Читать книгу Sports Psychology For Dummies - Leif H. Smith - Страница 18

In developing your mind through sports psychology training, you want to develop your own personal “mental toolkit” that contains the techniques and strategies you need to strengthen your mental muscle. Just as you can use equipment to help you improve your physical fitness, there are tools you can use to do the same for your mind.

Focus is one of the most critical mental skills to develop for success in athletics. It’s one of the most common assets of successful athletes, and a lack of focus is a primary reason for mental errors, mistakes, and the inability to perform under pressure. In Chapter 6, we give you Tool #1, “Mastering the Art of Focus,” so that you can take your focus up a notch.

Mental imagery can help you build confidence, manage pressure, recover from mistakes and poor performance, and prepare for practice and competition. In Chapter 7, we offer you Tool #2, “Seeing Is Believing,” and we explain what imagery is and how it works, giving you specific steps to use the tool of imagery in your sport.

As an athlete, you’re constantly working toward specific goals, and you are creating habits that will propel you toward victory. In Chapter 9, we introduce you to Tool #4, “Winning Habits,” and help you understand and harness the power of routines in your sport so that you can become more consistent in both your preparation and your results.