Getting Distracted?

distractionsAny 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 of distracters, internal and external.

The internal distracter takes the attention to events or episodes that were experienced either in the past or will occur in the future. When an athlete begins to remember a negative outcome from a prior game or shifts the attention to winning before the match is over, then the mental lapse causes the loss of positive momentum and creates unnecessary stress. Muscles begin to tighten and the heart beat accelerates. Athletes would typically start asking themselves: “what if I loss?”, or what if I cannot miss the next shot?” Unless the athlete is able to catch these internal distracters, the performance will most likely get worse.

The external distracter is primarily experienced by either visual or auditory stimuli. Athletes may get distracted by the crowd noise when playing away games. Or, for a professional golf player who takes a look at the score board to check how other players are doing.

Distractions are bound to happen. There is no way we can control the environment, much less our opponents’ behavior. However, going into your game with a mental plan that includes these non-controllable distractions will prepare you to respond rather than react.

If you get distracted, then:

1- Have a plan, like expressing a positive self-talk that triggers an immediate re-focusing response.

2 – a positive self-talk needs to be short, used in first person (“I”), and present tense.

Comments are closed