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Performance Psychology
Performance psychology is a specialised field that focuses on helping athletes develop the mental skills and mindset necessary to achieve their full potential in their respective sports. From visualisation and goal-setting to managing anxiety and stress, performance psychology can provide numerous benefits to athletes looking to enhance their performance and achieve success. Here are some of the key benefits of performance psychology for athletes.
First and foremost, performance psychology can help athletes develop a growth mindset, which is essential for success in any field, including sports. A growth mindset emphasises the importance of effort, practice, and learning from mistakes, rather than relying solely on natural ability. By working with a performance psychologist, athletes can develop a growth mindset and the belief that they can improve and achieve their goals through hard work and dedication.
Another key benefit of performance psychology is that it can help athletes manage anxiety and stress. High levels of anxiety and stress can negatively impact performance by interfering with focus, decision-making, and physical coordination. By teaching athletes relaxation techniques and cognitive strategies, such as positive self-talk and visualisation, performance psychologists can help athletes reduce anxiety and stress levels and perform at their best.
Performance psychology can also help athletes set effective goals and develop a plan to achieve them. Setting clear, specific, and measurable goals is essential for success in sports, as it provides direction, motivation, and a sense of accomplishment. By working with a performance psychologist, athletes can develop a plan of action that includes strategies for overcoming obstacles and monitoring progress.
Finally, performance psychology can help athletes develop mental toughness, which is the ability to stay focused, confident, and resilient in the face of challenges and setbacks. Mental toughness is critical for success in sports, as it enables athletes to bounce back from failures and stay motivated during difficult times. By teaching athletes strategies for building mental toughness, such as reframing negative thoughts and developing a growth mindset, performance psychologists can help athletes achieve their full potential and become successful in their respective sports.
In conclusion, performance psychology can provide numerous benefits to athletes, from developing a growth mindset and managing anxiety and stress to setting effective goals and building mental toughness. By working with a performance psychologist, athletes can enhance their performance and achieve success in their respective sports.
Do you get the Yips in your sport?
Are you having a slump in your performance or are you struggling with dealing with the yips at a crucial moment in your football or rugby career? Are you struggling to concentrate and focus or finding yourself so tense that you lose control over fine motor skills? Do you find yourself training even harder to beat this but getting really frustrated when it only gets worse? Then maybe it’s time to look at what the real problems with this are, not just try to outrun it. There is, after all, only so much training you can do. Also, check out my Sports Performance page.
This is not really a problem with what you are doing physically but rather an issue with how we hold information in the brain. The accumulation of all your old injuries, knocks or falls may be physically recovered but all the emotions from those events are held in your unconscious mind. All the upset from your losses, the frustration with mistakes made, the criticism from others is all held there too. Even things that maybe didn’t bother you that much at the time or things that happened when you were much younger. Everything adds to the pile. And all these mini traumas add up to become blocks, slumps, or yips. Any kind of training you do will help to an extent. Learning to manage the thoughts, training through them. Practicing passing more, kicking better, scoring more efficiently can all come from focused training. But this won’t get rid of the old emotions that are holding on in your unconscious mind and won’t help you overcome your issue properly if these unconsciously held emotions aren’t dealt with. Read up on Mackey Sasser, a US baseball star, whose yips cost him his career, and how he fought back and by getting help releasing the old emotions, becoming a renowned baseball coach.
I’ve trained in a number of therapies, including hypnosis and Brainspotting, that don’t just focus on the standard approach of dealing with thoughts and behaviors but also on tackling those old emotions. Brainspotting was what eventually helped Mackey Sasser. I’m more than happy to talk to any pro sportspeople to let you know more about how this works and offer a small experience of these techniques. This can all be done online, prior to working face to face when we can, so don’t let that hold you back. Coaches, I’m more than happy to talk to you too if you think this would be useful for some of your players. Success in sport is so much more than just physical training harder, you need to train your mind too. Invest time in yourself to be the best you can.
Brainspotting
In 2020 I began training in Brainspotting. There are roughly 20 000 practitioners of this technique around the world but most people haven’t heard of it. It’s a technique that helps resolve emotional difficulties that we can’t really get access to through traditional cognitive-based techniques. It works by accessing the limbic system in the subcortex of your brain rather than the thoughts in the more logical, recently developed part of the brain.
We start by finding where emotions might be held in the body. We then identify through various means where the equivalent spot in the brain is for that emotion. Through a process of focused mindfulness, the emotion can then be released. Sometimes this needs to go through several layers of experiences or traumas to be resolved. It can be a very powerful technique that gets to the source of an issue rather than being stuck at a cognitive level.
For me, the important part of the process is the connection with the person I am working with. Being held safely and given space to process emotions is vital for clients to be able to move through these difficulties, challenges, and traumas.
If you would like to find out more about this powerful technique please get in touch for a chat.