Tag Archive for 'sport psychology'

Book review: Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology – 7th Edition

Published on May 2, 2019 in Allenatori, Generale and Libri. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology – Seventh Edition

Robert S. Weinberg and Daniel Gould

Human Kinetics, pp. 663

This updated publication of Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology,Seventh Edition, includes web study guide, with technique videos, expert interviews and interactive activities.

Since many years, this is the leading handbook in sport and exercise psychology, now is back in a revised version, introducing new topics and updating the classical fields of this discipline. In this way, this textbook continues to play its role toward students and practitioners, providing a global and specific vision of sport and exercise psychology and drawing a strong bridge between research data and applied interventions.

In the first part of the book, Robert Weinberg and Daniel Gould describe in this 7thEdition a broader horizon of this field, with a section dedicated to talk about the present and future, centered on counseling and clinical training, the ethics and competence issues, the tension between academic and applied sport psychology, the problems related to the limited full-time positions for applied sport psychologists, the globalization of sport and exercise psychology, the advancement in technology and sport psychology-business link.

There is also a new chapter, in the third part of the book, titled  “Diversity and Inclusion” addressing topics related to gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, and disability. New contents are introduced in different book part related to popular and emerging areas like grit, mindfulness, organizational sport psychology, and technology in sport psychology.

Modern-day practical examples and anecdotes have been choose to better illustrate the concepts. The references have been updated including more current publications.

The updated web study guide represents an important learning tool supporting the educational journey. It includes more than 100 engaging activities, allowing students to apply the concepts from the text by completing activities for each chapter:

  • Use actual sport and exercise psychology instruments to assess their skills
  • Determine how to respond to real-life scenarios (with short answers or essays)
  • Review research studies and experiments
  • Search the Internet for relevant information
  • Apply and test their understanding of principles and concepts of sport and exercise psychology

Many of the study guide activities are completed by audio and video clips showing how sport psychology consultants interact and talk with athletes and coaches to improve their experiences and competences. These clips have been registered by esteemed experts from the field discussing concepts and situations they have encountered and managed during their careers.

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Book review: Handbook of Embodied Cognition and Sport Psychology

Published on February 1, 2019 in Generale and Libri. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Risultati immagini per Handbook of Embodied Cognition and Sport Psychology

Handbook of Embodied Cognition and Sport Psychology

Massimiliano Cappuccio (Ed.)

Cambridge, MIT Press

2019, 26 chapters, 740 pages

 

Although sport is played with the body, it is won in the mind.

(Aidan Moran, Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2004)

From the Introduction (Massimiliano Cappuccio)

Today, to clarify the mission and the scope of sport psychology requires understanding the deep intertwinement of “body” and “mind” within the framework of cognitive science and cognitive philosophy. That is one of the reasons a joint venture between sport psychologists and cognitive scientists—including, importantly, cognitive philosophers—is a must.

This volume is composed of seven sections. With the help of multidisciplinary teams of researchers, each section explores a particular area of thematic interest situated at the intersection of embodied cognitive science and sport psychology.

Section 1 presents the key notions and concepts necessary to lay the theoretical foundation of our interdisciplinary discourse. The very meaning of embodied cognition, and the reasons that make it relevant to the theory and practice of sport psychology, are introduced and discussed.

Section 2 tackles one of the issues that most seriously concerns athletic performance: the nature of embodied skill, its cognitive preconditions, and the factors that disrupt it. A correct understanding of the roles played by attention, self-awareness, and conscious- ness is key to developing a consistent theoretical account of both sport performance in optimal conditions and its failure in pressure-filled environments (the so-called choking effect).

Section 3 talks about the role of sport pedagogy inspired by the embodied theory, how cognitive enhancement is facilitated when accompanied by an appropriate regime of physical exercise and training.

Chapter 11 investigates an issue that is hotly debated by scientists and various categories of people working in the sport business: What is talent, and how can it be identified? Is it an inherited gift or the result of long and hard training? According to the authors philosopher Mirko Farina and sport psychologist Alberto Cei, the answer suggested by embodied cognition is articulated and complex: appropriate practice and intense experience during optimal periods of development, characterized by higher rates of neuroplasticity, can express and maximize the innate potential if accompanied by environments conducive to learning and well-designed training methods.

Section 4 is dedicated to the intersubjective and social dimension of sport skills, with a particular emphasis on team sports and other competitive athletic disciplines.

Section 5 discusses the best research methods in the social sciences for developing the sociological, anthropological, and cultural side of sport practices.

Section 6 deepens the theoretical background: according to the ecological approach to perception, objects are not just neutral sources of visual information, but “invite” the actions allowed by their shapes and their intrinsic possibilities of manipulation.

Section 7 inquires about the source of the mind’s predictive capabilities. This inquiry, central for both the tradition of philosophical psychology and the future of embodied cognition, is particularly debated now that predictive processing theory promises to unify the understanding of various mental functions (perception, imagination, memory, inference) under the same general Bayesian mechanics: the brain’s fundamental goal is to reduce the mismatch between sensory input and the corresponding predictions generated by feedforward systems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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14° Sport Psychology World Congress: abstracts and vote

Published on November 28, 2016 in Generale. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

The 14th World Congress of Sport Psychology will be held in Seville, capital of Andalusia in Spain, between July 10th and 14th, 2017.

The central theme of the World Congress is “The integration of science and practice through multicultural bridges, gender and social equality”. International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) has invited 10 distinguished keynote speakers, who made an outstanding contribution in Sport and Exercise Psychology during extended period of time, to present and share their academic achievements in the congress.

The deadline for abstract submission for the 14th World Congress of Sport Psychology is by 16 January 2017, and it is required to submit the abstract document via the Congress website.

In past years, in order to vote the new ISSP Managing Council was sufficient to pay the two years together directly to the Congress registration , now this rule has been changed. To vote (also by post) we must now pay the membership fee of 2016 by the end of this year and the one of 2017 in the next year. Regardless of vote preferences, which have not yet been formalized, we must commit to inform about this new rule so that the largest number of participants can vote. I ask you to encourage members and friends to join right now the ISSP or regularize their position. All those who will not do so by 2016, will in fact be excluded from voting in 2017.

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The Sport Psychology was born 50 years ago in Roma

Published on January 21, 2015 in Generale, Mental coaching and Stress. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Aula Magna of the Italian Olympic Committee, Rome, the 20th of April, 1965. That was the place and moment of the inception of the International Society of Sport Psychology – ISSP, by the hands of a small group of pioneers, led by the Italian psychiatrist Ferruccio Antonelli. This happened during the 1st International ISSP World Congress of Sport Psychology marking the Modern Era of our scientific field.

From that moment professional and scientific networks were initiated, sport psychology was spread internationally, and the knowledge in this field was developed enormously. Continental societies appeared, with the North American Society of Sport and Physical Activity (NASSPA) and the European Federation of Sport Psychology (FEPSAC), being the first two. Concurrently, National societies began to be established, mainly in the European countries. The International Journal of Sport Psychology, the very first scientific journal in the area and for many years the ISSP official publication, was founded by Antonelli and published by Luigi Pozzi Editors in Rome.

Exactly fifty years after, this historical occasion will be celebrated in the very same place of the Italian Olympic Committee Centre, in Rome. For two days (April, 2015, 19-20), the ISSP 50th Anniversary Seminar will honor the past and all those who worked for the development of the Society. Celebrating the ISSP history is also an opportunity to look to the future. Hence, the motto of the event is “A Bridge from the Past to the Future”.

The program of the ISSP 50th Anniversary Seminar will include invited keynote lectures, symposia and workshops, as well as submitted poster sessions. Reflections on the historical route will be done, namely during the Past-Presidents round-table, and the future will be symbolically represented by the lectures presented by the 2013 ISSP Developing Scholar Award winners. The 50th Anniversary Gala Banquet sponsored by Luigi Pozzi Editors will be the perfect moment for the social interaction among all the participants.

All the information on: http://www.events-communication.net/b57/index.php?lang=en

 

 

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Review: Secrets of Asian Sport Psychology

Published on August 20, 2014 in Libri, Mental coaching, Olimpiadi, Stress and Tiro a volo. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Secrets of Asian Sport Psychology

Edited by: Peter C. Terry, Zhang Li-Wei, Kim YoungHo, 
Tony Morris, and Stephanie Hanrahan

Free download at http://peterterry.wix.com/books

 

Secrets of Asian Sport Psychology includes more than 20 accounts of how many of the world’s best athletes have used sport psychology techniques to achieve their success. The book links countries in the Asian-South Pacific region to the sports at which they excel. Learn about the sport psychology secrets of Archery in Korea, Gymnastics in China, Boxing in the Philippines, Golf in Taiwan, Triathlon in Australia, Rugby in New Zealand, Judo in Japan, Wrestling in Iran, Shooting in India, and much much more.

 Written by experienced applied practitioners working at the front line of elite sport, Secrets of Asian Sport Psychology provides a series of authentic accounts of the psychology underpinning the success of Olympic and World champions.

Sponsored by the Asian-South Pacific Association of Sport Psychology and the University of Southern Queensland, Secrets of Asian Sport Psychology is the very first text on the subject of applied sport psychology to be published under a creative commons licence.

Peter Terry and I, we are the authors of the chapter entitled Shooting in India, dedicated at our experiences with the top Indian shooters.

“Secrets of Asian Sport Psychology are now out in the open! Congratulations on producing the very first Creative Commons licensed book on the subject.”

Emeritus Professor Jim Taylor AM, Honorary Fellow of the Commonwealth of Learning

“Secrets of Asian Sport Psychology is a must read for anyone interested in the psychology of sport.”

Dr. Gangyan Si, President of the International Society of Sport Psychology

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Book review: Inside Sport Psychology

Published on April 11, 2014 in Libri. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Inside Sport Psychology

Costas I. Karageorghis and Peter C. Terry

Human Kinetics Publisher, 2011, p.235

www.HumanKinetics.com

Karageorghis and Terry provide an excellent overview of sport psychology, regarding motivation, self-confidence, anxiety, emotion, concentration, visualization and self-hypnosis. Also mood and music on performance are well treated because they are one of the main authors’ interest. All the themes are presented not only from the scientific side but many anecdotes and exercises are included. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in learning about sport psychology or people looking to improve athletic performance or even to learn general mental skills for life.

In the first chapter entitled “Sport psychology applications” the authors talk about skill acquisition that underlie top performance and about the concept that too often the athletes’ performances are not very consistent during a season and the reason is most of the time related to a reduced mental preparation. At this proposal they ask to the readers to take a moment to reflect on all the excuses they commonly use to explain their worst performances. In this way, Karageorghis and Terry introduce the readers to one of the main aspects of book, that is to propose theories and psychological techniques but also exercises to practice in order to be actively involved in the topics treated. This permit to the readers to be inside the themes of each chapter and to read it in a ease way. The second chapter is about motivation and, after some theoretical introductions, he athletes are driven to identify their main strong and weak points and how to become totally involved, in a flow experience that represents the peak of the intrinsic motivation. The authors look also to the youth coaches when they explain about the relevance of a mastery climate during the training to sustain this intrinsic motivation, de-emphasizing  social comparisons. The following two chapters are about self-confidence and anxiety. Confidence is so important psychological factors that could increase or destroy the performance, starting from this suggestions the authors introduce the Bandura’s self-efficacy approach and try to propose for each of its dimensions practical strategies to improve and sustain the self-confidence using the athletes’ imagery and self-talk skills. The anxiety is treated following the best known approach to explain this phenomenon, its symptoms and responses and the main relaxation techniques to reduce it. Like for the other topics many example of great sport athletes are provided to show that to choke under pressure is something that happens also at the top performers. The book has one of the best explanation of the relation between mood and performance, the authors introduce this topic, show how to assess it and explain how they used it in the daily work with the athletes also before the most important events.  Relation between food and mood are also well described in a way that I believe all the readers will find very useful. Practical suggestions are also provided to show how the self-talk can be used to change the dominant mood in specific time. The chapter about concentration as the previous describe techniques for a better use of this skill; interesting is the section where the authors  provide the suggestions for future attentional training based on the use of new technologies and the web site to explore at this regards. To fulfill the athletes’ potential is necessary to practice visualization and self-hypnosis and the following chapter is devoted to these topics. The last one is about the power of sound, and it’s more related to the Karageorghis’s work in this field. It’s a very useful chapter because usually the sport psychology books talk only in general terms about the music role in training and before the beginning of sport events. We find inside the experiences of the athletes and for someone like the marathoner Paula Radcliffe the music helps her to do much harder workout, while for the double Olympic decathlon athlete, Daley Thompson, the music is not necessary because he is so immersed in his training. In any case, in the chapter the authors talk about the important relation between exercise intensity and preferred music tempo and provide a long list of popular tracks for sport and exercise and which are the useful web sites for planning music programs.

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