Why sport Psychology:

• Inconsistent performance
• Performance anxiety
• Performing below ability
• Making mental mistakes
• Difficulty with attention and concentration
• Coping with injury and rehabilitation
• Coping with loss

Coping with personal problems

The three fundamental sports psychology tools:

• • Goal Setting
  • Imagery and Simulation
  • Flow and Flow Control .

Summary of Imagery and Simulation

Your body is a sophisticated system powered by muscles and controlled by nerves, most of which are in the brain. The nerve pathways in your brain that are most important in sport are trained by presenting them either with real stimuli or, almost as effectively, with vividly imagined images.

Imagery is the process of using your imagination to create these vivid images which train the important mental pathways in your mind. At its most menial level, imagery can be used to practise this ‘body control center’ when no other method of practice is available. At a more sophisticated level you can use it to enhance your self-confidence, to prepare for eventualities that cannot be simulated in reality, to practise other sports psychology skills, to practise and improve technique, and to focus before a skill is executed.

Simulation is similar to imagery in that it is used to present nerve pathways in your brain with experiences that train them. In the case of simulation, however, the stimuli come through your senses, not from your imagination. Simulation works by making your training sessions as close to the final performance as possible by introducing spectators, judges, distractions and stress inducers so that you can learn to deal with them. Simulation trains not only the nerves in your brain, but also those in the rest of your body as you physically perform the skills being trained.

Imagery and simulation can be used together at the same time to create an intensely realistic pre-experience of an important competition or event. This gives you the feeling of having been there before, with the confidence and competence that comes with it.

Focus and Flow

Focus and Flow are at the heart of Sports Psychology:

• Focus is complete attention to the execution of a skill
• Flow is the state of being completely engrossed in the execution of a performance to the exclusion of everything else

When you are in a state of flow, focussing intensely on the execution of skills, you will give your best performances. You enter a state of almost Zen-like meditation in which mood, distraction and different stressors simply have no place in your consciousness. You are free to execute skills just as you have trained to execute them. This is an immensely satisfying state to achieve.

The qualities of flow are:

• All your attention is focused either
  • on the skills or routine being performed
  • or on the input from your senses relevant to the sport
• You are fully focused of the activities being performed, and are:
  • not aware of your own awareness, consciousness of self or ego
  • not evaluating the quality of execution of skills during performance
  • not concerned with distractions such as results, judges, audiences or other peoples expectations
  • not making any conscious decisions in your mind or reasoning with words – you are trusting your body to follow its training
• You are in complete control of actions and reactions
• You feel almost in an altered state of consciousness: achieving flow is exhilarating, and gives a powerful feeling of competence.

This section of Mind Tools will explain how to achieve flow and focus, and will explain how to deal with the main things that interfere with it. These are poor mood control, lack of ability to manage distraction and, most importantly, how to handle and use stress

How Focus and Attention Work

This section briefly explains the necessary theory behind the way in which your brain works. This will put subsequent sections into context. There are two main things you need to understand:

• How parts of your brain work together, and
• How your brain has evolved to react to stimuli

How Parts of Your Brain Work Together

Your brain is a hugely complex system made up of a vast number of components interacting in a hugely complex and sophisticated way. Much of its function is still not understood.

You will probably be aware of the theory that function of the brain is separated into left and right hemisphere functions. This theory grossly oversimplifies the complexity of brain function. It does, however, provide us with a useful model to apply to sports psychology that has a feeling of intuitive correctness.

The Left Brain/Right Brain Model

This model holds that different high level functions of your brain are localised into either the left side or the right side in the following way:

• Your Left Brainperforms analytical activities that are processed logically, in sequence, such as:
  • Logic and rational thinking
  • Language and verbal self-instruction
  • Mathematics
  • Planning and Goal Setting
  • Analysis of a complex skill and construction of an image of how that skill should be performed
• Whereas your Right Braincontrols complex activities where many factors are handled together, such as:
  • Imagery
  • Coordination, and execution of complex movements in space
  • Integration of complex skills into flowing movement
  • Intuition and creativity

The Left Brain (often called the Analyser) tends to be dominant, as skills it is responsible for are most intensively trained during education. This part of the brain analyses and understands new skills, and examines existing technique or attitudes for errors and faults. This part of the brain is highly effective during training in improving technique.

The Right Brain (called the Integrator) controls the best performance of a skill by integrating all the components of the skill into one flowing movement in which all the isolated components of the skill work together.

This is important because either your analyser or your integrator should be dominant in different circumstances:

• During much of training the Analyser should be dominant, picking up errors, faults in technique or harmful attitudes. It will then send corrections to the Integrator to amend the complex skill. Letting the ‘Integrator’ control practice can end up in empty training, in which nothing new is learned.
• During performance, however, the Integrator should be in control, so that all the skills learned are performed in a completely co-ordinated, flowing way. Similarly in a sport where complex movements of other competitors have to be taken into account, the Integrator is most effective in making tactical decisions. Letting the analyser control performance by criticising or analysing execution of skills distracts the integrator.

Effectively, you have achieved ‘flow’ when your integrator is in complete control of a performance, and is not being distracted either by analysis from the left side of your brain, or by external factors.

How Your Brain Reacts to Stimuli

Your brain has evolved to protect you from danger. An important part of this is the response that draws your attention to unexpected or unusual stimuli. These might, for example, indicate that a predator is about to strike. Things that indicate danger might be:

• Intense stimuli such as loud noise and flashing light
• Movement
• Unusual stimuli – things not experienced before can be dangerous
• Absence of usual stimuli – lack of noise might indicate that other animals are aware of a predator

In a natural environment, this drawing of attention is very important for survival. However in a modern sporting environment these are distractions that break flow. Loud noises can come from cheering crowds. Flashes of light can come from flash photography. Movement can come from performers in unrelated events, etc.

Part of learning flow is learning to isolate the important stimuli for the sport from the irrelevant ones that cause distraction. This will involve learning to selectively override your brains natural reaction to stimuli.

Achieving Flow

Achieving Flow

Flow is easiest to achieve when:

• You perceive that your skills are good enough to match the perceived difficulty of the contest.
• The competition is not so easy that you become bored and do not concentrate.
• You have distraction under control
• You are paying full attention to the performance, with no analysis of errors or technique
• You are relaxed and alert
• You are thinking positively, and have eliminated all negative thoughts
• It is allowed to develop, and not forced
• You have practised and trained attention

The Zen Approach

Perhaps the most systematic approach to achieving focus and flow so far is that used in oriental martial arts, such as Karate or Kendo. These adopt a Zen approach to concentration where the fighter is in a state of almost pure flow.

In these sports the competitor seeks to lose all distractions of ego, analysis and from surroundings, immersing him or herself completely within the activity.

The following things in particular are avoided:

• Wanting to win
• Show off
• Wanting to frighten or terrify the opponent
• The desire to be reactive and not take the initiative
• Trying so hard to achieve the correct state of mind that you distract yourself.

Effectively Western Sports psychology is now advocating an almost identical set of strategies through a skills based approach. If, however, you appreciate a mystical approach, you may appreciate the Zen approach to focus.

Improving Focus

Analysing your Sport’s Focus Requirements

Different sports, and different parts or positions in sports, require attention to be focussed on different skills and different cues.

Where success relies on a physical skill being executed, then focus on that skill.

In other cases, you may have to make a tactical appreciation before execution of the skill. The appropriate attention should be paid to this.

Alternatively where an opponent is involved, study and learn the cues that give away his or her intentions. For example, foot movements, glances in a particular direction or tensing of shoulder muscles can give away the fact that someone is about to throw a punch. Similarly the opponent may give cues as to defensive tactics to be used which may be picked up.

The focus requirements and cues to look for will differ from sport to sport and position to position. You can analyse them effectively by studying video footage of performance. This can be slowed down so that all cues can be examined. You can also pick up information on cues from books or videos on your sport.

By understanding the cues to look for, you can separate out the things to which attention should be directed from the clutter of irrelevant stimuli that occur in a competition environment.

Training to Improve Focus

You can improve focus by practice and training, much like any other skill.

You can practise it at its simplest almost as a form of meditation – firstly study an object for some time: get completely involved with it, in its shape, colour, texture, smell, etc. Then practise switching the focus to a different object, being completely involved in this, and nothing else.

Similarly you can practise focus on sounds, listening to them and then switching focus to other sounds.

This concentrated attention helps you to feel what sporting focus feels like. The rapid switching to another thing practises your ability to switch focus.

In normal training, visualise the performance of a skill using imagery, then focus on its execution as you actually perform it. Practise doing the skill without any analysis. Experience the feeling of flow. Associate this feeling of flow with a trigger word in your mind.

Keeping Focus as You Get Better

One thing to watch out for as you get better at a sport is loss of focus. This can happen for two main reasons:

• as your reactions become automatic they hold your attention less, and
• as you get better, you may find that you are not as challenged by other competitors.

You may find that these focus problems have their root in goal setting: if you are setting outcome goals such as ‘coming first’, then this will not be challenging if you win easily.

This can be prevented by setting performance goals that are sufficiently difficult to maintain motivation, a sense of being stretched and concentration on improving skills even when competition is weak.

Mood Control

Bad moods damage your motivation to succeed in training or competition. They make you more prone to negative thinking, and cause distraction, often as you trigger bad moods in other people. Bad moods emerge as bad temper, unhappiness, lethargy and sluggishness.

If you are in a good mood, then even dull training can be enjoyable.

Your mood is completely under your control – bad moods are an indulgence you cannot afford. You can improve your mood in the following ways:

• Through positive thinking and suggestion – say to yourself ‘I feel good’ or ‘I am going to move faster’ or ‘I can feel energy pouring into my limbs’. This really does help.
• By treating each element of a performance individually – when you make a mistake, refocus and concentrate on the next separate element of the performance. Treating a performance in this way ensures that a bad move or a missed shot does not effect following moves or shots.
• By using imagery – imagine a beautiful scene or a time when you were performing very well and feeling good. Alternatively, imagine feeling good directly.
• By reviewing your goals to remotivate yourself.
• By smiling! – Forcing a smile onto your face for more than just a few seconds always seems to lift a bad mood. Try it – it really does work!

Distraction Management

Distraction is damaging to your performance because it interferes with your ability to focus and disrupts flow. It interferes with the attention that you need to apply to maintain good technique. This causes stress and consumes mental energy that is better applied elsewhere.

This section will teach you skills for overcoming distraction

Sources of Distraction

Distraction can come from a number of sources, both internal and external, such as:

• the presence of loved ones you want to impress
• family or relationship problems
• media – photographers, interviewers, cameras, heat form lights, etc.
• teammates and other competitors
• coaches who do not know when to keep quiet
• underperformance or unexpected high performance
• frustration at mistakes
• unjust criticism
• poor refereeing decisions
• changes in familiar patterns
• etc.

You can prepare for and deal with all of these sources of distraction.

Coping with distraction

Coping with distractions and minor irritations is mainly a matter of attitude – you can either dwell on them and blow them up out of all proportion to their significance, or you can accept them and bypass them. If you waste mental energy fretting over a trivial problem, then this is energy that cannot be spent maintaining good technique (hence preserving physical energy). Over long events or competitions, this wastage of mental energy can seriously damage your performance.

What is worth remembering is that when you are distracted, lose concentration and make a mistake, you have not lost your skills. All you have lost is your focus.

The following points may help you to deal with distractions:

• Remember that although events may be beyond your control, your reactions to events are entirely controlled by you.
• Think positively – recognise petty irritations as such, and let them go
• Know you can perform well despite distraction
• Prepare for and expect more distraction at bigger events
• Expect other competitors to be more nervous at big events – use your ability to resist stress and distraction as a competitive advantage
• Develop a refocussing plan and practice using it when you are distracted
• Learn how to change bad moods to good moods
• Sleep and rest more before big events so that you have more mental energy to devote to distraction, mood and stress control

Increasing Stress Levels – Psyching Up

Where you are not feeling motivated towards an event, either because you are bored by it, because there is no serious competition or because you are tired, you may need to psych yourself up. This will raise your level of arousal so that you can perform effectively.

The following techniques can be used to psych up:

• Warm up faster and harder
• Use imagery – for example, a swimmer might imagine himself being chased by a shark!
• Use suggestion – ‘I can feel energy flowing into me’
• Focus on the importance of the event
• or Focus on personal goals, such as running a race in a particular time, rather than unchallenging outcome goals such as winning (when competition is not intense

Stress Reduction Techniques

This section shows you effective methods of reducing stress to a level where you can perform most effectively. The techniques that you select depend on the cause of the stress and the situation in which the stress occurs.

In choosing methods to combat stress, it is worth asking yourself where the stress comes from: if outside factors such as relationship difficulties are causing stress, then a positive thinking or imagery based technique may be effective. If the stress is based on the feeling of adrenaline in the body, then it may be effective purely to relax the body and slow the flow of adrenaline.

As with all sports psychology skills, the effectiveness of the stress reduction technique depends on practice.

Stress Reduction Techniques Explained

• Environmental Methods
  • Reduce the Importance of the Event
  • Reduce Uncertainties
  • Listen to Music or Relaxation Tapes
• Physical Techniques: these are most effective where stress is driven by excessive levels of adrenaline.
  • Progressive Muscular Relaxation
  • Breathing Control
  • Biofeedback
• Mental Techniques: most effective where psychological factors are driving stress.
  • Imagery Relaxation
  • Thought Awareness, Rational Thinking and Positive Thinking
  • Remembering past good workouts, performances and achievements
  • Self-Hypnosis and Auto-Suggestion

Avoiding Burn-Out

What is Burn-Out?

Burn-Out occurs where people who have previously been highly committed to a sport lose interest and motivation.

Typically it will occur in hard working, hard training, hard driven people, who become emotionally, psychologically or physically exhausted. This can occur where:

• you find it difficult to say ‘no’ to additional commitments or responsibilities
• someone has been under intense and sustained pressure for some time
• a perfectionist coach does not delegate
• someone is trying to achieve too much
• someone has been giving too much emotional support for too long

Often it will express itself in a reduction in motivation, volume and quality of performance, or in dissatisfaction with or departure from the sport altogether.

Symptoms of Burn-Out

Burn-out will normally occur slowly, over a long period of time. It may express itself physically or mentally. Symptoms of burn-out are shown below:

• Physical Burn-out
  • Feelings of intense fatigue
  • Vulnerability to viral infection
  • Immune breakdown
• Mental Burn-out
  • Feeling of lack of control over commitments
  • An incorrect belief that you are accomplishing less
  • A growing tendency to think negatively
  • Loss of a sense of purpose and energy
  • Increasing detachment from relationships that causes conflict and stress, adding to burn-out.

Avoiding Burn-Out

If you are training and performing hard, then you should take great care not to burn-out.

You can avoid physical burn-out by keeping the sport fun: intense, difficult training sessions that significantly improve technique should be mixed with lighter, enjoyable sessions that use new skills to good advantage. A relatively slow build-up from off-seasons can be adopted so that your body is not put under excessive stress. You should respect feelings of intense physical fatigue and rest appropriately.

Similarly, you can avoid mental burn-out by ensuring that the sport remains fun: there is a limit to your mental energy that you should respect. As you get better at a sport, people will want more and more of your time, and will rely on you more and more. It is easy for commitments to get bigger and bigger: people tend to be quite happy to consume other peoples mental resources without worrying about the consequences. You must learn to say ‘No’ to commitments that you do not want to take on – otherwise you will be in severe danger of burning out as you become unhappy with your situation. Involvement in sport must be fun, otherwise there is no point in doing it.

If you are in Danger of Burning Out…

If you feel that you are in danger of burning out, or are not enjoying your sport, the following points can help you correct the situation:

• Re-evaluate your goals and prioritise them
• Evaluate the demands placed on you and see how they fit in with your goals
• Identify your ability to comfortably meet these demands.
• If you are over-involved, reduce the commitments that are excessive
• If people demand too much emotional energy, become more unapproachable and less sympathetic. Involve other people in a supportive role. You owe it to yourself to avoid being bled dry emotionally.
• Learn stress management skills
• Examine other areas in your life which are generating stress, such as work or family, and try to solve problems and reduce the stress
• Get the support of your friends and family in reducing stress
• Ensure that you are following a healthy lifestyle:
  • Get adequate sleep and rest to maintain your energy levels
  • Ensure that you are eating a healthy, balanced diet – bad diet can make you ill or feel bad.
  • Get adequate regular aerobic exercise
  • Limit your caffeine and alcohol intake
• Perhaps develop alternative activities such as a relaxing hobby to take your mind off problems
• Acknowledge your own humanity: remember that you have a right to pleasure and a right to relaxation

Late Stages of Burn-Out

If you are in late stages of burn-out, feeling deeply demotivated and disenchanted with your sport, get help from a good psychologist.

If You Have Burned Out…

Do not worry. If you are so demotivated in your sport that for a time you do not want to continue it, then drop it for a while. If you come back later, you may find that you start to enjoy it again, and can take on only those commitments you want to.

You may, however, find that you have absolutely no interest in continuing with the sport. In this case it is best to drop it altogether. If you are the sort of person who has burned out, i.e. highly motivated and hard driving, then a complete change of direction may be appropriate – it is very likely that you will find another area in which you will excel. You will find that you are only demotivated and listless in the area in which you burned out.

The difference is that you will have already burned out once: next time you now know the signs to look for and the things to watch. You will be able to pace yourself, and control your energy much more effectively, ensuring that you operate at stress levels where you can give your optimum performance.

Deciding Your Commitment

Deciding your commitment to your sport is possibly the most important ‘Sports Psychology’ decision you will make.

If all you want out of sport is a bit of relaxed fun, then your approach should be entirely different from someone who wants to reach the top. It is important to realise that excellence demands complete dedication: if you want to be a top athlete, then training to be a top athlete must be the most important thing in your life. If your career or family are more important than your sport, then you will find it difficult to devote the time and dedication you need to achieve excellence to the sport, unless you have a very sympathetic boss or family.

Self Confidence

Why is Self-Confidence Important?

Self-confidence is arguably one of the most important things you can have. Self-confidence reflects your assessment of your own self-worth. It will play a large part in determining your happiness through life.

Sport can be both enormously effective in improving self-worth, and highly destructive in damaging it. Where sport is used creatively, with emphasis on enjoyment, effective goal setting and monitoring of achievement of goals, it can build self-confidence as targets are reached and improvement in performance is noted.

Where children are compelled to participate in a sport for which they have no aptitude, this can be immensely destructive to self-confidence as failure and lack of self-worth are consistently reinforced. Coaches should ask themselves whether they are prepared to take moral responsibility for inflicting this damage, even if numbers are needed to make up a team.

Self-confidence allows you to take risks, as you have enough confidence in your own abilities to be sure that if things do go wrong, you can put things right.

Levels of Confidence

The way in which you are self-confident is important: if you are underconfident, then you will not take risks that need to be taken. If you are over-confident, then you can end up not trying hard enough and losing.

Confidence should be based on observed reality. It should be based on the achievement of performance goals: you should be confident that you will perform up to your current abilities. Good self-confidence comes from a realistic expectation of success based on well practised physical skills, a good knowledge of the sport, respect for your own competence, adequate preparation, and good physical condition. The success attained should be measured in terms of achievement of personal performance goals, not achievement goals such as winning.

Where you are underconfident, you will commonly suffer from fear of failure (which will prevent you from taking risks effectively), self-doubt, lack of concentration, and negative thinking. Often you may find yourself blaming yourself for faults that lie elsewhere.These will damage your flow and disrupt your enjoyment of sport. Here you should use suggestion, visualisation, and effective goal-setting to improve your self-confidence and self-image.

Overconfidence is dangerous – it can lead you into situations which you do not have the ability to get out of. It can set you up for serious failure that can devastate the self-confidence you should have. Overconfidence is confidence that is not based on ability: it may be a result of misleading or pushy parents or coaches trying to help you without understanding your abilities, may be caused by vanity or ego, or may be caused by positive thinking or imagery which is not backed up by ability.

How Goal Setting Helps Self-Confidence

Goal setting is probably the most effective way of building self-confidence. By setting measurable goals, achieving them, setting new goals, achieving them, and so on you prove your ability to yourself. You are able to prove to yourself that you are able to perform and achieve effectively. You can see and recognise and enjoy your achievement, and feel real self-worth in that achievement.

Importantly, by knowing what you are able to achieve, you are not setting yourself up for surprise failure – you almost always have a reasonably accurate assessment of what your abilities really are, which is unclouded by ego or vanity.

For more information on goal setting, click here.

How Imagery, Positive Thinking, and Suggestion Help Self-Confidence

Imagery is useful in building self-confidence, but only if properly applied.

Imagery should be used to imagine achievement of a goal that is being worked towards in order to help you to believe that that goal is attainable.

It should only be used, however, where you are rationally aware that you have the raw ability to achieve a goal if you stretch yourself, but if psychological factors such as lack of emotional self-confidence are interfering with your ability to achieve. For many years psychologists have advocated use of imagery, positive thinking, and suggestion without stressing that it should be based on a rational assessment of abilities. This can easily lead to over-confidence and serious failure.

Sporting Excellence

The following pointers should lead you to maximise your sporting abilities:

• Training Excellence
  • Set specific achievement goals before each training session
  • Prepare your mind before training to get the most out of each period
  • In training practice your skills with the maximum attention and effort
  • Use imagery and simulation to mimic actual performance as far as possible
  • Practice distraction, mood and stress control so that they can be applied effectively in competition
• Performance Excellence
  • Rest effectively before a performance: over-training exhausts your body and tires your mind when you need your maximum mental resources
  • Use pre-performance ritualsand on-site psych plans so that you start competing in the best frame of mind
  • Keep focus. If you lose focus, apply a refocusing plan to regain concentration
  • Learn as much as possible out of your performance, but only analyse after your performance is complete
• Keep a training/performance diary to set goals and record performance and mental results.

Bringing it all together: The Training and Performance Diary

You can help yourself to routinely apply sports psychology techniques by getting into the habit of using a Training and Performance diary before and after every training session and performance.

The Training and Performance diary is an extremely effective tool that brings together and helps to apply almost everything that this Mind Tools Sports Psychology section has covered.

Take a diary that has a full page for every day. Block each page into sections for:

• Entries before the session:
  • Goals – enter the main goals to be achieved in the training session or performance here. Enter goals before the session or performance. Base the setting of goals on notes from previous pages of the diary.
• Entries after the session:
  • Achievements – Write down the goals achieved here after the session.
  • Errors – note mistakes here, and suggestions for future improvements or possible future goals
  • Quality of Session – Write down your assessment of the quality of the session. Include here any times or scores you achieved.
  • Mindset – make entries here recording your mood, susceptibility to distraction, feeling of stress, and feeling of focus/flow. Score these from 1(poor) to 10 (v. good). Note why you think you felt the way you did.

Keeping this diary has the following advantages:

• It focuses your attention before a session on what you need to achieve. This helps to ensure that training sessions and performances are always useful for improvement of skills.
• It helps you to track the achievement of goals, and feed information back into the setting of new goals. This helps to build your confidence as you can see easily what you have achieved.
• It helps you to isolate areas needing improvement and plan to work on them.
• It gives you the raw data you need to track improvement over time so that you can see how you are improving.
• It helps you to see and analyse how mood, distraction, and stress relate to performance and flow. This will help you to develop management programs for these, and apply them appropriately

Your Pre-Competition Routine

Part of mental preparation for competition is ensuring that you start your performance in a state of flow. Many high level athletes do this by developing routines that help them to focus their minds and block out distractions. These may involve complex and detailed rituals that involve preparation, detailed dressing rules, or precisely executed warm-ups. Part of this practised routine might involve specific sports psychology skills such as imagery, positive thinking, mood control and distraction and stress management, perhaps using a Training & Performance Diary.

All of this ensures that you enter a competitive situation in the ideal state of mind to give an excellent performance.

Experiment with developing a ritual that covers all points of preparation that you consider to be important. By practicing this ritual and keeping it standard in training, it will be automatic and complete when you face a potentially stressful competition

Performing at Your Best in Competition

You can perform best in competition if you remember the following pointer:

• Enjoy the performance – if you find it dull, then you may need to psych yourself up or focus on performance rather than outcome goals. If you are so stressed that you do not enjoy the performance, implement stress management techniques.
• Execute, analyse and improve skills in practice. In competition perform thought-free – trust all that hard training. Only analyse your performance after the event.
• If you make a mistake during performance, forget about it and focus on executing the next skill properly. Dwelling on past mistakes will distract you from good performance of present skills.
• Use Pre-Competition Rituals, On- Site Psych Plans and Refocusing Plans to block distractions, prepare for all eventualities, and keep your performance flowing

The On-Site Psych Plan

The On-Site Psych Plan works in conjunction with pre-competition routines to prepare fully for competition.

The idea of the On-Site Psych Plan is to prepare you for any reasonable eventuality, so that you can deal with the inevitable distractions that will occur as rapidly and effectively as possible. This helps to ensure that you are in a positive and focused frame of mind for the start of your event.

To prepare the plan, list all the physical and mental steps that occur between arriving on site and the start of the performance. List every distraction that might reasonably occur during this time. Next to the listed items, list what to do if these occur or go wrong and why you will do it. Next to that list what you will do if that goes wrong.

This will ensure that you have thought about and prepared for every reasonable eventuality that might occur up to the start of the performance. This will significantly reduce any anxiety you may feel, as not only do you know how you will deal with any problems that come along, you will know how to react if your first solutions do not work.

You can practise your on-site psych plan using imagery and simulation.

After using the plan in a competition, re-examine and refine it for the next competition.

Your Refocussing Plan

A refocussing plan is very similar to an on-site psych plan, in that it aims to prepare to return you to a state of focus and flow during a performance where something goes wrong. This might be because you are distracted, become stressed, make a mistake or suffer an unjust refereeing decision.

Since you will need to apply the refocussing plan rapidly, it needs to be short and simple.

An effective way of preparing the plan is to list what might go wrong with the performance, and then write down how you will let go of the distraction and refocus on your performance. This might be by rapid application of a relaxation technique, by using a cue-word that has been linked to a feeling of focus, or by effective use of imagery.

Practice applying the effective refocussing technique using imagery or simulation. This will make it easier to use and apply the technique during competition.

References

This review on Sports Psychology has drawn information from the following sources:

• In Pursuit of Excellence; Terry Orlick; Human Kinetics, US; 0-88011-380-4 This is an excellent, well written book giving a good overview of the subject.
• Coaches Guide to Sports Psychology; Rainer Martens; Human Kinetics; US. ISBN 0-87322-022-6 A very good, detailed, practical book. In places it seemed over-systematic, however this may be an appropriate approach for what it is trying to achieve. The book gives an excellent depth of information in a clearly laid out format.
• Sports Psychology: A Self-Help Guide; Stephen Bull; Crowood Press; ISBN 1-85225-568-3 This has a very good section on burn-out.
• Sports Psychology; Morris, Summers; Wiley; ISBN 0-471-33549-5
• Psychology of Sport: Behaviour, Motivation, Personality and Performance of Athletes; Butt, Dorcas; Van Nost Reinhold; ISBN 0-442-21437-5