During Super Bowl 2017, we witnessed the New England Patriots being down by 25 points. As improbable as it was, they scored 19 points in the fourth quarter, including a couple of 2-point conversions, to beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-28 in overtime. In 1993, then world’s No. 1 tennis player, Monica Seles, was stabbed in the back, which led to a 2-year physical and emotional rehabilitation. In 1995, in her first tournament back, she wins …
What keeps individuals so focused that they become determined to achieve their goals at any cost? There is no one simple answer, but we can take a look at a couple of types of motivations that promote goal achieving: Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic Motivation: individuals are moved by the personal significance and pleasure the action brings in himself. Accomplishing an action equals personal satisfaction and there is no greater importance than having that feeling. …
Whether we are athletes or not, we all experience ups and downs wanting achieve our goals. There is not such a thing as making progress in a steady straight line. There will always be happy moments and disappointing moments. If we use disappointing moments as opportunities to learn, then a habit is created. However, if we use disappointing moments to blame others, a habit is equally created. When we listen to successful people, they all …
You may be confused as to what I am trying to ask, but basically athletes tend to pay too much attention to either what just happened or to what will happen next. In either situation, what they often fail to do is to stay focused on the task in front of them. Peak performance is achieved when we pay attention to the current process feeling optimism and trust in our abilities. As easy as this …
We tend to think that practicing hard and pushing through rough experiences are enough to make it into the big leagues, but elite athletes are taught to understand that unless they build awareness of their thoughts, emotions and body sensations, they will fall short of achieving their true potential. To achieve peak performance, it is not only necessary to practice hard and develop consistent techniques, but also learn to become aware of moments when distractions …
This really does not make any sense at all!! At first sight, this title makes no sense whatsoever. Athletes train very hard to perform at their best. They compete to win and establish mental goals to achieve their dreams. So, how could it be possible that they would accept defeat in order to win? The burden of needing or wanting to win is extremely high, regardless of whether it is a young athlete or an …
Athletes that play against weaker opponents tend to become overly confident and fall into the trap of counting victory too soon. Players and coaches quite commonly prepare to compete against weaker opponents under that strong assumption that success is a forgone conclusion. Unfortunately, we all know by personal experience or by watching top athletes’ performance how such a mental approach ends up biting them back. In a recent squash match, a physically strong player stepped …
If I could mange distractions during my sports performance, I’d be able to achieve my peak potential! Distraction and losing focus are very common experiences that athletes find challenging to manage. For example: A tennis player lost the last four games and, during the changeover, he starts having uncontrollable negative thoughts. Elizabeth is bound to shoot her best round of golf and, as she is about to tee off, she pays too much attention to …
Visualization is one of the most common mental strategies used by top athletes to help them achieve their top performance. Visualization, also called imagery, intends to mentally rehearse the performance-like atmosphere by using the athlete’s five senses to pretend he is performing in real time. It is known that pretending to be executing a performance while in training by imagining its success becomes registered in the brain as if it were taking place in real …
Sports Motivation 101 means, keep your dreams alive!! Yes, many of us have frequently been told to keep our dreams alive, to envision what we want to achieve and imagine how those dreams would become reality one day. There is clearly no shortage of self-help books or motivational speakers voicing the importance of visualizing what we want to achieve by keeping our dreams alive. There is certainly a lot of truth to that. The wonderful …