Monthly Archive for October, 2024
To deliver effective performance in situational sports, it’s essential to understand what’s happening on the field of play. We’re talking about opposition sports, where two athletes compete for victory (such as fencing, tennis, table tennis, boxing, martial arts, and combat sports), but also team sports.
In these sports, having technical skills and knowing how to execute an effective strategy are fundamental to understanding how the game will develop during a match. If I have to write an essay, I need to know grammar and be able to articulate my thoughts into coherent, comprehensible sentences, using these skills to deliver a specific content. The same goes for a musician performing a piece: they know the music, the structure to follow, and then, during the concert, they must interpret the piece in the best possible way.
It’s therefore crucial to teach athletes to understand what’s happening during a match, how the opponent is responding to the strategy being used, and to decide whether to keep playing the same way or adjust something. This kind of awareness and the decisions that follow should never be taken for granted; they must be trained. In this way, the young athlete becomes prepared not merely for technical-tactical execution but for understanding and adapting to the unfolding of the game.
I’d like to reflect on the word “relaxation,” a term often used today to emphasize its absence rather than a condition one enjoys seeking out. I should mention that I’ve practiced autogenic training and other relaxation exercises since my university days, back when I was writing my thesis on cognitive processes during hypnosis. It was then that a friend and I came across Schultz’s work, and since that time, I’ve continued down this path without interruption. I’m not sure how widespread it is today, but among all the people I know—students, athletes, coaches, friends, and so on—no one ever seems to bring up these topics. Many engage in sports and physical activities, listen to music, or do other things to recover, for enjoyment, or to relax. These are positive activities for a person but distinct from the concept of relaxation, which implies the activation of the body’s recovery processes.
Relaxing is the exact opposite of daily life for most people; it requires a short amount of time for practice, around 10 minutes, but it needs to be done daily. This often scares people, who don’t think they can find that time. Another hurdle to overcome is that many respond by saying, “I have so many commitments that I just can’t do it,” without realizing that this is precisely the reason they should. In the smartphone era, others think they’re relaxing by playing games; in this case, the mind is distracted from daily life by doing something enjoyable, but this isn’t truly relaxing—it’s simply closing a door on the worries and concerns of everyday life.
On the other hand, everyone spends their time as they see fit, and there would be no point in relaxing if one doesn’t believe it could be helpful
Often, when correcting a mistake, teachers or coaches ask for more effort or acknowledge that the young person has worked hard and give them credit for it. Certainly, it’s essential to recognize the effort put into an activity, but for those guiding the learning, it is not enough to do just that.
Many parents or teachers say to praise effort, not the outcome. Personally, I think that’s wrong: you should praise the effort that led to the outcome or learning progress; tie the praise to that. It’s not just about effort but also about strategy. The student should be supported in finding another strategy. Effective teachers and coaches who foster a growth mindset in young people consistently support learning strategies and show how those strategies led to success.
Carol Dweck rightly argues that many parents and teachers who have a growth mindset themselves still fail to convey it to children, as they try to protect their confidence, focus on their abilities, and boost their self-esteem or shield them from failure. However, this approach inadvertently conveys anxiety about abilities.
Together with Kyla Haimovitz, Dweck has shown that the way a parent reacts to a child’s failure conveys a mindset, regardless of the parent’s own mindset. If parents react to their child’s failures as though they were something negative, rushing in, showing anxiety, and reassuring them by saying, “Oh, not everyone is good at math, don’t worry, you’re good at other things,” the child perceives this as something important and fixed. This way, the child develops a fixed mindset, even if the parent has a growth mindset.
If, on the other hand, the parent reacts to a child’s failure as an opportunity to improve learning, saying, “Okay, what does this experience teach us? What’s the next step? Should we talk to the teacher to understand how to learn this better?” then the child comes to understand that abilities can be developed.
Sharing is a word that should be placed at the center of interest for everyone in any workgroup.
Sharing requires agreement on goals, problems, solutions, and an evaluation system. It requires spending time together—technicians, physical trainers, doctors, physiotherapists, and psychologists—to understand each other’s work and how each can contribute to the work of the others.
For example, when discussing injuries, the question is how the various professionals involved (doctor, physiotherapist, psychologist) can collaborate to promote the athlete’s recovery. Or, in the field of physical preparation, how certain training sessions could improve the athletes’ resilience if the coach and psychologist worked together on this goal?
Unfortunately, this kind of collaboration happens very rarely in our sports context, and it only occurs when the professionals’ interests are aligned in this direction, regardless of the sports organization they work for. More commonly, deficiencies in one area are attributed solely to the individual expert, and the larger organization is never questioned. Often, when an athlete or team performs poorly in a competition, it’s said they lacked personality, and the psychologist is then asked to do more to eliminate this weakness.
Over the last 15 years, the situation has changed significantly in many Western countries. In the UK, every national team has a psychologist working full-time and exclusively for a four-year period with a specific program, often in collaboration with the staff. In France, psychologists at INSEP, the high-performance center for athletes, work similarly and participate in the Olympics. In Belgium and the Netherlands, the role of a “behavioral performance or development director” has existed for years, managing this work and guiding performance psychologists, well-being psychologists, and psychotherapists who work with teams. In the US, a similar, highly structured system exists, also addressing psychopathological issues.
Mindfulness and ACT under Pressure: Lessons from the Olympic Games
Dr. Peter Haberl
November 5th, 2024
Language: English (Translated live available)
Time: 14:00 UTC (New York, 9:00; Sao Paulo, 11:00; Beijing, 22:00; Seoul, 22:00)
Register Here: https://issponline.org/meetings-resources/webinar/
Today, we ask parents to adopt an educational approach that promotes the development of self-esteem in their children, with a focus on several key aspects. Here are some important practices we can ask parents to implement:
1. Active Listening and Emotional Support
- Ask parents to listen attentively to their children, respecting their emotions and feelings without judgment or rushing to solve problems. This helps the child feel understood and valued.
- Create a safe environment for emotional expression, where children feel free to express their vulnerability.
2. Encourage Autonomy
- Allow children to make age-appropriate decisions and learn from their mistakes. This fosters a sense of competence and responsibility, strengthening their self-confidence.
- Assign appropriate tasks that stimulate a sense of accomplishment, such as helping with household chores or taking on small personal responsibilities.
3. Acknowledge Efforts, Not Just Results
- Encourage effort and perseverance, rather than praising only results or performance. It’s important to teach that value doesn’t depend on external achievements but on personal effort and growth.
- Avoid comparisons between siblings or friends, which can undermine self-esteem and create negative competition.
4. Model Positive Self-Esteem
- Be a role model of self-confidence: children learn a lot by observing their parents. It’s important for parents to demonstrate a balanced attitude towards themselves, never demeaning their own abilities or worth.
- Teach self-compassion, showing how to accept mistakes without excessive self-criticism.
5. Build an Environment of Unconditional Love
- Regularly express love and affection, regardless of the child’s successes or failures. Knowing they are loved unconditionally strengthens inner security and self-esteem.
- Value the child’s uniqueness, recognizing and appreciating their individual qualities and talents.
6. Foster Positive Communication
- Use positive language, highlighting the child’s strengths and abilities. Constructive criticism should always be accompanied by suggestions for improvement, avoiding negative labels.
- Help children solve problems independently, offering support and guidance but allowing them to find solutions.
7. Teach Resilience
- Teach children how to face and overcome challenges, promoting the idea that mistakes and failures are a natural part of life and an opportunity for growth.
- Help develop a growth mindset, encouraging them to believe they can improve over time with effort.
8. Support Social Relationships
- Encourage participation in social activities and relationships with peers where children can build confidence in their social and interpersonal skills.
- Help develop conflict resolution skills, encouraging peaceful resolution of disagreements.
In summary, we ask parents to offer a combination of support, autonomy, affection, and emotional skill-building to help children develop a strong and positive sense of self, preparing them to face life’s challenges with confidence and resilience.
Giffin, C.E., Schinke, R.J., Wagstaff, C., Quartiroli, A., Larivière, M., Coholic, D., Li, Y. (2024). Advancing Safe Sport Through Occupational Health and Safety a Thematic Meta-Synthesis Exploring Abuse within Elite Adult Sport Contexts. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 55(1), 1-31.
Occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMS) promote healthy workplace environments through regulating hazards and health promotion activities. Abuse within elite sports is one hazard that threatens the health and safety of elite adult athletes. Despite the widespread existence of evidence-informed guidelines to safeguard youth athletes, few safeguards have been developed for elite adult athletes, despite sport being their primary occupation. Through a critical realist lens, we used a thematic meta-synthesis to search, appraise and synthesize 20 articles conducted with elite adult athletes who have experienced abuse.
We present three themes to highlight: (a) how abuse types (sexual, psychology, physical, and financial) are fluid and expand over time, (b) the contextual factors that influence abuse (individual, relational, structural, cultural), and (c) temporal impacts of abuse throughout athletes’ early, late, and post-sport careers.
The present work is discussed in relation to perceived advancement of OHSMS and safe sport through protecting athletes from the hazards present within their occupational environments.
Lee, Y., Sung, H., Cho, H. (2024). A longitudinal study on the bidirectional relationship between adolescents’ physical activity and life satisfaction. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 55(4), 313-333.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the longitudinal relationship between physical activity and life satisfaction in adolescents. We used Autoregressive Cross-lagged Model (ACLM) to investigate the longitudinal relationship and utilized four years of data (N = 1,897) from the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey, which was conducted by the National Youth Policy Institute. Results showed that physical activity and life satisfaction were found to be s over time.
In addition, we found that physical activity at a previous time point had a significant and consistent impact on life satisfaction at subsequent time points. Conversely, life satisfaction at a previous time point was found to have a consistent effect on physical activity at the subsequent time point. This study demonstrates that physical activity and life satisfaction mutually influence and impact each other, indicating that they have a reciprocal relationship.
In conclusion, it is noteworthy that life satisfaction has a strong influence in predicting physical activity, and that it needs to be considered as a priority and acts as a motivational factor for specific behaviors.
