Sport Psychology Essays

Sports—which involve emotion, competition, cooperation, achievement, and play—provide a rich area for psychological study. People involved in sports attempt to master very difficult skills, often subjecting themselves to intense physical stress as well as social pressure. research has expanded into numerous areas such as imagery training, hypnosis, relaxation training, motivation, socialization, conflict and competition, counseling, and coaching. Specific sports and recreational specialties studied include baseball, basketball, soccer,

Something that has always been in my life and repeatedly been said to me, or mentioned is that during a sporting event everything is mental. Now what I have always wondered was that everything in the mental game is based on one’s own preferences, the way one thinks and processes information and how he reacts to a situation. There are various components of an athlete’s mental game such as motivation, agility, confidence; all of which contribute in actual competitions, games or even at practice. More importantly, confidence is more complex because it is what is affected most of the mental game, that’s what makes or breaks an athlete, and that can be affected by a coach, parent, or negative teammate, it’s not just personal thoughts reflecting

“Imagery means to use figurative language to represent objects, actions, and ideas in such a way that it appeals to our physical senses.” “Imagery is associated with mental pictures. However… imagery, to be realistic, turns out to be more complex than just a picture.”

Research by Duda (2009) showed that football players who were taught imagery techniques learned new football techniques and performed athletically better than the control group with no intervention. Though the available studies on imagery may be limited, the results seem to indicate that there are benefits to using the intervention. Imagery does not take a lot of effort (compared to learning something like meditation) and can be applied anywhere, anytime. The ease of use mixed with the positive research results suggest that imagery is a practical intervention for athletes.

According to Ietswaart et al., (2011), “Due to cognitively demanding nature of mental practice, careful consideration in designing the intervention is given to facilitate the mental practice process, drawing on the cognitive neuroscience evidence base” (p.3). In this practice, demonstrating a wide range of sensory inputs and illustrative depiction of movement can trigger action simulation in the brain. For example, visual and auditory inputs facilitate accessing the content of motor images in conjunction with verbal information because language resonates with motor representations, and activation of motor areas can, therefore, be achieved through the verbal route. Likewise, the use of objects can be applied in mental practice because it enables visual perception of the objects to promote action. In fact, mental practice has shown to contain both the kinesthetic and the biomechanical constraints associated with the action, as well as the spatial coordinates of the action. Therefore, the visual imagery modality (i.e., “seeing” your hand move) can be used to characterize the spatial coordinates (i.e., distance and location), and the kinesthetic imagery modality (i.e., “feeling” your hand move) can be used to embody the biomechanical constraints. Following the rationale, both verbal and visual information can facilitate mental practice which can be achieved through the use of mental imagery scripts that are recited by the therapists while working on activities of daily living with the patients. These scripts describe the muscular sensations of the movements. For example, the therapist would have planned out an activity that requires the client to reach for a pen.

Our thoughts, diet/nutrition, exercise, rest, environment and physiology have a positive or negative impact on us which affects how well we perform and feel. In the world of sports, this is very easy to demonstrate because the mind/body connection provides you with immediate feedback. When you are positive, your performance excels. When you are negative, your performance is adversely affected. With various types of distress, or

•Concentration on the range of FUNdamental sports skills, such as throwing, catching, jumping and running

Smith et al. (2007) . undertook a study on the effects of the PETTLEP based imagery method compared against other more traditional methods (mental rehearsals, visualisation). Studies focusing on a hockey penalty flick and a gymnastics beam skill were carried out.

Today in sports athletes endure many mental and physical obstacles from there competitive environment. Many of today's best athletes work with sports psychologists to help them handle the pressures found in this competitive atmosphere. One question that athletes ask is, why cant they play in big games as well as they anticipate themselves doing? Sports psychologists feel that spending all their time on body conditioning and athletic skills will not ensure that athletes reach their peak performance.

What is the social role of sport? To what extent does social structure influence the practice and experience of sport? Discuss in relation to two of the following: gender, class, ethnicity or Aboriginality, or region. Illustrate your answer with at least three examples from sporting contexts (local or international).

Thoughts and actions of mentally tough athletes are mental plan (pregame and game), emotional control, optimal arousal, confidence, intrinsic motivation, optimism, controlled anxiety, concentration and attentional control (alert and mentally focused), performs automatically, proper situational appraisal (challenge and threat),good coping skills (deals effectively with adversity) projects a positive attitude (positive body language) sense of enjoyment in the competitive setting.

It has been identified that through sports psychology one can improve their physical ability and performance. Sports psychology is the study of how the mind, mental states and behaviour effect sporting performance. There are several sport psychology techniques, which have helped me become a better volleyball player. These techniques include planning for performance, controlling arousal levels, mental rehearsal and concentration.

Ability of an athlete’s competency of being able to understand and use imagery effectively is referred to as “the ability to examine visual and kinaesthetic images” (Williams, 2011). Hall,. Et al (2005) suggested that the idea of relating the ability of the being to the image is relevant to the effectiveness of the performance (Gregg, Hall & Nederhof, 2005). Ability is essential to assess due to the proven knowledge that as well as well as applying the athlete with desirable images that can help aid behavioural and cognitive outcomes to become more successful, applying an athlete with undesirable images can lead to a debilitative outcome (Cumming et al., 2016). This consequently can lead to less use of imagery for that athlete causing the

The first video gives us a brief discussion on mental imagery. Mental imagery refers to imagining the future prospects or the past events by associating it with an incident. However, research studies indicate, the eyes move in an order when we visualize an image. Furthermore, a debate on whether the image visualized was a pictorial representation or a propositional representation is being depicted through an illustration conducted in the Switzerland.

then training to be the top athlete must be the most important thing in you