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Sport Performance Psychology lecture notes

Sport and performance psychology (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)

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Lecture 1 - 19/09/2019 - General introduction and motivation

The mental side of sport (Chapter 1)
Mental toughness: “Hardiness is a constellation of personality characteristics that
enables people to mitigate the adverse effects of stressful situations.” (Kobasa,
1979) → dealing with failures, being able to fight pain, staying focussed.
Hardiness can be divided in three subcomponents:
● Control → the capacity to feel and act as if one could exert an influence in
the situation in question
● Challenge → the habit of perceiving potentially stressful situations as positive
opportunities rather than as threats
● Commitment → stickability or the extent to which an individual is likely to
persist with a goal or work task

Fourth C for mental toughness

● Confidence → a strong belief in one’s ability to complete a task successfully
= 4 C’s Model of Mental toughness.
Little agreement about what the construct itself actually means or the underlying mechanisms

Four aspects of athletic performance

● Physical
● Psychological
● Tactical
● Technical

How important is the mental side of sports? Sports is 90% mental.

Disagree:
● If people lack competence (do not have fitness, strength, technical and skills required),
the mental piece is completely irrelevant
● People tend to overestimate the impact of mental factors. Amateur athletes tend to
explain their inconsistency or lack of progress to mental factors.
● However, low-competent individuals typically perform inconsistently, also in low
pressure situations. Thus, competence rather than mental factors determine
(fluctuations in) performance.
Agree:
● When competing against a component of similar ability, mental factors make the
difference. Mental factors are more sensitive to fluctuations.
● Mental factors determine athletes’ performance losses
● Mental factors facilitate the development of competence (i.e. performance gains)

Potential performance = competence or

capacity to perform

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Mental problems: when you perform underneath your level when you’re under pressure.
Performance consists of competence, opportunity to perform and the mind to perform

Competence:
● Genetics
● Practice and Training
● Anthropometric and physiological factors
● Early specialization vs sampling and play

Opportunity to perform:
● Social support (parents and coaches)
● Athlete support programs
● Birthdate (Relative Age Effect)
● Birthplace

The mind to perform:

● Personality traits
● Psychological skills and motivational orientations

Predictor variables:
● Initial performance
● Goal commitment (really want to reach the goal)
● Problem-solving skills (try to find a solution, do not let go)
● Seeking social support
Classify in successful or unsuccessful → overall percentage of correctly classified =
84,6%
Indicating that mental aspects were important

There is now empirical evidence that more successful athletes

● Display high levels of motivation
● Command a wide range of mental skills
● Display high levels of mental toughness and resilience, including
○ Higher levels of confidence and perceived control
○ Better ability to cope with adversity (problem solving and ability to re-focus)
○ Greater resistance to ‘choking’

Mental skills are a critical part of the high performance package; its impact differs across sports,
individuals, situations and moments
Similar to any other skills, mental skills should be learned and practiced; there are
typically no “quick fix solutions” → knowing, being able, doing.
Knowing does not mean you can do it.
Mental skills are widely acknowledged to drive success, but in training practice, often ignored.
Body and mind are inseparable.

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Motivation and goal-setting in sport (Chapter 2)

Motivation: the psychological forces that determine the direction of a person’s behavior, a
person’s level of intensity or effort and a person’s level of persistence.
● Direction
○ Goal setting Theory, including perfectionism and self-efficacy
○ Achievement Goal Approach
● Intensity or effort
○ Achievement Goal Approach
○ Self-Determination Theory
● Persistence
○ Self-Determination Theory
○ Attribution Theory

The Self-Determination Theory (SDT) framework:

To better understand the role of motivation in sport, it is essential to consider the conditions and
processes that move an athlete to act, think and develop.
● Intrinsic Motivation: When an activity is performed for its own sake - that is, the behavior
is experienced as inherently satisfying, because it satisfies the basic need for autonomy,
competence, and relatedness, the natural ingredients for IM.
● Extrinsic Motivation: The activity is perceived as a means to a separable outcome.
● Amotivation: The absence of motivation.

Thwarting peoples’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness
decreases their autonomous regulation (IM)
● If athletes believe that their sporting behavior is controlled by external rewards, their
level of intrinsic motivation may decline.
● In contrast, if the same rewards are perceived informational, that is, as merely providing
feedback, intrinsic motivation will probably increase. Autonomously motivated.

When individuals are autonomously motivated in their actions, they experience

more interest, excitement and confidence and less anxiety and psychological
exhaustion → enhanced performance and persistent.

Since 1990 SDT shifted from intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to autonomous and controlled
motivation.
Autonomous extrinsic motivation
● Integrated regulation → practicing my sport reflects the essence of who you
are
● Identified regulation → a way to develop yourself
Controlled extrinsic motivation
● External regulation → people around me reward me when I do my sport
● Introjected regulation → I feel better about myself when I do my sport

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Lecture 2 - 25/09/2019 - Anxiety, emotions and coping

Arousal, anxiety and fear
Pressure situation (perceived demands of the situation) leads to arousal (release of
biochemical substances) → direction (arousal interpretation)

Primary appraisal: the perceived relevance of an event. Is there anything at

stake?

Modellen van arousal

Drive theory: more arousal → better performance

Yerkes-Dodson Law: Inverted U relationship → there is a maximum

at a particular level of arousal, it comes with high motivation, high
energy, sharp perception
Low = underaroused → boredom, low motivation, apathy
High = over aroused→ irritability, increased errors
Critical notes about this model → underlying mechanism? How to assess arousal
levels? Immune to falsifications.

This U curve is valid but only under the condition of low cognitive state anxiety
When cognitive state anxiety is high → catastrophe

Individual Zones of

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Optimal Functions
Individuals have zones of optimal functioning, this differs per
athlete. Some perform better when arousal is high, some better
when the arousal is low. This model has articulated implications for
self-regulation. The performance is best in a specific zone, not a
point.

Direction (arousal interpretation)

● Negative (distress → threat or anxiety)
● Positive (eustress → challenge, excitement)

Primary appraisal part 2: is the event relevant, does it harm, is it a

threat, does it feel like a challenge, potential benefits

Pressure situation does not equal pressure reaction

Depends on what you do with your arousal level etc and mental
skills

Anxiety can be negatively interpreted → psychological interventions may change

the athletes’ perception of anxiety

Reactions of the direction are emotions (anxiety, excitement), cognitions (attributions, interfering
thoughts) and behaviour (including performance)

Secondary appraisal: the perceived options to cope with the pressure situation

Emotion: a response to an event or stimulus

Mood: an enduring state whereby the individual may be unaware of the causes of the feelings
experienced
Affect: a broad umbrella term capturing all valenced responses during preferences, emotions
and moods.

Anxiety: an unpleasant emotion which is characterized by vague but persistent feelings of

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apprehension and dread (mood-like)

Fear: a brief emotional reaction to a stimulus that is perceived as threatening (emotion)
Arousal: a diffuse state of bodily alertness or readiness (not a synonym of anxiety)

Anxiety is by definition negative. Can be classified as:

● Somatic or physiological → perception of the physiological affective elements
→ autonomic arousal and unpleasant feeling states (nervousness, tension)
● Cognitive → negative expectations and concerns about oneself, the situation
at hand and potential consequences (worrying about performing poorly)
● Behavioural → indices of anxiety tense facial expressions, change in
communication patterns (rapid speech), agitation and restlessness (speeding
up routines)
● State → subjective, consciously perceived feelings of tension and
apprehension
● Traits → general disposition to feel anxious in a certain environment

Measuring anxiety
→ make athletes watch/think about their previous game and fill in a competitive
state anxiety inventory

Intense anxiety → choking under pressure

The occurrence of an anxiety based, acute and significant performance impairment under
pressure conditions
Additional features: the athlete was capable of performing better, was motivated sufficiently to
succeed and perceived the sport as important. The athlete typically feels low in perceived
control, in bothered by self-presentation control and tries too hard to perform well.

Conditions that lead to choking → perceived importance of the competitions, critical

plays (penalty kick) in a competition, evaluation by coaches, peers and parents.
Leads to physical changes → muscle tension, breathing rate is increased, racing
heart rate)
Leads to attentional changes → more self-focus, distraction

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Self-focus
Conscious processing hypothesis: anxiety has a negative impact upon performance by
increasing a participant’s self-consciousness of their movements that had previously been under
automatic control

Distraction
Attentional Control Theory: anxiety increases attention to task irrelevant stimuli (especially
threat-related) and reduces attentional focus on current task demands

Possible determinants of anxiety

● Evaluation
● Critical plays
● Perceived importance/relevance of competitions
● Traits anxiety → state anxiety
● Other traits (perfectionism)
● Self-efficacy

Perfectionism: the striving for flawlessness and setting excessively high standards for one’s
performance
● Common characteristic in elite athlete
● A conditio sine qua non for individuals to reach the top?
Perfectionism paradox: also been linked with various forms of maladjustments (including anxiety
and fear of failure)

Two main dimensions of perfectionism:

● Striving
○ Aspects associated with the striving for flawlessness and setting high standards
● Concerns
○ Aspects associated with excessive concerns over making mistakes, fear of
negative evaluations, feelings of discrepancy

Combinations

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● Maladaptive perfectionism → anxiety, maladaptive coping, neuroticism,

mental disorder, not necessarily detrimental to performance
● Adaptive perfectionism → conscientiousness, adaptive coping, positive affect,
higher performance

Conditions under which perfectionistic striving may be particularly adaptive

● Approach (+) vs avoidance (-) (you want to win instead of avoid losing)
● Self based (+) vs other based (-) (you want to become better and work instead of
evaluating based on another person)
● Personally adopted (+) vs imposed by others (-) (your own standards not others)
● Low (+) vs high (-) discrepancy between standards and outcome (don’t have too high
standards because you can’t reach it)

So, strive for flawlessness and personally adopted self-based, approach-oriented and high
standards for performance without being excessively concerned over making mistakes and
negative evaluation by others.

Self-efficacy: the belief that one has the capacity to execute the courses of action required to
produce given attainments - or to achieve a specific goal
Self-efficacy beliefs can vary in terms of their
● Level (regional, national, international)
● Strength: the extent to which individuals feel confident to the capabilities to perform (at a
particular level)
● generality: the extent to which a set of efficacy beliefs may generalize across a range of
activities or situations

Higher self-efficacy → better performance and vice versa

Goal setting theory: Self-efficacy → goal → performance

Goals should be specific and difficult but not too difficult (SMART)
Some mediators between self-efficacy and goal: perceived control, optimism, anxiety is lower

Achievement goals (state)

● Mastery vs performance (self-based vs other-based)
● Approach vs avoidance (directed to positive outcome vs directed away from a negative
outcome)
→ four dimensions

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Low self-efficacy → anxiety → motivation to avoid failure → easy goal

Or low self-efficacy → anxiety → motivation to avoid failure → excessively difficult
goal

Mediators between goal and performance

1. Direction/attention/concentration
2. Intensity/effort/commitment
3. Persistence
4. Action plans/strategies
Performance leads to knowledge of results → satisfaction → self-efficacy (cycle)

Self-set (preferably) or imposed goals enhance performance when difficult, specific and
approach oriented
However, relative to organizational settings, less strong in sport settings

Ceiling effect: athletes are highly motivated (because they want to play the game)
Spontaneous goal-setting in control groups: in sports, participants typically receive salient and
immediate feedback which leads to results in the control group as well
Statistical power: smaller groups

Sports is a zero-sum game → dichotomy of winning or losing

Motivates athletes to win (or not to lose)
A competitive situation however does not necessarily imply the motivation to compete against
an other-based standard

Achievement motivation: the motivation to compete against a valenced standard

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Lecture 3 - 03/10/2019 - Mental Skills

Coping with pressure situations

● Problem-focused → antecedent focused emotions regulation

○ Taking action to alter the situation (addressing the source → ineffective
pressure reactions)
■ Increase resources (performance levels)
■ Reduce demands (situation selection or situation modification
● Emotion-focused → response-focused emotional regulation
○ Self-regulating the ineffective emotional states associated with, or arise from the
pressure situation
● Social support
○ Social integration
○ Enacted support
○ Perceived availability

Low performance levels (coach appraisal) can lead to high estimated chance of dismissal. A
combination of low perceived availability of parental support and the high estimated chance of
dismissal can lead to psychological health complaints.

Mental skills: perceived opportunities to manage and effectively cope with the situation
● Transforming the arousal into action
○ Quite eye, MAC, hemispheric-specific priming
● Cognitive control strategies
○ Cognitive restructuring and self-talk
● Effective arousal management
○ Arousal reappraisal, routines, relaxation and mental imagery

Attentional mechanisms are critical in understanding the relationship between increased anxiety
and sporting performances

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This is Eberspächer’s hierarchical rings of attention

Nideffer’s theory of attentional and interpersonal style

Athletes can lose their concentration

● External distractions such as the weather, the click of a camera, opponents’ actions
(Ring 2)
● Internal distractors: self-generated concerns arising from one’s own thoughts and
feelings (Ring 3-6)

Ironic Processes model: try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a teddy bear and you
will see that the cursed thing will come to your mind every minute

To help athletes to achieve a focused state of mind in which there is no difference

between what they are thinking about and what they are doing → effective
concentration
1. Prepare and decide to concentrate

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2. Be single-minded (focus on one thought at a time by using self-talk and trigger words)
3. Do exactly what you are thinking (focused on specific, relevant and actions that are
within your control)
4. Keep your mind on track (re-focus regularly)

Metal skills:
1. Specifying performance and process goals
2. Using pre-performance routines
3. Trigger words and self-talk
4. Mental imagery
5. Simulation training
6. Premortem
7. Relaxation techniques

Specify performance and process goals rather than outcome goals → encourage
athletes to focus on task-relevant information and on controllable actions
The Quiet Eye phenomenon = final fixation toward a relevant target prior to the execution of the
critical phase of a movement

QE may work because

● It provides a focus on what is effective and controllable
● Timely information about the target increases motor preparation
● QE provides the external focus of attention and promotes automatic behavior in skilled
performers
● QE helps the performer to create a more relaxed pre-performance state

Pre-performance routines
A characteristic sequence of thoughts and actions which athletes adhere to prior to skill
execution
● Intend to encourage athletes to develop an appropriate mental set for skill execution by
helping them to focus on task-relevant information
● Enables athletes to concentrate on the present moment rather than on past events or on
possible future outcomes (ring 3-5)
● Prevent athletes from devoting too much attention to the mechanics of their well-learned
skills
Routines need to be reviewed and revised regularly to avoid the danger of automation

Trigger words and Self-talk

Vivid and positively phrased verbal reminders designed to help performers to focus on a specific
target or to execute a given action

Self talk
● Two underlying dimensions have typically been used to describe self-talk: positive-
negative and motivational-instructional

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● The benefits were seen for the use of positive self-talk (both instructional and
motivational)
● Instructional self-talk including mood words (rhythm, deep) = more effective for fine
motor tasks, and motivational self-talk is more beneficial for requiring strength or
endurance or before competition

Debilitative Self-Talk and thoughts → Facilitative Self-Talk and thoughts

1. 3R model
a. Register what’s going on in your mind
b. Release: disentangle yourself from unwelcome thoughts and emotions
c. Re-focus: re-engage in the taks for example by re-establishing a
connection with your values → back to ring 1
2. Counter dysfunctional explanations with
more helpful thoughts → is it true, is it
logical, is it helpful?
3. Reframe (so many people might see me fail
vs a nice crowd to see me go for it
4. Thought stopping → block or suppress
negative thoughts and re-focus

Rational-Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)

The ABC framework clarifies the relationship
between:
Activating events
Beliefs about them
Consequences of one’s beliefs: cognitive, emotional or behavioral

Negative self-talk does not seem to have a detrimental effect on motor skills performance
though.

Mental imagery: a multisensory construct that enables us to create virtual experiences of

absent objects, events and/or experiences
● Main function: to aid self-regulation of thoughts, affect and behaviour

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● Top-down, knowledge-driven process

● Functionally equivalent to perception
● Used for mental preparation in competition
● When imagery pertains to stimulating an action or movement, the key characteristics
are:
○ Sensory modality: primarily visual but also kinaesthetic
○ First-person perspective (1PP)
○ Consciously and purposefully employed

Researches findings
● Skilled performance improves most when
○ Mental imagery combined and alternated with physical practice
○ Physical practice conducted alone
○ Mental imagery conducted alone
○ Not practiced at all
● Expert athletes benefit more from it than novices do
● Athletes high in imagery ability tend to benefit more
○ controllability : ability to manipulate images so that they do what you want them
to do
○ Vividness: ability to use all senses to make images as clear, sharp and detailed
as possible

Entity theorist = fixed mindset

Incremental theorist = growth mindset

Mental chronometry paradigm: the greater the congruence between the imagined time and real
time to complete a mental journey, the more likely it is that imagery is involved

Simulation training and distraction drills: place the athlete in real life scenarios during
practice in order to simulate possible distractions and additional areas of focus that could occur
during a competition

Premortem (or prospective hindsight): Imagining that an undesirable event has already
occured which increases the ability to correctly identify future actions

Relaxation techniques
● Are needed to regulate arousal to stay focused and in control
● Can be classified as muscle-to-mind (Muscle relaxation, yoga, biofeedback) or mind-to-
muscle (self-talk, mental imagery, meditation, mindfullness)
● Are trainable and are more profound when performers have a growth mindset

Lecture 4 - Expertise - 11/10/2019

Lecture 5 - Teams - 18/10/2019

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Most characteristic psychological determinant of performance in sport teams →

interdependence

Reciprocal task interdependence and outcome interdependence

Teams: outcome interdependence
Interaction between players

Sequential task interdependence and outcome interdependence

Relay, total is outcome
Sum of different individual performances

Outcome interdependence
There is no task interdependence
Sum of individual scores is team scores
But individuals are totally independent

What is a team?
A collection of two or more individuals who
1. Common goal and focus
2. Unified
3. Engages and dedicated
4. Synchronized
5. Prepared
Team building interventions may be directed at one or several of these components

Actual group performance = potential group performance - process losses.

Always some losses particularly at a team level (social loafing, low resilience, lack of cohesion,
social inhibition, poor group decision making)
Process gains increase performance over time → improving physical, tactical and
technical aspects but also psychological factors

How to intervene with a team

1. Direct interventions: consultant/coach/managers works directly with all members of the
team, or one member only
2. Indirect interventions: Consultants acts as a consultant for the coaching staff, who has
the direct responsibility
a. More usual and sustainable paradigm (Brown & Fletcher)
b. Coaches typically work with their athletes on a daily basis and know them very
well
c. Many coaches are reluctant to relinquish their control over the team to an outside
consultant

Main goal of interventions: enhancing team effectiveness and performance

This specifically incluedes:

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● A positive team culture and group atmosphere where the payers put the group’s
interest ahead of their personal interests
● A social or team identity that includes the team’s distinct characteristics and the extent
to which the members feel proud of their membership
● OPen and honest communication that allows members to freely and effectively
express and exchange their feelings and thoughts
● Individual and mutual accountability that reflect team members’ willingness to accept
responsibility for their actions and group outcomes
● Team cohesion
○ Social: social support and peer helping
○ Task: synchronized actions

“Individual commitment to a group effort or goal that is what makes a team work, a company
work, a society work, a civilization work.”

Team building interventions

Conception of the self in individual teams → Individual goals (intrinsic) → individual

outcomes → team outcomes
Conception of the self in terms of the team → team goals → team outcomes

Team building intervention focuses on the conception of the self in terms of the team
Who are we as a team and how are we different from other teams
Consistency: co-variation of behavior across time
Do they show the behaviour every time in high pressure situations?
Yes = high consistency; No = low consistency
Dutch Volleyball team blew a comfortable lead in the fourth set → choke under
pressure

Distinctiveness: co-variation of behaviour across situations

Is the behaviour unique to high pressure situations or does it occur in most of the games?
Yes = high distinctive; no = low distinctiveness

Consensus: co-variation of behaviour across different teams

May other top-ranked teams act similarly in high pressure situations?
Yes = high consensus (universal); np = low consensu (team)

Team cohesion
Carron’s model of group cohesion
1. Individual attraction to the group - task: team member’s feelings bout his or her personal
involvement with the group’s task
a. I’m happy with the amount of playing time I get
b. I like this team’s style of play
2. Group integration - task: an individual member’s perceptions of the similarity, closeness

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and bonding within the group as a whole with regard to the task it faces
a. Our team is united in trying to reach
3. Group interaction - social: an individual member’s feelings about the similarity and
unification of the group as a social united
a. Like to spend time together in the offseason
4. Individual attraction to the group - social : an individual team member’s feelings about
his or her personal social interactions with the group
a. Some of my best friends are in this team

Cohesion is generally positive

Commitment to the team’s tasks and goals
Successful performance
→ focus on task-oriented interventions
Real, naturally formed groups
Small rather than large groups
Female rather than male team

Type of sport as no effect

Selecting the team goals

1. Give athletes list with performance indices
2. Choose the four most important
3. Agree with team

Establishing the target

1. Athlete identifies the target levels for each of the four team outcomes
2. Subunits agree
3. Whole team agrees

Coach remind players of the team’s goals

1. Goals are posted in the team’s locker rooms

Evaluations, feedback
1. coach/consultant meets with the team to review the goals and target

→ refine it etc

Self-efficacy
How to improve?
1. Mastery experience (good at task)
2. Vicarious experience (if you see epke do it, you want to do it too)

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3. Physiological and affective states

4. Verbal persuasion (yes you can!)
5. Mental toughness

Self-efficacy is likely to be negatively affected by adverse experiences

Mental toughness → people with high mental toughness can deal with adversity
better

Enhance mental toughness: genetics and mental skills training (self-talk, imagery)

Overcoming adversity

Lecture 6: The practice of mental coaching

Mental moments:
● Moments to think
● Moments when results are emphasized
○ Clay shooting: see results from first round, then relax en prepare again
● Moments when (muscular) tension is important
○ Heartbeat shooting
● Moments of preparation and interludes

Know psychology and terminology of the sport, also the competition and culture of a sport
Mental training is about learning and improving mental qualities: motivation, dealing with
competitive anxiety and concentration
In a sport situation by using several tools: goal setting, arousal control, imagery, attentional
control, thought control and team development & communication
To improve the performance and maintain intrinsic motivation

90% is elite, sub-elite or talent development

Does not only work with performance issues (80%) also with other problems like not supportive
family etc.

One-on-one consulting → mostly 8-10 times

Workshop → arousal and breathing in golf
Online mental training → assignments, for example goal that motivate them

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