In sports as in life how you interpret or explain negative and positive events is crucial. This largely depends on your so-called ‘explanatory style’. Like a simple general example, it is how you see the glass – half empty or half full?
Last time I wrote about self-talk and its importance for so many things in our lives: our beliefs, our actions, our presence, our confidence. For example, positive, encouraging, task and solutions-oriented self-talk, can boost your confidence and performance.
Do you remember a Nike commercial called “Reincarnate Now” when a runner starts an inner dialog in his head between the part of him that wants to stop running and the part of him that wants to continue?
As mentioned last time, imagery is a very useful and beneficial mental training technique for many different reasons. It can be used as additional off-court training for various performance areas, such as skills development, rehearsal, and mastering; tactical rehearsal & positioning; game management; problem-solving; recovery after injury, and many others. Whether you are a player, referee, or coach imagery can help you with your performance.
Today I would like to present one of the most useful techniques of mental training in sports – the technique of visualization and imagery. You may not have realized it, but you’ve probably already used imagery in your life especially when you are thinking about a game you’ll have when you remember the great performance you had the day before, or the missed shot you cannot forget about.
In the mid ‘90s when I was a basketball player, there was an Adidas commercial that had made such an impact on my dedication and motivation that I wrote it as a transcript on a big paper to be visible on the wall in my room.
It is the end of the year, the period when most people think about their New Year resolutions. If you are one of them, there is one topic that might serve as your inspiration to the New Year goals – a journey of self-actualization.
To be more specific and explain this interesting topic I will summarize the philosophy of two famous psychologists that wrote about this topic many years ago – Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. In their books, they presented the importance of one’s self-actualization process and the benefits of a personally fulfilled individual.
In the previous article, I wrote about emotions and how people generally express their emotions, based on their upbringing, social environment, personality, and the culture they live in. In this article, I would like to write a few things about the rise of emotions during the game. As we are all aware, emotions are expected to appear many times during the game and any situation can be a trigger for various emotions to rise.
In a sports environment many times we witness the rise of emotions, especially in tight score games with eliminating consequences on a stake. These emotions usually differ in intensity and the spectre in which they appear – i.e. joy, excitement, happiness, pride, anger, frustration, sadness – depending on the result of your team and your ability to control your own reactions.
How do people differ from each other? What are the personality types? How do we express them? These are some of the questions we want to answer speaking about important topics – about personality traits and types and characteristics of different people in one team.
The mission of the “LEARNING IS GROWING” is to show you how investment in education, your individual preparation, personal growth, and development can help you become a better referee, player, or coach. As individual preparation differs individually based on the character, experience, knowledge, age, level of performance, and many other variables, the topics that will be presented in this column should be transposed into your ambitions in a way that suits you the most.
Every month, we will roll out a podcast with interesting people of the basketball scene. Find out what goes on behind the scene in professional sports: referees, coaches, players, managers, sports professionals, and many others from the sewing box: Great moments, ‘crazy’ situations and breath-taking memories. With fun and interesting conversations, you will get to know the often hidden side of the sports participants.