Setting Goals The Athlete example essay topic

Sports is by far one of the fastest growing past times in the United States (Rainer 1987). Even if people don't take it to the professional level, sporting events are happening in our backyards, and at all of our local schools around the country. With the growing popularity and the increasing competitiveness of the sports, it will take more than just a physical advantage to compete at the highest level. This is where the psychology of sports comes into play. Goal setting is a hugely powerful technique that can yield strong returns in all areas of an athlete's life.

At its simplest level the process of setting goals and targets allows people to choose where they want to go in life. By knowing what a person wants to achieve, they know what they have to concentrate on, and what is merely a distraction. Goal setting gives long-term vision, and short-term motivation. By setting goals the athlete can achieve more, improve performance, improve the quality of the training, increase the motivation to achieve, increase pride and satisfaction in their performance, and improve their self-confidence (Bull, 1983). Research (Bull, 1983) has shown that people who use goal-setting effectively suffer less from stress and anxiety, concentrate better, show more self-confidence, perform better, and are happier with their performance. The way in which an athlete sets his goals strongly affects their effectiveness.

Before setting goals, the athlete should have set the background of goal setting by understanding their commitment to sports, understanding the level they want to reach within the sport, knowing the skills that will have to be acquired and the levels of performance that will be needed, and know where this will fit into their overall life goals. The following broad guidelines apply to setting effective goals. Positive statements, be precise, set priorities, write goals down to avoid confusion and give them more force, and keep operational goals small (Rainer, 1987). 'Your body is a beautifully evolved sporting machine, comprising, among other things, muscles that can be trained to a peak of fitness and nerves that control the muscles' (Morris 1992). The nerves are massively linked in an athlete's brain: vast numbers of nerve cells are linked with a hugely greater number of interconnections.

Many of the pathways, however, lie within the brain. These pathways can be effectively trained by the use of mental techniques such as imagery and simulation. Imagery is the process by which an athlete can create, modify or strengthen pathways important to the coordination of their muscles, by training purely within their mind. Imagery rests on the important principle that an athlete can exercise these parts of their brain with imputes from their imagination rather than from their senses: the parts of the brain that an athlete trains with imagery experience imagined and real inputs similarly, with the real inputs being merely more vividly experienced (Rainer 1987).

Simulation is similar to imagery in that it seeks to improve the quality of training by teaching the brain to cope with circumstances that would not be otherwise met until an important competition was reached. Simulation, however, is carried out by making their physical training circumstances as similar as possible to the 'real thing'-for example by bringing in crowds of spectators, by having performances judged, or by inviting press to a training session (Rainer 1987). Deciding their commitment to their sport is possibly the most important 'SportsPsychology' decision an athlete will make. It is important to realize that excellence demands complete dedication: if an athlete want to be the top athlete, then training to bethe top athlete must be the most important thing in their life (Orlick 1994). Self-confidence is arguably one of the most important things an athlete can have.

Self-confidence reflects their assessment of an athlete own self-worth. It will play a large part in determining their happiness through life. Sports can be both enormously effective in improving self-worth, and highly destructive in damaging it (Orlick 1994). Imagery, positive thinking, and goal setting can dramatically help in ones own self-confidence. The athlete can help The athlete to routinely apply sports psychology techniques by getting into the habit of using a "Training and Performance Diary" before and after every training session and performance. Take a diary that has a full page for every day.

Block each page into sections for Entries before the Session: goals, and Entries after the Session: achievements, errors, quality of session, and mindset. Keeping this diary has the following advantages: it focuses an athlete's attention before a session on what he needs to achieve. It helps them to track the achievement of goals. It also helps to isolate areas needing improvement. It gives an athlete the raw data they need to track improvement over time.

It helps them to see and analyze how mood, distraction, and stress relate to performance (Orlick 1994). Part of Mental Preparation for competition is ensuring that the athlete starts their performance in a state of flow. Many high level athletes do this by developing routines that help them to focus their minds and block out distractions. These may involve complex and detailed rituals that involve preparation, detailed dressing rules, or precisely executed warm-ups. An athlete can perform best in competition if they remember the following pointers. Enjoy the performance.

Execute, analyze, and improve skills in practice, and if the athlete makes a mistake during performance, they need to forget about it and focus on executing (Morris 1992). One thing to watch out for as an athlete gets better at a sport is loss of focus. This can happen for two main reasons. As their reaction becomes automatic, they lose their concentration.

The other reason is as an athlete gets better, they may find that they are not as challenged by other competitors. The athlete may find that these focus problems have their root in goal setting: if the athlete is setting outcome goals such as " coming first', then this will not be challenging if the athlete wins easily (Orlick 1994). Bad moods damage their motivation to succeed in training or competition. They make the athlete more prone to negative thinking, and cause distraction, often as the athlete triggers bad moods in other people.

Bad moods emerge as bad temper, unhappiness, lethargy and sluggishness. If the athlete is in a good mood, then even dull training can be enjoyable. The athlete can improve their mood in the following ways: through positive thinking and suggestion, by treating each element of a performance individually, by using imagery, by reviewing their goals to motivate themselves, and by smiling (Orlick 1994). Distraction is damaging to the athlete's performance because it interferes with their ability to focus and disrupts flow. It interferes with the attention that the athlete needs to apply to maintain good technique. This causes stress and consumes mental energy that is better applied somewhere else.

'Distraction can come from a number of sources, both internal and external' (Rainer 1987), such as: the presence of loved ones the athlete wants to impress, family or relationship problems, media, teammates and other competitors, coaches who do not know when to keep quiet, frustration at mistakes, unjust criticism, poor refereeing decisions, or changes in familiar patterns. What is worth remembering is that when the athlete is distracted, loses concentration, and makes a mistake, the athlete has not lost their skills. The athlete has just lost their focus. The following points help to deal with distractions. Their reaction to distractions is controllable, think positive, prepare for distractions, expect distractions, learn how to change bad moods to good moods, sleep and rest more before big events (Bull 1983). Too much stress and anxiety can seriously affect their ability to focus on their skills and low in a performance.

It is important that the athlete recognize they are responsible for their own stress levels. Very often they are a product of the way the athlete thinks. Always be aware that others may be out to manipulate their stress levels. A certain level of stress is needed for optimal performance. If the athlete is under too little stress then the athlete will find it difficult to motivate themselves to give a good performance. Too little stress expresses itself in feelings of boredom and not being challenged.

At an optimum level of stress the athlete will get the benefits of alertness and activation that a good level of stress brings. Excessive levels of stress damages performance and damages their enjoyment of the sport. When the athlete is in a competitive environment or is in an environment in which the athlete is being evaluated, adrenaline may enter their bloodstream. This has the following positive and negative effects on the athlete's body. Those positive effects include: adrenaline causes psychological arousal, it causes alertness, it prepares the body for explosive activity. Those negative effects include: it inhibits judgment, and it interferes with fine motor control (Morris 1992).

Anxiety is different from stress. Anxiety comes from a concern over lack of control over circumstances. In some cases being anxious and worrying over a problem may generate a solution. Normally, however, it will just result in negative thinking (Bull 1983).

The athlete needs mental energy to be able to concentrate their attention and maintain good mental attitudes. If the athlete is concentrating effectively then the athlete can conserve physical energy by maintaining good technique when their muscles are tired. The athlete can waste mental energy on worry, stress, fretting over distractions, and negative thinking. Over a long competition, these not only damage enjoyment, but also drain energy so that performance suffers. It is therefore important to avoid these by good use of sports psychology, and by resting effectively between events and by ensuring that the athlete sleep properly. Sports psychology is a relatively new idea and just now it is becoming more of a normal thing rather than something only pro athletes do.

The study of the mind and how it relates to sports is a beneficial thing that even our own school uses to help improve performance. Over the last two years our Varsity and JV boys basketball team has used a sports psychologist from Boulder two or three times during the year. Sports psychology is no longer looked down upon, it is now a legitimate practice..