Accepting Defeat in Order to Win?

This really does not make any sense at all!! At first sight, this title makes no sense whatsoever. Athletes train very hard to perform at their best. They compete to win and establish mental goals to achieve their dreams. So, how could it be possible that they would accept defeat in order to win? The burden of needing or wanting to win is extremely high, regardless of whether it is a young athlete or an …

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Successful Strategies When Playing a Weaker Opponent

Athletes that play against weaker opponents tend to become overly confident and fall into the trap of counting victory too soon. Players and coaches quite commonly prepare to compete against weaker opponents under that strong assumption that success is a forgone conclusion. Unfortunately, we all know by personal experience or by watching top athletes’ performance how such a mental approach ends up biting them back. In a recent squash match, a physically strong player stepped …

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Mindfulness to Achieve Peak Performance

If I could mange distractions during my sports performance, I’d be able to achieve my peak potential! Distraction and losing focus are very common experiences that athletes find challenging to manage. For example: A tennis player lost the last four games and, during the changeover, he starts having uncontrollable negative thoughts. Elizabeth is bound to shoot her best round of golf and, as she is about to tee off, she pays too much attention to …

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Visualization: Why and How to do it.

Visualization is one of the most common mental strategies used by top athletes to help them achieve their top performance. Visualization, also called imagery, intends to mentally rehearse the performance-like atmosphere by using the athlete’s five senses to pretend he is performing in real time. It is known that pretending to be executing a performance while in training by imagining its success becomes registered in the brain as if it were taking place in real …

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Sports Motivation 101

Sports Motivation 101 means, keep your dreams alive!! Yes, many of us have frequently been told to keep our dreams alive, to envision what we want to achieve and imagine how those dreams would become reality one day. There is clearly no shortage of self-help books or motivational speakers voicing the importance of visualizing what we want to achieve by keeping our dreams alive. There is certainly a lot of truth to that. The wonderful …

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