The Mental Aspect Of Sports Can Help You Become A Better Athlete

Staying up late to finish up an essay, or studying late at night after a long day of a physical and mental beat down, is pushed through with determination. Sports taught me determination, and it comes with work ethic. Being a student athlete also gave me leadership qualities both in the classroom and on the field. No where in the classroom will I be put into situations where quick decisions must be made and consequences are waiting to follow. The discipline that is required to be successful at a sport has only strengthened me in every aspect of my life. The discipline through sports has taught me to respect everyone, be coachable, and not to sell myself short. Everything learned through sports gives you a big advantage in school as well. For many of us, if it wasn't for sports, we wouldn't still be in school working this hard. Being a student athlete helps prepare you to catch anything life throws at you, and to handle it very well. Gold medal olympian Bob Richards stated that "One of the great lessons I've learned in athletics is that you've got to discipline your life. No matter how good you may be, you've got to be willing to cut out of your life those things that keep you from going to the top". Sports has taken me farther in life and school than I believe I could’ve taken

Motivation in sports is why people do what they do. It is also the direction and intensity of one’s effort and determination to achieve. The more motivated one is, the more likely one is to succeed.

Coaches always talk about how, “Sports do not make character, they reveal it”. By knowing this I know that the way I overcome difficulties on the field, shows how I will deal with the ups and downs in life. Sports also improve team building skills, communication skills, dedication, hard work, consistency, etc. I find if I improve on those I will be a better person on and off the field.

One of the people in the educational system I find useful are coaches. Coaches always talk about how, “Sports do not make character, they reveal it”. By knowing this I know that the way I overcome difficulties on the field, shows how I will deal with the ups and downs in life. Sports also improve team building skills, communication skills, dedication, hard work, consistency, etc. I find if I improve on those I will be a better person on and off the

My 1 page 9th grade writing assessment will be about how to train an athlete for any sport. I am going to share and or explain why I feel this topic I chose should be important to you. I think it should be an important topic to talk about because a lot of teens and kids get peer pressured to join activities that they necessarily don’t want to participate in. Also, their parents start to wonder why they aren’t playing good or as if they seem like they aren’t trying , well maybe now they understand that they have pressured them into something they are not interested in doing. Kids feel as parents don’t listen to them as much anymore about their taste and or extra curricular activities.

Being involved in high school athletics has had a huge impact on my life. It has not only taught me the meaning of hard work and persistence but giving me the opportunity to build confidence on and off the court. When i was younger i would tend to keep to myself, always sitting through class hoping to never be called on because if I were to be called on, there would always be a chance to do or say something wrong. It wasn't until later, when I came to the conclusion that I feared failure, and at that time I would rather stay quiet and give in to that fear rather than face it. It was ultimately through sports that I came to the conclusion that you can't always do everything perfectly, and in the end all I could do was take the little control

for one's mind and body work in tandem. The mind is a message center that

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.

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.

Secondly, another set of skills that I acquire is the use of persistent and determination amid goal setting. The skill has brought me this

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

4. School over Sports. This is important because no matter how good of a athlete you are education comes first.

Mental skills are a huge struggle for so many athletes, and that is because of lack of knowledge not only from players, but coaches. With lack of knowledge coaches don’t instruct their players on how to use mental skills and the benefits of it. As a coach of a recreational youth girls’ soccer team, it is my job to teach and prepare the girls to play at a higher level, whether it be club or high school, but ultimately just beyond rec soccer. At 10 and 11 years of age, teaching them how to cope with anger, or direct negativity into positivity, or any other mental skill, is crucial at this age because they are still getting down the physical skill. Learning these psychological skills will help them as they grown into more competitive athletes and better people outside of sports. Usually a PST is not made for athletes until they are around the college level, but this can benefit children as well. The main goal of creating this program outline is so that once the athletes have gotten more familiar with it and psychological skills, they will be able to self-regulate and mentally achieve their personal goals on their own.

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).

Injuries and challenges always have an impact on a athletes abilities and there physical and mental wanting to keep on playing. One challenge I had playing some of these sports is the coaches. Some coaches you have through your high school or athletic career will help you and assist you. One coach I had for track was the total opposite of that, instead of helping us, all she would do is criticize everything that a person would do wrong and ignore the team if they had questions. She wouldn’t help us resolve our problem and I found that as a challenge for me because if I needed help on some tips for running, she would not help. How I responded to this situation is by talking to her about the ways she coaches. She didn’t respond very well to what I had to say but at least I stood up and said something. She learned that I didn’t like how she was coaching and that’s how I resolved my situation with her.