The Positive Effects of Self-Talk in Sports and Exercise
Self-Talk in Sports and Exercise
Several studies have shown that self-talk can have a positive impact in sports. Self-talk includes all the purposeful and random thoughts that run through an athlete’s mind, it includes all the things said both silently and out loud. Self-talk can be positive, it can tell an athlete what to do, where to focus, and get one motivated. Unfortunately, self-talk can also be negative, and critical. Such internal talk definitely does not help performance and, in most cases, probably hurts performance. Of course negative self-talk is going to occur; but as we know, the key is to not focus on the negatives and instead focus on the positives. The article I read targeted the acquisition and retention stages of basketball shooting skill but I wanted to speak about self-talk in a more generalized state.
If one should experience negative self-talk there are several techniques one could try to reduce these thoughts. Another helpful technique that promotes beneficial self-talk is related to competition preparation. These are a few steps an athlete could practice in order to promote positive thoughts: become aware of self-talk, stop the negative thoughts, replace negative thoughts with positives ones, and lastly practice thought stopping. As an athlete develops a competition plan or strategy and reviews this using mental rehearsal, he or she can also develop a competition self-talk plan. Athletes should prepare in advance what they want to say to themselves and what needs to be reinforced in order to perform well; part of competition preparation should involve mentally rehearsing this strategy until it is second nature. One researcher by the name of Hatzigerogiadis conducted a research about this subject. Him and his team know this strategy works, and it works in sport but they want to know what makes it work better, and in what situations? To find out, they conducted a meta-analysis of 32 sport psychological studies on the subject with a
Several studies have shown that self-talk can have a positive impact in sports. Self-talk includes all the purposeful and random thoughts that run through an athlete’s mind, it includes all the things said both silently and out loud. Self-talk can be positive, it can tell an athlete what to do, where to focus, and get one motivated. Unfortunately, self-talk can also be negative, and critical. Such internal talk definitely does not help performance and, in most cases, probably hurts performance. Of course negative self-talk is going to occur; but as we know, the key is to not focus on the negatives and instead focus on the positives. The article I read targeted the acquisition and retention stages of basketball shooting skill but I wanted to speak about self-talk in a more generalized state.
If one should experience negative self-talk there are several techniques one could try to reduce these thoughts. Another helpful technique that promotes beneficial self-talk is related to competition preparation. These are a few steps an athlete could practice in order to promote positive thoughts: become aware of self-talk, stop the negative thoughts, replace negative thoughts with positives ones, and lastly practice thought stopping. As an athlete develops a competition plan or strategy and reviews this using mental rehearsal, he or she can also develop a competition self-talk plan. Athletes should prepare in advance what they want to say to themselves and what needs to be reinforced in order to perform well; part of competition preparation should involve mentally rehearsing this strategy until it is second nature. One researcher by the name of Hatzigerogiadis conducted a research about this subject. Him and his team know this strategy works, and it works in sport but they want to know what makes it work better, and in what situations? To find out, they conducted a meta-analysis of 32 sport psychological studies on the subject with a
Cited: Fendereski, T., Norbakhsh, P., Sepasi, H., & Harati, S. (2011). The Effect of Motivational, Instructional, and Motivational-Instructional Self- Talk on Acquisition and Retention Stages of Basketball Shooting Skill. Annals Of Biological Research, 2(6), 569-574. Hatzigeorgiadis. (2011, May 25). Thoughts that win. Retrieved from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/thoughts-that-win.html