Sports Psychology Research Paper

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

Our thoughts, diet/nutrition, exercise, rest, environment and physiology have a positive or negative impact on us which affects how well we perform and feel. In the world of sports, this is very easy to demonstrate because the mind/body connection provides you with immediate feedback. When you are positive, your performance excels. When you are negative, your performance is adversely affected. With various types of distress, or

The study results included that there were few differences between the male and female athletes perception of sport psychology except the males tend to view sport psychology as having to do with mental things and females viewed it as having a problem. Both genders seemed to view the barrier of using sport psychology services to be admitting you have a problem and how others (peers) would view it, embarrassment. Other conclusions from this study were that high school athlete has a positive attitude about sport psychology and want to gain a better understanding of the field. It was noted, the focus group facilitator’s background in the field of sport psychology was shared in the group and may have influenced the participates positive attitude

There are over 450,000 athletes competing at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) level across 24 different sports in the United States (NCAA, 2012). What psychological qualities separate the successful student athlete from the non-successful student athlete (i.e., a student athlete who completes their eligibility and graduates, or gets drafted into the professional level)? We know sport psychology and mental performance training can assist athletes in achieving peak performance by teaching confidence, goal setting, imagery, mental toughness, how to deal with pressure, relaxation, positive self-talk and more (Shemake, 2014). This study aims to identify if certain student athletes posses some of these characteristics without

Baseball as you may know, is a mental game. The famous New York Yankee catcher once said, “Baseball is 90 per cent mental. The other half is physical”. The use of sport psychology is vital in a game like baseball which I have an very deep background in playing and coaching. Through learning about sports psychology, it is easy to relate past experiences to different things that have been learned in class. There have been many situations that I can relate to psychology of sport, after playing in such a mental game.

Myths are commonly taken as fact when it comes to many of these areas of sport psychology. Coaches, teachers, and athletes will never change unless they inspect or are taught the facts and research behind these various theories and behaviors. This can be a large problem for those athletes who are instructed incorrectly, and it could potentially damage their futures in athletic competitions.

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.

Regarding the sport psychology consultant perception of performance profiling usefulness and impacts, a decretive analysis revealed that consultant believed profiling to be useful in providing the basic of goal, setting, and identifying strength and weakness. Also, sport psychology consultants perceive that performance profiling could be helpful in raising athlete’s awareness, evaluating,

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.

“Too much stress, or bad stress, can cause performance anxiety, which hurts your health and does not allow you to play relaxed, confident, and focused in competition,” (Cohn). Pressure added from an athlete’s coaches, parents, and teammates, can become overwhelming for a student to maintain. Team dynamics can directly affect an athlete’s performance during the game. If an athlete is not performing at their best, they run the risk of not play in future games and causing disappoint to the team. Issues between teammates are often not expressed on an individual basis, but are kept to themselves and never addressed, which is a contributor to the many reports of depression and anxiety in student-athletes (Putukian). With many other stressors present in a student-athletes day-to-day life, the added pressures of team dynamics and performance can result in the development of a mental illness. Over 50% of male athletes and over 60% of female athletes face heavy stress related to their sport in the form of pressure to win, extreme anxiety, and fear (Stress). The stresses of having to do well, not only for yourself, but for the overall team, causes many student-athletes to carry stress into their

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

The field of applied sport psychology has a history of the perception of being behind the times regarding the advancement of multicultural psychology.

Children who participate in sports are developing rapidly in sports skills, sportsmanship, and psychologically, but does this come from organized sports are just nature’s process. Children develop emotional and social benefits from participating in sports. Children experience character and leadership development through peer relations leading to an increase in self-esteem and a decrease in anxiety levels. Children will get opportunities to experience positive and negative emotions throughout their practice and games trials. It is important for the coach to understand the “psychology of youth sports and physical activity participation” (Weinberg & Gould, 2011 p.516).