SPS550 SPORTS COUNSELING

QUESTION:
According to Meyers, Whelan, and Murphy (1996), problems in performance are related to
issues such as competition anxiety, motivational problems, poor self-talk, and lapses in
concentration. In determining whether other factors might be involve requires understanding a
number of interrelated issues (Todd, and Anderson, 2010). From sport counseling perspectives,
discuss those issues and suggest some guidelines to help athletes grow and develop their
potentials.
ANSWER:
1. SELF-CONFIDENT
Athletes develop their self confident by the mastery of the skills, demonstration,
having ideal physique and body weight and vicarious experience. Some athlete may
have diverse factor where they see themselves in negative sides. Having negative
perspective in their sides makes their self confident and beliefs in sports decrease. They
are not motivated to success, afraid of taking risks, and known as diffidence where they
are lack of self confident.
Goal setting can be one of the guidelines to increase athletes self confident. By
setting goals, athletes will find themselves working to achieve the goal and by allowing to
show their abilities. In addition, setting imagery can help enhancing self confident when
they imagining the successful achievement and be aware that goals are attainable.
Coaches also play important roles in building self confident among players. There are
guidelines for coaches to develop self confident among athlete. They can give positive
feedback about athletes performance either in motivational of informational feedback.
Giving encouragement and advices based on their performance and what they need to
do to achieve high performance in sports.
2. STRESS
Athletes facing stress when they thought that their physiology are not able to
cope and be compatible with certain situation. Stress is related to other effects as it can

SPS550 SPORTS COUNSELING

cause anxiety when athletes feel the situations are threatening. It then cause negative
thinking and worry leading to decreased in performance.
Certain guidelines that can be given to athletes are coping strategies of stress.
Self talk are the most easiest way to do by communicating with themselves by using
positive talk where it can help athletes deal with stressful situation. By doing positive
talk, followed by thought control are the best guidelines for athletes. Counselor can use
cognitive strategies to move and change the negative thinking into positive thoughts.
Changing negative thought such as scared with opponent strength can be overcome by
believes to teams own strength. Furthermore, athlete need to monitor their own stress
level and use it based on the demands of the situation. Other alternatives that can be
given and used by athletes are by implementing relaxation technique; biofeedback and
autogenic training.
3. BURNOUT OR OVERTRAINING
Burnout can simply defined as athletes interest in participating in sport is no
longer available in themselves. These can be caused by loses interest and enjoyment of
the sports. It came from tiredness, over thinking, overtraining and emotional factor. Too
much pressure and a perfect expectation from coaches and other people around can
lead to these problems. Age, physical, psychological, personal and interpersonal factor
are the main contributor to burnout.
Some guidelines that can be used are by giving rest or time outs to athletes.
According to Henschen (2001) to prevent burnout, coaches should give athletes time off
ran away from training and competitions. Other than that, working by setting goals and
planning strategies together can give relief to athletes as they thought they can control
anything happen to them based on sport situation. Again, mental practice are the best
guidelines to follow where it help athletes body to recover from physical training while
they were thinking on positive perspective and the relevant ways participation in any
competitions.