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Sport and performance psychology summary (all the articles)
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Sports and performance psychologyWeek 1
Artikel: Introducing sport psychology (Chapter 1, p3-44)
Many athletes and coaches believe that sport is won in the mind. This idea applies both to individual
and to team sports. If mental processes are crucial for athletic success, psychologists should be able
to help sport competitors enhance their athletic performance by providing them with practical advice
on how to do their best when it matters most. Influenced by this possibility, increasing numbers of
athletes, coaches, and teams have turned to sport psychologists to gain a winning edge over their
rivals.
The quest to increase psychological strength is apparent in virtually all competitive games, especially
in mentally demanding individual sports (like golf). Athlete-psychologist consultations is not always
about performance enhancement. Keefe (2003) suggested that athletes hire psychologists to ‘tell
their story’ to someone who has little direct involvement in their lives (to make sense of their lives).
The tool that can be used for this is narrative inquiry, whereby they elicit and analyze stories of
athletes’ lives.
Regardless of whether its origins are pragmatic or therapeutic, athletes’ interest in consulting
psychologists is particularly noticeable at the elite grade of sport performance where minimal
differences exist between competitors in technical ability and/or physical fitness. Mental strength
probably plays the most important role here. Mental resilience can be developed through
appropriate practice and training. Scientific evidence indicates that mental toughness and the ability
to concentrate effectively are among the factors which distinguish top athletes from less successful
counterparts.
Performance enhancement is not the only goal of sport psychology. The discipline is also concerned
with the promotion of health and exercise among people of all ages- whether they are athletic or
not. Also, sport psychologists have begun to apply their theories and techniques to business and to
everyday work settings. Second, the assumption that sport psychology is an applied field within the
discipline of psychology is only partly true – simply because not all sport psychologists are
professional psychologists. Third, there are several ways of qualifying professionally in this field.
Finally, sport psychology has not always been welcomed or appreciated by athletes.
The mental side of sport
Sport scientists typically distinguish between four hypothetical aspects of athletic performance:
physical, technical, tactical and psychological. First, physical aspects of sport performance refer to
phenomena such as fitness, strength and stamina which can be measured objectively. Second,
technical aspects of performance refer mainly to the proficiency with which athletes can execute
fundamental skills required by their specialist sport. Third, the tactical part concerns strategic aspects
of athletic performance, such as planning and decision making. Fourth, the familiar yet mysterious
domain called the psychological (or mental) side of performance in sport. This domain is familiar
because, almost every week, we hear about or see athletes who make uncharacteristic mistakes due
to the temporary influence of psychological factors like anxiety. In a sense, therefore, lapses in
performance allow us to catch a glimpse of the psychological side of athletes’ mind. Mental
influences on athletic performance are not well understood.
A way to investigate the mental side of sport is to ask athletes what they have learned from their
personal experience about the mental factors that seem to affect their performance. Using this
, strategy, we can gain useful insights into the psychological challenges of team and individual sports.
This research strategy has two limitations. First, it is hard to be unbiased when editing or analyzing
interviewing data, because most people tend to see what they believe. Second, as athletes’ insights
are invariably sport-specific , they are rather limited in their generality of application. To overcome
these difficulties, researchers often use systematic and objective research strategies to explore
mental aspects of athletic performance, like a research questionnaire. Results revealed that sport
psychology is defined mostly in terms of mental preparation for competition. In addition, researchers
found that mental toughness (a construct) was perceived to be the most important determinant of
success in sport.
What is confidence?
A key characteristic of mentally tough athletes is self-confidence. Confidence, or ‘the belief that one
has the internal resources, particularly abilities, to achieve success’, is usually correlated positively
with peak athletic performances. Many elite athletes regard self-belief as the foundation of mental
toughness. An apparent lack of confidence is one of the problems most commonly reported by
athletes to sport psychologists. Confidence is belief-based rather than fact-based, so it requires
constant replenishment. This belief is also largely situation-specific. This makes self-confidence a vital
yet fragile ingredient of athletic success.
Psychologists identified six key strategies to develop robust sport-confidence (i.e., logging evidence,
developing understanding and awareness, manipulating the coaching environment, tailoring
interventions for the individual, using psychological skills, and developing an athlete’s signature
strengths) and four strategies to maintain it (i.e., a continuation of the development process,
influence the athlete’s environment, stable beliefs, and reinforcing abilities).
What is mental toughness? Meaning and measurement
Mental toughness is used as a synonym for determination, resilience, and/or an exceptional
immunity to pressure situations. It is a characteristic that enables athletes to react well to adversity
and to persist in the face of setbacks. Mental toughness has attracted a lot of attention from sport
psychologists in recent years. two. Key themes emerge from empirical studies of this construct. First,
mental toughness is widely regarded as the key to sporting success. Second, little agreement exists
about what the construct itself actually means – or about what theoretical mechanisms underlie it.
From all the research conducted on this construct, it is clear that mental toughness is a complex
multidimensional construct.
Clough et al. (2002) postulated four components of mental toughness in their 4Cs model of this
construct. The first of these four components is control or the capacity to feel and act as if one could
exert an influence in the situation in question. The second component is challenge, which refers to
the habit of perceiving potentially stressful situations as positive opportunities rather than as threats.
The third component is commitment of stickability. Fourth, and differentiating this model from the
hardiness approach, confidence was defined as a component of mental toughness that designated a
strong belief in one’s ability to complete a task successfully. Combining these four elements, Clough
et al. (2002) defined mentally tough athletes as people who have a ‘high sense of self-belief and an
unshakeable faith that they can control their own destiny’ and who can ‘remain relatively unaffected
by competition or adversity’. Jones et al/ (2002) used qualitive research to study mental toughness
and he postulated that it involves having a psychological edge that enables an athlete to cope better
than opponents with the demand of competitive sport- thereby remaining focused and in control
under pressure. He believed that mental toughness denoted a range of psychological processes. A
meta-analysis identified four key features/categories evident in mentally tough athletes: (1) personal
characteristics, (2) interactions within the environment, (3) progressive development, and (4)
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