Birrer, D. and Morgan, G. (2010), Psychological skills training as a way to enhance an athlete’s performance in high-intensity sports. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 20: 78-87.
In today’s professional and semi-professional sports, the thin line between winning and losing is becoming progressively thinner. At the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, the difference between first and fourth places in the men’s rowing events averaged 1.34%, with the equivalent for women being a mere 1.03%. This increasing performance density creates massive pressure. Thus, it is not surprising that in recent years, the importance of psychological skills training (PST) has been recognized, and the number of athletes using psychological training strategies has increased.
This paper aims to address the effect of PST on an athlete’s performance progress, with a special focus on a group of sports involving a high-intensity load. High-intensity sport (HIS) is characterized by an impact duration between 1 and 8min, with a very high-impact intensity and a continuous power output throughout the performance phase. Typical examples of HIS are rowing, swimming, 800 and 1500m track and field running, track cycling and flat-water canoeing.
What appears to be crucial to perform at the highest level is the presence of fear of failure. The psychological and physical impacts of fear are numerous. It affects athletes’ affective state, can reduce athletes’ motivation to train and compete, affects athletes’ self-confidence and their volitional and attentional skills, produces feelings of anxiety and increases muscle tension, which can lead to loss of coordination.
A number of strategies have been proposed for performers to modify their arousal state: psych-up psych-down techniques involving self-talk, imagery, physical activity, short or cued relaxation; pre-performance and performance routines; mental rehearsal strategies; stress management and mood-enhancement strategies.
Most research shows that these strategies can reduce anxiety or reduce the interpretation of symptoms of performance anxiety as debilitating. Almost all studies have failed to show a clear impact on performance. One reason might be that it is still not clear whether and when anxiety or fear exerts a beneficial effect, what arousal level is performance facilitating and under which conditions the same level might be debilitating.
It’s relevant the early recognition and control of anxiety symptoms were associated with superior performance in elite athletes. This statement indicates that two factors are important for competitive athletes:
- Athletes have to know their individual performance-facilitating state of arousal before and during the competition.
- Athletes have to be aware of their current state of arousal and how they can influence it in the direction of the performance-facilitating state.
However, considering the amount of research that has been conducted in this area, there is surprisingly little sports-specific knowledge regarding the individual optimal level of arousal.
Athletes can interpret the intensity of anxiety-related symptoms or arousal as either facilitative (athletes are termed “facilitators”) or debilitative (athletes are termed “debilitators”) toward performance and that this differentiation might be critical in the coping efficacy before a competition. Facilitators and debilitators experience more or less the same feelings in phases before a competition, but the intensity is less in facilitators.
Facilitators appeared to be capable of using a repertoire of psychological skills, which enabled them to reinterpret negative cognitive and somatic sensations as performance facilitating. In contrast, debilitators tried to use the same psychological skills but were not able to internally control these skills and experienced a loss of control (inability to attain a positive pre-performance state), lower confidence and an ongoing debilitative interpretation of the sensory input showed that it might be possible to restructure athletes’ interpretation of anxiety and confidence symptoms with:
- multimodal intervention (imagery, rationalization, cognitive restructuring, goal-setting and self-talk),
- positive effects on their confidence
- anxiety appraisal as well as their performance.
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