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Eight mental skills assist your entry to Winning Zone performance.
Ongoing application in evidence based psychology shows that complex terms and techniques developed by research scientists and psychologists in sport science and cognitive therapies around the world can be grouped into the following more easily understood eight mental skills.
MOTIVATION
Motivation in sport is a positive mental state associated with the development and maintenance of skilled performance
Motivation is essential to achievement in any sport. Motivation can get you through many situations when your other mental skills are not operating at their peak. The term “Motivation” creates images of activity, enthusiasm and specific actions in your sport.
In sport skilled performance requires goal directed thoughts, emotions and actions. The goal of skilled performance is the achievement of a personally defined reward such as winning, a personal best performance, team selection or even just being good enough to participate in an organised competition.
Motivation is one of the hardest mental skills to understand accurately. The research labs and universities of the world help us to understand this complex human and animal condition. Some athletes participate in the sports of dressage, polo, tent pegging, polocrosse and other sports with animals requiring the horse or dog to be motivated too!
MOTIVATION SHAPING
Motivation and the associated cognitions and emotions can be shaped to produce the desired state utilising advanced techniques
CONFIDENCE
Confidence is an expectation of future success based on the knowledge of past performance.
People tend to confuse the concept of confidence with other mental skills. Confidence is not......Concentration, Motivation or Control.
Confidence is a complex and difficult concept to understand and apply in your sport if you are not trained in psychology. Confidence arises through development of physical skills in conjunction with the knowledge of what happens during training, practicing, performance slumps and backslides.
CONFIDENCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
In the mysterious and exciting world of Self Belief, being able to control the inner twitter and inner reactions to mid match events prevents your thoughts and emotions from interfering with your performance.
By disassembling this complex concept we can obtain a set of concrete terms to work with.
CONCENTRATION
Concentration is more correctly referred to as Attention
Attentional strategies associated with a specific skill are developed specifically for that skill, and are relatively non transferable to other skills.
As the level of expertise increases task specific attentional strategies are adopted. Specific neurophysiological links are formed between the relevant information cue and each specific motor program during skill refinement.
Concentration requires the identification, development and refinement of appropriate skill relevant cue thoughts, background awareness and automatic focus switching.
CONCENTRATION REBOUND
Concentration destruction is commonly referred to as “Negative thinking”.
However advances in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy demonstrate that many syndromes exist. Negative emotions, concentration blocking, negative Self Efficacy, sports phobias, lost movement syndrome and other variations can be identified.
CONTROL
Control refers to deliberate manipulation and control of emotions
It is now known that both positive and negative emotions can interfere with concentration and motor programs.
Deliberate training in mental imagery and other techniques helps to maintain the flow like state of perfect calm focused concentration.
CHOKE AND YIP NEUTRALISATION
The stress and pressure of competition can produce individual reactions requiring personalised training.
Some frequent issues in sport can be called the six “Choke and Yips syndromes”:
1. The Sac 1 Revert syndrome - you consciously attempt to control the skill
2. Specific Situational Stress Points - big matches, home ground choke, leading, trailing
3. Self Consciousness - Concentration on task irrelevant issues
4. Personal Phobic reactions - Personal moments of freezing, choking or yips
5. Sub skill conflict- focusing on the wrong skill thoughts at the wrong time
6. Instruction Translation Failure (ITF) - Transmitting an incorrect motor program.