Sport Psychology Tactics - How To Develop A Highly Aggressive Mindset For Sports: A Guide For Athletes On Controlled Violence
About the Author
Ben Foodman is a licensed psychotherapist & performance specialist. He owns his private practice located in Charlotte North Carolina where he specializes in working with athletes to help them overcome mental blocks (the yips), PTSD, ADD / ADHD and achieve flow states through the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback. If you are interested in services, use the link here! Enjoy the article below!
Introduction: Athletes, Aggressive Mindsets & Mental Training
When athletes go to work with most sport psychologists, a common strategy that both parties work to improve on is how to stay calm. Many athletes experience nerves, anxiety and other symptoms right before competition and understandably want to make those experiences more manageable. While there is no question that many sports performance situations require athletes to remain calm, there are just as many scenarios that require athletes to be aggressive.
Because being aggressive can be so critical in sports I wanted to use this issue of the Training Report to explore why and how athletes should consider mentally training to be aggressive. For part I. I will go into discussing what we mean by ‘aggressive’ mental training, then for part II. we will explore some of the neuroscience that explains why athletes should train this way. Finally, in part III. I will explore how athletes can incorporate this into their mental training regimen. Let’s begin by defining aggression training.
Part I. Defining Mental Aggression Training For Athletes
Most sport psychologists and mental performance consultants in sport psychology are focused on helping athletes move away from aggression. In fact, much of the research that we see looks at how aggression is negative and needs to be controlled. However, I think we need to re-examine how we define and view this emotion. Aggression has been defined as ‘hostile or violent behavior or attitudes toward another; readiness to attack or confront’. Usually what comes to mind for most people is unchecked anger or unhealthy outbursts. But like anything, there is a spectrum of aggression and we should be helping athletes tap into that will be optimal for their performances.
For instance, when we look at fight, flight or freeze responses, there are elements of aggression in these behaviors. One could also argue that you can find similar aggressive traits within certain sport performance situations. For instance, American Football players tackling opponents, basketball players securing a rebound, or golfers trying to hit a difficult shot need to have aggressive behaviors in order to be successful during these moments. Either way, there are elements of ‘healthy’ aggression that athletes can identify that are both unique to them as individuals, but also unique to their sport as well. But like all Training Report issues, we need to explore how the neuroscience backs up the connection between aggression and optimal sport performance.
Part II. Understanding The Neuroscience Behind Aggression For Athletes
When we look at specific behaviors such as the fight, flight, freeze responses, aggression is a characteristic that can be found within one of those three behaviors. The subcortical brain recruits different regions of the brain and body to produce an assertive response in the quickest and most efficient manner possible in order to drive an individual’s behavior towards preservation of the self during a stressful and/or dangerous event. While these behaviors are dissociative in nature, they nonetheless sharpen the individual’s focus and bottleneck information processing.
One experience that virtually all athletes have had where they always tap into ‘aggressive mindsets’ is during strength & conditioning. For example, before an athlete performs a bench press there are several internal checks that the majority of athletes scan for in their bodies to make sure they are ready to perform the lift (is their body lined up the correct way, is their grip tight, are their legs firmly planted on the ground, have they inhaled enough air to create a Valsalva maneuver). This entire process is called Preloading, and can actually be used in almost every sport performance environment to prep the athlete to be aggressive.
Part III. How To Implement Aggressive Mental Training
As previously mentioned, athletes frequently and unconsciously use the Preload maneuver to create an aggressive mindset. The reason this is so effective is because this maneuver sends signals to the subcortical brain in a type of ‘language’ that that area of the brain understands. It’s like making a phone to your brain letting it know that you need it to interact with the environment in a certain way. Right before athletes go to compete or execute a certain sport performance movement, athletes can spend just a few minutes creating progressive muscle tension in certain areas of their body to create ‘aggressive’ behaviors that will sharpen their focus.
This can include simultaneously bracing your core, repeatedly clenching your fists, or inhaling air into your lungs to create a Valsalva maneuver. Once the athlete has done this for 30 seconds to 2 minutes, the athlete can move on to whatever they normally do for performance or training situations. Athletes should first practice this in ‘non-competition’ scenarios to see how this feels. If they believe that this technique is more situational, then they can use this skill only as needed. Remember, this procedure is meant to send the necessary signals to the brain to mentally prepare the athlete to be emotionally aggressive.
Lastly, as athletes go through the process of training aggression, it will be important that they process with someone they trust. This can be done with a parent, coach, a member of an athlete’s social support system or a sport psychologist. Since athletes usually get the message that aggression should be suppressed, there is a lot of stigma associated with exploring emotions with others. Sport psychologists and coaches have the opportunity to change the social messaging on this issue by encouraging athletes to take a deeper dive into this emotion in order to understand both the good and the bad parts about this. Aggression does not have to be all bad and can in fact be a beautiful part of an athlete’s experience in sports!
Note To Reader:
If you are an athlete reading this segment of the TRAINING REPORT, hopefully this content was helpful! I put the Training Report together because I felt like many of the discussions on issues such as the Yips/mental blocks, strength training & other subject matter on athlete performance concepts were really missing the mark on these ideas (e.g. how trauma is the direct cause of the Yips). If you are interested in learning more, make sure to subscribe below for when I put out new content on issues related to sport psychology & athlete performance! Also, if you are looking to work with a mental performance specialist, you are in the right place! USE THIS LINK to reach out to me to see if my services are the right fit for your goals!
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