Mental Training Research Paper

Mental Training Effects on Motor Development

Motor development starts from day one and continues to be a factor in all aspects of life up until death. Most people develop the basic motor skills in the areas of ballistic and manipulative skills, but when you are trying to be an elite athlete, you must try and perfect those motor skills. The physical aspect of fine-tuning the skills is important to the training of an athlete, but including mental training can bring those motor skills to the next level. Being an elite athlete takes a lot of time commitment and training, therefore, to make their training more efficient and beneficial there should be a combination of mental and physical training. Adding mental practices into physical training sessions will increase the training methods for elite athletes by creating more efficient motor movements, therefore will increase performance, because it increases positivity, focus, and helps break through that so-called maximum threshold. Reaching your peak performance and hitting a wall that is hard to break through is a problem most
First, it is necessary to know when to implement the mental training methods. Mental training is usually incorporated into physical training before or during the activity. A study performed by Donohue, et al. (2001), focused on cross-country runners and implementing mental training before their race. This research study published in the Journal of Sport Behavior, was conducted to find a mental training method that will increase the performance of cross-country runners. Division-one cross-country runners were put into three different mental preparatory types of training that took place directly before their races. Their performances were measured to compare the training methods that would take their physical abilities to the next