Leif H. Smith - Sports Psychology For Dummies

Building this ideal mindset, much like making any change in your life, starts with awareness. You need to be aware, first, of the mindset that has been holding you back in competition. You also most importantly need to be aware of the mindset you possess when you are performing at your best. We are taught to focus on the negative and be self-critical, but we need to spend more time and energy on what we are doing right!

Having a good supporting cast of family, friends, coaches, and teammates around you helps you do this, and from there you can begin to take the tools that you learn in this book to build a better mindset, step by step. This is the essence — the process — by which you can begin to perform better, at higher levels, and more consistently.

For more information on ways to start developing this process, check out Chapters 2and 8.

Motivation can come from within (we call this intrinsic motivation), and it can come from things outside of yourself, such as money, fame, or status (we call this type of motivation extrinsic motivation). When you understand how to utilize both types of motivation to your advantage, you hasten your development as a complete athlete, combining mind and body together to maximize the talent you already have for your sport.

Chapter 4is a powerful chapter, and it gives you the tools you need to understand and improve your motivation in sports.

One of the wonderful aspects of sports psychology principles and techniques is that they’re applicable on and off the field. They help you improve your confidence. And all improved performances — on and off the field — result from a gradual improvement in your confidence. The more confident you are, the more risks you take, and the more rewards and positive consequences you experience. All successful athletes know that when they’re confident and comfortable, their chances for success are dramatically higher, even though their preparation and physical fitness may be the same.

Confidence frees you to perform, compete, and reach your highest potential. And confidence is not an all-or-nothing game — it changes and develops over time. We want you to be in a place where you fear less and dream and create more! When you build confidence, you can try new things without fearing how you will look in front of others or worrying what they will think of you.

In Chapter 5, we show you the art and the science of building true confidence. We like to call this swagger. We help you take the guesswork out of the process of improving your self-confidence and give you a solid framework from which to improve your performance in sports. We also show you how best to address and manage those times when your confidence drops. Your goal should be to maximize the times when your confidence is high and minimize the times when it’s not. This is one of the secrets of confidence in sports.

In developing your mind through sports psychology training, you want to develop your own personal “mental toolkit” that contains the techniques and strategies you need to strengthen your mental muscle. Just as you can use equipment to help you improve your physical fitness, there are tools you can use to do the same for your mind.

Focus is one of the most critical mental skills to develop for success in athletics. It’s one of the most common assets of successful athletes, and a lack of focus is a primary reason for mental errors, mistakes, and the inability to perform under pressure. In Chapter 6, we give you Tool #1, “Mastering the Art of Focus,” so that you can take your focus up a notch.

Mental imagery can help you build confidence, manage pressure, recover from mistakes and poor performance, and prepare for practice and competition. In Chapter 7, we offer you Tool #2, “Seeing Is Believing,” and we explain what imagery is and how it works, giving you specific steps to use the tool of imagery in your sport.

As an athlete, you’re constantly working toward specific goals, and you are creating habits that will propel you toward victory. In Chapter 9, we introduce you to Tool #4, “Winning Habits,” and help you understand and harness the power of routines in your sport so that you can become more consistent in both your preparation and your results.

As you use your mental tools (see the preceding section), you’ll see the direct benefits of sports psychology in action, in practice and in competition.

As you practice and compete, you face all kinds of pressure. Being a great athlete is about being able to perform your best when the pressure is on. In Chapter 10, you learn about Tool #5, “Handling Pressure,” where we give you specific strategies for improving your ability to do exactly that.

And, because mistakes are a regular part of the sports world, in Chapter 11, we offer you Tool #6, “Handling Adversity,” and we give you lots of advice for becoming more resilient. From simple mistakes in competition to longer slumps, we show you how to move on from the mistakes of your past and focus on performing your best in the present.

As an athlete, you have to manage your energy levels before a competition to harness the mental and physical energy you need when it counts. In Chapter 12, you learn about Tool #7, “Sharpening Your Awareness.” There, we explain how to calm down and pump yourself up, so your energy resources are always there for you when you need them.

Mental health issues are one of the hottest topics discussed in the field of athletics today. Anxiety and depression aren’t just battled off the court or field — athletes have to battle them on the court, too, and we discuss this topic in greater detail in Chapter 13.

Managing stress is such an important topic in sports psychology today that we chose to dedicate another chapter to it entirely. After reading Chapter 14, you’ll be better prepared to understand the sources of stress in your life and manage them more effectively in the future.

We get so many requests from parents and high school athletes to help them navigate the ever-changing recruitment process from high school to college athletics that we devote a whole chapter about it — Chapter 15. It is a complicated process, and we believe that this chapter simplifies the process.

Ever wonder how the skills in this book can be applied outside of sport? Well, wait no longer, because Chapter 16, “Using Sports Psychology Skills in Daily Life,” is written just for you!

Since writing the first edition of this book in 2010, the field of sports psychology has expanded so dramatically in popularity that we get requests on a weekly basis from students interested in the field asking us for direction and career advice. What a wonderful development! Thus, we dedicated an entire chapter — Chapter 17— to exploring the career path of a sports psychologist. If you are a student with interest in this field, this chapter is written with you in mind.

Sports psychology is a growing and ever-changing field of study and applied techniques, and this popularity is due in part to how applicable sports psychology is to life outside of sports, too.