After the team’s loss due to Jess missing the penalty kick, she reached out to me as she heard other athletes were using a mental skills coach to help increase performance. Jess wasn’t certain on how a mental skills training (MST) could help her performance, but was eager to learn more. This was Jess’s first preseason friendly game, making it easy to implement a PST programme before the competitive season began, creating a long term solution for effective results in performance rather than a quick fix (5.1). Research by Weinberg and Williams (2011) suggest the best time to implement a PST programme is during the off season or preseason, working out perfectly as we had 4 months to implement a PST training before the competitive season began.
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Athlete’s attention will switch between attentional styles changing with the demands of their sport, although many athletes will have a preferred attentional style that forms part of your personality (Hodge, & McKenzie, 1999). For example dribbling in soccer and scanning for opponents would be the use of broad-external, when reacting to an opponent or passing quickly this would require switching to narrow-external (Hardy, 2006).
Selective attention is a key attribute to have within sport. Selective attention is the ability block out irrelevant cues and pay attention to relevant information (Cox, 2012). This can be incorporated in soccer to attend to concentrating on the goal during a free kick, not the distracting noises of the …show more content…
Jess has already been working on self-talk the previous month to this meeting which also helps attention/concentration. Imagery is the manipulation of images that mimics real experiences and can involve all of the senses (Hodge, 2004.
”Over the years, researchers have found evidence that the use of imagery in sport can be a highly effective performance enhancement technique for athletes” (Short, Tenute, & Feltz, 2005).
Imagery can be used to improve performance through manipulation of images from past experiences into new experiences, or recreating images into successful experiences from the same event that has happened before (Hodge, 2004).
Imagery is a skill that needs to be constantly trained for it to be effective, knowledge in the motor skill that is being mentally rehearsed is required for enhanced performance (Morris, & Summers, 2004). When trying to train imagery we first need to asses the athletes imgery abilities, assess the quality, vividness and controllability (Morris….).
“Learning to develop and control clear, vivid images of performance enables yout to practice and reherse your control of attention and attentional shifts” (Hodge, 2004).
MST
Athlete’s attention will switch between attentional styles changing with the demands of their sport, although many athletes will have a preferred attentional style that forms part of your personality (Hodge, & McKenzie, 1999). For example dribbling in soccer and scanning for opponents would be the use of broad-external, when reacting to an opponent or passing quickly this would require switching to narrow-external (Hardy, 2006).
Selective attention is a key attribute to have within sport. Selective attention is the ability block out irrelevant cues and pay attention to relevant information (Cox, 2012). This can be incorporated in soccer to attend to concentrating on the goal during a free kick, not the distracting noises of the …show more content…
Jess has already been working on self-talk the previous month to this meeting which also helps attention/concentration. Imagery is the manipulation of images that mimics real experiences and can involve all of the senses (Hodge, 2004.
”Over the years, researchers have found evidence that the use of imagery in sport can be a highly effective performance enhancement technique for athletes” (Short, Tenute, & Feltz, 2005).
Imagery can be used to improve performance through manipulation of images from past experiences into new experiences, or recreating images into successful experiences from the same event that has happened before (Hodge, 2004).
Imagery is a skill that needs to be constantly trained for it to be effective, knowledge in the motor skill that is being mentally rehearsed is required for enhanced performance (Morris, & Summers, 2004). When trying to train imagery we first need to asses the athletes imgery abilities, assess the quality, vividness and controllability (Morris….).
“Learning to develop and control clear, vivid images of performance enables yout to practice and reherse your control of attention and attentional shifts” (Hodge, 2004).
MST