10 amazing facts about sports peak performance coaching

It is always the good coaches, who are instrumental in developing successful champion teams or top athletes. Specialized peak performance coaching helps in building the necessary mind skills that are needed for crossing the final hurdles, like hitting the winning runs or goals. Psychological insights allow the teams to perform to their maximum potentials.

Understanding the importance of sports psychology:

If you follow any sports like football, cricket, baseball, volleyball, tennis, swimming, or even the indoor sports, then you might have seen some instances, where even the great players struggle to perform in big games.

In this world of high competitiveness in the field of sports, mind games also play a big role in intimidating the opposition. You might have also seen examples, where teams fail to win the championships, in spite of having great individual players.

You might have also seen the intimidating tactics by the players to mess up the focus of opposition player in the game. While some players react to such sledging tactics and make mistakes, great players simply ignore such gestures, and never let their focus get deterred.

This is exactly the reason why sports psychology training will have to be integrated along with physical training. Sports psychologists have their own sets of styles and mythologies to handle and manage sports people.

They work actively with them even if they are not facing any issues as such. They try to identify the psychological mindsets that are preventing their client from crossing the final hurdle, and claiming the championship.

According to the roles, scope of work, and relationship with athletes, the psychologists have various different designations like-

 

• Mental Trainer
• Mind Coach
• Mental Game Expert
• Performance Enhancement Specialist
• Peak Performance Coach
• Mental Game Coach

The role of Peak Performance Coach does not include –

1. Management of suicidal tendencies
2. Diagnosis and cure of eating disorders
3. Dealing with substance abuse

10 amazing facts about sports peak performance coaching

Nowadays, it is quite common to use mental skills coaching and psychological sports analysis in most of the sports. Generally, whoever wins the mental battle, also wins the game. This is because, the application of our mind is more important, if our body has to reach new potentials. Our body can replicate the actual performance action that our mind whole-heartedly believes in.

The benefits of Peak Performance Coach for supporting various sports programme are many.

1. Developing an Optimistic Belief System – It is possible for a Peak Performance Coach to change an athlete’s perspective for better. When confronted by sporting challenges, out mind could get clouded by various obstacles like inferiority complex or self-doubt.

It was once believed that it is not possible to break the barrier of 4 minutes for running a mile. In fact, the sporting communities had set this limit, and many people believed in the impossibility of breaking the 4 minute barrier.

 

Peak Performance Coach will implement various methods for guiding the mind to strongly believe that the unfeasible tasks are in fact, possible. Such belief system can help you in pushing the body to reach newer heights.

2. Finding the Most Favourable Performance Zone – Athletes from all age groups are usually unaware of various ways to control their excitement and fear of failure. Sports become even more challenging when the stakes are high. The physiological responses of the body like the breathing rate, high adrenalin flow, and heart rate, can hinder the performance of the sportsperson.

You might have seen many cases where the underdog player plays exceptionally well, but falters on the winning strike. When it really matters, it is usually the seasoned champion who is able to hold the nerves, to cross the finish-line first, or to hit the winning point.

Peak Performance Coach can train athletes to regulate their energy and excitement levels. Besides this, they will advise on how to manage the fears and apprehensions to push the body harder. Athletes can apply and implement the strategies to adjust to their excitement levels while performing in their sports.

3. Convert Your Sports Activities into Regular Practice – Before entering into any competition, athletes have to look into various things. These aspects include game plan formulation, diet and rest planning, equipment check, visualization practices, training, warm up, and so forth. These things might seem overwhelming for a new sportsperson. Worse still, he or she may not have included these things in the sports preparation routine.

Sports psychologist will develop a personalized checklist for the athletes to execute. When the activities are made as a routine, the athletes will not only learn how to conserve their over-anxiousness, but also improve on their techniques and performance. Also, they learn to avoid unexpected surprises. Besides these benefits, they also get complete confidence to face the competition.

4. Broaden the Strategies to Deal With Stress Related to Sports – Athletes generally encounter various forms of stress in sports. Over-excitement, over-confidence, injury, intimidation, foul-play, sledging from opponents, and so on. Such stress could distract athletes, and they will not be able to concentrate during the competition.

It will obviously result in inhibited performance. However, by learning the valuable psychological techniques, it is possible to equip the athletes with various strategies to handle stress encountered during the game. For instance, taunting and sledging is quite common in sports. In order to handle such stress, players could switch their visual focus to view other aspects, and ignore the taunting of other players.

5. The Role of Peak Performance Coach – The Sports Psychology is based on few vital concepts. Each of these concepts is imperative, especially if you wish to stand out as a coach. These areas are as follows –

• Pre-game Routines
• Facing Your Fears
• Perfectionism
• Composure
• Mindset for Training
• Confidence
• Processing the long terms and short term goals
• Expectations
• Stages of Mental Coaching

6. Traditional Sports Psychology vs. Peak Performance Coaching – Often people are interested to know the difference between the concepts of traditional sports psychology and Peak Performance Coaching. Well, the components of the two approaches often complement one another.

In the traditional psychology models, ‘talk therapy’ is generally used. However, Peak Performance Coaching trains athletes not to talk about those aspects of their games, which they don’t wish to experience, or see. Athletes are trained to focus on the things at hand without getting affected emotionally, thereby creating a stable and empowered state of mind.

A Sports Peak Performance Coach has expertise in mental aspects of the game. They usually works with clients facing personal problems, which go beyond the scopes of a sports performance expert.

7. Responsibility of a PPC

• To improve the efficiency of practice
• Help an athlete to regroup from injury (both physically and psychologically)
• Teach mental skills associated with stress management, routine, composure, focus, and confidence.
• Enhance team cohesion, thus improving team performance
• Coach athletes to improve performance with the mental game over their opponents.

8. Overall Benefits of PPC – Effective coaching is an important driver for the performance of team members. Psychological coaching and feedback makes a big variation between mediocrity and optimal performance. It helps the players in believing that they can touch the new records in their respective sports.

 9. Psychology training for diverse sports – Sports people who participate in intensive games like football, cricket, hockey, volleyball, swimming, and tennis might have great physical strengths, but they might not have the required and psychological maturity to handle pressures.

In many cases, the players will be away from their homes for the entire seasons. Also, they will have to keep changing places or locations according to the game schedules, and it is not easy to maintain your cool for such an extended period of time. So, how do they do it?

However, sports and people with proper psychological training, learn to find ways to handle intense pressures and provocations. A few players are gifted with natural composure and confidence. However, for most of them, mental skills need to be gained, perfected, and polished. It is very much like a player building his muscles in the gym.

This is the reason why most of the top sports clubs prefer to associate with sports psychologists. These professionals play a major role in teaching the players to handle their successes and failures. They work proactively with the sports people on a number of aspects, ranging from anger management mechanisms, rapid refocusing skills, positive self-talk, and on the mood triggers.

10. Benefits of psychological training in other fields – According to sports psychologists, the mental trickery learnt by players to handle high stake games, can definitely help others in diverse other fields too. Students, teachers, professionals, and businessmen can benefit from these methods too. These techniques are grounded in progressive science.

Peak Performance Coaching can help the dreamers, creative professionals, students, and entrepreneurs, and transform them into high-performers.