Imagery for Rehabilitation From a Severe Injury
Using imagery during rehabilitation for an athlete with a severe injury can be helpful if executed well, adequately utilized by the athlete, and as many variables that can be accounted for are taken into account.
Motorsport Demands and Effective Practices Part 2: The Effective Practices
Motorsports are unique because there is the material factor, the car. The car is thus a factor that an athlete can engage in DP with, as discussed above. However, there are aspects of the material factor the athlete cannot utilize DP to help address physical, physiological, psychological, and competitive demands.
Motorsport Demands and Effective Practices Part 1: The Demands
Athletes flourish and grow in their chosen sport as they come to learn, understand, and master the unique demands of the sport. The first step, however, is identifying those unique demands. This blog post explores motor sports athletes' physical, physiological, psychological, and competitive demands as an example.
Confronting Fear When Injured Part 2: Working with Fear?
We will briefly explored some techniques and ideas that have helped athletes address fear during injury recovery. This is meant to be information only, not a form of treatment or a recommendation for a treatment approach. It is essential that these approaches are done with the support of a professional, like a sport and performance consultant.
Confronting Fear When Injured Part 1: What is Fear?
Injury does happen as much as many of us would prefer that it not happen.Who wants to be sidelined with any injury or even worse taken out of your favorite sport all together? What about the journey back from injury? It can be filled with many different emotions, thoughts, and experiences. This post is going to focus on fear. Yes, fear when it comes to coming back from injury. While we may not want to talk about it, we are going to go there because it is essential. It is best to start at the beginning, which means we need to understand fear and what some common fears are for injured athletes. Chances are while reading, you may recognize some of your own experiences. This is only part one of a two part series. The second part will look at techniques and concepts for helping to address fear.
The Mental Skill of Self-Awareness to Benefit Us and Athlete Memory Part 2: Action and Practices
In the first part of this series, the foundation was laid, discussing what self-awareness is and some other factors to consider. Now it is time to see self-awareness in action. This post does get a little long. Just a heads up!
The Mental Skill of Self-Awareness to Benefit Us and Athlete Memory Part 1: Foundation
It is said that expert athletes have a good memory. If that is the case, can self-awareness be helpful in building an expert athlete’s memory? Let’s explore and see what we find.
Expertise and Deliberate Practice
Deliberate practice (DP) is a fairly popular topic when it comes to discussing expertise in sports and other professions. So what is DP?
Ericsson (2008) originally constructed the definition of DP to have the following components:
Individual active engagement
Training crafted by a coach, teacher, or similar
Dedicated to the improvement of a particular action
Integration of immediate feedback
Space for problem-solving and evaluation
Repetition of the action to cultivate the action
Definition of Expertise with Age
Expertise in sports is a complex process and, when talked about, can elicit many different thoughts, comments, and feelings. So what happens when we bring age into the picture? What happens to the definition of expertise? What happens when we consider physiological constraints, psychological processes, and the experience of aging?
Training, Memory, and Recall
Let neuroscience come forth! Not everyone is a neuroscience fan like myself, and that is completely okay. Neuroscience is not for everyone. In the case of this post, neuroscience does have to be brought up because it sets the stage for discussing memory and recall.
Self-Modeling in Sports
What is self-modeling? I am sure that you could guess the answer to this question if you do not already know the answer. Self-modeling is a technique that encourages athlete development of new and current skills to improve performance by observing themselves in action. This type of technique is grounded in social cognitive theory, which aims to explain how people learn and develop different behaviors via interactions with other people and their environment, emphasizing interactions between personal factors, environmental influences, and behavior.
Who Likes to Practice? Does a Coach Influence Liking Practice?
Why do so many athletes hate to practice?
What a question to ask. Talk about a loaded question to ask. There could be many answers to this question, and it can bring up many different thoughts and feelings. This post aims to offer some thoughts, but at the end of the day it is up to each individual athlete to answer this question for themselves. With that said, let’s dive in and see what we can explore.
Expertise, Mental Practice and Nature or Nurture
Hebb (1949) wrote that expertise “is a product of 100% nature and 100% nurture.” Interesting statement to make and fun to think about. What about the nature versus nurture argument can we use to learn about sport expertise?
Athlete Identity
What is identity? That itself is a big question and one that requires a ton of unpacking. While we will not be diving into a question that big, we will be exploring the athlete identity. Athlete identity, or athletic identity, is the degree to which an individual identifies with their role as an athlete and how they are recognized by others and themselves within their role as an athlete. This self-concept arises from the information an individual internalizes and its influence on how they process the information about themselves.
DNFing an Event or Race
The dreaded DNF, Did Not Finish! Why is this person writing about DNFing? Because we need to talk about it so that instead of dreading the DNF we understand how to use it to our advantage.
Ironman Triathlon Mental Toughness: Any Type of Athlete Can Learn About Mental Toughness from This Post
If MT is a must, then we need to understand what MT is and how someone can begin to build MT. The definition of MT that this post will utilize is the following:
“MT can be defined as a state-like psychological resource that is purposeful, flexible, and efficient in nature for the enactment and maintenance of goal-directed pursuits.”
(Gucciardi, 2017, p. 18)
Reinvestment Theory
Reinvestment Theory (Masters, 1992; Masters et al., 1993; Masters, 2000) suggests that relatively automated motor processes may be disruptable if this processing is running by means of conscious access and task-relevant declarative knowledge is what is controlling the mechanics of the movements on-line. Understanding Reinvestment Theory may help athletes avoid reinvestment issues within the context of still tailoring based on the individual characteristics as well as other characteristics, such as developmental stage, learning style, or awareness of internal and external awareness.
The Complexities of Athlete Learning Part 2
Part 2! Last time, we looked at errorless learning and external and internal focus of attention. Now we will build on last week and continue with the analogy of the ice skater. Today we will dive head first into analogy learning and implicit and explicit learning techniques.
The Complexities of Athlete Learning Part 1
Three key teaching concepts, errorless learning, external focus of attention, and analogy learning, may be used to support this skilled athlete in enhancing performance and improving preparation.
Implicit versus Explicit Training
What is implicit and explicit training in the world of sports? Implicit learning is learning that happens with little to no instruction from an outside source such as a coach and is more focused on the athlete’s experience. A few good examples of this is learning to ride a bike, using an analogy to teach a skill, or allowing an athlete to learn via sensory experience versus verbal feedback. In contrast, explicit learning is where an outside source such as a coach provides an athlete with verbal instruction.