Head games sports psychology


Head Games - Injecting sports psychology into esports

Mar 12, 2016

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In the world of competitive gaming, you can have the sharpest mind, the fastest reflexes and be the greatest player alive in your bedroom -- but it's all for naught if you can't perform under the spotlights of the big stage with thousands, sometimes millions, watching you.

When you look at the current crop of professional esport players, the ages generally average from a senior in high school to a college student. These players are getting big-name sponsorships, talking to the press and doing this for a full-time job; they weren't prepared for the world they've been thrown into. Traditional sports like basketball have kids with extraordinary abilities that are brought up from a young age to be ready for collegiate basketball media, or even, if they're good enough, the NBA. A majority of the biggest competitive gaming stars a few years ago never dreamed this career could be possible, or the mental fortitude needed to remain in the top tier. They simply liked playing in their bedroom by themselves or with friends, and the profession of 'competitive video gamer' was something that came unnaturally.

You have 17-year-olds who are the best at their specific game online; however, when put into an offline setting, they sometimes crumble under the pressure before they can even establish themselves. And in this growing industry of esports, one bad performance, one crack under immense pressure, and your shot of becoming a professional can get passed onto the next kid playing in their bedroom who is making waves with an amateur team.

Weldon Green, 33, is attempting to change how esports organizations operate in 2016. He's a sport psychological skills trainer with a master's degree in sport science and sport psychology from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Green, a former traditional sports coach (soccer and swimming), believes the mental game of competitive video gaming might be more important than the mechanical side.

"I think the biggest difference I found is the idea of embracing the pressure of performance instead of running away from it," Green answered when asked about the biggest difference between working in traditional sports and competitive video gaming. "I've worked with esport athletes who have a background in sport and [others] who just have a background in playing video games. The biggest difference between the two is that when the pressure comes or the stressful situation comes, it actually excites [the ones with a sports background]. Which is one of the reasons they like competition -- it's why they were doing sports in the first place."

""The environment there is merciless in terms of the drive to be perfect."" Weldon Green

For the others, Green went on to say it can be a struggle. A lot of players on teams were merely teenagers in high school who never thought of competing in traditional sports or going out for one of their school teams. "A lot of people just play video games for fun," he told me, calmly and thoroughly contrasting the two sides. "Then they find themselves accidentally becoming an esport athlete, and they realize they haven't for years been putting themselves in competition over and over again. So they don't have that mental toughness built up."

When I interviewed him, Green was on a vagabond-like journey working with several teams in the NA and EU LCS. From Fnatic in Europe to Team SoloMid in North America, he worked with some of the brightest and biggest talents currently playing today. Since then, he has joined the minor league North American team Ember as their head coach, turning his successful weekly stints with teams into a full-time coaching role with a squad challenging to make it into the summer season of the NA LCS.

"When I'm with a team [in person], I get to look at their communication and training," he told me, breaking down what he did to help teams who hired him for a week. "I confront them on how they're being too nice to their teammates or too mean to their teammates, or passive aggressive instead of just aggressive or just not focused enough on their play."

With his ability to work with various teams from across the world, it's not as easy as one solution fixes all. Some teams Green had to work with are at the bottom of table and struggling to survive into the summer split, while others wouldn't be happy with anything other than first place and a championship trophy brought back to their team house.

The Renegades competing in the NA LCS. Riot Games

Two of those teams were Team SoloMid, a team of all-stars put together to win another title, and the last-place Renegades, who were going through a weeks-long losing streak and slump when Green worked with them.

"Well, with TSM, you have a bunch of people who are very experienced," he said. "They've been on a lot of teams and had a lot of failures already. And they've learned through those and become pretty driven. The environment there is merciless in terms of the drive to be perfect."

When working with Renegades, Green experienced an entirely different group dynamic. "In Renegades, we have two people who are really experienced, but we also have a fresh kind of talent and fresh blood, and they need to be seasoned with years of competition before they build up the resilience to train super, super hard."

During his time with TSM, Green's main goal was to "unlock them" and have the squad be able to be more open with each other when it came to confrontation and criticism. With REN, he wanted to teach them how to "lose together instead of lose apart," wanting the team to trust one another even when the end result could end in failure. He commended Renegades on not turning on each other during their slump and trudging forward even through the losses, constant roster changes and issues with the lineup.

"I think what [teams] should add is the deep focus during training," he said. "What usually I see in houses is kind of a causal focus, then training happens and it's the same casual level of life, and then training ends and it's the same casual level of life. But in the best teams, from what I see, life is very relaxed and free, and then when work starts -- work starts and everyone goes full-on and focused [with] no mistakes forgiven. No lapses in effort are allowed by the players to themselves. They themselves are regulating that effort."

The stark deviation from Green's philosophy and the one implemented in South Korea, where they've won the past three League of Legends World Championships, is that he believes teams should be extremely free-flowing and relaxed when not practicing or scrimmaging. In Korea's premier league, LCK, some teams will steadily practice the entire day without any free time or relaxation. For some Korean teams, there isn't any fear of 'burning out' or getting tired. They'll work 14 hours, go to bed and then wake up to do it all over again in a diligent, no-nonsense fashion.

The effort that region puts in isn't seen as working harder than everyone else. To them, the rest of the competition is just lazy -- and they'll do what's necessary to stay ahead of the pack.

But what about South Korean players in other regions, like North America? "I think everybody's actions are dictated a lot by the culture of the group they're in. So when you live and exist with a Korean team, you might start acting the same way because that's the structure of their society and the structure of their organizations."

Team SoloMid's support, Bora "YellOwStaR" Kim Riot Games

Green continued: "I have experience with sport in Japan, which is very similar style of approach to sport compared to Korea. ...The thing that I noticed was that they were much more about pursuing mastery instead of pursuing competition. So in the West, we're very driven by beating the people in front of us, and when that opponent is not there, then our motivation drops. ... But in Japan, people trained for the sake of training, to be better than they were when they woke up in the morning."

Green also spoke on the group dynamic in countries like South Korea and Japan. When you're in a team of people in those countries and are the weak link, it's seen as something shameful and becomes a sort of guilt that pushes them to practice even longer to make up for it. If a player thinks they're lagging behind the rest, they don't give up or complain of the regimen being too difficult. They do everything in their power to become a use to their group and release the guilt of being the one dragging everyone down around them.

"Let's say you put in 14 hours of effort in a day and your team loses," Green said, describing the mindset of a player taken from the machine-like environment of Korea and transitioned into the more carefree living of the West. "You train like crazy and then your team loses, and you look around you and you see your teammates, let's say, watching Hearthstone videos or something on Twitch. And you think, well, I trained an extra four hours and we didn't win. And if I don't train an extra four hours, we don't win, so maybe my effort isn't worth it because my teammates aren't doing it."

Green also believes esports won't reach its full potential until the idea of playing video games is seen and used as a way to sharpen your mind instead of a tool for purely entertainment. If schools and other youth organizations see there are games which can help kids become quicker thinkers or possess better management skills, it will allow esports as a whole to be better accepted into society.

"I think Fnatic is the closest to creating a sports environment," Green answered when I asked which teams or players had impressed him the most after working with them. "They have the mixture of trying to be focused on mastery and focused on competition at the same time."

When it came to which player he believed encompassed the capabilities of an in-game leader the best, Green had high praise for TSM's support, Bora "YellOwStaR" Kim.

"I feel like YellOwStar on TSM is really ready to develop himself," he said. "I gave him criticism on how he could be a better leader, and within 10 minutes, he was deploying that in-game and post-competition. And I didn't ask him to do something that was easy. I asked him to do something that was very hard, and he did it instantly. Not only that, he's very humble and compassionate at the same time, which I think are two necessary attributes for a leader."

From hiring cooks to prep healthy food for the team to eat, to required gym for all members of the team to keep their bodies in shape, to now having sports psychologists and similar staff members attempting to solve the mental side of the game.

Mechanical prowess might get you through the door.

Your mental fortitude, though, is what will keep you inside the house.

Home | Head Games

THE MENTAL GAME: SCIENCE-BACKED MENTAL 

PERFORMANCE FOR BRAZILIAN JIU-JITSU

The only science-backed workbook that teaches the mental conditioning skills and techniques to improve your Brazilian jiu-jitsu game.

THE WORKBOOK WILL HELP YOU:

  • Accomplish your Goals: 

    • The workbook will help you set specific goals for the next six months of BJJ (anything from technique improvement to competition outcomes).  

    • Research spanning more than 35 years demonstrates that setting goals increases your effort, motivation, and performance! You will learn to set and track goals to reach the next level. 

  • Get Locked in the Zone:

    • You will be able to quickly assess what you need to get into the “zone.” You will know how to manage the stress of anticipation and anxiety that comes from competing. You will be able to reduce, increase, or maintain the optimal energy level to avoid choking, “spazzing out,” and "adrenaline dump." 

    • Top sport psychologists have repeatedly demonstrated that managing your competition anxiety/energy will help you perform at optimal levels. 

​​

  • Increase Confidence:

    • You will learn to reduce the automatic and hard to notice negative internal messages that come from practicing a challenging sport.  

    • Over the last 30 years, research shows that negative internal thoughts (or negative self-talk) are among the most significant contributors to pre-competition nerves and poor performance.  

  • Increase Performance with Mental Imagery:

    • You will create customized mental imagery or visualizations for practicing techniques and for rehearsing your BJJ competition strategy. 

    • Research findings from hundreds of studies demonstrate that imagery and visualization effectively enhance performance, preparedness, and confidence.​

What People Are Saying:

This workbook is helpful because I can use it over and over. I have more focus in training because I have clear goals. I think it will help my BJJ long term.

It helped me develop my strategy for comp and to help me feel relaxed during comp.

I am starting to feel more confident after using the workbook. I noticed a lot of negative thinking that prevented me from training with harder people at my gym. I recommend it for anyone that wants to focus on their mindset for BJJ.

As someone who has been searching for a way to step up their athletic performance, I can't recommend this book highly enough. The author shows that physical training to reach your goals is only half of the process and that by having a psychological strategy, you can take your game to the next level. Whether you are prepping for a competition or just looking for a way to improve overall, this workbook will give you the tools you need to enhance motivation, create winning visualizations and condition your brain for better success on the mat.

This book was very helpful for my confidence especially competing at the next rank.

The Mental Game workbook helped me focus on the important stuff preparing for competition. Creating my own competition strategy visualization helped me feel calmer, and I had few nerves in the days before and on comp day.

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GET IN TOUCH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Derek Mueller is a psychologist who researches, writes, and speaks about the science of sports performance for judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He received his doctorate in clinical psychology from Pacific University in Oregon. He began his judo study at Portland Judo with Louis and Andrew Hung (owner of Dojo Outfitters). Dr. Mueller has a black belt in judo and currently trains at Yungwirth Judo Academy. He also trains Brazilian jiu-jitsu at Charlotte Jiu-jitsu Academy under John Piper. He resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, and competes at the local, regional, and national levels in Judo and BJJ. 

Sample of References:

  • Locke, Edwin & Latham, Gary. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation - A 35-year odyssey. The American psychologist. 57. 705-17. 10.1037//0003-066X.57.9.705.

  • Hatzigeorgiadis, A.,  Galanis, E. (2017). Self-talk effectiveness and attention. Current Opinion in Psychology, Volume 16, 138-142, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.05.014.

  • Montse C. Ruiz, John S. Raglin & Yuri L. Hanin (2017) The individual zones of optimal functioning (IZOF) model (1978–2014): Historical overview of its development and use, International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 15:1, 41-63, DOI: 10. 1080/1612197X.2015.1041545

  • Latinjak, Alexander & Hatzigeorgiadis, Antonis. (2020). Self-talk in Sport. 10.4324/9780429460623. 

  • Weinberg, Robert. (2008). Does Imagery Work? Effects on Performance and Mental Skills. Journal of Imagery Research in Sport and Physical Activity. 3. 10.2202/1932-0191.1025.

10. psychology. Badminton game

10. psychology

BADMINTON

B

adminton, like any other game sport, requires high emotional stress. Therefore, the correct distribution of not only physical, but also psychological stress largely contributes to a rational game. Moreover, psychological stability is the basis of modern badminton.

How to act wisely on the court? When to focus, when and how to relax? How to relate to the opponent, to the mistakes of the judges, to poor lighting and a defective shuttlecock, to your unsuccessful game? Very important questions. And the answers to them are very interesting.

Concentration of attention serves as the basis for a player's winning psychological behavior on the court. It is she who makes it possible to do everything in time: to see the flight of the shuttlecock, to approach it, to swing and strike. But the psychological qualities of a person do not allow to concentrate attention for a long time. In schools and universities, lessons and classes last no more than 45 minutes. However, this is also a lot. Scientists have proven that the maximum concentration of attention is possible within just a few minutes, and sometimes even seconds. It has long been known in sports that it is attention that is the main factor in confidence in the game. Therefore, the determination and implementation of an athlete's ability to concentrate during the game period is a very important task, which often determines the real level of his game. Training attention is very difficult, but necessary for those who want to achieve higher results.

Experts also recommend: you need to play calmly. Excessive excitement, which many athletes sin, is harmful to building the right game. The so-called sports anger most often leads to stress and loss than it helps to win. Although a number of good players recommend it as a psychological doping, unreasonably confusing it with game courage. Anger deprives self-control, creates unnecessary tension, makes mistakes.

Don't think of your opponent as an enemy to be destroyed. Try to be grateful to him for a good game. She helps you improve. Some coaches teach their wards psychological tricks (techniques) with the aim of unnerving the opponent, exerting latent pressure on him, depriving him of calmness in the game, and making him make unjustified mistakes. For example, during breaks, when giving a shuttlecock to the opponent, throw it away from the bliss, forcing you to walk around the site once again and bend over; regularly express doubts about the correctness of hitting a known-to-be-correct shuttlecock; often stop the game to tie up the laces of the sneakers; throw a racket on the floor as if in a fit of feelings, etc. This is especially true for games without referees. The thirst for victory should not kill the joy of the game.

Keep in mind that following the norms of sports ethics, polite attitude towards opponents, referees and spectators, according to the rules of badminton, are the responsibility of the athlete. There are special sections of the rules that clearly stipulate these issues.

You must not deliberately distract an opponent with your actions, such as shouting or gestures.

Do not interfere with an opponent, for example by blocking him with a racket or body when he is hitting a shuttlecock that is above the net.

Without the permission of the referee on the tower, the participant cannot leave the area during the match; the exceptions are breaks due to these rules.

A participant may not:

intentionally delay or suspend a meeting;

intentionally change the shape of a shuttlecock in order to change its speed of flight;

unworthy behavior;

commit unsportsmanlike acts.

All instances of unsportsmanlike conduct and action taken must be reported to the Chief Referee immediately.

If the Umpire reprimands a competitor for an infraction, he announces: “Come, please”, and then announces a reprimand for unsportsmanlike conduct, while raising his right hand with a yellow card above his head.

If a competitor who has already been cautioned for an infraction is being penalized, the platform umpire will address the offender by announcing “Come, please” and then announce a warning for unsportsmanlike conduct while raising his right hand with a red card above his head. At the same time, the opponent is awarded a point.

Unsportsmanlike conduct committed between sets is penalized in the same way as during the match. The announcement of the penalty is made by the referee on the tower before the resumption of the match. Thus, the game can start with a score of 1:0, and the resumption of the game after a break in the middle of the game (if, say, the break began at a score of 11:8) can start with a score of 12:8 or 9:11.

If the platform umpire penalizes a competitor who has already been warned for a serious offense or repeated violations, or if a competitor does not enter the court before the end of the break, the umpire will announce to the offender: “Come, please” and then announce a warning for unsportsmanlike conduct. At the same time, he raises a red card above his head and calls the chief referee. If the chief referee decides to count the defeat to the violator, then he passes a black card to the judge on the tower. The referee on the platform, addressing the offender, must announce: “Come, please,” and then declare defeat for unsportsmanlike conduct, while raising his right hand with a black card above his head.

In the doubles game, when there is a warning and the first warning, the personal punishments are marked on the score sheet. The second warning, regardless of which of the participants in the pair is punished, is counted as a systematic violation for the pair - with the second red card being shown and the chief referee being called.

Experience shows that all unsportsmanlike showdowns on the court equally negatively affect the game of all its participants.

The main game psychological state should be based on three factors: calmness, attention, confidence. And another valuable quality - always play to the end. Badminton knows many cases of incredible winnings on the verge of defeat. Remember: while the shuttlecock is in the game, everything is possible.

At the same time, without putting pressure on the opponent's nerves with his unsportsmanlike behavior, it is quite natural to use his psychological weaknesses. He is afraid of a blow under his left arm - regularly send a shuttlecock under it. In doubles and mixed doubles, if your opponents are arguing, you often send the shuttlecock to the disputed areas.

In unfavorable situations, look for motivation to win.

Badminton Code

In addition to the official rules of the game, there is also a badminton code of conduct. This is a generally accepted order of relationships between players on the court, which helps to eliminate incorrect situations in the game and create a friendly atmosphere, which is especially important in amateur games without referees. So, before the start of the match, the rivals introduce themselves: they shake hands and give their names. During the game, they are not distracted by extraneous conversations and actions, they do not allow rude and obscene expressions. When passing the serve, they try to pass the shuttlecock conveniently into the hands of the opponent. After the end of the match, its participants thank their partners and opponents for a good game and end the meeting with a handshake.

10. psychology

10. psychology badminton player Badminton, like any other game sport, requires high emotional stress. Therefore, the correct distribution of not only physical, but also psychological stress largely contributes to a rational game. Moreover,

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How Athletes Deal With Stress - Knife

Clockwise from top left: Bianca Walkden (taekwondo 2019), Mark Cavendish (cycling), Adam Gemili (athletics 2019), Jordan Pickford (soccer), Simone Biles (gymnastics) ), Marcus Rashford (soccer), Naomi Osaka (tennis), Bradley Sinden (taekwondo), Bukayo Saka (soccer), Emma Radukanou (tennis). Composite: Getty, EPA, Reuters, Rex / Shutterstock

The anticipation of the 2021 Olympics was not too joyful. But then the sport did its job, and despite the lack of crowds and the looming threat of covid, the games in Tokyo turned out to be amazing. Among other things, they can also be called the Mental Health Olympics.

When Simone Biles withdrew from competitive gymnastics, she drew unprecedented attention to the psychological challenges of professional sports. One of the greatest female athletes of all time chose her mentality over her will to win and the stress that came with it.

“Life isn't all about gymnastics,” she said. After deep thought in the Tokyo gym, she finally decided to compete on the balance beam and won the bronze medal. This award was felt by her as one of the biggest victories in her life.

Mental health has been one of the top topics in sports this summer. Biles says she was inspired by Naomi Osaka, the Japanese tennis star who withdrew from the French Open to ease her anxiety and depression.

The slogan "Brain over brawn" caused controversy during the match at Wembley Stadium in the final of Euro 2020, where the "curse of penalties" hung over the English again, and during the Wimbledon tournament, in which the British wild card tennis player Emma Raducanou prematurely left the court No. 1. Meanwhile, Mark Cavendish returned to the Tour de France in spectacular fashion after overcoming his depression.

This display of honesty was contagious.

In July Ben Stokes decided to take an indefinite break from cricket to attend to his mental well-being. His decision, according to former player Michael Vaughan, was "a wake-up call for all of us." The following day, England defender Tyrone Mings made headlines in The Sun when he said his "mental health had taken a turn for the worse" ahead of Euro 2020 due to concerns over selection.

“I've been working on this a lot with a psychologist,” says Mings. “I was recommended a set of stress management strategies—breathing, meditation, or attention to the present moment—to keep the subconscious from taking over.”

Athletes face unprecedented stress, not only when performing, but also in the media and as brand faces. “At the end of the day, we are not just entertainment, we are people, and behind the scenes there are things outside of sports that we are also trying to cope with,” says Biles.

If great athletes are no different from us, then the field of sports psychology, which has traditionally been the prerogative of elite athletes, is also relevant for ordinary people.

More than ever, sports psychologists argue that the lessons athletes learn from the poignant moments of their careers can be useful for you and me.

The Rise of Sports Psychology

Emma Raducanu appeared at Wimbledon out of the blue and charmed the country by defeating a number of higher ranking players in an amazing series of matches. But after making it to Court No. 1 (and hitting all the front pages) for the fourth round against Ayla Tomlyanovic of Australia, the 18-year-old athlete began to suffer from dizziness and shortness of breath - she was forced to withdraw from the competition. “I think that all these experiences eventually took over me,” she later said.

Dr. Claire-Marie Roberts painfully recognized herself in this story. Roberts was a promising teenage swimmer in her day; she qualified for the 100m breaststroke at the 1996 Olympics. Roberts was able to do this despite almost paralyzing anxiety before the competition.

“Before swims, I used to throw up in the toilets because of the lack of self-confidence and the sheer number of absurd scenarios that played out in my mind,” she says. - I was worried that I would disappoint my father and coach, and it seemed to me that every opponent was much better than me. Sometimes I imagined myself in inflatable shoulder pads, trying my best to swim at least to the end of the pool.

In a happy (and very unusual for those times) case, Roberts had a sports psychologist, to whom she turned for help: “In the early 1990s, no one really knew what sports psychology was all about.” Only after that did she manage to cope with her anxiety and qualify for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta as part of the Great Britain team.

Roberts was injured right before the competition and her Olympic dream was shattered. But this experience inspired her to change her occupation. She now works as a sports psychologist at the University of the West of England at Bristol and as a training and development manager for the Premier League. Before football, she advised several Olympic athletes and teams.

Her quarter-century journey is a good illustration of the evolution of sports psychology, which in turn is linked to greater awareness of mental health. Mental well-being has become part of British public discourse. The voices of people as diverse as Prince Harry and Marcus Rashford urge us all to speak up on this topic and take care of ourselves. Rashford, even before missing a penalty in the Euro 2020 final against Italy, sent Emma Radukan a letter of support after her withdrawal from the competition, and said that he himself experienced similar feelings during the match in the England youth football team.

Simone Biles on a log in Tokyo. Photo: Wally Scalige/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

The 4 Skills of Performance Psychology

What can we learn from the unimaginable stress that athletes face in performance and how to use the lessons from the lives of athletes to cope with the demands of our own lives ?

Roberts gives the example of a friend who is very afraid of flying. The psychologist identifies four main skills in the psychology of productivity. “They can be just as useful for an England player about to take a penalty as for my friend flying to Malaga,” she says.

Achievable goals. First, break down your big, scary goals into smaller, more manageable ones. “For my friend, the first goal might be to get to the boarding gate,” she says.

Internal dialogue. "You need to pay attention to the internal dialogue and positive affirmations, saying to yourself: 'I can handle this', 'I've done this before, I'm supposed to be here.'" Mo Farah said that before he became a champion, before the races he felt unworthy. “I always wanted to win, but some part of my mind constantly thinks:“ That opponent is better than me, this one is better than me, ”so you put yourself in third or fourth place in advance,” he told The Guardian in a 2012 interview. . When he broke the 10,000m record in 2011, it gave him confidence: "It feels like a weapon... You're in control."

In Tokyo, Swedish discus thrower Daniel Sos instantly became a meme hero thanks to his self-praising. “I am a Swedish Viking! Ah-ah-ah!" he shouted to himself a second before the throw.

Visualization. “For self-confidence, it is very important to be able to imagine achieving your goals,” says Roberts. “The athlete can imagine how he scores a penalty, and my friend can visualize how he approaches the gate.”

Relaxation. Finally, Roberts, as a doctor, prescribes relaxation - the ability to get out of a state of increased arousal in order to assess the situation and make informed decisions. Muscle relaxation and meditation practice can help with this. “A simple breathing exercise that my friend does before takeoff is usually sufficient,” says Roberts.

Ready for any outcome

Professor Steve Peters is a veteran sports psychiatrist; he has worked with dozens of teams and athletes, including the England national football team, the British Cycling Federation and sprinter Adam Gemil, and in Tokyo with the British taekwondo team. Peters often talks to athletes about the consequences of competition. “I could talk to a sprinter and list everything that could happen during the upcoming 100m race: a world record, an unsatisfactory result, or something unexpected,” he said.

- I prefer to go through all the possible results and sort them out so that athletes don't have to go over them in their heads when they need to concentrate. It always surprises me that people don't do this beforehand, but simply react to what life throws at them."

Peters is also trying to identify what prevents an athlete from giving his best. Sometimes this requires a conversation with his or her trainer - and a little diplomacy. “Often there is some kind of disagreement between them,” says Peters. - A high jumper can get hung up on the position of the feet, while the coach will say that the problem is in lifting the hip. I find out the truth."

Discipline

Dr Andrea Furst, a sports psychologist who works with the England national rugby team and the Australian yachting team, says the main difference between elite athletes and mere mortals is discipline. Athletes are able to focus on what they need to improve and work on it. “Many things needed to become a professional are not particularly difficult, but require daily repetition. The ability to fulfill this requirement is what makes athletes the best among their kind, ”she says.

“One of the most useful tips for everyday life is to choose one thing to improve and focus on it.”

Honesty

According to Roberts, the growing popularity of sports psychology is improving the support system for athletes and how they talk about themselves in the public arena. “In the situation with Radukanu, the openness with which she spoke about what happened was inspiring,” says Roberts. - I doubt that this could have happened ten years ago; Athletes avoided discussion of such issues, blaming food spoilage or other external circumstances to hide the real reasons why they were forced to withdraw.”

Biles talked about her difficulties so honestly that it seemed like something radical. She told that the support she received at that time helped her to understand that she was more than her sports achievements - she did not believe in this before.

“The image of a god-athlete is a dangerous illusion,” adds psychologist Pippa Grange, who has worked with several professional athletes and teams, including England during the 2018 FIFA World Cup (she now works for Right to Dream, football academy in Ghana and Denmark). At England, she made psychology the core of teamwork, not just a service that players could use if they felt (and could admit) they needed it.

Grange encouraged players to share their life experiences and anxieties in small groups to improve cohesion and trust - this remains at the core of international coach Gareth Southgate's successful management style.

"I pushed myself too hard": Defending her title, Olympic taekwondo champion Jade Jones is eliminated in the first round. Photo: ANL/Shutterstock

“The performances that captivate the most are those in which the athletes show great heart, depth of character, and inspiring skill; in which we can see humanity, and not robotic perfection and unemotional performance, says Grange. “We all have something to take away from this.”

Joy

Dr. Geir Jordet, professor at the Norwegian School of Sports Science in Oslo, is popular with businessmen trying to learn from an extremely tense penalty shoot-out scenario. The former Norwegian footballer, who turned to sports psychology after an injury, spent five years analyzing every penalty shootout at the World Cup since 1976 and at the Euro and America's Cup finals. He also interviewed twenty-five players. “The mechanisms we use to work under stress are universal,” he says.

When the Euro 2020 final between England and Italy went to penalties, Jordeth grabbed his notebook. His analysis, which covered more than 45 years of penalty shootouts, showed that when a penalty goal means a team win, the player who takes it scores 92% of the time. If missing a penalty means losing (as in the case of Bukayo Saki's shot for England), the player only scores 62% of the time. “In life, it’s much more important to talk about the positive consequences of what you do than to wind yourself up with the negative consequences of failure,” he says.

Jordeth discovered that even the way a player celebrates a successful penalty makes a difference! "If you're celebrating brightly, showing off your coolness, and showing joy in what you've just done, it immediately increases the team's chances of winning," he says.

Working with dozens of the best teams (he prefers not to name clients, but says he got a call before a Euro 2020 game in case it came to penalties), Jordeth discovered that extremely fun goal celebrations increased the chances of more than just success next hit, but also on the miss of the opponent's next hit. “I tell business people that when you win an important contract or succeed in a meeting, it is important to show everyone that you are happy. It's contagious."

Don't rush, but don't pull

Jordeth measured the time it takes a player to hit the ball after the referee blows the whistle. Players who rush are more likely to miss, Jordeth says, perhaps because they are trying to relieve stress quickly. Just two seconds to assess the situation and take control of it will significantly increase the chance of scoring a goal.

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But too long a pause can also get in the way. Jordeth was stunned when Rashford waited a full 11 seconds before taking his shot and missing. According to him, in the last 45 years in major matches, no one has waited so long before hitting. “I never rushed and collected my thoughts before a penalty, but something was wrong that time,” Rashford tweeted the next day. “I gathered my strength for a long time, trying to gain time for myself, but, unfortunately, the result was not what I wanted.” What lesson follows from this? Waiting too long can lead to an accumulation of stress.

Feel in control

Evidence suggests that penalties are not a lottery: “We found that the more players believe that the outcome of a penalty is an accident, the more likely they are to experience destructive anxiety. Feeling in control is the key to success.”

Southgate knows this and has therefore prepared its team accordingly, choosing the players who will take the penalty according to certain criteria, and not according to the call of the heart. But regardless of whether the feeling of control is subjective or objective, the match against Italy in the final showed that this is only part of the story.

It was these techniques, which were new at the time, that helped Roberts get rid of the stress that consumed her before significant swimming competitions. This stress never stopped her, but made her a very anxious teenager.

According to Roberts, the rise in awareness of these stressors, backed up by the honesty of Radukan and Biles, is an outstanding achievement of the rise of sports psychology.

“If you look at the athletes competing in Tokyo, some of them are very young. Participation in the Olympics is extremely stressful for anyone, but it is especially difficult for a teenager.
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