Sports Psychology: 4 Tools Athletes Use to Achieve Peak Performance

To achieve excellence in any sport or athletic competition, it’s important to focus on your mind just as much as your body.

A healthy mind is what drives good practice, preparation, and focus before you enter a game. Ask any successful athlete and they will tell you the importance of their mental approach when it comes to improving their physical skills and performance.

Sports psychology is a fast-growing branch of science that seeks to learn more about how our minds can improve athletic ability and maximize our performance in different sports.

The Champion’s Mind: How Great Athletes Think, Train, and Thrive is an excellent new book by psychologist Jim Afremow that explores the latest research in sports psychology and how it applies to different athletes in a wide variety of sports.

Here are 4 tools influenced by sports psychology that athletes use to achieve peak performance in their game.

Goal Setting

Goal setting is the first major tool that all athletes use to improve themselves.

Athletes don’t just practice their craft mindlessly, they practice with a specific goal in mind that they want to work toward and achieve.

A golfer may focus on improving their putting. A basketball player may focus on improving their defensive skills. And a baseball player may focus on improving their fielding and throwing.

Athletes are always identifying weak-points in their game and using “practice time” to focus on improving those skills.

A growing body of research shows that “goal setting” is most effective when your goals are:

• Specific – The more specific a goal is, the more you know exactly what you want to work on. Instead of saying to yourself “I want to be a better runner,” say “I want to improve my time running the mile.”
• Measurable – It’s important that your goal is measurable so that you have a concrete way of knowing you are making progress. For example, a basketball player who wants to improve their defensive skills may aim to make 3 steals in their next game.
• Challenging, But Attainable – Research shows a goal is most effective when it hits a “sweet spot” between being challenging but attainable. Setting goals too high can often lead to frustration and fatigue, so try to find a good balance between pushing yourself forward, but being realistic. You wouldn’t expect to walk into the gym one day and improve your bench-pressing from 150 pounds to 300 pounds. Focus on small improvements.
• Time Based – Put a deadline on your goal to help you stay focused and disciplined. When you finally pass your deadline, use it as a time to reflect on your progress regardless if you achieved your goal in the given timeframe or not.
• Written Down – It’s smart to write down your goals and keep track of your progress in a daily journal or diary. This can end up being a great source of motivation when you look back and see the improvements you’re making.

Successful athletes are always setting new goals for themselves and pushing themselves forward. They know how to set goals in the right way so that they see progress and never get too frustrated or disappointed.

Self-Talk

Self-talk is another important tool in sports psychology. According to a recent study, how athletes talk to themselves on and off the field can have a dramatic effect on their performance and attitude.

Here are key findings on how self talk can influence athletes in different ways:

• Instructional self-talk – Instructional self-talk can be effective when working on fine skills or improved technique. For example, when about to drive a golf ball onto the fairway, it would be better for the golfer to use self-talk such as “keep your knees bent” or “swing with your hips” rather than motivational speech like “you can do it!”
• Motivational self-talk – Motivational self-talk was found to be effective during tasks “requiring strength or endurance, boosting confidence and psyching-up for competition.” So those motivational speeches your football coach gives you before a big game can definitely have an effect, especially if those motivational messages stay inside your head throughout the game. A linebacker thinking “Let’s get ’em!” can be an empowering thought.
• Novelty vs. well-learned – Some studies find that self-talk is better for novel tasks rather than well-learned tasks. This is probably because during early stages of our sports development we are learning many new things, and self-talk can facilitate that learning. On the other hand, if someone is already a well-learned baseball player (where everything is already second-nature), forced self-talk may disrupt the natural flow of their game.

Self-talk is something that all athletes do. Depending on how you use it, it can both improve your performance or sabotage it – especially if your self-talk is filled with negativity, doubt, and beating yourself up over mistakes.

In the book, one of my favorite examples of “self-talk” is a motivational affirmation used by author and runner Haruki Marakami. When he did a 62 mile ultramarathon, he would repeat to himself the mantra:

What a great piece of motivation! What are some bits of self-talk you need to add to your own game?

Mental Imagery

Another very popular tool in sports psychology is the use of “mental imagery.”

Recent studies in neuroscience have shown that when we imagine ourselves doing a particular habit it activates many of the same regions in our brain as when we are physically doing that same habit. And one recent study found that when experienced pianists practice playing a new song in their heads, it improves their performance and accuracy.

In this way, visualizing in our mind’s eye can be an effective way to prepare ourselves for a situation before it plays out in the real world.

When athletes imagine themselves performing a certain way, they are mentally preparing themselves to act that same way once they step onto the field. For example, a golfer or basketball player will often visualize their shot before actually attempting it.

When using mental imagery, many sports psychologists recommend the following advice:

• First person perspective – Try to imagine how you want to act (and what you want to happen) from a first person perspective. Experience the situation from your own eyes as if it is happening right now.
• Make it realistic – Try to imagine the situation as it would happen in the real world. For example, picture yourself wearing your own jersey and playing at your own home field. The closer your imagery is to the real situation, the better your mind will be prepared.
• Focus on process, not just results – Try to imagine the whole process from beginning to end. Don’t just skip to the soccer ball going into the goal, see everything: you running down the field → teammate passing it to you → you moving past a player → you seeing an open spot in the goal → you kicking the ball. Preparing yourself to act the right way and make the right decisions is key.
• Evoke multiple senses – Try to imagine the experience from multiple senses. What you would see, hear, feel, taste, smell, etc.? The more senses you can evoke, the more clearer the experience will be in your mind, and the more of an imprint it will make on your brain.

All successful athletes make use of mental imagery in one form or another. They are masters at seeing their success in their mind before they make it into a reality.

Mental imagery can be especially effective for injured players who aren’t capable of physical practice but still want to keep their instincts sharp.

Another way a lot of athletes mentally prepare themselves these days is by watching lots of video footage of themselves, especially comparing their good performances vs. bad performances. Video footage can be a great aid to creating effective mental imagery.

Meditation

Another tool in sports psychology that has become very popular is the use of meditation.

Meditation is one of the most well-researched tools in psychology. Studies show it can help in improving focus, reducing stress and anxiety, and boosting your health and immune system – all effects that athletes can greatly benefit from.

Today it’s not uncommon for sports teams to have scheduled meditation sessions to help improve the focus of their players. The legendary basketball coach Phil Jackson (Bulls, Lakers, Knicks) is just one example of the recent surge in meditation.

To maximize performance, it’s very important for athletes to be able to get “in the zone” during a game. This often includes ignoring negative thinking (doubts, worries, mistakes) and external distractions (crowd, referee, trash talk, sports media).

The goal of meditation is to focus on the sensations of your breathing while ignoring any other distractions. With time and practice, you learn how to sustain your focus for longer periods of time. Distractions just become clouds in the sky that keep passing you by, but there’s no need to draw your full attention to them.

Focus is one of the most powerful abilities you can have in any area of life, especially sports. And meditation is currently one of the best known ways for athletes to naturally improve their focus and state of “flow.”

A good starting point is the Breathing Meditation. Once you get comfortable with that you can expand to other types of meditation like a Sound Meditation or a “Walking Meditation.”

A steady meditation practice can help you create a state of focus and awareness that you can carry into all other areas of your life.

Conclusion

The Champion’s Mind is a really fantastic and useful book when it comes to sports psychology and learning more about how you can use your mind to improve athletic performance.

This article covers a few tools mentioned in the book, but there’s a lot of other tools and advice that I didn’t get to go over.

One of my personal favorite chapters is called “Golden Reflections” – it’s a collection of success stories by different Olympic gold medalists. Each olympian shares an inspiring and defining moment in their journey to becoming a world class athlete.

Every professional athlete has at least one role model who helped motivate them and inspire them to pursue their goals. Learning from other people’s stories can be one of the most useful ways to improve yourself and your own game.

If you’re an athlete who wants to bring their game to the next level, considering adding one of these mental tools to your practice and preparation.

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