Monthly Archive for December, 2015

Book review: Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology – 6th Edition

Published on December 29, 2015 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Libri, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: daniel gould, Human Kinetics, robert weinberg.

Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology 6th Edition

with Web Study Guide

Daniel Gould and Robert Weinberg

Human Kinetics, 2015, p.649

www.humankinetics.com/FoundationsOfSportAndExercisePsychology

As the leading text in sport and exercise psychology, “Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology, Sixth Edition With Web Study Guide,” provides a thorough introduction to key concepts in the field. This text is for me the best manual about this topic integrating updated research data and professional tools regarding sport and exercise.

The book is organized in seven-part and key points are highlighted throughout to help readers to learn the main concepts.

Part I – Beginning your journey – Introduces the sport and exercise psychology definition, its history the differences between these two specialties, providing an international perspective of the present and future trends.

Part II – Learning about participants – is devoted to understand the personality studies and its measures, identifying the relation between cognitive strategies and success and the role of the expert in understanding personality. Others two chapters talk about the motivation and the relation between self-regulation (arousal, stress, anxiety) and performance. There is always the focus regarding how to apply these knowledges in professional practice.

Part III – Understanding sport and exercise environments – comprehends two chapters one about competition and cooperation and the other on feedback and motivation. To the PE teachers and coaches provides a lot of useful information theory based about the interpersonal relation with their pupils in the different settings (sport, physical education and exercise).

Part IV – Focusing on group processes – is another section focused to provide theoretical and practical information on group management, leadership and interpersonal communication

Part V – Improving performance – is probably the section more useful for all the practitioners or motivated to be involved in program of mental coaching. There are five chapter on arousal regulation, imagery, self-confidence, goal setting and concentration. From my side the most important content of this part is the first devoted to explain what, why and who should conduct psychological skills training programs.

Part VI – Enhancing health and well-being – this topic has become increasingly important in the last 20 years and the authors have devoted four chapters, regarding: exercise and psychological well-being, exercise and behavior adherence, athletic injuries and psychology, addictive and unhealthy behaviors, burnout and overtraining.

Part VII – Facilitating psychological growth and development – is a section with different topics such as children and sport, aggression in sport, and character, fair play and good sporting behavior.

It also includes web study with: 21 video demonstrations of sport psychology techniques, 30 interviews with leading experts and 89 interactive activities.

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Mindfulness enhances adolescents’ memory

Published on December 28, 2015 in Allenatori, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi and Stress. 0 Comments Tags: adolescenti, memoria, mindfulness.

A Randomized Controlled Trial Examining the Effect of Mindfulness Meditation on Working Memory Capacity in Adolescents

Quach, D., Jastrowski Mano, K.E., and Alexander, K, J. Adolesc Health 2015

This is the first study to provide support for the benefits of short-term mindfulness practice, specifically mindfulness meditation, in improving work memory capacity. The study has involved 198 adolescents recruited from a large public middle school in southwest United States and randomly assigned to mindfulness meditation, hatha yoga, or a waitlist control condition. Results highlight the importance of investigating the components of mindfulness-based interventions among adolescents given that such interventions may improve cognitive function.

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Waiting that the role of sport psychologist is required again among the requested criteria to become in Italy Elite Football School, the youth and school department of the Italian Football Association has nevertheless made a significant step forward in the recognition of this professional. It has decided and informed the football schools that the choice of the psychologist to use in the clubs will take place only among those who attended a master’s degree in sport psychology. Therefore, from next year it will not be enough to be graduated in psychology but it will need to have a title proving to have this specific training in sport psychology. The recognition of the specificity of this professional field is important because as with the doctor there are specific skills that the psychologists ignore and instead are needed to work with the young children and adolescents and there are clinical or psychotherapeutic skills to be used by the psychologists must be adequate to the sport context in which they will work.

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Lazio: desperate tears

Published on December 16, 2015 in Allenatori, Calcio, Generale, Mental coaching and Stress. 0 Comments Tags: calciatori, lazio.

LAZIO PRESS – There are pictures that are worth a thousand words and the tears in Lazio is one of them. “Tears are a desperate behavior, the players are no longer able to do what before they could naturally”, says the sports psychologist, Alberto Cei. As reported by La Gazzetta dello Sport, and it’s a team that no longer knows what to do to get out of this crisis. Here is the solution to the problem: “The tension does not help, it should be loose, but it’s easier said than achieved. The bulk of the pressure comes from the outside, from an environment that demands better results and there is not a solution. Something must be done within the group, but it’s not simple. “

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Parent’s Code of Conduct

Published on December 15, 2015 in Calcio, Generale, Giovani, Tennis, Tiro a volo and Young and Football. 0 Comments Tags: bambino, codice, condotta, genitori.

The top concern of Canadians is poor parental behaviour (60%), followed by lack of access for some people (48%) and violence (48%).

If children are to grow and develop in their sport or physical activity, an environment of positive communication and respect must exist. Parents should observe the following Code of Conduct with their child athletes. The following code is taken from a resource manual developed for community coaches by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES).

I will remember that my child plays sport for his or her enjoyment, not for mine.
I will encourage my child to play by the rules and to resolve conflicts without resorting to hostility or violence.
I will teach my child that doing one’s best is as important as winning, so that my child will never feel defeated by the outcome of a game/event.
I will make my child feel like a winner every time by offering praise for competing fairly and trying hard.
I will never ridicule or yell at my child for making a mistake or losing a competition.
I will remember that children learn best by example.
I will applaud good players’ performances by both my child’s team and their opponents.
I will not force my child to participate in sports.
I will never question the official’s judgement or honesty in public.
I will support all efforts to remove verbal and physical abuse from children’s sporting activities.
I will respect and show appreciation for the trained volunteer coaches who give their time to provide sport activities for my child, understanding that I have a responsibility to be a part of my child’s development.

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Everyone can walk on the water if…

Published on December 14, 2015 in Allenatori, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi and Stress. 0 Comments

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The boules sport could participated to the Olympic Games

Published on December 13, 2015 in Generale, Olimpiadi and Stress. 0 Comments Tags: bocce, boules.

The Fédération Internationale de Boules is a candidate to become a discipline of the Olympic program in the 2024 Games. This proposal stems also from the consideration that for that edition of the Olympic Games are running both Rome and Paris, and the bowls between Italy and France put together approximately 20 million practitioners.

Besides the number of practitioners is, however, possible to consider the bowls rightly considered a precision sport as are archery, shooting, golf and curling.

Accuracy and speed – It’s an activity requiring to combine together the technical precision and speed, so that the concentration should be fully oriented to the technical execution.
Activation – Boules require intermediate levels of activation, so that the execution of the shot takes place in a condition of controlled heart rate and the athlete performs the action in a condition of semi-apnea. As with any sport, stress management is essential to compete at the best.
Error handling – The way to recover from a mistake is to wait the opponents mistake or wait the next turn. It cannot recover from a mistake with an increase of commitment or doing something different from the usual behavior. It serves, however, to have a strategy to refocus on the technical action and execute the shot.
Concentration – In the precision sports, there are in the same event peaks of the total focusing just before every action and periods of waiting in which the concentration is directed generally on the event. In fact, in boules, each competition is composed of a series of shots: therefore the athletes are fully concentrated in the few seconds before each shot, as a result, while it’s the turn of the others (opponents or teammate) he/she is in a waiting state with a diffuse attention, till the moment of the new shot.

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The best athletic track in the world

Published on December 11, 2015 in Allenatori, Corsa and Giovani. 0 Comments Tags: atletica, danimarca, pista.

Athletics Exploratorium_01

Denmark made the running track most beautiful in the world. It’s not a running track traditional, in part in the form of the outer ring. It’s what happens inside that ring that is gorgeous: the Athletics Exploratorium in Odense is a very special athletic field, combining the traditional track & field disciplines with 12 islands for workouts allowing to develop particular skills and integrate the crossfit into the usual workout routine.

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