Sports Psychology Essay

1500 Words3 Pages

Define Sports Psychology: According to About.com, “Sports psychology is the study of how psychology influences sports, athletic performance, exercise and physical activity. Some sports psychologists work with professional athletes and coaches to improve performance and increase motivation. Other professionals utilize exercise and sports to enhance people’s lives and well-being throughout the entire lifespan” (Cherry, 2011). Sports psychology is all about using information from both kinesiology and psychology to understand how different factors can affect a player’s performances and participation in a sport or exercise. This can affect a person psychologically and physical.
Summarize the history of the field of sport psychology: Sports psychology has become an important type of psychology is today’s world, but where did it all begin? The first known was in 1920 when Carl Diem founded the world’s first sports psychology laboratory in Berlin, Germany. Two more laboratories were created in 1925. They were created by A.Z. Puni and Coleman Griffith. Puni was in the Institute of Physical Culture in Leningrad, and Griffith was at the University of Illinois. Coleman Griffith is known as the first American sports psychologist. Griffith released a two books called The Psychology of Coaching and Athletic. After Griffith research/lab were closed in 1932, sports psychology let downhill until the mid-1960. It seemed like no one cared about sports psychology until 1965 when Ferruccio Antonelli created the International Society of Sport Psychology. After Antonelli bought back sports psychology, universities started offering course in the subject. In 1970, the first academic journal the International Journal of Sports Psychology was established, a...

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...t, but once I did it I would be proud of myself. Life is all about taking chances, and I don’t do that enough. I’m the experiences seeking category. I may not be a crazy thrill seeker, but I’ll stuck with my average score on the sensation seeking scale.

Reflection on Psychfiles podcast about extreme sports
Extreme sports have become very popular in this generation. Extreme sports serve as an outlet for us to go out and do something crazy that we never thought we would do. Some people love the adrenaline levels they get when doing extreme sports. Extreme sports give us the opportunity to use the Optimum Arousal theory. Sensation seekers have a high amount of dopamine in their brain, so that makes them want to do crazy stunts or activities. Some people live every day to the fullest, and doing extreme sports can add some major excitement into an individual’s life.

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