How Can Sport Psychology Affect You?
“Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” - Vince Lombardi
“Has anyone here ever performed their perfect race?” When I ask athletes this, I am usually met with a quiet room and people’s heads turning around to see if anyone else is going to raise their hand. Having asked this question in front of multiple professionals, Olympians and athletes, I am yet to find anyone that has ever felt they have raced the perfect race. So what is it that makes it so difficult to achieve this; the physiological or the psychological factors?
Competition Performance
Game day is messy and racing is never simple. The minds are mysterious and the body is a cocktail of hormones colliding simultaneously. The perfect race has been suggested to be a theoretical concept, only achievable on paper. While competitive sport is never played on paper, there are a number of factors impeding an athletes performance levels in competition or training, creating a competition performance. This concept is much more dynamic and relates to the specific performance on a given day. If, for example, one athlete can run a perfect 100m sprint in 12.34s, then for a multitude of inhibitors, they only ran a competition performance time of 14.10s, this could be seen as far below the perfect potential.
100m Perfect Performance (optimal conditions) —> 12.34s
100m Competition Performance (head wind) —> 14.10s
Diminishing our perfect performance, inhibitors can be categorized under external factors, including weather, opponents, course, severity of the event and many others. For instance, running into a headwind is going to reduce the athletes competition performance from their perfect race to give them a slower time. In addition to external impediments, there are many internal factors that can also diminish optimal performance levels, these involve injury, illness, nutrition and fatigue which are all physiological markers.
Psychological markers
The other side of internal factors affecting performance are the psychological markers, such as anxiety, confidence, resilience and many more. When an athlete’s psychological mindset is acting against them in a counterproductive manner, it can feel like running into a headwind. This has been shown with athletes experiencing greater anxiety levels to have a reduced physiological output, such as poor decision making, shallow breathing and increased cortisol (stress hormone). Before the athlete has even started, they have already placed a disadvantage in front of them. The athlete with high anxiety, unable to effectively mange the many inhibitors, may only be able to run a competition performance of 15.02s.
On the other hand, an athlete that has great control over their mindset may be experiencing greater self-belief to perform and will be showing enhanced reaction times, greater physiological markers, and regular breathing patterns. As opposed to running into a headwind, the athlete has now turned the wind in their direction to help achieve greater performance levels and reach closer to their perfect race. This athlete can successfully deal with the many distracting variables to perform a competition time of 12.81s.
Highly Anxious Athlete —> Competition Performance of 15.02s
Confident Athlete —> Competition Performance of 12.81s
The difference for the psychological markers compared to the external factors is that they are all under direct control of the athlete. Sport psychology – used correctly – aims to support the athlete to overcome the many inhibitors affecting competition performance. When athletes feel they have the necessary skills to deal with these barriers they will be able to bridge the competition performance much closer to their perfect performance.
