IDENTIFY AND EXPLAIN THE NEED OF SPORTS PSYCOLOGY

DURING ANY SPORTS COMPETITION.

WITNESS ANY MATCH AND USE IT AS A REFERENCES.

SUBMITTED BY
Surriya Murtaza
STUDENT REGISTRATION NO.
F18BACT030
SESSION
2018-2022
DATE:
16th February 2022

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What is sports psychology

A human being’s mind of difficult with the learning and the developing at different rate of
speed. A psychological skill can be an inherent ability for people to have a control over their
state in which they feel under pressure and where they have to maintain focus and aim for
their goal during the time of extreme circumstances of uncertainty. Sports psychology is an
attempt to investigate an athletic performance, to make them stable and to improve the
performance during matches with the help of an appropriate balance of both physical and
psychological dimensions of performance. Sports psychology offers a development in the
aspects of a sportsman mental aspect during the competition and performance. It has been
shown in research that the mental health training is and addition to the physical training it can
help improve the results much more efficiently let alone the physical training. With keeping a
focus on the mental skills that are needed to be successful for a sports competition, a mental
coaching help in achieving the all over performance improvement of the goal.

A sports psychology can also be defined as the segment which focuses on helping the athletes
break through the barriers which are held mentally, which keeps them away from performing
up to their highest potentials. It helps by focusing on the mental skills that are important to
pass any sports successfully in any competition. It is all about improving the attitude and the
psychological skills which help them perform and give their best by picking up their limiting
beliefs and by embracing a much healthier faith about their sports.

Need of sports psychology:

1. Attention focus:

Sports psychology involves an attentional focus which means that an ability to turn blind eye
on distractions, to cut out from distractions and focus on the task. This leaves the sports
person to better manage their focus mentally.

2. Mental toughness:

This area has gained importance in sports psychology. This term means the characteristics
that are important for athletes to reach their best and optimal level of performance. These
may include strong belief in oneself that they have the ability to bounce back from the
setbacks or having an eager to succeed.

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 3. Visualizing and establishing goals

This involves setting the goal and then having visuals of each and every step that is important
for reaching the goal without anxiety and to successfully perform at a particular skill. All this
together help the athlete to prepare mentally for the competition.

4. Motivation and Team Development

Sports psychologist work with professional athletes and coached to improve the performance
by maintaining a motivation. In subject to sports psychology there are two type of motivators,
extrinsic and intrinsic.

Extrinsic are those who are motivated from reward such as medals, trophies prize bonds.
Where on the other hand, intrinsic are those who are motivated due to their personal desires
to win or sense of pride from a better performance in a game.

5. Anxiety:

This include finding ways to reduce the stress and anxiety or to combat the burnout. Getting
nervous before game is common for athletes during performance and competitions. However
these nerves can have a negative impact on the performance. It is a learning tactic to stay
calm to help the athlete perform his best in his game.

Such tactics focus on the area of sports psychology, these might involve some relaxation
techniques, improving self confidence and finding other distractions to reduce the focus on
the anxiety.

6. Rehabilitation:

This is another factor that requires the need of the sports psychology, rehabilitation help the
players on coming back from the recovering time during an injury after sports. A sport injury
might leave people to experience some emotional reaction along with the physical one. It
might include anger, frustration, or hopelessness.

Reference from a match:

From the soccer match between

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Pressure in soccer can be felt in many ways. It is usually before matches leading up to
nervousness some players will feel before game. And also pressure in matches where you get
nervous in those situations, which cause you to get nervous and loose the ball.

In this match I have analysed following situations which has lead the players to use their
mentality skills to overcome the situations.

Pressure situation in the match:

It is different depending who you are what’s your position, a pressure situation for striker
could be when he has an opportunity to make a goal , to take someone on one on one,
pressure of winning or loosing a game, or we can flip it to a goal keeper to stop the goal from
making and not making a mistake that could lead him to the other team making a goal. The
same could be said for the defender a position where he could be receiving the ball in
pressure and when some one is running at you.

The first piece of advice is to get yourself in the moment, usually player feel pressure or
nervous in these situation because players are over thinking that they get the ball in tight spot
and think of all the way they could mess up. That why player feel the pressure work, players
in the moment and they just respond to the situation the player is in their training will be to
take just go for it, but if players allow themselves to be just nervous because they just
thinking way too much about it then it is way more likely that they are going to make a
mistake. So the first thing is to get in the moment, don’t think fear, don’t think past.
Concentrate on what you are doing right then and right there, don’t think about any ways you
could possibly mess up the situation. As we see in the game that as the striker is gets the ball
the goal keeper gets so nervous that he gets on his toes and couldn’t think straight where to
aim to keep the ball touching the net. He gets nervous even before the ball reaches to the
striker. Which makes him loose the ball.

The second advice for the situation is to practice the game just like situation in the training
that player struggle with, for example if they struggle with players closing them down when
they get the ball, really practice those type of situation in their training maybe they can
practice kicking it in to the wall. And playing more quickly. The more players practice the
situations that they usually struggle with in their practice the more comfortable they will
become and more confident they will become doing those things in match repetition leaves
them more confident and less nervousness. As we heard in an interview after game, when the
interviewer when he asks the player how he is so confident on the field, he revealed that he

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their coached asks them to practice those situations which makes them weak, and those where
there opponents are stronger.

Before match:

Visualization. We have discussed this before, visualizing yourself playing very well in the
match, visualizing yourself in those pressure situations and handling them perfectly whenever
you do that you go in to the matches so much less nervous this is like magic pill to going in to
your matches less nervous obviously you need to this consistently for it to work but the
reason to it’s importance is because it does work. So an hour or 2 before your match visualize
yourself playing so well in your mind of yourself playing in the game. It boosts your
confidence and will make you less nervous. In the soccer game we see that the team comes
up to the ground to see the overall situation, then the visualize in their mind, such famous
teams have this training where they know how to visualize such situations in their mind
where they see themselves playing in the field and doing their best.

Next thing is to relax and just breath, if players have a breathing exercise to do or listen to the
music that relaxes them, they should absolutely do that, becoming intense does not help the
players in any way. They may think it does it really does not they have to relax and take It
easy before the match and don’t overthink the match the rule is that players don’t need to do
complicated in order to deal with the pressure before the game, either it is simple, small size
game or a big match like finals or player are in a tournament. The advice is same, visualize
and relax.

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References:
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/44/Suppl_1/i55.4
https://www.topendsports.com/psychology/benefit-of-sports-psychology.htm
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-sports-psychology-2794906
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehbvgh7g_fs&ab_channel=SimplySoccer