Concentration – Psychological Skills Training

This is part of a five part series on Psychological Skills Training, covering the education, acquisition and practice of psychological skills.

Other posts in this series include:

  • Arousal Regulation – Psychological Skills Training
  • Imagery – Psychological Skills Training
  • Self Confidence – Psychological Skills Training
  • Goal Setting – Psychological Skills Training

Education:

1.  Concentration is made up of:

  • Selective attention: Focusing on relevant cues in the environment, selecting what cues to attend to and which to disregard.
  • Maintaining attentional focus: Maintaining that focus over time.
  • Situational awareness: Having awareness of the situation.

2. There are four types of attentional focus (diagram on page 331). Shifts between these types of focus is important as the situation demands.

  • Broad: Aware of many factors.
  • Narrow: Aware of few factors.
  • External: Directed outwardly (to an opponent, situation etc).
  • Internal: Directed to thoughts and feelings.

  1. Attentional problems are usually caused by an inappropriate attentional focus (ie, incorrectly broad/narrow, or external/internal). Attentional problems are classified as internal or external:
    1. Internal distracters: Distractions from within ourselves.
      • Focusing on past events (especially past mistakes/failures).
      • Focusing on future events: Thinking about consequences of actions, rather than the action itself.
      • Choking: Shifting focus from relevant external cues to narrow/internal cues related to fears of poor performance.
      • Overanalysing body mechanics: Excessive focus on the skill when the skill has already been learnt (the ‘yipps’).
      • Mental fatigue.
      • Self talk.
    2. External distracters: Distracters from the environment.
      • Visual distracters.
      • Auditory distracters.
      • Gamesmanship: Behaviour of opponents.
  2. Self Talk:
    • Positive self-talk: Enhances self esteem, motivation, attentional focus and performance. Creates positive emotions.
    • Negative self-talk: Critical and demeaning. Creates negative emotions.
    • How does self-talk work?
      • An event occurs.
      • As a result of the event we undertake self-talk/internal dialogue.
      • Our self-talk leads to a certain emotional/physiological/behavioural response.
    • Uses of self-talk:
      • Skill acquisition: To focus attention on an important element of the task. eg: ‘finish the pull’.
      • Breaking bad habits: A reminder to avoid the unwanted action/behaviour. eg: ‘hips down’.
      • Initiating action: As a motivational tool. eg. ‘explode’.
      • Sustaining effort. eg. ‘keep moving’.

Acquisition and Practice:

  1. Techniques for improving self-talk:
    1. Thought stopping: Concentrating on an undesired thought and using a trigger or cue to clear your mind, eg. ‘stop’. Then shifting your focus to a task related cue.
    2. Changing negative self-talk to positive self-talk: Becoming aware of negative self talk and replacing it with positive self talk.
  2. Tips for improving concentration:
    • Simulation training: Emulating competition situations in training.
    • Cue words: Using instructional or motivational words as part of your self-talk.
    • Employ nonjudgemental training: Don’t classify performance into good and bad, rather, focus on strategies for improvement.
    • Establish routines: Routines for before or during an event to focus attention, reduce anxiety, eliminate distractions and enhance confidence.
    • Develop competition plans: Process goals will focus the mind on the task at hand.
    • Practice eye control: Focus on a one point to reduce unwanted visual distractions.
    • Focus on the present.
    • Overlearn skills: Overlearning skills makes a skill automatic, allowing the athlete to focus on other areas of the performance environment.
Dan Williams

Dan Williams

Founder/Director

Dan Williams is the Director of Range of Motion and leads a team of Exercise Physiologists, Sports Scientists, Physiotherapists and Coaches. He has a Bachelor of Science (Exercise and Health Science) and a Postgraduate Bachelor of Exercise Rehabilitation Science from The University of Western Australia, with minors in Biomechanics and Sport Psychology.

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