Many of you in motor racing and motor sport will be unsure of what sport psychology is and if this is the case, then you'll certainly be unsure of how it can help you go faster more often. This article will address these two questions.
Sport psychology is concerned with optimising sports performance by improving mental skills, dealing with issues such as confidence and anxiety and building teams.
All extreme sportsman feel fear, whether they are involved in rock climbing, mountaineering or moutainbiking. The psychology of managing this fear to allow us to fulfill our potential is complex and hard won often through difficult personal experience. This film uses the words of the mountaineer and alpinism legend Mark Twight, taken from his book Extreme alpinism which gives a fantastic insight into overcoming fear in climbing mountains.
The psychology of completing ultra endurance events is one of staying in the moment. but looking deeper, why are we participating in the first place ? What drives us to push our bodies far beyond our preconditioned limits. Lance Armstrong has said "All endurance athletes are running away from something". Is he right? This video uses images from ultra endurance cycling and considers "suffering" in the makeup of an endurance athlete.
Oh dear, oh dear, another ghastly portrayal of sport psychology in the media!!! In today's Times, a double page spread about British tennis hopeful, Anne Keothavong relates her experience with an American sport psychologist, who told her to talk to a tree.
A player can feel it during a game when they hit a match-winning goal or when they miss a wide open net. A team can feel it when they come back from a deficit late in the game or when their lead in the league vanishes. A fan can feel it as their team "catches fire" or goes "as cold as ice". And, play-by-play announcers love to talk about it. We know it as the "Big Mo", the "Hot Hand", and being "In The Zone" while the psychologists call it Psychological Momentum. But, does it really exist? Is it just a temporary shift in confidence and mood or does it actually change the outcome of a game or a season? As expected, there are lots of opinions available.
Throughout my career I have been determined to present sport psychology in a palatable and digestable format. Often some of the concepts and methodologies presented by the psychologist can be a little "clunky" to say the least.This led me to develop the Mindsport card series.
iStadia member Sam Kotadia, through his company Mindsport Ltd, has just released a range of sport psychology 'self-help' cards for athletes and students that will help you to keep mental strategies to hand at all times.
We are delighted to be able to offer these through the iStadia Marketplace.
Anyone working in sports therapy will be well aware of how common it is for athletes to injure themselves. Sports therapists also understand that the severity of physical injury is not the only factor determining recovery. Some athletes adjust well to having an injury, whereas others don't. What makes the difference is how the athlete psychologically interprets and processes the fact of the injury.
Is mental toughness a resilient state of mind, or is a number of states - and about being in the right state at the right time?
Mental Toughness is a concept that has been given a lot of attention in sport psychology in the last few years. It tends to be associated with some kind of ability to cope with pressure, or resiliency. It is something that athletes, coaches and commentators seem to recognise, but seems to be quite difficult to pin down.
Read the latest blogs and articles from sport scientists and other professionals with an interest in sports performance, covering a wide variety of topics including physiology, psychology and biomechanics.
A week ago (as I write this) Manchester United looked imperious and unassailable at the top of the Premier League. Two straight defeats and the story is quite different. While they still hold a lead in the Premier League, a Liverpool win tomorrow would cut that back to one point. The real story is not arithmetical, however, but psychological. Liverpool, on the back of convincing wins against Man United and Real Madrid, will take fresh confidence from their rivals' defeat at Fulham today, and revitalise their belief that they can still win the title. Chelsea, having lost to Tottenham today, failed to capitalise on their opportunity to close the gap.
Reversal theory is one of the few psychological theories of motivation or personality that takes sport really seriously and makes it a central topic. (When did Freud or Jung ever write about soccer, or Skinner go beyond teaching pigeons to play ping pong?)
There's a word in sport psychology that always generates a snigger whenever I introduce it to a client and especially so when I use it at a workshop. That word is 'arousal'. So what is it, and why should you bother about it if you want to go faster?