Sport Psychology Tactics - How Athletes Can Improve Their Mental Game By Understanding The Difference Between Competition & Practice
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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: The Mental Difference Between Practice & Competition
A common issue that arises for many athletes is having trouble understanding why they perform so well in practice, but sometimes cannot get those same psychological skills to translate towards competition. While this is an issue that primarily affects youth athletes, all levels of performers experience this issue in some capacity. Traditional sport psychologists try to help athletes build mental skills to cope with the stress of this issue, but this is like trying to use a spoon to hammer a nail.
For this issue of the Training Report, I want to take time to dive into this issue and explore the nuances between mental states during practice and competition. We will first explore the neuroscience between these different experiences, followed by strategies that athletes can use to replicate competition-level psychological states during practice. Finally, we will also review sport psychology-based strategies athletes can use outside of practice and competition to help with this dilemma. Let’s begin first by digging into the neuroscience of practice & competition.
Part I. The Neuroscience Of Practice & Competition
Before we jump into the neuroscience of practice vs. competition, we need to understand some philosophical aspects about the differences between these two environments. First, one of the primary purposes of practice is to encode your memory with sport-specific movements and to build up the appropriate energy systems that match the specific sport. There are several reasons why practice needs to be examined through this framework. By encoding an athlete’s memory with constant repetitions of both the same and different techniques of a sport, the athlete is creating a type of reflexive response. When athletes review the course of their entire history in a given sport, almost all of them will tell you that they hardly think about some of the movement patterns with the same intensity that they did as a beginner. This is because over time those repetitions turned unfamiliar movements into reflexes that are generated by an athlete’s motor cortex. However, most coaches and athletes stop here at this level of planning and rarely consider how these concepts will translate to competition.
In terms of the neuroscience behind practice and competition, we need to keep two concepts in mind: motor behavior / skill acquisition and stress inoculation. Motor behavior and skill acquisition is a field of study that investigates how people learn and perform movements. It is a multidisciplinary field that draws on knowledge from psychology, neuroscience, biomechanics, and kinesiology. The reason it is important to be familiar with this way of thinking about sport movement is because the environmental demands will drastically change from a training setting to a competition setting. These changes will significantly affect the psychology of the athlete’s movement. The other area that athletes and coaches need to be aware of is what many sport psychologists refer to as stress inoculation. This process is commonly understood as a process by which coaches specifically introduce multiple stressful scenarios to help prepare the athlete to be able to deal with the stress. While this style of coaching is more widely used that motor behavior and skill acquisition, it is still not used as much as it should be, nor titrated appropriately. So what are some specific strategies that come from these two approaches ?
Part II. How to replicate competition-level mental states in practice
We are going to cover one strategy related to motor learning and skill acquisition principles and one strategy related to stress inoculation. Keep in mind that neither of these strategies should take up the bulk of practice. Rather, these approaches should compose anywhere from 15 to 25% of the total practice. The rest of the practice should be devoted to skill improvement, physical performance enhancement (strength & conditioning) and film study. Let’s dive into the first strategy!
Adjusting Speed & Opponent Size
In weightlifting, there is a term called overload training. For instance, if an athlete’s one rep max back squat is 400 lbs, the coaches might load the bar with 450 lbs, and have the athlete rack the weight to give their brain a sense of what the new load might feel like. A similar approach can be taken in practice situations. For example, athletes can put themselves in simulations where they are outnumbered by opponents or the time at which they have to complete a task can be shortened to give them the experience of increased pressure. This approach should ONLY be done with athletes that are more ‘senior’ in nature. Youth or beginner athletes should be focused on developing skill levels and confidence.
Simulate Competition Environment
Creating game-like scenarios for athletes can be a form of stress-inoculation training. Again, it is very important that the majority of the training session be focused on technique development, film study, and physical performance enhancement. But we also need to make sure that athletes are getting healthy doses of stressful simulations. If possible, creating practice environments that mimic competition environments can be an effective strategy. Examples of this include but are not limited to the following: having crowds present; playing loud blaring music or playing loud audio simulating crowd noise; creating one rep max attempts in weightlifting where the team is watching. There is even research that supports this concept that stress simulations will increase an athlete’s performance outcomes.
Part III. How to practice mental training outside of practice & competition
In addition to developing the psychological skills needed to be prepared for high stress environments, one of the best things athletes can do is regularly explore and process their emotions on a deep level. Preparing, training & competing in sports competitions can be incredibly emotional experiences. Regardless if they are positive or negative, the regularity and intensity of these emotions can be energy draining and possibly even traumatic. One of the best sport psychology interventions that athletes can use to help be consistent across training & competition is Brainspotting. Brainspotting is a brain-based psychotherapy that uses the athlete’s field of vision to process stored stress in the body. This technique allows athletes to access the areas of the brain that are involved in regulation and dysregulation, and bypass the areas that are not. Regardless of what types of mental training athletes choose to do, as long as they are doing something then this will pay off in the long run. Furthermore, this type of work will smooth out the transition of confidence from training experiences to competition experiences.
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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