Tag Archive for 'abilità'

Mental coaching in high-intensity sports

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.

The fundamental psychological skills

Identifying basic psychological skills is a daunting task that only a few researchers have approached. Research results on this topic are scarce, and there is not complete agreement on what basic psychological skills are.

Based on this analysis, I decided to establish an a priori criterion that would allow their identification. The criterion adopted is that the basic skills to be developed are those that have the widest scope of application during sporting activity regardless of the sport practiced and the level of mastery of the athlete, and that can be learned and improved during that stage of development called “training to train.” There are four psychological skills chosen and they concern: self-control, mental imagination, talking to oneself and learning from experience. They can be considered fundamental skills since they enable the young person to experience training in a conscious and positive way.

Autori

Abilità psicologiche di base

Vealey (1988) Volontà, consapevolezza di sé, autostima e fiducia
Hardy, Graham e Gould (1996) Goal setting, rilassamento, immaginazione mentale e dialogo con se stessi
Durand-Bush, Salmela e Green-Deemers (2001) Goal setting, impegno e fiducia
Ricvald, e Peterson (2003) Impegno e dedizione
Weinberg e Gould (2007) Regolazione dell’attivazione, immaginazione mentale, goal setting e concentrazione.

 

The acquisition of these skills is analogous, for example, to knowledge of a foreign language, which can also be prefigured as a basic skill that expands opportunities for communication and understanding of the world regardless of the domain in which the individual will apply it. The choice to identify these four psychological skills as basic factors is largely coincident with what has been proposed by Hardy, Graham and Gould (1996) from which it differs in that it does not consider goal setting but rather the ability to learn from experience as a priority competence. The choice to introduce another competency is due to the reason that the skills proposed here are to be acquired in an age range corresponding to late childhood and early adolescence, years in which understanding the value of experience is basic to being aware of the quality of one’s engagement and how one learns. Further supporting this are the numerous data showing that underlying the belief that one knows how to cope with sporting situations is the evaluation of one’s past experiences in relation to that task.

 

 

Mind skills in gymnastic over 14

  • Routine: Total command of the routine, regardless of competitive environment and situation.
  • Recovery: Focus on recovery and regeneration strategies
  • Mental skills: Imagery, concentration, emotional control, positive self-talk and relaxation, self-regulation, adaptive perfectionism and self-confidence
  • Team: Team competitive events bring different pressures, and require development and management of team work skills
  • Media: Managing interviews and media events
  • Training: Managing distractions and interruptions in training, while maintaining peak performance over the long term
  • Coach: Takes a stronger role in decision-making, working in partnership with the coach
  • Ethics: relating to competition and social maturity
  • Life: Balance through outside interests and friends, education
(Source: Adapted from http://www.gymcan.org/uploads/gcg_ltad_en.pdf)

Toughness makes the difference between winners and losers

I was asked what is the decisive psychological characteristic for an athlete. My idea is that there are many skills that must be developed from the basic ones (self-control, imagery, constructive self-talk and learn from experience) to advanced covering such as stress management and the attention training to those relating to the lifestyle of the athlete.

But what makes the difference between winners and losers? Their reaction to competitive pressure, challenges and mistakes.

The psychological ability that emerges in these moments is the toughness; we can even call it perseverance, grit or resilience. Basically it means to compete or train at the best even after an error occurs, when tired, in times of greatest stress, when aware that you must do absolutely the best.

If they are not supported by toughness the other psychological skills will get worse. An athlete can have a good self-talk  but in decisive moments if not supported by toughness, his/her self-talk can become negative. An athlete knows what to look for and how to adapt him/herself to the race situations, but faced with an unexpected can lose this ability, if it’s not supported by the toughness, which is the conviction to be able to compete at the best in these moments too.

Therefore the question is: how and how often is trained this skill?

Children have to practice different sports

Skill + motivation + attitude = success

Skill is what you’re capable of doing.

Motivation determines what you do.

Attitude determines how well you do it.

(Lou Holtz)

and remember:

Goal of psychological counseling in top sport

  • Developing/improving athlete psychological skills to cope with the races
  • Psychological assessment of the athletes
  • Advice for coaches on specific issues of interest to them
  • Solutions for individual athletes problems that coaches no longer know how to cope
  • Collaboration in the management of the group outside workout
  • Psychological counseling to athletes and coaches during competition
  • Competitive stress management of athletes, coaches and staff
  • Athlete wellbeing improvement and management extra-sport life

New fields of mental coaching

The mental aspect of sport is not only related on technical or tactical training. This aspect is only part although important. I would say that the first aspect of the mental coaching concerns the implementation of the daily life of an athlete, and then his/her daily lifestyle. Nutrition, sleep, friends and family are significant aspects of the success. In many sports, for example, weight control is an essential aspect  of the performance and live in a conscious and positive these aspects increases the athlete well-being. Research conducted by the United States Olympic Committee found that family and friends are needed for success as they provide economic support, encouragement and emotional stability. The second aspect refers to the mental component of fitness. Feeling fit and ready to face any situation of their athletic performance is an essential part of self-confidence and viceversa. In fact, the motivation and the mental capacity to resist effectively to physical fatigue and exercise intensity promote the quality of the training sessions. Moreover, in many sports you should develop abilities not depending of other technical skills and who are however crucial to determine the result. I think the serve in volleyball and tennis, free throws in basketball, penalties in football, kicks in rugby, start in motor sports or sailing. These situations need to be trained mentally with accuracy.

Do you coach yourself to compete?

When the young athletes have acquired the technical skills required by the sport they enjoy and have become skilled in the execution of specific sport actions, it becomes important to train them to compete. These are the goals of the coaching that takes place from 16 years for most of the sports and that will lead some to become world-class athletes. One should not confuse the acquired skill with the ability to provide an adequate performance at their own level. Indeed, it’s not difficult to meet young teenagers capable, good from a technical standpoint but not ready to compete. For this reason a part of the training, that with the increase of age will become more significant and wide should be dedicated to achieve the purpose of teaching the athlete to give their best in terms of comparison with other athletes. The coaches should not be afraid to acknowledge that this is an essential goal of their work and the practice must be oriented in this direction. This type of training is intended to teach the athletes to maintain the quality of their performance under the competitive pressure.

Mistakes can be as allies

Those who want to improve in any business should be aware that if they want to achieve this goal, they should definitely learn from mistakes. It’s a phrase that it’s often repeated by those who are responsible for the training of young, but seldom they explain how to do and more often I have heard from a coach: “You never learn.” The athletes have two important allies : their skills  and the errorsthey commits, both are extremely significant for the improvement .

Everyone is convinced that the skills of the young athletes represent their strengths, skills that are showed in each field where they train or compete .

But mistakes can be regarded as allies?

Of course they are! As mistakes are the only way to train yourself to get out of troubles and to coach attention and emotions to remain positively oriented success even in those moments.

The young male and female athletes need to be mentally trained to take this attitude, without which they cannot develop their full potential.