by Artur Poczwardowski, Ph.D., performance enhancement consultant
Being seriously involved in some competitive sport, you probably consider every means of enhancing your athletic performance. Smart practice, appropriate diet, strength training, and stretching (e.g., see the works published by Stadion Publishing) are likely examples of what you have used to excel in your sport.
Here is a question for you: How mental is your sport? If you said 50% or more you got it right! Very often mental factors account for more than 50% of a sports performance. Next question: What percent of your practice time do you spend on psychological training? Your first response might be, “How do I know that I need this stuff in the first place? I’m pretty tough mentally already.” It is true. Not everybody needs to work on psychological skills to the same degree. On the other hand, no great athlete neglects the psychological part of his or her sport preparation and training.
Before we go any further consider the following thought, which originated in the former Eastern Bloc’s philosophy of sports excellence: An athlete can produce maximal speed (and other components of an athletic skill) only while being in a state of emotional comfort, often called the emotional comfort zone or simply the zone (Hanin, 1980; Sozanski and Witczak, 1981).
Your state of emotional comfort is a range of emotions such that you display your full athletic potential. Some sport psychologists call this state “peak performance” or “peak experience” (e.g., Ravizza 1977, Williams 1993). These emotions differ from person to person. For some it is a feeling of joy, or of playfulness, while for others it is cold fury.
Those of you with considerable training experience probably can recall several situations during contests or during practice when every move was perfect. With reflection you also realize that in all these situations you felt nearly the same emotion. That is the emotion that represents your state of emotional comfort. Common to these situations is that athletes who experience peak performance do not have any thoughts about the outcome of their performance; they are totally in the moment and completely with what they are doing.
Have you ever been nervous, worried, or anxious prior to or during competitions? Did you reach your full sports potential during that event? Stress and anxiety are conditions that everybody experiences in such situations. Anxiety or negative thoughts
(a) distract you and thus slow down your reaction time. (Will you be right there to counterattack your opponent?)
(b) decrease your ability to concentrate on the task at hand. (Don’t you sometimes think about what’s going to happen to you after you win or lose a particular fight?)
(c) make your muscles tense, which makes you slower and shows up in the interruption of your breathing pattern, fatiguing you and further increasing your anxiety. And, importantly,
(d) negative thoughts related to anxiety might weaken your motivation. (Don’t you wish sometimes the competition was over before it even began?)
Even elite athletes feel anxious prior to major tournaments. What makes them champions is that they have practiced the necessary skills to cope with these mental states. How did they know that they needed this “mental stuff?” The next few pages will help you find out whether you might consider psychological skills training to improve your sport performance. Among various psychological skills that help athletes gain control over their performance, the most important seem to be these seven:
1. Self-regulation (the ability to relax or energize at will)
2. Self-imaging (the ability to produce controllable and vivid images in your mind)
3. Self-concentration (the ability to concentrate and maintain your concentration)
4. Self-talk (using positive self-talk)
5. Self-confidence (maintaining an optimal level of self-confidence)
6. Self-motivation (nurturing a strong achievement motivation)
7. Self-development (planning and using well-prepared mental routines).
For a true champion, gaining control over one’s performance means smart use of the above listed skills. As a result, body and mind work together!
Here are several questions that will help determine your mental condition. Just answer yes or no. If you think that you have experienced a described scenario more than 20% of the time, the response is yes (1 point). When this scenario applied to you 1 out of 5 times or less, the answer will be no (0 points).
1. You have trouble sleeping a night or two before a major tournament (Yes/No).
2. You perform better during practice than during competition (Yes/No).
3. Your mind is full of pictures of you performing poorly and you cannot rid your mind of these pictures (Yes/No).
4. You find it difficult to practice your sport skills in your mind with your eyes open (Yes/No).
5. You have a hard time focusing your attention, your mind wanders, and you have to constantly remind yourself to stay focused (Yes/No).
6. You allow yourself to think about what others do halfway through your warm-up (Yes/No).
7. After a mistake you beat yourself up verbally: “I’m so stupid! It’s not my day. It’s over” or something similar along these lines (Yes/No).
8. You’re injured and it’s time for your treatment. The thought goes through your head: “Well, I have done what the doctor said six times already and nothing’s changed. I’ll stay home and watch TV” (Yes/No).
9. Prior to a challenging match or fight, you think that you’re too weak for your opponent and you start to think about your chances in the next tournament (Yes/No).
10. When you face an opponent you defeated a couple of times earlier, you don’t even bother to stretch before the fight (Yes/No).
11. The major feature of your tactics is defense and not being defeated (Yes/No).
12. Your coach says you can make another step up in ranking but you are pretty much satisfied with where you are right now (Yes/No).
13. Every time you compete, you experiment with a new warm-up or you are too stressed out (or too excited) to follow your regular way of approaching competitions (Yes/No).
14. You find it foolish when some of your opponents follow the same ritual before every single match or fight (Yes/No).
If you scored 12 or more, you will definitely benefit from psychological skills training, and the sooner you do something about it, the better. Scores of 6-11 indicate that there is a substantial room for improvement in the way you psychologically approach competitions. If you scored below 6 it may indicate that mental preparation is one of your strengths—but, can you ever stop building your mental toughness?
Can you ever stop any conditioning program—physical or mental—if you want to get better and better? Just think about it! Obviously, there are more sophisticated and accurate ways of assessing your needs with regard to your mental toughness. For example, some performance enhancement professionals (e.g., sport psychologists) would use an in-depth interview with both you and your coach to learn about your strengths and weaknesses. You might have also heard about various psychological questionnaires and inventories that assess an athlete’s abilities in such psychological skills as these I listed earlier. Often, observations of your practice and competitions will give a lot of insights into how you handle pressure on a psychological level. A really smart way to learn about how you will benefit from a mental training program is to combine all these sources of information. Many sport psychologists do that. If after this initial assessment of your readiness to benefit from mental training, you have found out that such a program is indicated for you, you can contact a sport psychologist who is accessible to you, or you may contact me personally to discuss your concerns. Remember, there are plenty of good self-help materials on the market. Good examples are Terry Orlick’s works (1986, 1990) or a very thorough and systematic program for combat sports developed by Dariusz Nowicki (1997) published by Stadion Publishing.
Last but not least—there is a bonus to learning psychological skills for sport performance. These skills are also life skills. You can use them at work to be more productive, at school to learn more effectively, and even in your relationships to make them work better! Yes, you are perfectly right—your self is the best investment you can make!
Recommended reading:
Do You Need Mental Training?
Your Self-Confidence and Your Performance, Part I
Your Self-Confidence and Your Performance, Part II
Your Self-Confidence and Your Performance, Part III
Your Self-Confidence and Your Performance, Part IV
References
Hanin, Y. 1980. A study of anxiety in sports. In Sport Psychology: An analysis of athlete behavior, ed. W. F. Straub (pp. 236-249). Ithaca, NY: Mouvement Publications.
Nowicki, D. 1997. Gold Medal Mental Workout for Combat Sports. Island Pond, VT: Stadion Publishing.
Orlick, T. 1986. Psyching for Sport: Mental Training for Athletes. Champaign, IL: Leisure Press.
Orlick, T. 1990. In Pursuit of Excellence: How to Win in Sport and Life Through Mental Training. Champaign, IL: Leisure Press.
Ravizza, K. 1977. Peak experiences in sport. Journal of Humanistic Psychology 17(4): 35-40.
Sozanski, H. and T. Witczak. 1981. Trening Szybkosci [Training for Speed], pp. 154-155. Warszawa: Sport i Turystyka.
Williams, J. M. 1993. Applied Sport Psychology: Personal Growth to Peak Performance. Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield.
