The Athlete’s mindset

The mind is an extremely powerful tool. It has the ability to break or make a person. Not literally though!

Sports psychology is one of the fields of behavioural science that aims to study mechanisms of the mind of a sports person. These professionals work through psychological factors that would lead to performance enhancements and increased gestalt wellbeing. Sports psychologists tend to work on the external factors too which have an effect on the athlete. The factors that exist outside the game that influence personal and social lives of the athlete due their nature of career.

Have you ever thought that athletes seem to think differently? How are they able to express their art and perform in front of huge crowds, face defeat and come back?

To dismantle a bit on the first part of the question, I’ll point out Dr. Jocelyn Faubert, a psychophysicist who investigated the enhanced perceptual-cognitive abilities of professional sportsmen. He conducted a study to determine how elite players differed from amateur athletes and non-athletes in their ability to remember complex, moving visual sceneries without any context or previous information. Short bursts of dynamic, persistent, laser-like attention were needed for the activity. It was found that professional athletes outperformed the other two groups handily, followed by amateurs and then non-athletes. It was understood that professional athletes have the capacity to hyperfocus for brief periods of time, which lead to amazing learning abilities. Even their MRI scans show a difference!

Now, for the second part of the question

Well renowned sports psychologist and coach, Bell Beswick expressed how his work throughout years involved varied kinds of sports, with varied personalities and one thing that caught his attention in his early career days was the type of training. In an interview he said, “I began to question performance and wonder why one player wanted to take a ‘game-deciding’ shot under pressure and why another did not’’. Coaching in those days focussed on the purely physical, tactical and technical aspects of the sport. He slowly tried to comprehend that there was an extremely crucial characteristic that created top players. This captured his attention on the importance of ‘attitude’ in the game that differentiates a lot of professionals from others. The belief that players held on winning a game and viewing themselves on and off field. All of which made a major impact on the way they performed.

When we think of great professionals, we automatically have a face in front of us even if not their names. Knowing the sport is also not required to recognise some faces that have influenced the sports they play/ed. Most of the great sports professionals that I researched showed an incredible way of thinking which acts as a foundation to their nature. Many of them like Micheal Phelps, Cristiano Ronaldo, Serena Williams, Sunil Chhetri, Kobe Bryant speak about how they believe in their ability to win. They believe that their mind is the strongest machine they can train to achieve the goals they set for themselves.

Sports psychologists do just that, they train the mind of professionals to enhance the way they feel about their self confidence, performance, self esteem and the ways they can continually improve to be on top. Important characteristics that leading sports psychologists identify in the way great athletes function is their awareness of hard work and sacrifice needed to accomplish goals and the passion for the sport they play. They realise that all rounded consistent training even when the athlete is at their lowest professionally could get them back to the top if there is an attitude to do better.

How many times have we been affected by what happens outside our control?

As we know, we cannot have ‘talent’ if we are not blessed with it, but we can always work ‘harder’ and ‘smarter’ than the one with just talent. Yes this could maybe mean we take more time to reach the destination but who says that talent is enough to get one on the top ladder. Similarly, in sports another chief characteristic that determines enhanced performance and confidence is the clarity on forming actions to tackle the controllable factors that affect the sport. Most of the players are trained to think in the manner that requires them to focus on the controllable factors and not be drowned in the ones they have no control on. This helps them build habits to improve where they know they can.

One of the greatest footballers’, Cristiano Ronaldo shared his childhood experience in one of his interviews about how he was told that he is a very talented player, but is ‘’very skinny and slim’’ to which he believed that this is something he could ‘’improve’’. He was clear that his talent is not the only factor that could make him a top player and that he needs to focus on improving his physique to enhance his performance. The awareness to focus on the controllable is extremely crucial extending to all other walks of life and career.

The mind of an athlete is praised by almost everyone, there is a lot we can as individuals from varied careers learn and implement in our lives to magnify our professional and personal growth.

Resources

https://youtu.be/QOsHNL6V8O8 - One of the World's best-respected Sports Psychologists Bill Beswick

https://youtu.be/Wy17-qnyovw - The Psychology of Working with Elite Athletes, Dr. Joel Fish

https://youtu.be/BtS2w6XRKrY - Mental Aspect of Sports w/ Seahawks Sports Psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais

https://youtu.be/2v6_Mq3fGbU - How this Sports Psychologist Trains NFL Players' Brains, The Assist

https://youtu.be/yG7v4y_xwzQ - Sport psychology - inside the mind of champion athletes, Martin Hagger

https://brainworldmagazine.com/sporting-genius-inside-the-minds-of-elite-athletes/

https://theathletemind.com/

Li, L., & Smith, D. M. (2021). Neural Efficiency in Athletes: A Systematic Review. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.698555

https://www.thoughtways.org/coming-soon-01 - Needs- action tracker, Track the needs in your control