Sports Psychology
Sports Psychology is all about “being in the moment.”
The athlete remains calm, confident, and fluid enough to respond instinctively to external challenges. While internally attuned, he or she is simultaneously aware of what's coming next. “Optimizing tension” is both a physical and mental state, and vital for excellent performance.
Staying Mentally Sharp
When concentration wavers, insignificant details loom and demand attention. the golfer thinks about being embarrassed by a poor shot, rather than about hitting the ball. The tennis player thinks of the net, not the topspin. The ballerina thinks of hitting the floor, not soaring into the air.
The mechanism of unconscious thought allows us to perceive events before they register in the conscious mind. Anxiety and stress hamper the proper firing of neurons in the brain, and what should have been a sweet moment collapses into chaos.
Internal awareness, while engaged in the outside world, is crucial to peak performance.
What to do?
Athletes and performers talk about the level of anxiety that's useful in attaining peak performance. They transform this anticipatory tension into energy that helps them achieve that higher zone. It is about being “on”.
For some, the experience involves visualizing the desired event. Larry Bird, the Celtics great, says he imagined every shot hitting the net before he let the ball fly—even in the heat of competition. He rarely missed. Opera singers do the same thing: a quiet moment, standing still, aligning the muscles throughout the body.
Anxiety over the top
Your anxiety is out of control and performance is at risk when your body engages in some or all of these:
- Racing heart / racing thoughts
- Sensation of not getting enough breath
- Urge to urinate
- Tremors in limbs / sweating palms
- Unaccountable itching
Training the mind
Your unconscious mind works all the time. As you train your body, so does your mind get trained when you let it! It's your choice.
You can enhance unconscious competence in your technical training program. You can also train your Conscious mind to trust the unconscious and develop a useful dialogue.
- Engage the unconscious by acknowledging internal resources leads to developing them.
- Learning and Execution becomes easier
- You learn to feed information to the unconscious intentionally and develop a reliable feedback loop.
- You learn skills that teach you to trust the dialogue between the conscious wish and resources of the unconscious. The tools are there. They always shave been.
