Sport Psychology: Analysis of Psychological Skills Training models with particular reference to Thomas's (1990) model for performance enhancement.

Sports—which involve emotion, competition, cooperation, achievement, and play—provide a rich area for psychological study. People involved in sports attempt to master very difficult skills, often subjecting themselves to intense physical stress as well as social pressure. research has expanded into numerous areas such as imagery training, hypnosis, relaxation training, motivation, socialization, conflict and competition, counseling, and coaching. Specific sports and recreational specialties studied include baseball, basketball, soccer,

Sports psychology deals with the mental and emotional aspects of physical performance. It involves describing, explaining and predicting attitudes, feelings and behaviours in an attempt to improve performance. In the film 'Coach Carter,' directed by Thomas Carter, sport psychology is used effectively to enhance the performance of a high school basketball team. However, this improved performance is not limited to the basketball court, it extends into the classroom where the students use goal setting, motivation, concentration and confidence control, ultimately to become accepted into college, avoiding a life of drugs, gangs and prison.

This report was created to help the Florida Sports Committee understand why Clear Choice Coaching will want to partner and incorporate the sport phycology discipline in our practices to help us with our approach to recruit, retain and develop our coaches. This report was created to bring attention to the benefits of working together with coaches and sport psychology professionals to help advance and implement reliable yearly platforms of activities that carry out quality measurable assessments. We concentrate in coaching Soccer, Basketball, Tennis and Football. We are confident by integrating this discipline we will develop increased efficiency, knowledge sharing and transfer of improved skills to our athletes. We can see the benefits that

This causes their mind to be in a clear state and be able to perform well while training. When they have to to perform for an event their mind is not at its normal state. “Athletes that have not had exposure to sports psychology are often to go through completed stage of change, decisional balance, and self efficacy questionnaires. This means that they are not psychologically ready to take on performance related performances that are not in a familiar environment” (Powell, 2011). This does not entirely mean that athletes that do not get informed with sports psychology perform poorly. There are things such as achievement motivation, and grit that help them perform well. Based on the information that has been addressed it is true that a person’s mind set is different when one is going to perform in any kind of sport.

Meyers (1991) has shown that an increase to fitness levels in athletes is important to enhance their self-esteem and interpersonal behaviours. Physical practice is important not only for mere practice, but having a clear functioning mind toward the sport, adhering to exercise programs in an endeavour to improve athletic performance, both physically and mentally (Meyers, 1991). Researchers are finding it necessary to modify their approach towards athlete behaviour to enhance performance in the field of sport (Mendoza & Wichman, 1978). Studies also found that mental rehearsal was as effective as physical practice in improving performance, however physical practice gave athletes the benefits of enjoyment and motivation towards sport (Mendoza & Wichman, 1978).

Today in sports athletes endure many mental and physical obstacles from there competitive environment. Many of today's best athletes work with sports psychologists to help them handle the pressures found in this competitive atmosphere. One question that athletes ask is, why cant they play in big games as well as they anticipate themselves doing? Sports psychologists feel that spending all their time on body conditioning and athletic skills will not ensure that athletes reach their peak performance.

Hoar cites Graham Jones (1991) as proposing the direction dimension of perceived anxiety, which relates to the translation of perceived anxiety to either debilitative or facilitative behaviour. Simply, athletes differ in the way they handle anxiety, some athletes perceive anxiety as a sign of readiness, and others perceive it as a reason to believe they are unable to perform at a high level. Jones’ proposal is highlighted in an article by Martinant and Ferrant (2007) which aims to find meaning groups of athletes based on intensity, direction, and frequency of anxiety.

Thoughts and actions of mentally tough athletes are mental plan (pregame and game), emotional control, optimal arousal, confidence, intrinsic motivation, optimism, controlled anxiety, concentration and attentional control (alert and mentally focused), performs automatically, proper situational appraisal (challenge and threat),good coping skills (deals effectively with adversity) projects a positive attitude (positive body language) sense of enjoyment in the competitive setting.

On the biggest stages, athletes cannot avoid feeling some stress and anxiety. Even some of the greats in their sport still struggle with nerves. For instance, Lionel Messi is known to vomit on occasion before or during games, as he did in the 2014 World Cup final against Germany. A majority of successful athletes have had their resilience and composure cited as reasons for their victories, and certainly, one cannot overlook an athlete who goes out there and executes under immense pressure like a gymnast executing a flawless routine on the balance beam. On the flip side, many an athlete has had hopes and dreams dashed by not being able to handle the pressure and collapsing down the stretch. So how does sport psychology help to limit anxiety and increase performance? Well, there are a handful of techniques and interventions that can be used, and an article (Samulski & Lopes, 2008) was written on some of the techniques used on Brazilian athletes at the 2004 Olympic games in Athens. There were a total of 10 sport psychologists available for the 242 Brazilian athletes. Some of the sports in which the athletes were counseled included judo, tae-kwon-do, wrestling, swimming, diving, synchronized swimming, sailing, triathlon, mountain biking, track and field, marathon, table tennis, and shooting. This is not a comprehensive list, but it shows a wide variety of settings that anxiety reduction techniques can be applied in. Some of the specific intervention strategies used were deep

It has been identified that through sports psychology one can improve their physical ability and performance. Sports psychology is the study of how the mind, mental states and behaviour effect sporting performance. There are several sport psychology techniques, which have helped me become a better volleyball player. These techniques include planning for performance, controlling arousal levels, mental rehearsal and concentration.

For the first learning experience, I chose to discuss Sports Psychology, which discussed several key points that I have used since taking the course and will use in the future. Some of the course objectives included: covering various psychological principles that are associated with sports, discussing psychological variables that can hinder athletic performance or enhance it, and illustrating numerous psychological techniques that can enhance athletic performance. The main goals were to apply the theories of psychology to real world situations in sports and to allow students to gain a better understanding of psychological techniques that may help them in the future, which can be applied to social situations as well as situations in sports setting. Personally, this class had such a huge impact on me because it gave me a foundation of psychology, in which I based my own athletic performance on. For

In earlier days sports psychology was mostly concerned with developing assessment methods that would identify those people with the potential to become serious superior athletes. Today the focus is on psychological training, exercises that strengthen the mental skills that will help athletic performances on the path to excellence. These skills include mental imagery and focus training. If an athlete is serious about becoming the best he or she can possibly be, the most essential ingredient is commitment to practice the right things. It takes incredible commitment to reach the top: a commitment to rest and train the body so it can perform under the most demanding conditions and a commitment to train the mind to

What makes champions in sport? At the end of the day, it is the moment when one stands at the top of the podium, holding up their well-deserved medals and trophies that all elite athletes strive for. Thus, experts have studied this question extensively to see which programs, or by what means, are elite athletes developed to achieve this goal. One of the many aspects to athlete development is the controversial topic of deliberate practice versus deliberate play. Deliberate practice can be defined as “any training activity (a) undertaken with the specific purpose of increasing performance, (b) requiring cognitive and/or physical effort, and (c) relevant to promoting positive skill development” (Cote et al., 2007, p. 185) On the

Mental toughness is not a new concept in sport, but is generally misunderstood. Coaches design programmes to develop mentally tough athletes, predominately in professional sport, to separate elite performers from good performers (Gould, Jackson, & Finch, 1993) as physical talent itself is not the only component that can lead an athlete to success (Gucciardi, Gordon, & Dimmock, 2008).

In this report, I am going to talk about the effects of personality and motivation on sports performance and I will do this by looking at the different theories relating to sports performance and how sports athletes deal with the effects of personality and motivation in sports performances.