Monthly Archive for April, 2023

The world of psychological science is moving forward. In this blog I propose when it is being implemented in Denmark with the DRIVEN program to promote better behaviors in people. Leading this process are two sports psychologists.

Changing people’s behaviours is often challenging and complex. Many people intend to change their behaviour but fail to act or, if they do, struggle to maintain their new behaviours. Health-care providers, parents, teachers, managers, and various organisations and communities often find it challenging to motivate others.

Understanding the mechanisms of successful behaviour change and developing effective interventions to implement such changes are the cornerstones of behaviour change science.

DRIVEN is a multidisciplinary effort, the first in a Scandinavian context, to deliver cutting-edge research, education, and consultancy on factors that support sustained behaviour change in various contexts such as health, education, the environment, and the workplace.

Our mission is to advance evidence-based research and policy on challenges and issues that are of high value for the scientific community, governmental agencies, industry, charities, policy makers, and the public.

To fulfil this mission, we harness expertise from diverse scientific disciplines, such as psychology, public health, exercise and sports science, epidemiology, nutrition, rehabilitation, education, behavioural and health economics, environmental science, digital health technology, engineering, and data mining.

Leader on the field wanted writes Franco Vanni in Repubblica.it : “Fabio Capello, who something of soccer knows, … said that in the league Inter is struggling to find a leader on the field. Then, from the height of his experience as a footballer and as a coach, he added: -The coach can prepare the match, but in difficult moments you need a player who knows how to make others listen to him. A Franco Baresi -. There are not many of Franco Baresi around, and it is true that at Inter for one reason or another all the possible leaders have ruled themselves out.” The history of soccer teaches us that many players have played this fundamental role within winning teams.

However, I also think that you have to coach another aspect that is instead about the group. I am talking about not just going in search of that one man who can get the team to listen to him, but working to increase the collective effectiveness that stimulates performance that is superior to what each one could provide individually. Technical-tactical quality is part of collective effectiveness; cohesion and conviction refer to its relational and cognitive-social aspects. So the question that needs to be asked is, “How should the players interact on the field for the purpose of showing unity and confidence in their skills as a team?” Napoleon used to say that he also won his battles with the dreams of his soldiers; this phrase is an effective metaphor for what should be meant by collective effectiveness.

The lack of this collective mentality, in my opinion, highlights that the team is united only according to the importance of the result, e.g. winning in the Champions League, but this does not allow for continuity of play during a stage race as the league is. Overall, it seems to me that there is a lack of gratitude of individual players to all the other members of the team, a lack of awareness in recognizing that it is the others who allow me to play my best. It is this understanding of the value of the collective that determines the unity of a team while its absence hinders its performance, with the consequences we know.

It is quite common to meet young athletes who have difficulty explaining their performance or understanding the reasons for their mistakes.

This is because they have not effectively developed the ability to use their sports experience to improve. The reason for including this skill among the relevant psychological competencies stems from the realization that learning and subsequent improvement are based on the continuous correction of mistakes made until optimal execution is achieved, a stage at which the athlete should be able to deliver excellent performance even in the presence of problematic psychological, relational, physical, and environmental conditions. Furthermore, since training is based on repetitive drills and at least 1,000 hours of activity per year, reflecting on this experience that is so important to the athlete is absolutely necessary to avoid training on autopilot and without taking full responsibility for how one trains.

Knowing how to use one’s past and daily sports experiences as an essential tool for one’s own improvement requires that the athlete develop a clear awareness related to one’s performance in training and competition. In fact, self-awareness is the key that opens the door to understanding one’s experiences and is the way to come to exert positive control over competitive pressure. We often hear “at some point I didn’t understand anything anymore, I don’t know what happened to me, I lost my mind.” Kenneth Ravizza, one of the most established psychologists in Major League Baseball argued that “athletes must learn the difference between the mechanical execution of a skill and the experience of the skill itself.”

Mindfulness involves the athlete being totally focused on performance, that is, on what he or she is doing at any given moment. In this way he cannot be focused on the outcome of his performance, which, on the contrary, would put even more pressure on him than he is feeling, probably reducing its quality.

Therefore, training sessions as well as the pre-competition warm-up must aim to keep the attention centered on the present; in those moments, athletes will have to perform technical actions in a condition of concentration that allows for optimal execution for them. Moreover, training, and especially its most significant phases, must never be merely an execution of an athlete’s or team’s physical and technical/tactical skills but must constitute a demonstration of their cognitive and emotional abilities. For example, in skeet shooting, athletes before beginning training do warm-up exercises that determine a general and sport-specific level of physical activation, then perform “focused shooting” exercises to ensure equally adequate activation of the mental component of performance.
The latter exercises include actions of slinging the rifle, paying attention to ensure that this movement is precise and accurate, and concentration tests to recognize that the gaze is directed toward the point from which the skeet will come out. This sequence of drills is replayed for several minutes until the shooter feels mentally and physically ready to begin. Since the start of competitions is obviously predetermined, each shooter must possess his own pre-competition routine that leads him to be ready a few minutes before the start. It thus becomes apparent that the development of awareness concerns the timing of the preparation to be carried out before the competition, the activities to be performed, as well as the mental attitude with which to carry them out in order to feel ready to compete both physically and mentally.