Exam 1 Flashcards
Peak Performance
Moment when athlete puts it all together both physically and mentally
- Average performance is exceeded and personal bests are often achieved
- Relatively rare and involuntary
- More likely to occur when athlete’s skill level match the demand or challenge of situation
- Absolute skill level is not important
Athletes and coaches attribute success with mental factors at what percent?
Most atj;etes and coaches acknowledge that at least 40%-90% of success is due to mental factors
Peak Performance Psychological Profile
Five sources to identify psychological characteristics
- Researchers asked athletes to recall their subjective perceptions during greatest moment
- Data comparing psychological characteristics of successful athletes
Flow State
- State in which people are so involvued in an activity and nothing else seems to matter
- Can have flow without peak performance but cant have peak performance without flow
4/9 elements of flow
- Awareness and action merge so that movement is perceived as effortless
- Goals are clear
- Unambiguous feedback indicates that what is being done is correct
- Total and complete concentration on the task at hand without force
External Imagery
Person views self from perspecitve of an external observer like seeing oneself on television or videotape
Internal Imagery
Requires approximation like actual perspective when skill is performed or imagining being inside the body and experiencing the same senations as one might expect in actual phyiscal execution
Traits of Successful Athletes
- Highly self confident
- Total commitment
- Strong performance focus
- Cope well with stress and distactions
- Better concentration and less likely to be distracted
Traits of Poor Performance/Unsuccessful Athletes
- Self doubts
- Acting contrary to normal perforance routines
- Lack of concentration
- Over or under arousal
- Focuses on Distractions
IZOF
The individualized Zone of Optimal Functioning
IZOF Model
Attempts to identify emotional patterns associated with individual athletes’ successful performances
Ideographic
Individually focused; every athlete has their own unique emotional state in which successful performances are most likely
Four Groups of Emotional States Recognized
- Positive performance enhancing
- Positive performance impairing
- Negative performance impairing
- Negative performance impairing
What do top sport people think it takes to “make it”?
- Commitment
- Goal of being the best they are capable of being
- Maturity and self control
- Staying cool and confident
Psychological Differences Between Successful and Unsuccessful Athletes
- Compared 1976 US Olympic qualifiers to non-qualifiers in men’s gymnastics
- Finalists coped more easily with competitive mistakes
- Were better able to control and utilize anxiety
- Had higher self confidence and more positive self-talk
- Had more sport-related dreams
- Used internal imagery more
Competitive Stressors
Experienced immediately before and during performance
Organization Stressors
Directly linked to placement within/on the team (e.g. position on the baseball field, spon on a relay, making varsity vs JV)
Personal Stressors
All the remaining factors not directly related to the sport and performance that weigh on an individual
Responses to stress
Arousal and Activation:
-
Arousal is psychological response that the body undergoes when placed under stress.
- ie. Bracing
-
Activation is similar to arousal yet is specific to those responses that are directly related to the sport and performance that weigh on an individual
- ie. Differential relaxation
Competitive Anxiety
All the emotional responses normally associated with sport performance. It’s a negative response to the stress of competition
Cognitive Anxiety vs Somatic Anxiety
- Cognitive Anxiety: Encompasses all the mental aspects of dealing with stress
- Somatic Anxiety: The athlete’s own interpretation of their own phusical response to stress. This includes all sympathethic nervous system responses such as increased heart rate and sweating
Trait Anxiety vs State Anxiety
- Trait Anxiety: Evaluative situation where outcome matters in the presence of important or threatening or worrisome
- State Anxiety: An increased level of stress due to a particular event happening immediately or in the near future. Fluctuates constantly as the situations and their demands change
Drive Theory
States that drive arousal has a positive linear relationship with performance, so as drive increases so will performance as long as the participant is learned in their activity
ie. a swimmer is not golfing, a baseball player is not throwing a football
Inverted U Hypothesis
Reflects a parabolic relationship between arousal and performance. As arousal increases, as does performance to a point
Zone of Optimal Functioning
A tool used by athletes to find that optimal arousal level to produce peak performance
Multidimensional Anxiety Theory
Differentiates between cognitive and somatic responses to stress, as they have different effects upon performance. According to the theory, somatic responses follow the inverted-U for arousal and performance, whereas the cognitive aspect follows a negative linear relationship
Cusp Catastrophe Model
Created to fill some gaps that were found with MAT. It highlights the effect of cognitive anxiety on the physiological repsonse to stress
Explicit Monitoring
Control from automatic leads to choking
Distraction Theory
Paralysis by analysis
Processing Efficiency theory
Explains the somatic responses to positive and negative cognitive appraisal of stress
Attentional Control Theory
Is a continuation of PET that goes on to explain the effects of anxiety, a portion of their mental capacity is directed toward ambivalent worrying, which will lower their available mental power to focus on the task at hand
Conscious Processing Hypothesis
Used to explain the mechanisms behind poor performance due to anxiety.
“Paralysis by Analysis” CPH
Stress Management Interventions
- Prevention
- Reduction
- Restructuring
- Energizing
- Each technique works but not each technique works with every person
Stress Prevention
Works to actively remove the stressor entirely
Stress Reduction
Focus on minimizing and eliminating the symptoms of stress while maintaining heightened awareness. These techniques are classified as either mind-to-muscle or muscle-to-mind
Mind-to-Muscle vs. Muscle-to-Mind
Mind-to-muscle: relies upon the mind affecting the body to make the muscles untense
Muscle-to-mind: involves utilizing the muscles to calm the mind
Stress Restructuring
Focuses on athletes and their appraisal of the stressor to change from negative to positive, which leads to fewer detriments in performance
Stress Energizing
For participants that require high levels of stress to perform well, they will do activities or exercises to increase arousal to enhance performance
ie. Breathing exercises, energizing imager, transferring energy
Awareness
- An athlete pays particular attention to their mental focus and their mental state of being
- includes being aware of their own arousal levels and determining if they are too low or too high
- If awareness is lacking, athletes become more focused on the end result rather than the process
The seven step process - the “R’s”
- Responsibility: An athlete becomes accountable for their actions
- Recognize: Know internal and external components of thought that could affect performance
- Release: To get rid of anything that ould negatively affect performance
- Regroup: Regaining focus and composure
- Refocus: Tuning in focus to the task and focuses on their plan of action
- Ready: The athlete commits to the task and focuses on their plan of action
- Respond: This is the step where an athlete must trust the training they have done and act appropriately
All-or-None Syndrome
There is more to a performance than a success or failure. Even if the game is lost, there are aspects of the game that were successful.
Athletes should look at what went well in the performance, and also draw attention to areas that may need work.