The role of Performance Psychology in High Performance context is already well documented in scientific research.
It is of common knowledge that high competition athletes and their coaches tend to integrate this kind of knowledge and consultants within their optimization plans or teams (I.e: Serena Williams, Hamilton, Pete Sampras, Luiz Filipe Scolari, and José Mourinho).
The optimization possibilities go from generic competences such as: trust, motivation, focus and anxiety control to more specific ones that tend to characterize each athlete in a unique and singular way. As an example:
-
to develop focusing strategies during training and game, in ways to develop more control and consistence over the performance.
-
to manage emotions associated with the competition (stress, frustration…)
-
optimize self-confidence developing, for example, mental films of the desired performance, accelerating learning and increasing confidence.
-
process and learn from the failure experiences in order to get back to good performances.
Optimally manage extra-sporting situations (eg. family) that may impair sports performance; optimize the levels of performance and efficiency in “key moments” of (a) game / event (eg. goal assists or shots on goal, match-point, terminate service, run a blow for birdie, among others).
optimize the most of the athlete physical / technical / tactical ability, through the development of their psychological / emotional skills
The main contribution of training the psychological skills is the optimization of the individual’s performance. The performance is leveraged by self-regulation and focus capacity, which are responsible for significant improvements in terms of efficiency, technical prowess and strategic thinking.
