Sport and performance psychology
Lecture 1. The Mental Side of Sport & Motivation.
Coleman Griffith is often credited as the first person to apply psychological principles into
sport performance.
Exercise psychology is more focused on positive health outcomes instead of performance
outcomes
Positive psychology: where meaning in life is about, how individuals find their lives
comprehensible, significant and purposeful beyond daily concerns.
Three characteristics of sport psychology:
1. regarded as a science
2. It involves the study of exercise as well as of competitive athletic behavior
3. Sport psychology is a profession as well as a science
4 hypothetical aspects of athletic performance:
1. physical: fitness, strength and stamina which can be measured objectively
2. technical: the proficiency with which athletes can execute fundamental skills required
by their specialist sport
3. tactical
4. physiological
What is the most important principle of sport and performance psychology? →
You can only control how you play, what you do and no other effects around you
(your teammates, weather etc)
- How you play = how you play - performance losses (all kind of mental factors that
is lowering your performance)
Mental training is typically directed at avoiding performance losses: To teach, develop
and maintain skills that help athletes to focus exclusively on ‘how to play’ while ignoring
distractions. Including internal distractors or self-generated concerts arising from one’s own
thoughts and feelings, and external distractions such as weather conditions, the click of a
camera, or actions by opponents or others
Performance gains: cause performance to increase over time (level and consistency). Bv;
Food, rest, recovery (all kinds of factors to increase your performance)
,→ Mental side of sports: reduces performance losses and increases performance
gains → belief that you can achieve your goals.
Kern van het verhaal: APA: Acknowledge, practice, act
Note: Applied sport psychology, as a sub-field of performance psychology, is about
enhancing athletes’ performance and helping them reach their potential (rather than
addressing mental issues, that is for clinical psychologists).
By developing an individual's mental toughness, regarded by athletes and researchers as a
key characteristic of successful athletes. What is mental toughness, how do you define it?
- emotional regulation
- avoid distractions
- resilience: SOC (sense of coherence) is a crucial factor related to resilience. SOC is
a pervasive, enduring belief that one’s environment is predictable, resources are
available to cope with challenges, and these challenges are meaningful and worth
addressing. Comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness (= most
important)
- motivation
- discipline
- belief
→ every athlete has a different view on mental toughness! be aware of that. Be
critical on conceptualizations and how they define some terms during the whole
course.
,Mental toughness in the sport psychological literature: “Hardiness is a constellation of
personality characteristics that enables people to mitigate the adverse effect of stressful
situations. Mental toughness and concentrating effectively are factors that distinguish top
athletes from less successful counterparts.
According to Durand-Bush and DesClouds: athletes reports that they like having video
available as a way to help them achieve an optimal state of mind before competing.
4C model of mental toughness: (Clough et al.,)
1. Control = the capacity to feel and act as if one could exert an influence in the
situation in question
2. Challenge = the habit of perceiving potentially stressful situations as positive
opportunities rather than as threats
3. Commitment = stickability or the extent to which an individual is likely to persist with
a goal or work task
4. Confidence = a strong belief in one’s ability to complete a task successfully
Clough: Mentally tough athletes are people who have a high sense of self belief and an
unshakeable faith that they can control their own destiny and who can remain relatively
unaffected by competition or adversity.
Mental skills are not the most important in sport because:
- If people lack in competence, do not have fitness, strength and technical and tactical
skills required, the mental piece is completely irrelevant
- People tend to overestimate the impact of mental factors. That is, amateur athletes
tend to explain their inconsistency or lack of progress to mental factors.
- However, low-competent individuals typically perform inconsistently, also in low
pressure situations. Thus, competence rather than mental factors determine
(fluctuations in) performance.
Mental skills are the most important in sport because:
- When competing against an opponent of similar ability, mental factors make the
difference, because mental factors are more sensitive to pressure situations than
physical, technical and tactical factors
- Mental factors determine athletes’ performance losses
- Mental factors facilitate the development of physical, technical and tactical expertise
, Genetics seems to play an important role in becoming an athlete, but there needs to be an
opportunity to perform. Other factors: personality traits, psychological skills, opportunity to
perform.
Example: Max Verstappen. He has a dad and a mom who were care drivers and he also has
the right genes. Environment is also playing an important role. In the Netherlands ice
skating, Jamaica Running
Mental practice should focus on:
Performance gains:
1. developing mental skills and enhancing sustainable motivations
2. improving one’s expertise (level and consistency)
3. optimizing opportunities to develop and train
Performance losses:
4. enhancing the ability and motivations to effectively self-regulate during performance
5. developing the competencies to utilize when performing
6. optimizing the opportunities to perform well
Motivation: Self-determination theory (SDT)
Motivation = The psychological forces that determine the direction of a person’s behavior, a
person’s level of intensity or effort and a person’s self-regulation and level of persistence
To better understand the role of motivation in sport, it is essential to consider the conditions
and processes that move an athlete to act, think and develop.
Intrinsic motivation: When activity is performed for its own sake, that is, the behavior is
experienced as inherently satisfying, because it satisfies the basic needs for autonomy,
competence and relatedness, the natural ingredients for IM.
Extrinsic motivation: The activity is perceived as a means to a separable outcome (being
instrumentally important)
Amotivation: the absence of motivation
Six mini theories of SDT:
1. Cognitive evaluation theory (CET): Thwarting peoples’ basic psychological
needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, decreases their autonomous
regulation (intrinsic motivation). For example: if athletes believe that their sporting
behavior is controlled by external rewards, their level of intrinsic motivation may
decline
Two social inputs:
