-
Asked by spacenut to Faye, Martin, Mus, Pete on 15 May 2012.
-
Faye Didymus answered on 15 May 2012:
That’s a really good question spacenut! I think that it’s a combination of both. No doubt you need to have a physical ability and lots of great sportsmen can be described as “naturally talented” but if they don’t have the right mental attitude, they may struggle to make it at the top. Ronnie O’Sullivan is a good example of this – he’s been described as they most naturally gifted snooker player in history but for many years, his mental game held him back. Recently he has been working with Steve Peters who is a legendary sports psychiatrist and he just won the World Snooker Championships – it may have been down to other things too but there was lots of talk at the Championships about how much his mental game has improved and how it helped him to win the World title. The mind is certainly a powerful thing and I believe that with the right training and preparation, any talented sportsperson can perform amazingly well if they have the right mental attitude!
-
Comments
spacenut commented on :
Cool! How would a physicactrist improve the mental attitude?
Faye commented on :
That’s another good question spacenut! There are many different ways that mental attitude can be improved – the way you improve it depends on the problem that the athlete has with their attitude. Let me give you an example…let’s say a sports person was suffering from very heightened and unhelpful levels of anxiety during sports performance, which was making that person have a negative attitude towards performing. Depending on the type of work the psychologist or psychiatrist specialises in, they would work with the athlete to get their anxiety under control. This can be done in a variety of ways – cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for example, can help people to think differently about things so it could help an athlete see their anxiety as facilitative (helpful) rather than debilitative (unhelpful) for performance. The technical term for this technique is cognitive restructuring. There’s a fair amount of scientific research out there that suggests that it’s not the intensity of the anxiety but the athletes perception (view) of the anxiety that determines how it effects performance so cognitive restructuring could be really helpful in this type of situation. Other things that could help to control anxiety before sports performance are progressive muscle relaxation, diaphragmatic (deep) breathing, visualization, goal setting, developing self-confidence, and focusing on the controllables. There’s a lot of information there but I hope it helps to answer your question! Give me a shout if you want to know anything else or any of the above is unclear 🙂
spacenut commented on :
How long would that take?
Faye commented on :
Hi spacenut. Again – it depends on the problem! Some take longer than others and it depends whether the problem stems from deeper inside the individual’s personality or whether it’s something more superficial. CBT interventions start at about 6 weeks and generally speaking go on until the problem has been adequately addressed. A sports psychologist may be recruited for a short contract – say 6 months or maybe be asked to work with sports people across one or more seasons. The last intervention work I did started in September and will finish in July 🙂
bossman commented on :
how did you think of all these questions?
spacenut commented on :
Haha!!! I had loads before!