The one constant across all disciplines of competitive sport is that of stress. Athletes are continuously placed under copious amounts of stress, yet are still expected to perform at a high level. We would not be hard pressed to come up with examples of athlete who have ‘frozen’ or ‘choked’ under pressure, and have not liven up to the high expectations. Nevertheless, at the same time there are athletes whose performance is not impaired, who succeed despite the pressure all around them. In order to help explain this difference, it has got to be understood that stress is not […]
Read more
11
Jul
2014
Resilience and Overcoming Performance Errors
Resilience, or “mental toughness,” is a key psychological aspect of sport. The ability to bounce back from a poor performance or a detrimental mistake is crucial to an athlete’s success. As much as athletes hate to admit it, failure is a part of the game. A baseball player with a batting average of .3 has failed 7 times out of 10 at the plate. It is important to recognize that mistakes and failure are part of the game (Halden-Brown, 2003). However, when an athlete places too much emphasis on his or her failures, performance begins to suffer. Athletes need […]
Read more
