What is sports psychology?

Sport psychology involves understanding how the mind affects an athlete’s performance in the chosen sport.  According to reports, various approaches are based on sport psychology principles to address the issues such as how athletes prefer to learn, what their personality is, how they can relax and focus, how athletes learn to visualize a successful play, whether they overcome their limiting beliefs, and how they develop strong self-awareness.

The role of sport psychology in modern sports increases every year around the world. The coach’s role in sports is difficult to overestimate because coaches help athletes to maximize their achievements.

How does mental health affect performance?

Coaches and athletes are aware that there is a mental component to sports success. And this value of mental preparation is supported by several psychological studies. 

According to a study published in the American Psychological Association, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were notable not only for taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic but also for being the first athletic competition to measure and broadcast competitors’ heart rates as world-class archers competed for Olympic gold.

Yunfeng Lu (Nanjing University) and Songfa Zhong (National University of Singapore, New York University Abu Dhabi) examined these biometric data and found evidence to support what sports fans have long suspected: When athletes feel the pressure, their performance suffers.

Best professional athletes are negatively influenced by psychological stress.

“We found that high contactless real-time heart rate is associated with poor performance,” said Lu and Zhong in an interview. “This suggests that even the best professional athletes are negatively influenced by psychological stress, even though they are generally well trained to cope with pressure.”

Increased heart rate reduced performance

Lu and Zhong found that athletes whose heart rates were higher before taking a shot consistently scored lower on those shots. While archers’ age and gender were not found to significantly influence the relationship between stress and performance, several factors related to the nature of the competition did.

Moreover, increased heart rate was more likely to reduce the performance of lower-ranking archers and of all archers who shot second in a match or who had a lower score than their opponent at that point in the match.

There was also a stronger relationship between stress and performance closer to the end of each match, possibly due to the increase in pressure as athletes progressed in the competition, the authors wrote.

“Elite athletes usually receive training to manage psychological stress, but our results suggest that they continue to be subject to the influence of psychological stress,” wrote Lu and Zhong.

Sports 50-90 percent mental

In another research, Keith Kaufman, Ph.D., a Washington, DC-area sport psychology practitioner and research associate at The Catholic University of America presenting at the 125th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association said, “It’s been suggested that many coaches regard sport as at least 50 percent mental when competing against opponents of similar ability. In some sports, that percentage can be as high as 80 to 90 percent mental.”

“With popular belief and scientific evidence being in such harmony, one might expect that mental training would be a top priority within the athletic community. However, curiously, this is not the case,” said Kaufman. “We have met so many athletes and coaches who know that mental factors, such as concentrating, relaxing, and letting go of thoughts and feelings, can aid performance, but have no idea how to actually do those things under the pressures of training and competition.”