Sport Psychology & How To Teach Aggression
About the Breakthroughs Need Breakdowns 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: How Mental Performance Coaches Teach Aggression In Sports
At some point in an athletes career they have probably been told by a coach to be more aggressive in certain moments of their training or performance. But when you ask athletes about this interaction, most of them will tell you that their coach never told them HOW to be more aggressive or even what it means to be more aggressive. This experience can be very frustrating for both athletes and coaches, which can both strain their relationship while also reducing the athlete’s confidence in their sport performance abilities. What makes this even more of a double edged sword is how athletes are also receiving social messages that aggression is a ‘toxic behavior’.
While many sport psychologists and mental coaches have tried to help athletes with this issue they have largely failed. The reason for this is because many of these professionals neither have the knowledge needed to properly teach this nor the applied experience. Because this is such an important topic that frequently comes up in my work, I decided to cover this in my book Breakthroughs Need Breakdowns. For this issue of the Notes, I wanted to take the time to explain how training aggression in athletes shaped both by book and my work with athletes. I will explain the science of aggression and how athletes can actually train themselves to enter this mental state.
Part I. Defining How To Teach Aggression In Sports
Part of the controversy around teaching aggression to athletes in sports is that there is not a standardized method to teach how to be aggressive nor is there a definition sport psychologists and coaches agree upon. Aggression has been defined as ‘hostile or violent behavior or attitudes toward another; readiness to attack or confront’. This definition makes sport psychologists and coaches uncomfortable because there is a general resistance around teaching athletes how to be violent while also preaching the importance of ‘controlling emotions’. The fact of the matter is that most sport psychologists who stress the importance of ‘controlling emotions’ are more focused on suppression than exploration of emotions. Furthermore many sport psychologists and coaches hold the false assumption that athletes will not be able to appropriately place boundaries on when they should or should not be aggressive, which infantilizes the athlete.
First, we need to dispel the myth that being aggressive in sports it ‘toxic’. In fact, not only is aggression in sports necessary in order to compete at a high level, it helps keep the athlete in the safest position possible. Most sports require athletes to produce abnormal amounts of explosive power and muscle tension which in turn means their competitors need to match their physiological disposition. Additionally, we should also start from the position that athletes know their own bodies better than coaches and sport psychologists do and therefore deserve the benefit of the doubt in terms of their ability to manage their emotions both inside and outside of sports. When all is said and done, we need to be more focused on helping athletes appropriately express emotions and tap into their natural ability to be aggressive in sports for both the sake of their mental health and their safety during performances. With that being said, let’s tap into the science of athlete aggression.
Part II. Understanding The Neuroscience Of Aggression In Sports
We first need to establish the difference between aggression that is performance-based versus fight, flight, freeze-based aggression. Fight, flight, freeze-based aggression is an involuntary response that is produced by the subcortical brain when an individual feels as if their safety is completely compromised. This type of aggression usually comes in one of two forms: either an individual is experiencing imminent danger and must fight to survive, or the individual has experienced trauma and is perceiving (or misperceiving) some form of their environment as threatening (the garden hose is mistakenly seen as a snake). In either case, this type of aggression is not ideal for athletes to be experiencing during sports because this type of response is purely involuntary and not strategic in nature. Essentially, the athlete is not able to control their actions in any meaningful way for performance.
Aggression that is performance-based presents with similar characteristics as flight, fight, freeze-based aggression but is largely different due to the voluntary nature of the emotional-behavioral response. Performance-based aggression is meant to have athletes create sympathetic nervous system responses that create higher levels of muscle tension, explosive power, and increased focus through a mind-body synchronization. Athletes usually try to create these sensations through some type of psychological construct or belief (e.g. the other team disrespects me and this makes me angry, this other person is trying to harm me and take away my livelihood, etc.). While this may be helpful for some individuals, I have found in my work with athletes this does not produce consistent and reliable results. Athletes need to focus on skills that directly tap into the body, rather than imaginary ideas.
Part III. Somatic Exercises & Mental Skills Training For Athlete Aggression
One area where I have spent a considerable amount of time enhancing psychological performance for the athletes I work with is through exercise psychology. Typically when we think about exercise psychology, most people think about research that is focused on keeping people motivated to lose weight. In fact, a vast majority of exercise psychology is focused more on improving negative health experiences through motivation-based strategies (e.g. self-determination theory, achievement goal theory, etc.). Because of my dual background as a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and a Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC), I try to look at how athletes design their exercise training programs as it relates to improving their mental performance outcomes. What is an example of this?
Rather than trying to help athletes develop insight-based thoughts for aggression, I try to help them select exercises that will force them to synchronize the mind-body connection and create aggressive emotional states. For example, let’s say you are an athlete that does not know how to access the feelings of aggression when needed…a perfect exercise to solve this would be doing some variation of an Olympic-style weightlifting movement. Olympic-style weightlifting force individuals to generate more muscle tension, more power and more sympathetic nervous system activation in order to create an aggressive ‘brace’ response (think of tensing your body to absorb a punch). Another example would be to do some form of heat training in order to train your mind to be ‘comfortable with discomfort’. All of these approaches are introduced in my book Breakthroughs Need Breakdowns, which I review extensively throughout the performance enhancement section! If you would like to learn more, sign up below to receive more information on the book!
