Sports Psychology involves the connection between Mind and Body and the utilization of the connection for enhancing Performance.
While talking to one of the cricketers, he mentioned that he gave 100% in his practice sessions. He also focused a lot on his physical fitness so as to do well in this season and get selected for India team.
However, he was unable to explain what went wrong as he did not get selected and his ultimate dreams to get selected for India team came crashing down. When asked to explain where he felt short in spite of doing so much of practice and fitness training, he said that he did everything and tried to implement all the techniques and suggestions that his coach had given while playing matches. But a very important thing that he shared with me was when he was playing matches, he was constantly worried about the opponent team being very strong and their victory last year........
There he is and in fact all those who are into sports......
We generally think of sports as being more physical. And hence there is so much of time as well as money that we invest in getting the best facilities for any player. However, the fact that sports is also a mental game is not yet accepted by many and therefore has not been recognised as a tool to enhance sports performance.
A sport is a combination of mind and body........
Do you play cricket or for that matter any sport without thinking about
- the opponent.....
- without thinking of what will happen if I do not perform as per my potential....
- without any anxiety or tension....
- without fear of failure....
- without getting distracted....
- without having any negative thoughts about your victory........ and so on and so forth.
I think the answer for all these would be a big ‘NO’......
So there you are..... Our statement that it’s a connection of body and mind is absolutely true. It is next to impossible to keep your mind away while you are playing and it being your mind is going to distract you and try to have an upper hand.
Therefore, we as sportsmen need to attend to our mind as well as our body and train both of them equally to work effectively so that we will definitely be successful in any game that we play.
Once you agree to the connection of mind and body to your sport, you yourself will start getting answers to many of your failures and setbacks that you experienced in your sporting career.
So, I will surely be back with more and more articles on Sports Psychology and how it works and most importantly what you need to do to achieve the deserving success....
All the best and keep reading!!!!!!!!!
Mugdha Bavare
Sports Psychologist