Sports Psychology For Dummies. Leif H. Smith

Sports Psychology For Dummies

calm down and pump yourself up, so your energy resources are always there for you when you need them.

Knowing the Hot Trends in Sports Psychology Today

Mental health issues are one of the hottest topics discussed in the field of athletics today. Anxiety and depression aren’t just battled off the court or field — athletes have to battle them on the court, too, and we discuss this topic in greater detail in Chapter 13.

Managing stress is such an important topic in sports psychology today that we chose to dedicate another chapter to it entirely. After reading Chapter 14, you’ll be better prepared to understand the sources of stress in your life and manage them more effectively in the future.

We get so many requests from parents and high school athletes to help them navigate the ever-changing recruitment process from high school to college athletics that we devote a whole chapter about it — Chapter 15. It is a complicated process, and we believe that this chapter simplifies the process.

Ever wonder how the skills in this book can be applied outside of sport? Well, wait no longer, because Chapter 16, “Using Sports Psychology Skills in Daily Life,” is written just for you!

Since writing the first edition of this book in 2010, the field of sports psychology has expanded so dramatically in popularity that we get requests on a weekly basis from students interested in the field asking us for direction and career advice. What a wonderful development! Thus, we dedicated an entire chapter — Chapter 17 — to exploring the career path of a sports psychologist. If you are a student with interest in this field, this chapter is written with you in mind.

Sports psychology is a growing and ever-changing field of study and applied techniques, and this popularity is due in part to how applicable sports psychology is to life outside of sports, too.

Becoming a Sports Psychology-Savvy Coach

Coaches are constantly looking for that extra edge that will put them over the top in the ultracompetitive sports world. With that in mind, they frequently turn to sports psychology to learn better ways to understand their players, motivate their teams, and get more from the talent they have at their disposal.

Every day, coaches see athletes with incredible talent who can perform in practice, but who can’t carry that performance into competition. They know and understand that the mindset of their athletes is often what determines their success.

If you’re a coach, you’ll find plenty of advice throughout this book that you can use to help your athletes be their best. But we devote Chapters 18 and 19 in particular to you. There, you find strategies for helping your athletes improve their focus and perform under pressure, as well as mental drills you can utilize with your team to enhance and improve their mental development alongside their physical development.

Don’t limit yourself to Chapters 18 and 19 if you’re a coach. The advice we give to athletes throughout this book is information you can share with your players individually or as a team to help them reach their potential.

Chapter 2

Starting with the End in Mind: Know Your Ideal Athlete Mindset

IN THIS CHAPTER

Determining your ideal mindset

Using journaling to hone your mindset

Assessing and improving your mindset

Getting into the zone

Knowing your ideal mental state is a critical step in building your mind for consistent high-level performance. Most people habitually criticize themselves for even the smallest of mistakes. It becomes a bad habit that they don’t know how to break. When asking athletes, performers, and everyday people about their past negative experiences and mistakes, they can usually quickly recall a long list of them. These are the experiences and incidents that stand out in our brains. Our “default” mental state, unfortunately, is usually negative. It is an almost automatic response. As a culture, we are trained to focus on the negatives in our everyday lives. There is an evolutionary and biological reason for this fact as well (i.e., fear kept people alive thousands of years ago — because without focusing on the possibility of danger around them, they could have easily been attacked by a hungry animal).

Think about it for yourself. Do you focus on the positive things you are doing in terms of your performance? Or do you focus on the negative? What are your thoughts about this response from one of our professional athletes, who had just made the World Cup Soccer Team:

“I cannot believe I had such an awful practice today. Why did they even keep me on the national team?”

He did not even take a few seconds to celebrate his accomplishment of making the World Cup Soccer Team for his nation! Clearly, the battle to stay positive in our brains is a very real one.

Here’s another example from a high school softball player we were working with. She had gone 1 for 4 at the plate, no errors in the field, and pitched three solid innings that game. She did happen to pitch at the time when a tying run scored from the opposing team, however. Her team went on to lose, but she spent almost a week beating herself up for that one pitch (and the pitch was a good one — the hitter was very good). Her inner critic took over for days! She took the loss personally and did not consider that there were three fielding errors by her teammates, or that her team’s batting average at the plate that game was about .200, and the opposing team was highly ranked nationwide.

The point we are making here is simply that neither of these athletes took the time to think about, absorb, and celebrate the positive aspects of their performance. This is where having an ideal mindset can help, however. If you do not work on your ideal mindset, you cannot practice it, refine it, or master it. Thus, if you infrequently pay attention to when you perform well and frequently obsess when you do not (usually due to a mistake or two), your default negative mindset will continue, and this is not helpful for performing at your best.

Tapping Into Your Ideal Mindset

The first step is building awareness of what your ideal mindset can be. A good place to start is to make a list of some of your best performances. Speak with your coach, who can help you come up with some of these. Ask your friends, a teammate, or a parent or family member. As you discuss these performances, write them down in a performance journal or verbalize them in a voice notes app on your cell phone. Use the following questions to

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