Sports performance at a high level often boils down to the last moments of competition to dictate a winner. A penalty shootout to advance to the final, a golf putt to claim that first trophy, scoring those two basketball free throws to ice the game. In these scenarios, although elite athletes practice the correct technique […]
Defining attentional focus. Attentional focus in athletes can be split into two broad strategies, that of association and dissociation (Lind et al. 2009). A range of terms for association and dissociation are in the literature, these include internal focus, attention, and redefinition for association and external focus, distraction and avoidance for dissociation, although the constructs […]
“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” – Zig Ziglar This month I would like to discuss the aspect of focus and concentration to create performance and ultimately success. I’m sure it would prove beneficial to discuss the theoretical frameworks of focus and concentration. Concepts such […]
Further to my last article on “attention” I decided to come back to the more specific aspect of concentration. Despite it being one of the more obvious mental skills that athletes utilise to perform at their best, a loss of it is often blamed for poor performance. On the other hand athletes also contribute a […]
Ronan O Gara and Jonny Wilkinson, among many others place the ball, set themselves, say something to themselves and then go about their business and put the ball between the posts. So what exactly are they saying and why? Research has shown that the use of psychological techniques can enhance sporting performance (Krane & Williams, […]