Sportsmind

Athletes of all abilities acknowledge the importance of being in control of their thoughts. The Sportsmind Institute of Human Performance (Queensland, Australia) recognised this and developed Sportsmind. It is based on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and provides an alternative to traditional Sports Psychology. Holy Grail Fitness has a Level 2 coaching accreditation.

Your thoughts can be enhanced by the 7 Sportsmind Skills. Specific group seminars and/or one-on-one sessions are a great way to learn and master these skills:

1. Self Motivation

• The best sports performers are positively motivated
• The more we live in a "choose to, want to, I am in charge of my own life" frame of mind, then the more effective our personal goals become
• A positively self motivated person will achieve more of their potential than a negatively motivated person

Fast Fact: Desired goals, clearly & regularly visualised are the key to positive motivation.

2. Goal Achievement
It is important that you set short-term and long-term goals in your training. Strategies also need to be determined and implemented to achieve these goals. True fulfilment comes from achieving goals in different key areas of life:

• Fitness/Sport
• Health
• Relationships and Family
• School/Career
• Personal Development
• Pure Pleasure

Fast Fact: Most people over-estimate what they can do in a year, yet under-estimate what they can achieve in ten years, or over their lifetime.

3. Positive Mental Attitude
It is vital that you maintain a positive mental attitude. Negative thoughts lead to negative actions. Characteristics that determine a positive mental attitude:

• Self Motivation
• Setting Realistic Goals
• Setting High Standards
• Self-to Self Comparisons
• Maintaining Flexible Time Frames
• Personal Involvement

Fast Fact: "Never, never think that you're too good. Always think that you can learn and that you can get better." - Pele

4. Emotional States
It is important that you develop an understanding of how you can control your emotional states. Anger and frustration need to be replaced by feeling calm and composed. Ultimately your emotional states influence:

• Thinking
• Tone of Voice
• Behaviour
• Posture
• Health
• Performance

Fast Fact: For good health and high performance you need to spend more time in the day actively feeling good about yourself.

5. Concentration & Focus
To be able to concentrate effectively we need to be able to remove the undesired stress from our lives. To reduce stress we need to be able to relax. Benefits of relaxation include:

• Prepares the mind for visualisation practice
• Improves concentration
• Manages arousal levels
• Improves the quality of rest and sleep
• Improves body awareness
• Improves recovery time from physical activity and injury
• Decreases frequency of minor illness and symptoms of illnesses
• Improves sociability

Fast Fact: Stress is stored in the muscles and organs of the body creating tension which detracts from health and physical performance.

6. Positive Self Image & Confidence
Every thought you think has the potential to either improve or diminish your sports performance.

• Use positive affirmations (short positive statements) to paint a mental picture of the kind of athlete you want to become
• The purpose of positive affirmations is to replace negative self talk with positive, empowering self talk, to program in a new self image, which enables improved performance

By developing self confidence you can perform at a higher level in sport. To assist with this you need to develop a number of personal attributes:

Fast Fact: With an improved self image comes an increased level of confidence in your own ability to perform tasks and achieve goals.

7. Visualisation
Visual imagery is a natural skill, but mastering positive mental imaging to improve sports performance is a very intentional skill requiring training and practice.

Scientific experiments have shown that just visualising a precise movement pattern can improve performance equally as well as practicing physically. "The Exercise" forms the basis of future visualisation practises.

Fast Fact: Visualisation primes neural pathways and hence can be used to program particular neuromuscular circuits and thereby allow for faster and more effective skill learning and better real performance of the activity.