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Mental game
coaching is that the segment of sports psychology that concentrates
specifically on helping athletes break through the mental barriers
that are keeping them from performing up to their peak potential. By
focusing on the mental skills needed to be successful in any
sporting competition, mental game coaching seeks to achieve the
overall goal of performance improvement.
Sports psychology is about improving your attitude and mental game skills
to help you perform your best by identifying limiting beliefs and
embracing a healthier philosophy about your sport. Below is a list
of the top ten ways that you can benefit from sports psychology:
1. Improve focus
and deal with distractions.
Many athletes have the ability to concentrate, but often their focus
is displaced on the wrong areas such as when a batter thinks “I need
to get a hit” while in the batter’s box, which is a result-oriented
focus. Much of my instruction on focus deals with helping athlete to
stay focused on the present moment and let go of results.
2. Grow
confidence in athletes who have doubts.
Doubt is the opposite of confidence. If you maintain many doubts
prior to or during your performance, this indicates low
self-confidence or at least you are sabotaging what confidence you
had at the start of the competition. Confidence is what I call a
core mental game skill because of its importance and relationship to
other mental skills.
3. Develop
coping skills to deal with setbacks and errors.
Emotional control is a prerequisite to getting into the zone.
Athletes with very high and strict expectations, have trouble
dealing with minor errors that are a natural part of sports. It’s
important to address these expectations and also help athletes stay
composed under pressure and when they commit errors or become
frustrated.
4. Find the
right zone of intensity for your sport.
I use intensity in a broad sense to identify the level of arousal or
mental activation that is necessary for each person to perform his
or her best. This will vary from person to person and from sport to
sport. Feeling “up” and positively charged is critical, but not
getting overly excited is also important. You have to tread a fine
line between being excited to complete, but not getting
over-excited.
5. Help teams
develop communication skills and cohesion.
A major part of sports psychology and mental training is helping
teams improve cohesion and communication. The more a team works as a
unit, the better the results for all involved.
6. To instill a
healthy belief system and identify irrational thoughts.
One of the areas I pride myself on is helping athlete identify
ineffective beliefs and attitudes such as comfort zones and negative
self-labels that hold them back from performing well. These core
unhealthy beliefs must be identified and replaced with a new way of
thinking. Unhealthy or irrational beliefs will keep you stuck no
matter how much you practice or hard you try.
7. Improve or
balance motivation for optimal performance.
It’s important to look at your level of motivation and just why you
are motivated to play your sport. Some motivators are better in the
long-term than others. Athletes who are extrinsically motivated
often play for the wrong reasons, such as the athlete who only
participates in sports because of a parent. I work with athlete to
help them adopt a healthy level of motivation and be motivated for
the right reasons.
8. Develop
confidence post-injury.
Some athletes find themselves fully prepared physically to get back
into competition and practice, but mentally some scars remain.
Injury can hurt confidence, generate doubt during competition, and
cause a lack of focus. I help athletes mentally heal from injuries
and deal with the fear of re-injury.
9. To develop
game-specific strategies and game plans.
All great coaches employ game plans, race strategies, and course
management skills to help athletes mentally prepare for competition.
This is an area beyond developing basic mental skills in which a
mental coach helps athletes and teams. This is very important in
sports such as golf, racing, and many team sports.
10. To identify
and enter the “zone” more often.
This incorporates everything I do in the mental side of sports. The
overall aim is to help athletes enter the zone by developing
foundational mental skills that can help athletes enter the zone
more frequently. It’s impossible to play in the zone everyday, but
you can set the conditions for it to happen more often.
I will add that
sport psychology may not be appropriate for every athlete. Not every
person who plays a sport wants to “improve performance.” Sport
psychology is probably not for recreation athletes who participate
for the social component of a sport or do not spend time working on
technique or fitness to improve performance. Young athletes whose
parents want them to see a sports psychologist are not good
candidate either. It’s very important that the athlete desires to
improve his or her mental game without having the motive to satisfy
a parent. Similarly, an athlete who sees a mental game expert only
to satisfy a coach is not going to fully benefit from mental
training.
Sports
psychology does apply to a wide variety of serious athletes. Most of
my students (junior, high school, college, and professional
athletes) are highly committed to excellence and seeing how far they
can go in sports. They love competition and testing themselves
against the best in their sport. They understand the importance of a
positive attitude and mental toughness. These athletes want every
possible advantage they can get including the mental edge over the
competition.
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