Some sports are more psychologically demanding than others and sports that require an athlete to make immediate difficult decisions based on timing, scoring method and
immediate mental calculations, it’s pretty difficult, but as if that wasn’t enough, experiencing all the intrusive thoughts that pop up in your mind, requires a psychological and intellectual mindset that will allow you to do it all.
Anxiety plays a unique major role in sports. When the body and mind react to danger or threat, a person feels physical sensations of anxiety.
Anxiety, as a negative emotional sensation, affects perceptions in sport, especially in competitions, where a large majority of athletes become affected and as such consider anxiety to be debilitative towards their performance, which ultimately may result in a decrease in performance. There are two main types of anxiety: Trait anxiety is the personality core, which varies from person to person. State anxiety is changeable and varies depending upon the situation, and in sports it does exactly just that. Somatic anxiety refers to an athletes' physiological response in the game, such as increased perspiration, difficulty in breathing, increased heart rate, changes in the brain wave, elevated blood pressure, increased urination, butterflies in the stomach, less saliva in the mouth and increased muscle tension.
Reprogramming your mind and mastering the mind games, is a process which involves the restructuring of one’s thoughts as it relates to the game, the environment in which the game in played, and most of all, the intrusive negative thoughts that occupy your frontal lobe which is where the hypothetical thinking is taking place.
Sports Mental Performance Coaching includes a combination of several psychological techniques such as thought restructuring, psychoeducation, and mental training to name just a few, will alter the brain’s chemical composition to a point where you are no longer experiencing fear and anxiety, or even focusing on just winning, but instead on playing the game, and that is what makes the difference.
A fit body and a mind that’s been trained in the specifics of the mental game of that particular sport, takes an athlete, from a beginner to a pro, from losing to winning, from a player to a champion.
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