A Beginners Guide to Sports Psychology: Part One:The Relationship With Your Team

Psychology and indeed Sports Psychology are sciences that are still in their infancy, and whole texts have been written on them.

I'll try to give a brief outline of what Sports Psychology is, why it's important in all sports, and how in these pressurised sporting times, the manager must understand that Sports Psychology is a tool that must be utilised and not feared. And also how the difference between using it and not using it can often be the difference between winning and losing.

First of all, what is sports psychology? And how can it help you in the training and development of your players?

Basically, psychology is the study of the mind and how it works. Sports psychology takes that one step again, and specializes in the scientific study of people and their behaviour in sport.

If you're a manager (be it in work or the playing field), the first thing to understand is your players.

You will need to get to know them personally, what makes them tick, recognise in them their personality shifts, when they're happy, and when they're sad. If something isn't right at home, it won't be right on the field either.

Players care what you know about your sport when they know you care about them.

During this getting to know your player phase, you should learn the most important tool you're going to use, which will lead into how you motivate your players.

Why do they play sport? Do they play to improve themselves? Is it for a sense of achievement? Money? Parental or peer pressure?

When you understand your player, then you'll understand why they play. And then you'll be able to use the correct motivational technique for each player.

When dealing with younger players, don't be afraid to give them questionnaires so you can gauge their on and off field personalities. Simple questions like favourite foods, films, music, teams, and what they eat at home can yield huge results.

Going one step further and asking them to describe what they like doing on the pitch, and how they see themselves on the pitch, can help focus your attentions towards their deficiencies, as players usually know their strong and weak points before a new coach can assess them.

One of the basic principles of sports psychology is that the player is central to everything you do as a coach or manager. The player is the "focal" point of your attention and you should strive to develop a player-centered approach.

An important factor when dealing with children is a "fear of failure". This should be avoided at all costs. Fun and enjoyment should be the key factors for children participating in sports, one of the major causes for concern, anxiety, and indeed players dropping out of sports, is the constant reference by coaches and parents to winning.

Players looking at themselves as failures because they lost a game, can have devastating effects. Younger players quickly develop poor motivation to continue, they worry about certain tasks within the game, and their development of sporting and personality can be hindered.

Sven Goran Eriksson had many detractors within the game of soccer, but he remains one of the foremost philosophers on the game. His book in 2001 (SGE on Football) highlighted this "fear of failure" issue.

He stated that coaches should encourage, and that players should not be afraid to make mistakes if they are trying to do the right thing. Players are more likely to enjoy playing and develop at a faster rate, if they are encouraged to concentrate on personal improvement at the expense of simply winning.

This does not mean that players should be discouraged from winning matches—it simply means that the focus should be on player development. (Arsene Wenger—Arsenal uses this as one of his core philosophies in football.)

If a player is only coached to win, then the player or manager will invariably experience frustration and disappointment at losing, which can increase them dropping out of the sport. (Roy Keane—Sunderland resigned after losing six games in a row.)

Participants should be encouraged to develop an attitude of personal improvement over and above winning, and should ultimately see victory and defeat as the same enemy in their search for personal improvement.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause;

"Who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." — Theodore Roosevelt

Part One: The Relationship with Your Player

Sports should be about fun, and the sense of joy and fulfillment that you get from the game you choose to play. Sometimes you will be happier in defeat than you would be in victory, because you know you did everything right and victory just didn't happen on the day in question.

If you can instill such a belief system within a child, then they will stay with the sport until their legs can't carry them any more. By which stage, hopefully they'll be in your shoes and ready to pass the game onto the next generation.

The relationship between coach and player should not be underestimated, be it at child or adult level. As the person in charge, you have a responsibility to make the workplace a place worth coming to, a place where the players can feel at ease with themselves as you remove their outside pressures.

Regardless of level, professional or children's, if the player isn't happy, they won't perform. It's your job to fix that before you can move onto other things.

Next: Motivation