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.
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 sports 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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