admin, Author at SPORTS MENTAL EDGE

Sports Mental Toughness: Can You Develop It?

In a recent interview with Jack Nicklaus, he was asked if athletes are born having mental toughness. His immediate response was that athletes do not know their fullest potential until they put themselves in situations where they are demanded to perform outside their comfort zone. Athletes are continually asked to take one step further to improve their performance. A thorough preparation leading to perform to one’s best is the only guarantee to building confidence in …

Getting Distracted?

Any athlete, whether elite or recreational, deals with the challenge to stay focused on the task at hand. And, any one of them will tell you that they need to work quite hard to remain focused if they want to perform to the best of their abilities. One may argue that elite athletes are better able to keep their concentration than a recreational athlete could, but the challenge remains the same. There are two kinds …

Pre-Performance Sports Routines

A pre performance routine is the “sequence of task, relevant thoughts and actions which an athlete systematically engages prior to his or her performance of a specific sport skill” (Moran 1996, p177). The objective of executing a pre-performance routine is to assist the athlete to gain full focus of the task at hand. Just prior to starting the performance, it is quite common that noises, people moving around, intrusive thoughts, and emotions become a distraction. …

Fear of winning?

Although it may sound strange to some readers, but athletes and coaches are very familiar with this phenomenon as they witness repeated performances where expected outcomes are not nearly achieved. It is not necessarily fear of winning that athletes are concerned about; after all, that’s why they compete. However, it is the consequences that come as a result of winning that some athletes fear most about. Athletes feel high levels of stress trying to perform …

Fear of Losing in Sports?

A very well known sport psychologist, Dr. Adam Nicholls, found that “performance is impaired more by the expectation that failure will indicate one’s lack of competence than by the mere expectation of failure to complete a task.” Athletes can become much immersed in the expectation others have on them to the point that their performances become one of not wanting to fail others more than accepting one’s potential. Athletes do not want to disappoint parents …