to play hockey in college; and consequently, moving away was a necessary step in the journey. Backed by the support of my family, I set off and was determined to reach it no matter the cost. Along the way there were countless hours of practice and training and sacrifice, but there were also times of great disappointment, such as not making the top team my first year. Persevering, I refocused my efforts so that I made the team the next year. Outside the game came many lessons too. Right away it was tempting to go hang out with friends or play basketball, but I quickly realized that didn’t leave time for homework. Living away from home forced me to create my own strong study habits, time management skills, self-motivation and strengthened my dedication for excelling in both sports and the classroom.
There have been many times that I have questioned myself in the sport. It’s not only the physical aspect that is hard, it is the mental aspect as well. Situations like not eating when you come home from practice so you can lose weight. It’s waking up two hours before school starts so you can run to lose weight. It’s believing in yourself when no one else does.
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.
When coaching athletes of the many things you do not want to happen is overlearning. Overlearning is when the practice goes beyond the amount needed to achieve a certain performance criterion. Extended practice of relatively simple skills could result in learners not continuing to engage in appropriate amounts of cognitive efforts. Players will being to daze off, become lazy in their efforts and not pay attention because they find the practice irrelevant. To prevent overlearning use a distributed practice technique, hold shorter practices and greater number of sessions with breaks in between. Next, you need to organize how complex you want your practice to be. If it is complex, start slow with isolation on the parts of the skill and progress to doing the entire skill, if simple then do the whole skill. Use any keys necessary in order to help the athletes learning process, visual, virtual, or written. Another way to improve practices is to make sure athletes have plenty of mental practice or strength. Have them mentally visualize themselves doing the skills that they performed in practice, it will help them to remember what they learned better and possibly increase their performance next time in
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.
To begin, this clip demonstrates motivation by definition as the coach acts as an external force that produces a behavior in his team that is of high intensity and in a positive direction to perform in the game. Given that the movie only addresses the following game, I cannot speak about how the coach influenced the persistence of the team’s behavior. Also, although the players have been motivated in the past, they were rather unmotivated before the speech so I would say the coach also initiated the motivated behavior. This clip portrays motivation to perform which is not the same as motivation to learn. The coach demonstrates an understanding of the five guidelines.
medals. An example of this could be a player who is offered a lot of
Goals should always. Be Specific, Measurable, Accurate, Realistic and Time limited. As in the example above one must consider is 5k run achievable. It is specific distance and activity, and it is measurable. If the task if too difficult the participant May lose interest. Although it is important to review goals and observe how far one has come, how much one has achieved. However as one achieves more they may become more complacent, efforts can reduce for this reason it is essential to remain goal focused. Remaining motivated and persisting with goals over a sustained period can be difficult. There are techniques which can assist an individual to remain motivated. Imagery in sport is useful techniques that can assist one remain motivated. Imagery has been described as “an experience that mimics real experience, and involves using a combination of different sensory modalities in the absence of actual perception”. For example a national football team preparing for the World Cup might use imagery in visualising themselves in the final, lifting the World Cup, scoring goals, penalties etc., not only visualising but imaging how it will feel. This technique motivates them but also can assist in reducing stress at the time of the event. Research has shown that imagery can prevent one "choking", where an athlete can imagine a pressure situation they can perform on automatic pilot rather than the pressure affecting
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
Why are mental skills so important to performance and why are they often neglected by coaches and athletes? Yogi Berra has been quoted as saying, "sport is 90% mental and 50% physical." You can question his mathematical savvy, but if you're an athlete, coach or fan, you can't question his wisdom. (Hacker, 2000) Many athletes understand that while developing oneself to their physical potential is a critical element in performance potential, it is often a deficit in our psychological game rather than errors in our physical performance that keep us from performing at optimum levels in practice, games or matches. Spud McKenzie, the Budweiser poster puppy, suggested that it is important to say when, but also emphasized the critical element of knowing “when to say when”. It is often the successful athlete has recognized what needed to be done and the unsuccessful athlete was unable to do so. As a consequence, it is not the physical talents or abilities that separate athletes and teams, or successful versus less successful performance, rather, the psychological dimension that most frequently explains a given sport outcome or individual performance. For this reason games are played. Prior to each contest, judgment could be made with regard to which team or individual is the “more highly skilled”. If games were decided on who is the most physically gifted and/or talented individuals or teams, it would prove to be an exercise in futility to compete. As a result, whether you are an athlete or a coach, mastering the mental game of sport will allow you to achieve a level of success as a competitor than you could otherwise not achieve by focusing exclusively on the physical side of sport.