Sports And Exercise Psychology

With The People's Games: London 2012 over, many of us who witnessed the greatness of Olympians have left many over the country harbouring secret aspirations for sports. For example, did you know your belovéd tutor is training in archery?

During midterm break, I had a chance to catch up on my shooting and I found it so difficult. Mostly this is down to being out of practice while tutoring my amazing students. However, what was most difficult was concentrating! The best way to ruin a good shot, is to over-think it. So how can a psychologist who loves thinking more than anything else, put a stop to this terrible distraction?

Well naturally, I fight fire with fire-if psychology was a problem, then psychology had to have an answer!

Sports psychology studies how psychological factors influence the performance of and participation in sports and exercise (Weinberg & Gould, 2010). Like I previously mentioned, many people think psychology is the study of behaviour to apply back to a counselling and mental health environment. While this is noble, not everyone considers themselves a healer. Instead, imagine if you were to use the same principles to say, advise an Olympic athlete? Coach a football team? Rehabilitate an injured athlete? Or how about just improving your own performance on the pitch?

One thing is certain, sports psychology offers the promise of a high flying and ever exciting career. Consider the American founder of sports psychology, Coleman Griffith (1893-1966). A graduate of psychology at University of Illinois, he began researching sports psychology involving his favourite pastime, American football. While working with the university's football coach, Griffith's first major contribution was studying the psychological aspects of competitive team sports. His passion and unique contributions to a new field found him great success. Griffith was given his own laboratory and a job working with the major league baseball team, the Chicago Cubs.

A key area of sports psychology studied and discussed frequently is mental toughness. Mental toughness is "the ability to consistently perform towards the upper range of your talent and skill regardless of competitive circumstance" (Loehr, 1995). It's at this point in my research that I realize what I may need to work on to improve my archery scores. Interestingly, this concept of mental toughness has been carried over into organisational psychology as a unique personality characteristic of successful business managers (Marchant et al., 2009).

Surprisingly, there were not many English-language studies for sports psychology regarding archery; as this is a favourite sport among Chinese and Korean athletes, much of the research comes from sports psychology departments in west Asia. However, one researcher eloquently described my problem as one of attention focus. Kathleen M. Haywood (2006) explained that over-thinking my shot disrupts my focus because all that extra thinking sends an increased number of neurons to the parts of my brain not associated with motor skills; thus my motor skills decrease the more I think about it. EEG testing also shows that when shooting, 'automatic' thought processes produce better results than conscious thought about the stages of the shot (I.e., "Pull back the bow string. Put the pin on the gold ring. Check your stance. Release your hand back."). What she suggested is that I refocus my attention on visualising good shots, or thinking the word "Aim" over and over like a philosophical mantra. Ultimately, I will shoot my best when the steps of shooting an arrow become so second nature that I just don`t think about them at all.

Looks like I have a lot of arrows to shoot before Rio 2016!

If you have an interest in sports psychology, A-levels you should study include psychology, physical education, biology, chemistry, applied science and statistics.

Universities with sports psychology programmes include University of Glamorgan/Morgannwg, Liverpool John Moores University, London Metropolitan University, University of Roehampton, Abertay University and University of Ulster.