Sport Psychology

Five topics that are really one

Sport psychology looks like a pile of unrelated lists. Types of skill. Types of guidance. Types of feedback. Something about arousal. Goal setting with an acronym. Learned as five lists it is dull and it scores badly, because an exam question almost never asks you to recite a list. It gives you a performer with a problem. ⭐ So learn it as one thing instead. Everything on that pile is a place in a single loop that is running inside a performer all the time. They take information in. They decide what to do. They do it. Then information comes back about how it went, and round it goes again. ⚠️ Every topic in this module is somewhere that loop can be helped or jammed. Which means one question will unlock almost any question you are asked: which part of the loop is this affecting?

The loop, in four stages

This is the information processing model, and it is the spine of the whole topic. A midfielder receiving a pass goes round it several times a second. Learn the four stages in order. Almost every later idea attaches to one of them.

Run the loop on one moment

An invented netball player receives a pass near the edge of the circle. Put the five events in the order they happen.

• She picks out the position of the defender and of her nearest team mate
• She chooses a shot rather than a pass
• Her arms and legs carry out the shooting action
• She feels the release was slightly early as the ball leaves her hands
• That information changes what she attends to on the very next attempt

The performer who stops seeing

An invented hockey player is described by her coach as trying too hard in big matches: she stops seeing team mates who are clearly free. Where in the loop is the problem, and why?

• At the input stage, because very high arousal narrows attention onto fewer cues
• At the output stage, because her muscles are too tense to pass accurately
• At the decision stage, because she does not know the rules of the game well enough
• At the feedback stage, because nobody is telling her where her team mates are

Classifying a skill by what it demands

Classifying a skill is not a labelling exercise. Each pair of words tells you something about how hard the loop has to work, and therefore what a coach should change.

Find the sentence about feedback

A coach describes a training session with an invented young sprinter. Select the ONE sentence that describes feedback rather than guidance or instruction.

• Before she ran I showed her a video of a good start so she could see the shape of it.
• I talked her through where her hands should be on the blocks.
• I physically moved her front knee into position while she stayed still.
• After the third start I told her that her head had come up too early, and why that cost her.
• I reminded her that the session was about starts and nothing else.

Which changes reduce the load

A beginner is overwhelmed learning an invented racket sport. Three of these five reduce the amount the loop has to handle at once. Choose the three.

• Practising the serve alone against a wall before playing rallies
• Telling them to watch only the ball for now and worry about the opponent later
• Showing a short demonstration instead of explaining the technique in a long description
• Giving them six corrections at the end of every single rally
• Putting them straight into a competitive match so they learn under pressure

One question for any performer question

Exam questions in this topic nearly all come in the same shape: here is a performer, here is what is going wrong, suggest something. ⭐ Ask which part of the loop is affected, then choose a tool that acts on that part. A performer who is missing things has an input problem. One who freezes or picks the wrong option has a decision problem. One who knows what to do but cannot yet do it has an output problem. One who keeps repeating the same error has a feedback problem. ⚠️ Naming the stage is what turns a guess into an answer, and it costs you one sentence.

Match the coaching choice to what it acts on

The new driver at the roundabout

Leave sport for a moment. Think about somebody on their fourth driving lesson, approaching a busy roundabout. They are doing everything at once. Which gear. Which lane. Where the cars are. What the instructor just said. Whether the car behind is too close. And they stall. ⚠️ Nobody would say that person lacks talent. Everybody can see exactly what has happened: there is more coming at them than anyone could handle while also working the pedals. ⭐ Now watch the same person two years later. Same roundabout, and they are holding a conversation. Nothing about the roundabout got easier. The steering, the gears and the mirrors stopped needing them, so almost everything they have is free for the traffic. ⭐⭐ And look at what the instructor actually did, because it is the whole of coaching. Started them on an empty industrial estate on a Sunday, so there was almost nothing to watch. Said one thing at a time instead of six. Waited until the car had stopped before explaining what went wrong. Every one of those is the same move: cut down how much has to be handled in one second, until the parts that can become automatic have done so.

Complete the sport psychology facts

Everything a performer senses arrives at the _____ stage, and far more arrives than can be used. What to do about it is chosen at the _____ stage, the movement itself is the output, and information about how it went is the _____. A skill performed in a predictable environment is called a _____ skill, and it can become almost automatic because there is so little to read. Performance rises with _____ up to an optimum and falls away beyond it, and a target set before the session tells the performer what to look for, which is why it should be _____ rather than vague.

Build the coaching recommendation

An invented beginner can perform a tennis serve alone but falls apart when rallying. Complete the recommendation.

Sport psychology quick-fire

Five quick decisions. Three lives.

Coach a performer who has gone backwards

An invented young badminton player is excellent in training and poor in tournaments. Work out what to do.

• She says that in matches everything happens too fast and she cannot think. Where is the problem?
• You want something she can use during a match. What fits?
• You set her a goal for the next tournament. Which is the better goal, and why?

Explain one performer using the loop

A talented young player performs well in practice and much worse in competition. Explain what may be happening and what you would do about it.

• Name the stage of the loop you think is affected, and say why you think so
• Use the idea of arousal correctly, including what happens beyond the optimum
• Suggest one change to guidance or feedback, and say when it should arrive
• Set one goal the performer controls, and say what makes it a usable goal
• Say what you would expect to see if your explanation was right