Surely this week you have been hearing talk everywhere about Simone Biles, American artistic gymnast, seven-time national champion, 2-time Olympic champion in Rio 2016 and five-time world champion.
Why are we talking about her?
It's just that this week in the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games, the athlete has withdrawn from the Olympics due to mental health problems. She has been acclaimed and supported in all social networks for having made such a brave statement because she could not have said it more clearly: "Mental health is equally or even more important than physical health. I think mental health is more present in sports right now. We have to protect our minds and our bodies and not just do what the world wants us to do. As soon as I step on the mat, it's just me and my head, dealing with demons in my head. I have to do what is right for me and focus on my sanity and not jeopardize my mental health and well-being.r.” Declare.
From a sporting point of view the sports psychology It is an intersection between psychology and sports science, the principles of which dictate what applies to each area. We can approach this intersection from two different points of view:
- Psychological factors that influence sports participation and
- The effects derived from participating in a sport.
The psychological functioning of athletes is just as important for their performance as their physical, technical and tactical functioning. Furthermore, psychological functioning can positively or negatively influence all these factors, so it is very important to control the mental aspect in the right direction. It would be ideal for psychological preparation to be integrated into training, since being “off the field” is worse than not knowing how to play.
What role does the coach define with respect to the athlete?
The coach is one of the most important figures in the world of sports, which is why having a good relationship with his players is essential. We can approach the relationship with a player in two ways, based on rewards or criticism. Although both are useful when applied well, as a general rule the most used is the positive one, in addition to being the most recommended, since it helps increase the player's motivation and in turn responsibility with the objectives.
Let's see how we can keep our players motivated:
- Focus on teaching and practicing sports skills.
- Change your activity frequently.
- Set realistic expectations for each player based on their abilities.
- Perform demonstrations, giving short and simple instructions.
- It rewards not only results, but also technical execution and effort.
- Use a positive approach to correct mistakes.
- Alter the rules slightly to increase player action and involvement.
What psychological aspects are the most important to take into account during the preparation of your players?
The motivation: We can define it as the intersection of the commitment that the subject has towards the task and the desire that he or she uses to fulfill it.
Self-confidence: It is the degree of certainty or security that the subject has in performing a certain action or motor skill. Confidence produces positive emotions in the subject and facilitates the subject's concentration on the task to be performed. In addition, it influences the degree of achievement of objectives by increasing both the intensity and duration of the effort, interferes with game strategies and affects the other psychological variables.
Concentration: To optimize the footballer's performance, he must be able to develop the four possible types of attention, wide, external, narrow and internal. Despite this, and as we have mentioned previously, the footballer's focus of attention changes throughout a match, and therefore, so does his concentration.
Activation: We can understand it as how active the player's body is, we understand it as the gradient between deep sleep and maximum arousal.
Anxiety: It is an emotional state that includes feelings of nervousness, worry and apprehension, related to the activation of the body. According to this, anxiety has a thinking component called cognitive anxiety and a somatic anxiety component that constitutes the degree of perceived physical activation. The most important sources of anxiety within any football-related event are the following:
- The fear that failure can produce, which generates a high level of anxiety, especially in regards to what family, friends, the public will say... That is, anxiety is determined by the contempt or rejection that the footballer could suffer in the future regarding a certain point or match.
- Fear of not being up to the necessary level of the competition, that is, the player has a contempt for himself that generates a high degree of anxiety.
- Somatic and psychological manifestations.
Stress: There are a reasonable number of stressors in football. These stressors influence performance through different processes, weakening it (bringing negative responses), or strengthening it (helping players to use individual resources effectively and efficiently in sporting situations).
We have detected several agents that bring stress to footballers, some of these are:
- Importance of the Event: As a general rule, the more important a soccer match is, the more stress it produces in the athlete.
- Uncertainty level: When the footballer faces another subject with similar conditions, the uncertainty caused by the same situation can be a significant source of stress.
- Anxiety Level: Trait that the footballer possesses.
- Self-esteem: The level of self-esteem of the footballer makes stress more or less relevant.
Stress is influenced by multiple variables, especially those that make up the subjectivity of the individual. In this sense, the cultural variable is very important. The way of evaluating a certain stimulus is different depending on the cultural belonging of the subject and so is the way of coping with stress. This will bring differences in the way stressful stimuli affect the subject.
In short, the footballer and any athlete is bombarded with an endless number of factors that affect their performance, which is why the job of a good coach is to know how to detect when something is not right and give a push in the right direction. Many of our students refer their players to psychologists to promote individual and team performance as recommended in serious situations in our school. Master in coaching and sports psychology, but the important thing is to be able to detect and know how to act in these situations and having the correct training will help you and the well-being of your team.