What is Sport Psychology?
For years the study of sport has been based on a multi-disciplined approach – physiology, biomechanics, nutrition, technique and tactics, and psychology.
Sport psychology is the study of the psychological factors that affect participation and performance in sports.
It's the study of the mental aspect of sport, how our mind interacts with our body (and vice versa) to create our performance, and it's about how we can intervene to change and enhance individual and team performance.
Sport Psychology also deals with increasing performance by managing emotions and minimizing the psychological effects of poor performance, percieved 'failure' and dealing with injury or being dropped.
The majority of high performance athletes are generally physically, technically and tactically at their peak when they perform, therefore the difference between athletes on any given day could be down to their psychological preparation and mental state during performance~ which is why psychology plays such a large factor in performance sport and why it can make the difference between being successful or not!
The study of sport psychology has grown massively in recent years and as such, many people in sport consider it to be a major contributor to their success. Amongst those who actively use Psych and NLP techniques and advocate the importance of mental preparations are: Jonny Wilkinson (Rugby), Tiger Woods (golf), Peter Odemwingie (Prem Football) , Steve Redgrave (Rowing - as if you needed it!), Louie Oosthuizen (Golf), Andrew Strauss (Cricket), Arsene Wenger, Sir Alex Ferguson, Tom Daley (diving), Bernhard Langer (golf), Steven Hendry (snooker), Roger Federer (tennis) .... the list is endless ... and that's without the teams that regularly use it as part of their warm ups and preparation for games.
Psychology in sport is undoubtedly a major part of being successful, as without a good grip on what goes on between the ears, that person is simply somewho 'could have been great .... and wasn't!'.
