Sports psychology:

A science that promotes sporting performance

By Amal Hewavissenti

Sport is what co-ordinates a person's physical and mental health and upgrades it in the course of energetic and competitive activity. The close relationship between man and sports dates far back to the early history when people were involved in sportive activities simply to raise their health and strength to a higher degree.

From the earliest times, man has valued the concept of the "healthy mind within a healthy body" after he developed an insight into the healing effect of sports on him. A new science too has emerged to prepare and strengthen a sportsman's mind for a better performance. This exclusive science is sports psychology.

This science is gaining increasing popularity simply because it gives valuable suggestions to develop sporting talents in players after analysing their behaviour. It involves scientific study of trends and behaviour of sportsmen within the field of sports. Even though it emerged as a new born science connected to psychology, it generally deals with the mental process linked to the behaviour of people in sporting activity.

Mental changes

This fascinating science deeply studies the mental changes that occur in a sportsman when he is being competitively dynamic in sport, losing or winning a game. Several studies show that sports psychology has grown in leaps and bounds since recently and its popularity is ever mounting up.

Player's motivation is the most important aspect playing the key role in sports psychology. Motivation is capable of bringing out the ideal sportsmanship latent in any person engaged in sports. The natural motivation in the form of courage and commitment directly guides a player to victory by giving a powerful sense of competitiveness.

Naturally, the courage and unfailing effort in the sporting activity are the real forms of internal motivation.

The natural competitiveness and the drive for victory comes to him internally and it is almost inborn. On the other hand, a sportsman may be spurred onto play a game out of the expectation that he would gain special privileges.

A swimmer may show an unfailing dedication, a sound mental strength, courage and concentration to lead himself to victory in a match. This inner drive in the player, as psychologists interpret, is intrinsic motivation.

The expectation that he would gain popularity, money, certificates or medals may entice the same player to play well and strive for victory. This situation is inter prettable as extrinsic motivation.

Here the sports psychologist is confronted with the uphill responsibility to correctly set goals for the player after weighing the overall performance. Interestingly enough, the psychologist focuses more on developing a player's intrinsic motivation because he values the role of a player's potent mental strength in his struggle to go for victory. Here, he values the player's commitment, discipline, passion enthusiasm and positive attitudes when person takes part in a sport.

Inner traits

That is precisely why sports psychology is move concerned about developing the inner traits of a sportsman.

A coach with a sound knowledge of sports psychology is capable of improving the inner capacity of the player and map out solutions to certain problematic conditions.

Several hundreds of sports psychologists are currently at work in universities and other educational institutions or sports departments offering their expertise to the sportsmen.

Their professional role has been to bring out the sporting potential in players by identifying their physical and mental activity, nature and fitness. As psychologists point out, certain level of anxiety and stress is important for a sportsman to be more committed.

A player highly charge with stress may play desperately to get rid of the strain and gain victory.

The competitive anxiety extant in a player helps to develop his self-confidence, sporting orientation and concentration. It is obvious that a player with a sound sporting personality is naturally enabled to crush down any negative feeling arising from anxiety.

The underlying truth is that players develop feelings of anxiety just when he thinks very hard on the ability of his rival, the competitiveness of the match and the image that others have built on him or the importance of the match to his life.

Recurrent anxiety has its disastrous effect on the morale of the player who might have negative emotional response to the play and others when it becomes almost unbearable to him, sports psychologists say.

Sports psychologists emphasise the value of physical and mental relaxation as the way to effectively cancel out stress in the play.

They suggest a course of simple meditation practices for better results. They also suggest simple techniques of physical relaxation which are sure to enable the player to use the maximum level of his capacity.

Sri Lanka, no doubt, has produced best players with the natural capacity to compete against any player of any nationality. Therefore sports psychology can be better exploited to bring about better performance. So this science is perhaps the life of sports.