Identify and apply psychological principles to facilitate peak sport performance, enhance physical ability and achieve your optimal performance and push your limits.
We all now that running brings several benefits for our body. For example, improved performance of the cardiovascular system, improved immune defense and strengthening of the muscles and also several positive effects on mental health. In this article, we will highlight the benefits off retrain your brain for a sport performance with success.
For me as coach is exploited of potential mental aspect of my athletes a important part of training as physical training. Mental training helps them consciously use thoughts and feelings to achieve a state of optimal performance. Is a parallel process that you can include in every training session, because also by every competition is the training influenced by thoughts and feelings. If this often happens unconsciously this can reduce performance.
In this term is mental training a way to Retrain your brain to perform better involving adopting new habits, developing positive mindset, and practicing consistently. Here are some general strategies that may help:
Adversity training
Use a workbook to list actionable ideas for tackling any perceived weaknesses or just making it harder for yourself, to build event-day confidence. To help you start, we’ve provided some examples.
| Situations I lack confidence in | What I can do about it |
| Running when wet. | Go out run when it is pouring with rain. |
| You lost contact with your opponent during the race. | Go out and deliberately try to pace alone. |
| Running 10km at a consistent pace. | Train to run 12km. |
| Performing at the same level towards the end of a race. | Start your workout with core of strength training before doing your practice to simulate training under fatigue. |
Stress & Anxiety
Many athletes struggle with stress and anxiety on a daily basis. Each athlete reacts to the stress and anxiety differently. We wil explore the differences between stress and anxiety, as well as how these conditions affect athletes.
What is Stress?
Martens, Vealey, and Burton (1990) stated, “stress has been defined as stimulus, intervening and response to variables by different researchers. As a stimulus variable stress is a precipitator; as an intervening variable, a mediator; and as a response variable, a behavior.”
The stress model demonstrates what factors affect stress in sport. Stress can affect performance, the way an athlete responds to the stress can affect it, and the management of the stress can negatively or positively affect the athlete’s stress level.
Stress is a factor of life that affects everyone, but athletes tend to suffer from it more than non-athletes, due to the amount they are required to balance, between schoolwork, practices and events, as well as family pressures and everyday life.
Signs and Symptoms
There are seven categories in which an athlete may experience stress. These categories are: affective, behavioral, biological/physiological, cognitive, imaginal, interpersonal, and sensory (Ray and Weise-Bjornstal, 260). Each category has its own signs and symptoms. Affective signs and symptoms include: anxiety, anger, guilt, depression, shame and feeling sorry for oneself. Behavioral signs and symptoms include: sleeping disturbances, restlessness, aggressive behavior, alcohol or drug abuse, sulking, crying, poor performance, absenteeism, and clenched fists. Biological or physiological signs and symptoms include muscle tension, increased heart rate, indigestion, stomach spasms, pain and headaches.
Cognitive signs and symptoms are frustration, worries, distortion, exaggeration, unrealistic performance expectations, self-defecting statements and self handicapping. The imaginal signs and symptoms include images of failure, images of reinjury, flashbacks of being injured, images of helplessness, and images of embarrassment. The interpersonal signs and symptoms include withdrawal, manipulation and argumentation. The last category, sensory, includes tension, nausea, cold sweat, clammy hands, pain and butterflies in the stomach.
Healthy Response
There are many ways an athlete can respond to stress. Many times athletes do not handle stress properly, nor do they know how to, so they must seek outside help in order to deal with it. Healthy ways for athletes to deal with stress are to engage in pleasurable activities, take care of their body, maintain a positive perspective, laugh, practice relaxation techniques, talk to others, and get help from a professional. Many athletes do not know how to handle their stress and usually need help when it comes to dealing with the stress. Due to this fact many times the athletic trainer or coach is the first person the athlete turns to when they are stressed out.
Stress Reduction
Mindfulness and meditation techniques help train you to acknowledge your surroundings while remaining alert, attentive, and present within yourself in the moment. Mindfulness and meditation can calm the brain and nervous system, reduce anxiety, and improve performance. Numerous athletes use these techniques before and during big sporting events.
What is Anxiety?
As defined above anxiety is “the emotional or cognitive dimension of physiological arousal. “of all the psychological factors thought to influence sport performance, anxiety is often considered the most important,” which explains why so much research has concentrated on stress and anxiety in athletes.
Signs and Symptoms
There are many different signs and symptoms that signify anxiety. Some of these signs and symptoms include raging heartbeat, difficulty breathing, paralyzing terror, nervousness, shaking, stress, heart palpitations, dizziness, lightheadedness, nausea, trembling, sweating, shaking, choking, chest pains, distress, fear, fright, hot flashes or sudden chills, and tingling sensations in the fingers and toes. Many of these symptoms can be debilitating for the athletes experiencing them. Once these symptoms get out of the athlete’s zone of optimal functioning they will not be able to participate to their maximum ability.
Healthy Response
There are many ways an athlete can respond to anxiety as well. Many times athletes do not handle stress or anxiety properly, nor do they know how to, so they must seek outside help in order to deal with it. Healthy ways for athletes to deal with anxiety are to learn specific ways that help them to relax and get comfortable in the situation that is causing them to be anxious. These can include, but are not limited to, engaging in pleasurable activities, take care of their body, maintaining a positive perspective, laughing, practicing relaxation techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation, Use mental imagery of a calming place, use positive self-talk, etc.
Choking Prevention Training
Choking under pressure, you might have seen top level athletes do this. Where they get into a pressure-moment and just cannot perform. Where one freezes and underperforms when it matters most — even despite deep expertise and years of practice is a phenomenon in the world of sports.
When you choke, physiologically, your body has entered into protection from danger mode and has released a cocktail of stress-related hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. These can elevate your breathing and heart rate, and even cause you to sweat. Normally, when choking, not only does your performance in the moment decline, but it can trigger a vicious cycle of self-doubt, shame, guilt, and fear, making it all the more likely you’ll choke again.
Practice for pressure, train not only for skills and abilities, but also for pressure. Train gradually increased pressure on athletes to intentionally evoke and practice working with their choke-response. Introducing mental, technical, tactical, or physical competitive stressors by unexpectedly changing the usual conditions. For example, pacing without a watch and demand they to increase a pace use only their cadans skill or introduce training partners with different running styles by surprise. Forcing them to train “blind.” This experience is useful when they compete and adapt at live time to every change circumstances during the race.
Competition Preparation
When preparing for a big event, rehearse it in your mind in as much clarity and detail as you can. Cristiano Ronaldo and Michael Jordan are all strong believers in visualization. Visualizing previous successes at crucial moments has multiple benefits: It prepares athletes for various scenarios and allows them to manage expectations and emotions more effectively. The same part of the brain is activated when we visualize an action (e.g., lifting your left hand) and when we actually perform the action. That’s why mental imagery is used to improve motor learning in rehabilitative settings, such as after a stroke.
Mental imagery workbook
Decide on a specific skill or situation you want to improve:
Create a script to play in your mind. The example from the lesson has been provided. You can adapt this to your needs or simply remove it and write your own.
| Select the skill you want to practice. Perform it in your mind, feeling confident and mentally strong. Bring in all of the normal sensations and notice them. Feel the confidence you have added in. Notice how easily you do it; how light and effortless it feels. Practice it multiple times. Take in the sounds, the sensations you can feel. Now repeat it in different scenarios. Realistic race-day scenarios. Imagine the other competitors. Now, imagine you’re feeling anxious. Take a moment to let the anxiety in. Imagine yourself taking a breath and relaxing. Now, perform the skill with confidence. Finally, imagine your pre-event warm-up. See it going well. You feel fired up and ready to go. |
Where will you practice this? And when? Be specific.
What trigger word could you use to bring these feelings back during a competition?
Sport Psychology SilvaRunningSchool
Pre-performance routine
A pre-performance routine can help you clear your mind, get into the momentum. Those set of words or movements that you hear and see before an athlete delivers an important performance have a very important purpose. You might develop a short ritual, such as breath exercises or doing body scan that can get you in the right mindset to tackle those first moments before you approach the start line. Once you’ve got a routine you’re comfortable with, you can use it whenever you need to unlock you full potential.
WHAT´S NEXT STEP?
The mental training level I, II and III helps to Unlock your full mental potential achieving enhanced focus, relaxation, and peak mental fitness. This product features a set of audio files designed for easy integration into your daily routine. Unwind with guided mindfulness sessions, boost focus with brain exercises, and find relaxation through accessible relaxation techniques. Elevate your confidence, Handling setbacks and prepare yourself to the next step