Tag Archive for 'Nideffer'

The best athletes suffer of emotional overload

TAIS is a system for assessing attentional and interpersonal style and these data show that élites’ emotional overload is an important component reducing their performance, including world record holders, who instead suffer less the environmental distractions and cognitive mental overload. This also explains why top athletes use psychological preparation programs to reduce competitive stress.

Talk about badminton to increase the practice

Talk about Badminton in Italy is a challenge because it is little known and this is the reason why we need to start talking about it. Badminton is a sport very interesting, in fact, it enhances the quality of technical and tactical player. There is no service at 200km/hr as in tennis or volleyball, you win not for the dominance of one technical skill: the service, but for the game that the athlete is able to lead. It’s a fast and dynamic sport in which are integrated well the skills required to decide and the concentration needed to play point by point.

Only here in Italy we do not talk about badminton, however in 1985, Robert Nideffer (one of the most influential American psychologists) wrote:

“You will notice that two different situations have been identified in badminton. In one situation, you have that part of the game that is under the control of one players (in the sense that the player dictates when the action will start, the serve); in the other, you have that part of the game that consists of a rapid series of actions and reactions. On the serve, because the server can control the tempo, there is time for assessing the game conditions (e.g., current score, conditions in the gym, position of the other player on the court, etc.). There is also time to analyze this information, taking the external conditions and mentally comparing them to past history (e.g., thinking about strategy in similar situations, reminding yourself of the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, etc.). Then the athlete can prepare by centering and by adjusting tension levels. Finally, they shift to a narrow-external focus to begin the point.”