Concentration can be defined as the athlete putting deliberate mental effort on what is most important in the moment See the book by Aidan Moran , Sport and Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction. Most athletes learn to filter out external information such as crowds, parents, and coaches when they need to. Ultimately, every athlete wants to attend to the moment, or stated differently, to the specific task at hand.
They use selective attention, often naturally tuning out irrelevant data. We all use selective attention on a daily basis. We must tune out friends talking while we are trying to listen in a classroom. Or we tune out many things when we drive so we stay focused on the road. Tool and Selective Attention.
We also need to use selective attention if our mind becomes too busy and we are thinking too much. So how can we use selective attention in sport deliberately? We can use small, easy, but very important mental tools. When attention and concentration decrease due to external or internal issues some athletes use trigger words to bring themselves back to the task. A trigger word can be one word or a short phrase repeated over and over to help block out competing thoughts or a busy mind.
As a sports psychologist, what caught my eye during the game was a second sequence during the first half. Take a look here. Syracuse freshman Tyler Lydon fell and his sneaker came off. His fellow freshman teammate Michael Gbinije picks up the shoe - while he's dribbling - and tosses it off the court. Gbinije then passes to Lydon, who makes a clean 3-point shot… wearing only 1 sneaker.
Keeps you in the present moment, not worrying about a past mistake or getting ahead of yourself. Allows you to see things earlier and notice smaller details that can give you an edge. First, you practice, practice, practice, so the ability is second nature, even in big post-season games. Sports psychology skills are the same as any sports skills, in that respect. You practice ahead of time, so the skill comes naturally. In a football game, for example, there are numerous and varied stimuli.
Last but not least, there are internal stimuli which may range from our mood to our own thoughts. Many times, they may also take our minds away from the now and space completely. Concentration consists in keeping that attention focused on specific stimuli. But on which ones? That will depend on our objectives. However, it would be inappropriate to assert that the more focused, the better the performance.
There must be a fair balance. And we will illustrate this with a discipline where attention and concentration are everything: magic. Before continuing reading, I invite you to watch this video.
As you can see, a magic trick always plays with our focus of attention. Besides, the video has two tricks where what it is intended to show is not much of the card game taking place in the foreground but what takes place in the background. After understanding Dr. Not at all. Magic plays with illusion, and in some way, our objective is to avoid being tricked. Even though we are asked to focus on a given task, the video intends to show our lack of attention on the other stimuli instead.
We get distracted when watching one hand, meanwhile the other hand is actually doing the trick. But that does not mean our brain or senses do not work correctly. It simply shows our ability to stay focused on a specific task or to be in the zone —as it is colloquially known in sports. Therefore, not paying attention to the two people changing their clothes in the video, the backdrop, or the colour of the cloth shows that we chose some stimuli instead of others in order to perform our task.
Similarly, in a football game, athletes must learn to avoid irrelevant information by means of selective attention and so to focus on the appropriate stimuli. Although there are people who get more distracted and others who are more focused, everything can be trained. In this case, the objective would be increasing or diminishing the attention when the player intends to do so.
What is interesting about training our concentration is that it can be done both psychologically and physically, for example, by teaching players to recognise what is called cognitive interference , which is no more than a thought that is irrelevant to the task. It may come across as a simple proposal, but it takes a lot of effort to focus on what is exclusively important for our objective. In terms of physical training, if a player can manage to automatically learn some movements through practice and improve their technique, they will no longer have to focus on them, which means they can draw their attention to external demands.
It would be like learning to drive and stop focusing on the clutch and gears. At a brain level, the cortex is free so that it can pay attention to the environment and thus make better decisions. Living in the present moment here and now , has been very helpful for many elite athletes who have been able to focus and improve their competitive performance through this practice.
It is not a matter of mysticism or spirituality, but of learning to focus and devoting some time to do so during the day or even before a game. In fact, all differences considered, reading, listening to relaxing music or walking in the mountains, to give some examples, may produce similar results to those of meditation in many aspects. Borussia Dortmund forward Erling Haaland, stated that he meditates before taking the field in order to increase relaxation. As a matter of fact, he affirmed that he meditates as much as he trains, allocating a significant amount of time to this practice in his daily routine.
The same happens to Pau Gasol, who claimed to read a lot about zen philosophy and meditate in order to see everything from a different perspective, develop self-awareness, live in the moment, and stay calm. It is true that improving meditation correctly can reduce stress and anxiety as well as enable better emotional control.
And this is of great importance. Negative thoughts can distract us and reduce our performance. According to some research, emotions such as happiness or excitement are more closely related to concentration as they are more likely to lead and promote a better performance focus as well as automating physical movements.
In short, meditation helps to manage the external aspects of the competition as well as to improve our performance. We are surrounded by stimuli which try to catch our attention and make us lose focus on the tasks we are performing. Learning to select the important ones and ignore the irrelevant ones, as well as to develop techniques to manage all that information, is essential for an elite athlete.
Otherwise, losing focus on what matters the most will lead to a distraction that will negatively affect the outcome of the competition. As mentioned at the beginning, not only losing focus will force us to face our opponent ahead but also our internal one, who can put an end to any personal aspiration.
After all, it is not a less important opponent to look down at. Vast, R.
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