Tag Archive for 'dialogo interno'

Teaching athletes to develop a positive self talk

Published on November 14, 2024 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The coach plays a fundamental role in teaching athletes to develop positive and constructive self-talk, which is crucial for improving performance and managing stress during competition. Here are some strategies coaches can use to guide athletes in this process:

1. Educate About Self-Talk

The coach can start by explaining what self-talk is, how it affects performance, and why it is important. Often, athletes aren’t aware of their own thoughts or how they impact their emotions and actions. Educating them to recognize self-talk is the first step.

2. Replace Negative Thoughts with Positive Ones

Encourage athletes to identify negative thoughts (e.g., “I’ll never make it” or “I’m sure I’ll mess up”) and replace them with positive or neutral thoughts (e.g., “I trained well, I can do this” or “I’ll just focus on the next step”). This process takes practice and consistency but is key to building a winning mindset.

3. Use Positive Affirmations

Affirmations are motivational phrases or words athletes can repeat to themselves to build confidence. The coach can help each athlete find affirmations that fit their character and goals, such as “I am strong and prepared,” “I can overcome challenges,” or “I trust my abilities.”

4. Visualization Techniques

Visualization is a powerful technique that helps athletes replace negative thoughts with positive mental images. The coach can guide athletes to visualize their success, the correct technique, and moments of optimal performance. This not only trains the mind but helps them mentally prepare to face competition with greater confidence.

5. Create Pre-Game and Pre-Training Routines

Pre-competition or pre-training routines, such as a short motivational speech or mantra, can help athletes enter a positive and focused mindset. Repetitive routines and rituals teach athletes to quickly access constructive self-talk.

6. Build Resilience and Error Management Skills

It’s essential to teach athletes to view mistakes as growth opportunities rather than failures. Constructive self-talk can help athletes manage errors and recover quickly. The coach should reinforce a growth mindset by praising effort and improvement, even in the case of mistakes or losses.

7. Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness techniques help athletes stay in the “here and now,” observing their thoughts without judgment and focusing on the present moment. The coach can guide athletes to practice short mindfulness sessions to increase awareness of their self-talk, improving stress management and concentration.

8. Self-Talk Writing Exercises

A practical exercise is to have athletes write down their recurring thoughts, both positive and negative, in a notebook. This way, they can become aware of limiting beliefs and work to transform them. The coach can provide feedback on these exercises to help athletes reframe thoughts positively.

9. Post-Game or Post-Training Reflection

After a game or practice, the coach can reflect with the athletes on how they felt mentally. Exploring which thoughts helped or limited them and how these thoughts affected their performance. This helps athletes learn to evaluate the effect of their self-talk and make adjustments in the future.

10. Model Positive Self-Talk

Finally, the coach should embody positive and constructive self-talk, showing athletes how to face challenges with a proactive attitude. When the coach speaks constructively and reinforces positive language, athletes are more likely to adopt the same approach.

Conclusion

These tools, if applied consistently, help athletes develop a mindset geared toward growth and success.

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Self-talk in football

Published on October 31, 2022 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Continuous mistakes in the soccer league, from Bentancur’s against Porto to Sassuolo- Napoli highlight that many players probably do not have a self-talk that gives them instructions on how to play at certain times and that supports their toughenss to continue to strive at the best. These are big mistakes that crack any tactical idea of a team and of whose importance I don’t think teams and coaches are fully aware and acting to change. Here are some scientific facts that demonstrate their importance in soccer.

Self-talk may affect sport performance. There is positive correlation between performance enhancement, positive self-talk (which boosts confidence and belief in one’s ability), and instructional self-talk (which diverts the focus of attention on to certain elements of a movement to increase attentional focus, thereby helping execution).

Daftari, Fauzee, and Akbari (2010) examined the perceived positive and negative effects of self-talk on football performance on Iranian elite-level football players (members of the national team). The participants of this study were 25 Iranian male professional footballers (mean age 27 years). The results demonstrated that the perceived effects of self-talk on professional footballers in real performance contexts can be categorized in two main categories: positive and negative.

Positive effects comprised more than 80% of the perceived effects of self-talk, while negative effects comprised less than 20% of the responses. The three most cited positive effects of self-talk were:

  • “It enhances coordination with teammates (15.6%)”
  • “It enhances focus and attention (12.5%)”
  • “It promotes decision making skills (11.4%)”

The results indicate that the perceived effects of self-talk among these participants were to:

  • Increase players’ coordination through mental rehearsal of critical situations
  • Enhance athletes’ concentration and sharpen the accuracy of their movements
  • Boost their ability to make correct decision with precision in the shortest time
(Source: Farina e Cei, 2019)

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The self-talk relevance

Published on August 25, 2022 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Libri, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Van Raalte, Vincent, and Brewer (2016) provided a definition that emphasizes the linguistic features of self-talk. According to them, self-talk is ‘the syntactically recognizable articulation of an internal position that can be expressed internally or out loud, where the sender of the message is also the intended receiver’ (p. 141). The addition of the term ‘syntactically recognizable’ is of particular importance since it distinguishes self-talk from other verbalizations (such as shouts of frustration like aaahhhh!), self-statements made through gestures, and self-statements made outside of the context of formal language. Defining self-talk as an ‘articulation of an internal position’ also contributes to anchor its meaning within the individual and places the origin of self-talk in consciousness and information processing.

Self-talk has many potential applications, including breaking bad habits and sustaining efforts in acquiring new skills and is normally categorized in 3 types: positive, instructional and negative.

Positive self-talk focuses on increasing energy and efforts but does not carry any task-related clue (e.g., ‘I can do it’). Positive self-talk thus shapes our minds with thoughts enabling us to manage difficult situations and stress more effectively. It also increases motivation and it is therefore essential for athletes to attain consistent and optimal performance (Blumenstein & Lidor, 2007).

Instructional self-talk helps the performers’ understanding of task requirements by facilitating their attendance to task relevant cues that aid the players’ concentration during task execution. As such instructional self-talk can be said to help athletes in focusing on the technical aspects of the performance and in improving their motor skills (Hardy, Begley, & Blanchfield, 2015).

Negative self-talk is critical and gets in the way of a person’s reaching goals. Negative selftalk thus interferes with a positive mindset, creates a failure mentality, deflates self-confidence, reduces motivation, generates anxiety, and disrupts optimal arousal (Burton & Raedeke 2008).

Unfortunately, coaches in many football academies display a considerable lack of knowledge concerning the training of players’ mental skills (Harwood & Anderson 2015). This crucial lack of knowledge has determined an under appreciation of the contribution of both concentration and self-talk to elite football performance.

Source: Farina, M. and Cei, A. (2019). Concentration and self-talk in football. In Konter, E., J. Beckmann and T.M. Loughead (Eds.), Football psychology. New York: Routledge.

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Concentration and self-talk in football

Published on September 23, 2020 in Allenatori, Calcio, Mental coaching and Stress. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

‘According to the attentional style approach originally proposed by Nideffer (1985) and adapted to football by Pain (2016), footballers must be able to broaden or narrow the focus of their attention quickly and appropriately in response to specific match situations. Under conditions of intense psychological pressure footballers have little time to devote to the rational analysis of a situation (e.g., pass the ball rather than shoot). This is because the speed of the game requires them to act fast, formulating thoughts within a few milliseconds. Consequently, high pressure match conditions must be extensively practiced during training until the player’s responses to such situations become fully automated. This is instrumental to allow the players to focus on playing the game without the need of constantly assessing what is best in a specific situation. In practical terms, this means that a decision and therefore a behaviour must be taken and implemented while the ball is in motion and it is in these types of situations that the differences between amateurs and experts is evident. While the amateur typically focuses on the technical execution of the task, the expert is typically more oriented towards the tactical components of his/her actions. The reason is that years of training have prepared the footballer for this situation and the player has mastered the technique which has become fully automatized (Christensen, Sutton, & McIlwain, 2016).  

            A number of studies have compared novices and expert performances (Lum, Enns, & Pratt 2002). In football (Memmert, 2009; Williams, Davids, Burwitz, & Williams, 1993), research has shown that expert players are typically more oriented to observe other players without the ball (environmental focus), whereas less experienced footballers focus their attention on the ball and at teammates to whom they could pass it (skill focus). Furthermore, highly skilled athletes analyse only a few relevant elements of the game for a longer duration compared to amateurs, who instead attempt to process a large amount of information over a restricted period of time. Thus, it seems it is not just the amount of attention or concentration that it is important to achieve top performance (accurate and quick); but rather the fact that concentration must be complemented by the skill to locate and select the appropriate environmental focus (Williams, Davids, & Williams, 1999). In football, this involves the ability to selectively concentrate (as quickly as possible) on the most significant environmental signals; those that allow the player to ‘read the game’, that is, to anticipate the opponents’ actions.’

(Source: Farina e Cei, Concentration and self talk in football, 2019)

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Basic mental skills

Published on November 22, 2017 in Allenatori, Calcio, Corsa, Generale, Giovani, Mental coaching, Stress, Tennis, Tiro a volo and Young and Football. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The basic mental skills can be learned at any age and they are independent from the motor and sport skill level.

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Negative self-talk can be motivating

Published on August 30, 2013 in Allenatori, Corsa, Giovani, Stress, Tennis and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

At 35 years old Tommy Haas is the oldest tennis player at the U.S. Open. How did a player of this age do to maintain a mental approach so effective that it is still 13 in the world? A video of 2007 during the quarterfinals of the Australian Open opens a window on his thoughts in a very stressful moment. In fact, the video shows the Tommy Haas self talk during a break. Dialogue mainly negative and offensive to himself but with some positive statements almost exclusively centered on the result to get (do not go to the net, you can win, you will win the match, you cannot lose it, fight). In this case, the system that Haas has used with himself was useful as he won that match. Sport psychologists emphasize the importance of having a positive dialogue with yourself, centered not on the result to be achieved but on the actions to be performed. Although it is important to teach this positive approach to young people, in my work I have lived many situations where the negative dialogue has served as a motivational drive to provide the best performance. I met athletes in the break between two trials or before a final passing long minutes to insult themselves as Haas and then at some point ask: “Tell me something positive” and some times I talked about the sacrifices that had done to get to that point and other times of the obstacles and races who had won for being there, at that point they changed attitude and said: “Now go and do it” rather than “Ok! I will give my best.” They are almost always kept their word.

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