The Mental Aspect Of Sports Performance Essay

The next similarity is having the passion for the game. We all have passions in our lives, although many of us might not be clear with that passion yet, many athletes have found their passions When athletes have the passion for the game it can move athletes through tough times and stay hungry for the next game. Passion gives athletes a reason to work hard and be the best player they can be. With a passion, athletes have specific targets to shoot for. According to Dr. Stankovich “Many years ago it dawned on me how important it is in life to have a passion and purpose — to be dedicated to the nth degree, and to have specific targets to shoot for in the big picture of life. I have learned that without true passion (also loosely known as intrinsic motivation), it is extremely difficult to truly reach your full potential in life.” Although it is debatable wither passion can be taught, passion can be looked for.

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,

Early specialization is characterized by year-round training in a single activity, beginning at a young age, apart from other activities with the goal of developing expertise (Ericsson et al., 1993). Ericsson and his colleagues studied pianists and violinists of varying skill levels and discovered that the expert musicians typically began training between ages four and five while the non-experts started training later in life. Moreover, a pattern emerged indicating that the level of performance attained related to the amount of deliberate practice. By age 20 the best performers had spent over 10,000 hours, an intermediate group had put in 8,000 hours, and the least accomplished group only 5,000 hours. In their theory of deliberate practice, Ericsson et al. (1993) suggest that talent plays no role in the development of expertise, rather it is an effortful activity motivated by the goal of improving performance. Typically, deliberate practice requires a high amount of concentration and must be carried out over time. The obligation to significant amounts of deliberate practice in one sport from a young age has been demonstrated as one approach to developing elite athletes (Helsen et al., 1998).

There are a lot of aspects that should be taken into account when determining what makes an athlete successful. One could argue that natural ability is one of the determining factors which leads to success. For example, if an athlete has dreams of playing in the NBA then height makes a difference. There aren’t many successful players in the league under six feet tall. One could argue that level of competition plays a role in the development of an athlete. This could include the skill level of the opponent or outside factors such as playing conditions or game circumstances. These types of arguments play a role in athlete success, but will not be used in this paper because they are factors that are out of the athlete’s control. This paper

Authors, Sanneh and Heinrich describe in “Why We Run” and “What Could Be Better Than a Touchdown”, that mental agility is just as important as physical prowess in sports. They use many examples with how football and running needs both of these elements to perform their best while the sports they do.

Let’s look more in depth at the visual aspect of decision making. Visual information is critical for any team. The visual (spatial) learning system is when a person (i.e. athlete) prefers learning through images, colors, pictures and maps to gather information. Cueing and priming are key features in the sport realm that are integral in visual attention (Decision Making in Sports, 2004). When an athlete is confident of their opponent’s next move, their

•Concentration on the range of FUNdamental sports skills, such as throwing, catching, jumping and running

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.

Many athletes would agree that they have felt butterflies in their stomach or a sudden rush of adrenaline before an important game. This feeling can either translate into legendary performances or monumental failures. According to Sharon D. Hoar (2007), to fully comprehend anxiety’s effect on performance, one must understand the discrimination between two unique sets of sources: trait and state anxiety, and cognitive and somatic anxiety. Anxiety symptoms are numerous and unique to every athlete. Hoar suggests that athletes might report cognitive symptoms (eg. Inability to focus), somatic symptoms (eg. Sweaty palms), or both. The author discusses a variety of sources of anxiety and argues that it can have both positive and negative effects

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.

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 effects of optimal arousal and performance has been studied extensively in psychology. Throughout sports psychology it is known that there is an optimal arousal level at which athletes perform their best. In previous studies surrounding the relationship between emotional states and performance, have been examined using the individual zone of optimal functioning (IZOF). IZOF is a sport-specific framework that describes the relationship between emotional experiences and success on the basis of individual patterns (Ruiz, Raglin, & Hanin, 2015). In a review done by Ruiz et al. (2015), it was found over 183 IZOF based studies making it one of the most popular models for an analyzing subjective experience and athletic performance. From past research the IZOF model has found that anxiety heavily influences performance of athletes and each athlete has an individually optimal level of anxiety, which with probability will lead to a successful performance (Hanin. 1978, 1986, 1989).

Specifically, they engaged in various “invasion” sports, where the goal is to move into the opponent’s territory to score (e.g. soccer, basketball, and hockey). The amount of deliberate practice was an important determinant for the emergence of expertise for the AFL athletes (Berry et al., 2008). In a more expansive study, Memmert et al. (2010) confirm the same results with respect to a wide range of team sports: basketball, handball, field hockey, and soccer. They state that there is a need of specific training over a long period of time, the “10-year rule,” for the attainment of expertise.

“Sports are for fun, but they also offer benefits and lessons that carry over into all aspects of life”. This well-known anonymous quotation conveys the message that sport is the game which has some rules and custom. It is not only for fun and entertainment, but there are also some benefits of playing sports and which gives some important lessons for life. Every kind of physical sports is healthy because it involves running, jumping, stretching, mind skills and much more. There are so many sports available in the world nowadays, but we can categorize them by the numbers of players, the three main categories are individual sport, dual sport and team sport.