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Sports Psychology – A healthy mind is as important as a healthy body

By Loh Shih Ying

Do you know that a public announcement during a sports competition can affect an athlete’s concentration and performance on the game?  How then is he able to win the game if the audience is against him - taunting and jeering at him?

Well, other than physical training, it is also important that the athlete is trained to be mentally stronger. You may point out that sports psychology is like that of social or other psychology. But how familiar are you with the following?

• The first sports psychologist is said to be a North American man born in 1898. His first breakthrough was that cyclists cycle faster in pairs or in a group, rather than when riding singly.
• The first sports psychology laboratory was opened in 1920 by a German who resided in Berlin.
• Sports psychologists have begun considerations that exercise acts as a therapeutic addition on top of maintaining mental health.
• The Mental Game Professional certificate programme is a sports psychology performance enhancement system that has been proven to be effective in building an athlete’s confidence and maximising his performance through the use of mental stimulation.
• The power of mind sculpting (mentally rehearsing how one responds in a situation) can bring performance improvement comparable to that of actual physical practice.
• Visualisations involved in mind sculpting are so complete that one’s central nervous system responds as though in actual situation./i>

• One’s brain is unable to differentiate between reality and imagined scenes, thus this makes sports psychology effective.

• To increase the effectiveness, as many sensory factors should be incorporated into visualisation as possible.

• By setting goals and establishing trigger words that instantly refocus the athlete’s concentration to the goal, an athlete can be further pushed to achieve his/her goal.

• When an athlete fails to control his anger, the athlete would lose concentration and his performance would deteriorate. The loss of faith in one’s ability further fuels anger, serving as a slippery slope to failure.
  

Editor’s note:
Imagine running in an empty stadium as opposed to running in one to the cheers of your home crowd, moral support is as important to an athlete to reach peak performance as physical training. Come and lend your support to disabled athletes at our next game or look out for Beijing 2008 Paralympics, of which our athletes with disability, Muhammad Firdaus Bin Nordin and Theresa Goh Rui Si, have already qualified for. Let us bring a medal back to Singapore together as a nation!

References:
Manktelow, J. (n.d.).  Introduction to Sports Psychology. Retrieved June 15, 2007, from http://www.mindtools.com/spintro.html

Psychology. (n.d.). Retrieved June 15, 2007, from http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/psych.htm

Susic, P. (1999). Sport Psychologists and the History of Sport Psychology. Retrieved June 15, 2007, from http://www.psychtreatment.com/sport_psychologists.htm

Association for the Advancement of Applied Sports Psychology. (n.d.). Applied Sports Psychology. Retrieved June 15, 2007, from http://www.aaasponline.org/asp/index.php

Sports Psychology. (2007, June 15, 01:06). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved June 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_psychology