Motivation in Sports Psychology: 4 Interventions & Techniques
- Goal setting. Goals focus attention, mobilize effort, enhance persistence, and encourage strategy development (Kremer et al., 2019).
- Self-talk. Motivational self-talk improves endurance performance, increasing both power output and time to exhaustion (Meijen, 2019).
- Change the environment. ...
- Growing intrinsic motivation. ...
What are the principles of sports psychology?
Sport psychology is the understanding of how the mind influences an athlete’s performance in their chosen sport. Within the principles of sport psychology are various concepts such as how do athletes prefer to learn, what is their personality, how can they attain states of relaxation and concentration (narrow and broad focus), how does an athlete learn to visualize a successful performance ...
How to become a sports psychologist?
How to become a sports psychologist
- Undergraduate Degree. The first step that you should take after completing your high school is enrolling in a university for a bachelor’s degree.
- Graduate Degree. Unfortunately, merely obtaining a bachelor’s degree is not sufficient to make you a sports psychologist.
- Professional Experience. ...
- Board Certification. ...
What is peak performance in sports psychology?
incorporate information from sport psychology into their preparation of athletes for competition and use information during competition to help their teams perform at their highest possible level (peak performance in sports). Hornby (2004) defines peak performance as the point when somebody is best and most successful in
What is the psychology of Sport and exercise?
“Sport and Exercise Psychology” is a title that encompasses a huge variety of theories that have been developed to explain how motivations, beliefs and emotions influence our behaviour plus the behaviour of individuals or members of groups in sport and exercise.
What are sports psychology interventions?
Sport Psychology interventions are designed to assist athletes and other sports participants (e.g., coaches, administrators, parents) from a wide array of settings, levels of competition and ages, ranging from recreational youth participants to professional and Olympic athletes to master's level performers.
What is an example of a psychological intervention?
Examples include helping clients to focus on good things, the future self, gratitude, affirmation of the self and kindness towards others.
What types of psychological interventions are there?
Broadly, psychological interventions can be classified into behavioural, cognitive, psychodynamic, humanistic, systemic, motivational, disease, and social and environmental.
What do you mean by psychological intervention?
Psychological intervention is defined as a relationship aimed at promoting a better adaptation of the individual to a given situation and thereby optimizing his or her personal resources in relation to autonomy, self-knowledge and self-help [1].
What are positive psychological interventions?
Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs) are intentional activities that aim to boost wellbeing, enhance positive feelings, behaviours, or cognitions Sin and Lyubomirsky (2009. (2009).
Why is psychological intervention important?
The main benefits of psychological interventions appear to center on promoting positive mood, reducing depression, and fostering confidence in self-management (i.e. self-efficacy).
What are the three types of interventions?
Interventions are Generally Categorized into Four Main TypesThe Simple Intervention.The Classical Intervention.Family System Intervention.Crisis Intervention.
What are the 4 major types of psychological therapies?
To help you get familiar with the different therapeutic approaches, here's a quick guide to four of the most widely-practiced forms.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)Psychodynamic Therapy.Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)Humanistic/Experiential Therapy.
What are intervention techniques?
Listening involves focusing, observing, understanding and responding with empathy, genuineness, respect, acceptance, non-judgment and sensitivity. A number of specific strategies can be used to promote effective listening during crisis intervention. These include: Using open-ended questions - “what” or “how” questions.
Is exercise a psychosocial intervention?
This review evidenced positive effects of some types of psychosocial interventions such as exercise interventions, group-based health promotion and various psychological interventions.
What is in a psychological intervention plan?
A treatment plan will include the patient or client's personal information, the diagnosis (or diagnoses, as is often the case with mental illness), a general outline of the treatment prescribed, and space to measure outcomes as the client progresses through treatment.
What are psychological interventions for psychological problems?
Psychological interventions used in the trials included social skills training, participant modelling/graded exposure, social problem solving followed by assertiveness, assertiveness followed by social problem solving, traditional psychotherapy and CBT.
What are psychological interventions for psychological problems?
Psychological interventions used in the trials included social skills training, participant modelling/graded exposure, social problem solving followed by assertiveness, assertiveness followed by social problem solving, traditional psychotherapy and CBT.
What psychological interventions are available for patients dealing with end of life issues?
Psychological intervention with these people includes psychotherapy for depression and anxiety, stress and pain management, relaxation training and family and group psychotherapy.
Why is it important to assess the effectiveness of a sport intervention?
It is important for sport and exercise psychology (SEP) professionals to demonstrate that the interventions they employ make a difference. Assessing the degree of an intervention’s effectiveness depends first and foremost on the nature and scope of the intervention (i.e., the objective of the intervention) and its targeted group.
What is exercise intervention?
In the simplest terms, exercise interventions are designed to influence inadequately active, physically inactive, or sedentary individuals to move toward accumulating the World Health Organization’s recommended 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity of per week (World Health Organization, 2010 ). Interventions focused on a psychological element or theory utilize some sort of interaction aimed at changing individuals’ thoughts or beliefs about their capability to exercise and, ideally, increasing their autonomous choices to be more active. Although they are not directly mentioned as PST in the exercise psychology literature, the tactics and techniques employed in reference studies and reviews of the literature highlighting how interventions that successfully influenced activity in underactive populations were implemented closely mirror what has been published in sport psychology interventions (e.g., behavior modification, enhanced self-regulation, etc.).
How does PST help athletes?
The focus in these studies has been on examining how a psychological strategy or skill may enhance outcomes related to a better recovery or better mood states while coping with injury . When placing military personnel with nonspecific low-back pain in an experimental group focused on goal-setting, a therapist-led exercise therapy group, or a non-therapist-led therapy exercise group for three weeks, Coppack, Kristensen, and Karageorghis ( 2012) found that self-efficacy and adherence was significantly higher with the experimental group, suggesting that goal-setting can enhance the rehabilitation or exercise therapy experience. Similar findings were supported in an earlier study by Evans and Hardy ( 2002 ). After a five-week intervention, injured athletes in a goal-setting experimental group showed increased self-efficacy and adherence.
What is PST in exercise?
In line with the description of PST in the preceding paragraph (Vealey, 1988 ), the term PST is used here to refer to various psychological techniques designed to enhance psychological skills and qualities to facilitate optimal sport and exercise performance experiences.
What is SEP in sport psychology?
Sport and exercise psychology (SEP) professionals provide services to a range of participants in various domains (e.g., sport, exercise, military, performing arts, and music). It is important for SEP professionals to demonstrate that the interventions they employ make a difference in participants’ performance and well-being because this evidence gives credibility to the field of applied sport psychology (Brown & Fletcher, 2017 ). Assessing the degree of an intervention’s effectiveness depends, first and foremost, on the nature and scope of the intervention (i.e., the objective of the intervention) and its targeted group. Traditionally, the interventions have been quite varied between the sport psychology and exercise psychology; a common thread however, can be seen as an enhancement of the sport or exercise experience, along with an attempt to help the individual better self-regulate engagement with the targeted behavior or mindset. For example, sport psychology interventions have primarily focused on sport performance enhancement (Vealey, 2007 ), and the focus of exercise psychology interventions has been on increasing physical activity and self-regulating exercise habits (Buckworth, Dishman, O’Connor, & Tomporowski, 2013 ). Although the two fields have different objectives, it can be argued that sport psychology interventions—specifically psychological skills training (PST) interventions—can inform SEP professionals’ research and applied practices with both the sport and exercise populations.
What is exercise psychology?
In exercise settings, there is a common thread of utilizing psychological skill building or psychological manipulations in exercise- and physical-activity-focused interventions to help individuals to begin exercising, increase physical activity, or enhance adherence to regular exercise habits (see Berger, Weinberg, & Eklund, 2015; Buckworth et al., 2013 ). There has been a long history of interest in the relationship between psychology and exercise (some scholars have linked it to the writings of Heridocus and Hippocrates), but exercise psychology emerged as a focused field of study only in the 1960s (e.g., Layman, 1960 ), and became more fully established in the 1970s and 1980s. Much of the field’s progression has been credited to William P. Morgan, whose body of work focused on various psychological experiences associated with or mitigated by exercise, and his influence in seeing the viability of psychology as field of interest in physical education and exercise science. He is further credited with creating, in 1986, and serving as the founding president of Division 47: Society for Sport Exercise and Performance Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association that focuses on the combined interests of exercise and sport psychology (Buckworth et al., 2013 ).
How effective is the theory of physical activity?
In a meta-analysis of 82 studies following randomized controlled trial methods and utilizing one or more theories to guide physical activity, Gourlan and colleagues ( 2016) concluded that no single theory was more efficacious in increasing physical activity than any other, returning an effect size of d = 0.31 overall. However, studies utilizing a single theory (n = 61) to increase physical activity returned a moderate effect of d = 0.35, whereas studies guided by two theories (n = 14) or more (n = 7) returned a smaller effect of d = 0.21. Thirty-one of the single-theory papers utilized the transtheoretical model (TTM); 16 studies utilized social cognitive theory (SCT); 8 utilized the theory of planned behavior (TPB); 5 followed self-determination theory (SDT); and one was based on the protection motivation theory (PMT). These findings underscore the need for individuals working to enhance physical activity to engage with the underactive and inactive populations from a supportive position, showing empathy, working to build competency, and promoting autonomy in choosing exercise activities.
How effective are psychological interventions in sports?
In general, educationally-based psychological interventions have produced significant increases in performance. Specifically, it was found that 38 of the 45 studies examined (85%) had found positive performance effects, although causality could only be inferred in 20 of these studies. These interventions could be classified as relaxation-based, cognitive, cognitive-behavioural or behavioural in nature. Although general support was provided for the effectiveness of psychological interventions in competitive sports, a number of methodological shortcomings limit the application of the findings. For example, future intervention research in competitive sport should employ more detailed manipulation checks, include follow-up assessments beyond a mere post-test, include placebo-control groups to control for expectancy effects and include more diverse samples. In addition to the empirical intervention research, recent research employing qualitative methodologies has greatly added to our understanding of the types of interventions and what type of sport psychology consultants most positively affect performance enhancement, as well as the personal growth of athletes. Continued quantitative and qualitative research needs to be conducted so that a better understanding is gained of how to conduct psychological interventions with athletes that will enhance performance as well as personal growth.
Why is psychological intervention important in sports?
The use of psychological interventions in competitive sport to enhance performance has become increasingly popular. However, the effectiveness of these interventions has been questioned by some sports psychologists.
How many studies have shown positive performance effects?
In general, educationally-based psychological interventions have produced significant increases in performance. Specifically, it was found that 38 of the 45 studies examined (85%) had found positive performance effects, although causality could only be inferred in 20 of these studies.
What is sport psychological support?
An essential feature of the quality of sport psychological support, both for the athlete and for the coach, is the transparency of the programme being undertaken regarding content, time demands and costs. One should always strive to apply quality management while conducting sport psychological services. By providing a clear structure and transparent characteristics for these services, one can create an obvious distinction between a high-quality, scientifically grounded practice of sport psychology and that practised by so-called mental trainers, who demonstrate no relevant qualifications.
What is sport psychology?
But first, back to the basic question: What is sport psychology? According to the European Federation of Sport Psychology (FEPSAC, 1995), sport psychology is concerned with the psychological foundations, processes and consequences of the psychological regulation of sport-related activities of one or several persons acting as the subject(s) of the activity. The focus may be on behaviour or on different psychological dimensions of human behaviour, that is, affective, cognitive, motivational or sensory-motor dimensions.
Why is psychology important in sports?
Sport psychology has been receiving more and more interest over the past years, and it is almost common knowledge that being fully present mentally, when required, can give an athlete the final edge in competition. Still, there seem to be differing opinions about the role that the psyche plays and how important psychology in sports really is. Some people consider the use of psychological skills to be a pure waste of time or to simply be an excuse for poor performance. Coaches often say that they have sufficient psychological skills to influence their athletes and that all they really need to have is sympathy, willingness to listen and good communication skills.
What is the third level of crisis intervention?
The first two levels continuously extend throughout the entire intervention process. The third level, crisis intervention, however, is geared at situations requiring immediate intervention. Crisis intervention, for instance, is applied in the event of conflicts within a team, or between an athlete and the coach, as well as in cases involving injuries. This third level uses both the relaxation techniques of basic training and the skills learned in advanced training. Different forms of crisis intervention are presented in chapter 7.
What is sport psychology?
sport psychology to young athletes, a long-term focus and a stable environment. are prerequisites for success. The results of the current study suggest that delivering sport psychology. services inside the athletes’ daily training environment and within their training.
What are the objectives of the sport psychology study?
The objectives of the study were: (1) to identify key themes that expert practitioners used to communicate their experiences of sport psychology interventions, and to integrate them into an empirical framework, and (2) to explore the experiences of these practitioners in their successful and less successful interventions in youth and senior sports using the framework. Twelve internationally recognized sport psychology practitioners (SPPs) were involved in semi-structured interviews, and the data were thematically analyzed. The empirical framework derived from the SPPs’ intervention narratives contains eight themes integrated into two categories: (1) the content and focus, and (2) the organization and delivery of interventions. We found differences between successful and less successful interventions and between youth and senior contexts in terms of needs assessment, adaptation and breadth of content, athlete-practitioner relationship, and intervention settings. The empirical framework might help SPPs to design, implement, and evaluate their services in these two contexts.
What is burnout in sports?
Burnout in sport settings is commonly described as a multidimensional syndrome explained through a variety of antecedents. The present study aims to investigate the predictive relationship of psychological (motives, satisfaction, fatigue, anxiety, self-esteem) and situational (hours of training per week and perceived volume of training) determinants with athlete burnout symptoms (reduced sense of accomplishment, emotional / physical exhaustion, and sport devaluation). Participants were 142 Greek talented competitive athletes, aged 14-18 years, from various individual and team sports. Canonical correlation analysis indicated that the lack of satisfaction with performance, amotivation and dysfunctional personality traits undermine athlete perceptions of accomplishment, while those less fatigued, less overloaded and with a variety of motives protect themselves from feelings of emotional and physical exhaustion. Devaluation factor showed low reliability (.57) and thus was not included within canonical correlation analysis. Additionally, multivariate analysis of variance showed that “high burnout” athletes (n = 7) had elevated levels of amotivation, fatigue, and trait anxiety, but lower satisfaction with performance, less self-determined motivation and lower self-esteem compared to “low burnout” athletes (n = 26). The present results highlight the need to take into consideration a combination of factors to understand burnout occurrence in adolescent athletes. Further, such athletes need to be supported in acquiring strategies to mitigate against threats to amotivation.
What is expert performance?
The theoretical framework presented in this article explains expert performance as the end result of individuals' prolonged efforts to improve performance while negotiating motivational and external constraints. In most domains of expertise, individuals begin in their childhood a regimen of effortful activities (deliberate practice) designed to optimize improvement. Individual differences, even among elite performers, are closely related to assessed amounts of deliberate practice. Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years. Analysis of expert performance provides unique evidence on the potential and limits of extreme environmental adaptation and learning.
What is a TMP in tennis?
The article collects a summary of the experience of the authors at the event "Tennis Mental Point" (TMP), born from the collaboration between the Working Group on Sport Psychology of Regional Councils of the Psychologists of OdP Lazio and Liguria, the Regional Committee of the Italian Tennis Federation (FIT) and the Circolo Canottieri Roma. The TMP is a three days tennis federal tournament under 14, in rodeo formula, in which psychological initiatives were developed. The FIT mental trainers have carried out training and practical interventions with young tennis players, their parents and coaches. In particular, the areas of motivation, emotion, concentration and self-efficacy were deeply examined. Furthermore, to investigate the mental abilities of the athletes and to divide them according to their areas of improvement, the Sport Performance Psychological Inventory (IPPS48; Robazza, Bortoli e Gramaccioni, 2009) was administered before the activities. The final goal was to raise awareness and inform the tennis context of the importance of the mental component and its trainability. We believe that similar initiatives have to be undertaken in the future, hoping that this may represent the first of a concrete event series in the sports field with reference to sport psychology.
What is a mental point in tennis?
The article collects a summary of the experience of the authors at the event "Tennis Mental Point" (TMP), born from the collaboration between the Working Group on Sport Psychology of Regional Councils of the Psychologists of OdP Lazio and Liguria, the Regional Committee of the Italian Tennis Federation (FIT) and the Circolo Canottieri Roma. The TMP is a three days tennis federal tournament under 14, in rodeo formula, in which psychological initiatives were developed. The FIT mental trainers have carried out training and practical interventions with young tennis players, their parents and coaches. In particular, the areas of motivation, emotion, concentration and self-efficacy were deeply examined. Furthermore, to investigate the mental abilities of the athletes and to divide them according to their areas of improvement, the Sport Performance Psychological Inventory (IPPS48; Robazza, Bortoli e Gramaccioni, 2009) was administered before the activities. The final goal was to raise awareness and inform the tennis context of the importance of the mental component and its trainability. We believe that similar initiatives have to be undertaken in the future, hoping that this may represent the first of a concrete event series in the sports field with reference to sport psychology.
What are the consequences of depression in sports?
Depression is a common mental health disorder among competitive athletes that can have detrimental consequences including performance-decline, premature career-dropout, and even suicide. Athletes have been found to be as susceptible to depressive symptoms as non-athletes, and stress has repeatedly been linked to depression in the context of competitive sports. Based on the serious potential consequences of depression in competitive sports, the present dissertation explores depression and stress, and factors associated therewith, in German competitive athletes. An overview of the current body of literature reveals that existing prevalence studies on depression report a broad range of prevalence rates and inconsistent findings regarding the association between depressive symptomatology and demographic variables (e.g., age, level of sport performance). Several of the existing prevalence studies are further characterized by methodological limitations, such as small and unrepresentative sample sizes, and the disregard of the adolescent athlete population. With the intention of addressing the aforementioned limitations of, and research gaps in, prior studies, the aim of study I of this dissertation is the investigation of the prevalence of depressive symptoms in a comprehensive sample of German competitive athletes. A special focus is placed on the examination of the association between the demographic variables age, gender, and level of sport performance and the prevalence of depressive symptomatology. Study I reveals that of 1,799 German competitive athletes, 13.4% were screened positively for depression and 10.2% for impairments in psychological well-being. Adolescent age, female gender, and junior national team status were identified as risk factors for depressive symptoms. For the general population, empirical support for the relationship between depression, stress, and back pain is extensive. Despite the fact that back pain is a widespread issue in competitive sports with adverse performance and (mental) health outcomes for athletes, the relationship between the factor back pain and the psychosocial variables depression and stress has hardly received any scientific attention in competitive sports. To close this research gap, study II of this dissertation investigates the relationship between depression, stress, and back pain in German competitive athletes. Study II reveals that depression and stress are associated with back pain parameters in a population of 154 competitive athletes with back pain. In particular, stress could be linked to pain intensity and depression to pain-related disability. A multitude of empirical findings supports the assumption that adolescence is a sensitive period for the experience of stress and stress-related mental (e.g., depression) and physical (e.g., back pain) health outcomes. In order to transfer knowledge derived from empirical findings and theoretical frameworks to the applied work with competitive athletes, the aim of study III is to develop, implement, and evaluate a theory-based stress-prevention intervention for 92 adolescent soccer players through a randomized controlled trial. The intervention was evaluated on its effectiveness regarding stress, coping, and depression parameters and on its perceived usefulness according to the athletes. No intervention effects on stress, coping, and depression emerged. Notwithstanding, the athletes perceived the stress-prevention intervention to be useful, especially with regard to the improvement of their performance and well-being. This dissertation provides new insights into depression, stress, and factors associated therewith in competitive sports by means of basic research via cross-sectional designs (study I and study II) and a longitudinal preventive intervention study (study III). Considering the average prevalence rate across all three studies, every 10th German competitive athlete was screened positively for depressive symptoms. This observed prevalence rate of depressive symptoms in competitive athletes is akin to the prevalence rate detected in the general German population. This dissertation further indicates that adolescent athletes seem to be more vulnerable to depressive symptomatology than other age groups. Forthcoming studies should consider investigating the mechanisms of stress and stress-related conditions in competitive sports to improve the understanding of their etiology and to deduce effective preventive interventions for the context of competitive sports in general, and for the adolescent athlete population in particular.
