At a conference dedicated to the sport psychology and organized by the register of psychologists in Veneto which was attended by about 200 psychologists, today I gave a talk on the performance psychology applied to sport. I realized once again that the performance psychology is a subject little known by Italian psychologists. This is probably due to the lack of this type of teaching at the university, all centered on understanding the different forms of distress and psychopathology rather than providing cognitive tools to know how to become experts in something. The paths to become expert athletes or coaches are disregarded. This training deficiency determines a vision of the human being in which the psychological difficulties that the individuals experience in their professional path are often interpreted in terms of psychopathology, not understanding instead that these difficulties are stimulated by the complexity of the performances to be provided. In football missing a penalty is not an extraordinary event but it could be if the team lose an important game and the player who makes this mistake can live with this extreme discomfort this mistake, not because he/she has a psychopathology but for the consequences of the action. Psychologists ignore these implications and hide themselves behind words to their reassuring such as performance anxiety. They do not possess the theoretical tools to understand this phenomenon and they ignore how to deal with it, without going to the categories of psychopathology. It takes years to introduce the changes necessary to modify this way of thinking, because at this point the young psychologists can apply these knowledgel in the area of expert performance.
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It starts a new sport season for all children enrolled in schools football (7000 in Italy), tennis, volleyball, swimming and so on. I hope it will be a happy year for play and learning for all, where it will be possible to learn that the sport means loyalty, commitment, fun, cooperation and respect. Children acquire easily these concepts and behaviors that follow, but they must be led by coaches and parents who act to meet these needs. Some suggestions for these adults:
- I will encourage sportsmanship by supporting all boys and girls, as well as coaches, parents and judges.
- My first goal is the physical and emotional development of boys and girls.
- I know that training must satisfy the young and not the adults.
- I will teach boys and girls to respect their opponents and judges.
- Regardless of skill level all will have to fun.
- I will fight against every abusive behavior showed by other adults.
The new doping scandal in athletics and the doubt that the next winner of the Tour de France is doped represent facts and questions that lead to the sport destruction. We enthusiasts look “our” athletes, for a moment we their best fans but then we wonder if what we look at is true or if we are looking at the crooks. Maybe that’s why we’re so excited about the London Paralympics, because we cannot imagine the possibility that they are doped. What to do? Argue that we must abolish the fight against doping as some say? Of course not! A first answer might be not to leave alone the young who are into sports, alone with coaches, parents, doctors or managers who can convince them to make wrong choices. I would like to talk to these young people and tell them to talk about this big problem and what are the reasons why you may fall into this trap and what they need to be convinced that they can win without getting hurt. We have to talk and talk and talk without ever leaving alone them with their own ghosts and with the suggestions of the dishonest people. I am convinced that no organization of the sport has never acted in this way, because for them it is only important to say doping is bad for health and it is persecuted by law. But no one is interested to the fears and ghosts of these young people. We continue with this biological vision of the athlete but we cannot hide ourselves behind the “I told you.”
By: Cedric Arijs
When the European federation of sport psychology announced its conference with the working title, ‘Development of expertise and excellence in applied sport psychology’ I had the feeling this 2-day conference would be enriching for a young sport psychology student like myself, and I was not disappointed! Allow me to share some insights.
The many experienced applied sport psychologists (APSs) and researchers didn’t give the recipe for a successful career on a silver platter. But why would there be a clear-cut trajectory in a discipline where the answer is so often “It depends…”? Therefore, self-reflection and peer discussions are necessary. During the weekend I met many (future) colleagues in the field who were more than willing to share their stories with me. And I guess there are worse places for networking and becoming acquainted than a nice boat dinner on the Seine River next to the Eiffel Tower, wouldn’t you agree?
Read more on http://emsepblog.tumblr.com/post/51137951759/reflections-of-the-2013-fepsac-conference-in-paris
For many athletes the year after the Olympics is a period of transition. Often those who have achieved great successes in the four previous years use this year as a time of recovery, to be ready next year to start a new challenge. For younger athletes, however, can be an important year to prove their value in international competitions in a time when the best are not making pressure. And it is on these that I want to focus, with the question: when does a young athlete (girl or boy) begins to dream that she/he could be part of the Olympic team of her/his country? And then it makes sense to dream?
I found support for this idea in a study conducted some years ago by the U.S. Olympic Committee, it was asked this question to the athletes who have been members of the US Olympic team in the period 1984-1998. These are the results:
- The athletes began to dream of becoming Olympic athletes in the period in which they obtained their first successes at the local level (between 10, 9 and 18 years).
- After about 3,5 years they decided to pursue this dream.
- After about 1,7 years they thought that their dream was realistic at an age between 13,4 and 22,4 years.
The differential of age are due to the fact that gymnastics and swimming are sports earlier specialization compared others such as shooting, rowing and track and field athletes where the athletes reach maturity at an older age.
These findings teach us that boys and girls need to nurture their dreams and that they pass from an initial desire to one in which you decide to commit to make it last that it is considered realistic implementation. Second, another strongest trend to emerge from these data was the short period of time between the decision to become Olympian and the belief that it was possible.
More and more often I wonder why most coaches do not recommend their athletes to follow a program of mental training. I do not mean the beginners but who practice one sport for many years and who want to enhance their skills when they compete. The typical words of the coaches in front of the psychological difficulties are “put a little more than …” and here you can choose the psychological dimension that it is considered the most appropriate: more confidence, more focus, more determination, more effort and so on. The problem is that athletes usually do not understand these sentences, and do not know how “to be more.” On the other hand the lack of attention to the psychological dimension of the coaches is evident in the fact that almost no athlete knows how to take a deep breath; lost no time to teach! While it is well known that a deep breath permit to lower a too high psychological tension level but never mind when the coach is in this situation he will say to his athlete, the decisive sentence “be calm,” and as a result the athlete or will feel even more tense or be angry with the coach who does not able to help him.
How do we solve this problem? Simply,the athletes more aware of the mind value decide by themselves to go to an expert in mental coaching, of course there are also coaches that guide the athletes to follow this option but they are few.
The champions commit few mistakes and yet often they have a very negative impact on the outcome of the match. It’s ‘the case of the two errors committed by Buffon, Juventus goalkeeper, giving rise to two goals with which the Sampdoria won the game. These errors affect us much more than those committed by other players less talented. Also because the goalkeeping errors, compared to other roles, more easily leads to goal in favor of the opponents. I liked the statements of Buffon when he said that he commits some mistakes during the season and that this is the normal. Second important statement, it was to say that a team is strong if it can react to these negative events immediately providing a winning match. These words confirm a famous phrase that “no matter how many times you fall but how quickly you get up.” For young athletes, it is important to take inspiration from the experience of champions such as Buffon, to understand that all wrong but that the difference between the good players and the other is in the error response, to cry on or lean the blame to other fellows do not need and rather it is harmful.
In Italy the 2012 year ended with the politic that in its programs did not talk about phisical activity and sport world who complains about this absence, without doing anything else. It’s a bad news for all of us who believe that having a physically active lifestyle is not only a hobby but a basic right for our well-being. Perhaps the worker problems come first, but are we sure to have the highest percentage of overweight children in Europe is a great record? They eat bad, do not exercise and stay too sitting at school and home. In the U.S. this problem has caused a campiagn by Michelle Obama, not just an ordinary person and it is starting to show positive results, as in the cities overweight is regressing. Italy is the country with the lowest number of hours of physical activity at school and there is no initiative to increase it. Must be three coaches of the national volleyball, rugby and cycling teams to talk about this Italian plague but their statements did not rise reactions. The future of young people it is also created thinking to children and adolescents who leave not only sports but also any form of physical activity since the secondary school and they will rarely come back. We cut our children’s legs from the beginning of their lives and that’s why we are not a country for young people.
(From http://www.huffingtonpost.it/../../alberto-cei/lo-sport-e-assente-dallag_b_2381927.html)
The coach of the cyclist Italian national team Paolo Bettini said in an interview at Eugenio Capodacqua (La Repubblica) that he would leave this for another role to work with young people. Hays that young people are nauseated by inadequate training to them, from parents obsessed with money and sporting organizations seeking to achieve results at all costs. It seems clear that this approach is no more than the prelude to doping and it is the reason for the drop out of those young people who do not accept this kind of sport culture. Bettini expresses his thoughts very clearly: “You cannot force a kid to do training sessions of 4 hours and a half and then gym, sacrifices, hardships. Junior tables I’ve seen are the same of the seniors. The result is the nausea.”
He is also very clear on the proposals to be made: “The things to do are known: the school, the recruitment, the slow start, the rejection of the result at any cost. But when you put them into practice there is always someone who opposes and says – why change if we have always done so? – “. Too easy to respond to these people that it is because it is always done in this way that cycling has become one of the sport less clean.
Congratulations to Bettini for saying that young people need other things and that the Italian cycling needs to change. The sportpsychologists will certainly be at his side to support this battle of sport culture.
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