In class yesterday we started to talk about the aspect of talking trash in sports. I think that the mental part of sports is extremely interesting. To me, sports are at least as mental as physical, if not more mental. If you are in the wrong mind set for whatever reason, you will perform poorly. The most talented athletes are always able to get into a zone on the court or the field that blocks out everything else except their goal and their game. Sometimes you can actually tell that someone is "in the zone" by the almost possesed way in which they are playing. I can point to a few of my basketball games where I felt like the hoop belonged to me and like no matter what I shot I could not miss. This does not occur very often for me, but I would argue that for the most elite athletes, it happens much more frequently.
"The zone" can also have the opposite effect on an athlete. If your mind is on something else or if someone is bugging you, it becomes much more difficult for your body to do its job. An example of this is when one of the other players is able to throw you off of your game. They can do this by talking smack, being extra physical, or even just looking at you in a certain way. Many athletes are very susceptible to the "sledging," and it can screw them up. Other athletes say it motivates them. In class we talked about how it is an important part of the game because it teaches you to become stronger mentally, and turn it into motivation. I believe that this is why sports are just as mental as physical. Even if you are not flustered by trash talk or the coach yelling at you or the fans booing, athletes are constantly forced to push things out of their brain so that they can focus. Even your own thoughts effect your play every second. If you are having a bad day and you do not feel like playing, you have to mentally push yourself to pick up the intensity. If you miss a shot you have to re-center your own thoughts and not let yourself get into a slump.
Pressure is also a mental feeling that gets turned into a physical result. Everyone reacts differently to pressure, and pressure can be put on an athlete by their coach, their team, themselves, the fans, or just a big moment. For me, I used to put a lot of pressure on myself, and I had to teach myself not to get really nervous before every game. If a coach added pressure to that and had extra expectations, it would actually help, because I would focus on that instead of my own pressure.
There are tons of social science projects that one could do to look at mental effects in sports. It is a key component of sports, whether it be trash talking, your own mind or pressure of some kind. Hopefully an athlete's mentality can be manipulated to push them to do better in a game, or get them in "the zone," but all those detractions from the game seem to end up to be just as important, if not more, than the game itself.
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2 comments:
Dealing with trash talk, for me, does not show the great mental strain of an athlete. As trash talk is common in nearly every sport, dealing with it is just another aspect of the game. While I realize that focus is key, and that athletes can and do use an opponent's talk as motivation, simply dealing with trash talk is not a great showing of mental ability. Dealing with insults in the real world is not seen as requiring raised focus, why should it be any different on the field.
I'm not sure (in response to Matt) that dealing with "sledging" in the real world doesn't require any extra focus, but what this discussion raises for me is how we define an issue as "mental" or "physical" - David F-R's post (http://sportseminar.blogspot.com/2007/01/sport-vs-instinct.html) mentions a percentage breakdown of mental/physical/luck in sport, and at some point in the debate we have to ask ourselves: how do we decide whether something is a physical or a mental factor... which is where things get metaphysical!
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