Success Is No Accident
“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do” – Pele
The ‘healthy mind, healthy body’ philosophy dates back to ancient Greek and Chinese civilisations. Socrates believed that the ‘good life’ was one devoted to the pursuit of excellence in all things – physical, intellectual, and ethical – and that an individual’s emotional state could affect their physical state.
The study of sports psychology and how the mind affects a sportsperson’s body has developed in much more recent times but, even without such deep historical roots, it has grown quickly into a recognised and significant part of the science of sports performance coaching. Sports psychology 2 uses cutting-edge technology to demonstrate how developing mental training skills can lead also lead to developing the ’winning edge.’
“Olympism…exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, mind, and will” – Pierre de Coubertin (Olympic Games revivalist)
In its widest sense, sports psychology encompasses all areas of exercise, fitness and leisure, not just competitive sport, but in terms of competition results, what are the factors that lead us to the conclusion that the best man, woman, or team won on the day?
The person holding the trophy is undoubtedly the winner but there’s much more to getting your hands on the prize than simply turning up on the day and hoping you play better than the other competitors. Without appropriate levels of fitness and physical preparation, the chances of playing well are instantly limited but equal emphasis must also be placed upon mental fitness and preparation if a top performance is to be realised.
Here are some frequently heard comments made by sports commentators:
- “He seems to be struggling to find his form today.”
- The winner, “…just wanted it more.”
- “They’re all over the place; there doesn’t seem to be any spirit in the team.”
- “There’s no sparkle; she seems to be just going through the motions.”
- “His focus would appear to be on picking fights with officials rather than on his game.”
- “That missed shot seems to have shaken his confidence; he’s struggled to regain concentration since then.”
Now, here’s a list of proven sport psychology, or mental skill, techniques used by sports psychology 2 to ensure those comments are never true of your own or your team’s performance:
Goal Setting
Setting a course towards the ‘big event’ and progressively working through a series of lesser events, or smaller goals strategically placed in a training schedule, will ensure you achieve your peak performance when it really counts. Sports psychology 2 encourages athletes to set specific, measurable, achievable, recorded, and appropriately time phased goals to keep motivation high in training and in competition.
“The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move” – John Wooden (basketball coach)
Understanding Motivation
By learning what motivates you, you can prepare a training schedule that will keep you going even when the going gets tougher! Understanding motivation is an important part of the goal setting process. Sports psychology 2 promotes the need for each athlete to understand what motivates them as an individual, even if playing as part of a team.
“Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there” – Will Rogers (actor/humorist)
Positive Mental Attitude
Things can, and do, go wrong! An athlete’s ability to remain positive when the pressure is on is key to allowing them to realise their full potential. Sports psychology 2 techniques can’t prevent things from going wrong but they can develop powerful mental skills that make it much easier to remain positive when they do. A positive attitude is a winning attitude.
“It’s not the disability that defines you, it’s how you deal with the challenges the disability presents you with. We have an obligation to the abilities we DO have, not the disability” – Jim Abbott (baseball pitcher)
Understanding ‘Mindset’
In a nutshell, the term ‘Mindset’ describes an individual’s view of who and what they are. A person with a ‘fixed mindset’ holds the belief that they are what they are and nothing will change that. A person with a ‘growth mindset’ holds the belief that change is always possible and that nothing is set in stone. In a sports environment, a fixed mindset leaves no room for learning new skills or improving performance through making changes.
It could also lead to a successful athlete resting on their laurels in the mistaken belief that they don’t need to work at their skills – as they’re a given! Promoting a growth mindset is therefore of vital importance if athletes are to thrive through continued learning and the mastering of new skills. Sports psychology 2 helps athletes to identify their current mindset and paves the way to making positive changes.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit” – Aristotle
Developing Team Spirit
‘There’s no I in team,’ or so the saying goes. There’s also a great comedy come-back to that line that goes, ‘But there are four in platitude quoting idiot.’ It goes without saying that an effective team must devote a large proportion of training time to the actual physical practice of perfecting their skills as a unit. However, an effective coach will also recognise the need to utilise the learned skills of goal setting and understanding motivation for each individual player if a winning team is to be formed. True team spirit can only be achieved through open communication and trust. Sports psychology 2 provides practical, effective methods of analysing – and improving – the available lines of communication between players and coaches as well as between players themselves.
“If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games” – Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant (American college football coach)
Visualisation
Learning how to visualise a positive outcome under any set of circumstances is key to preparing any sportsperson in any sport for the pressures of competition. A vision of exactly what it takes to create a winning performance must be clear in the athlete’s mind’s-eye and there should be no surprises on the day! Negative external factors such as poor weather or noisy crowds will no longer have the power to break concentration or focus when visualisation techniques, along with the ability to use positive self-talk, have been mastered. Sports psychology 2 trains athletes to go beyond ‘seeing’ a winning performance and to also, hear, feel, smell, or even taste it too.
“To give yourself the best possible chance of playing to your potential, you must prepare for every eventuality. That means practice” – Seve Ballesteros (golfer)
Building Confidence
Everyone experiences moments of self-doubt but it’s important that athletes should not experience those moments just as they are about to compete in the most important event of their career so far. Building confidence also builds greater self-belief. Sports psychology 2 not only provides effective methods of developing confidence but also powerful coping mechanisms for those high pressure moments of doubt.
“Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it” – Stan Smith (tennis player)
Improving Focus
Developing an understanding of and practicing the techniques used in the above – goal setting, motivation, positive mental attitude, mindset, team spirit, visualisation, and confidence – will have the added bonus of improving an athlete’s ability to remain focussed and to maintain concentration when it matters most – in competition. We are all creatures of habit, we like our comfortable, familiar training environment. The competition environment often takes an athlete out of their comfort zone and the result can be a loss of focus leading to a poor performance. The mental training skills developed through sports psychology 2 techniques provide athletes with the ability to focus and concentrate only on what’s important and to disregard the rest – the noisy crowds; the 747’s flying over; the loose dog after the police display; the call for the lost child on the loud-haler just as they are about to perform…
“When I go out on the ice, I’m just thinking about my skating. I forget it is a competition” – Katarina Witt (figure skater)
Here’s the question, “Why are some athletes able to rise to the occasion and perform well under pressure when others seem to lose the plot?”
“Luck? Sure. But only after long practice and only with the ability to think under pressure” – Babe Didrikson Zaharias (golfer)
The answer? Explore Sports psychology 2!
