Taking care of your mind can improve sports performance by up to 25%

An athlete does not go to a psychologist just because he has problems like everyone else, but to increase his performance. Some say that the mental plan affects 25% of the performance, along with the physical, technique and tactics, although the percentage varies depending on training, education, the culture in which they grew up or the situations in which they lived. This is why more and more clubs and athletes in Galicia are turning to professionals.

Every physical injury entails a psychological one. In those of short duration, the mental will be milder; and, in the medium and long term, psychologically it will also be more difficult and you have to follow a recovery process similar to that of mourning when there is a critical situation in a person. There is a first phase of frustration, anger or even aggression; the second stage of grief where everything seems to be negative; the third in which the work to recover from the injury arrives; and a quarter of hope and a return to the normality of their sports practice. The goal is that when the athlete returns to competition, he does so with 100% confidence.

Throughout the season we work with him so that he has a set of thoughts that help him be confident in what he does and how he does it and above all so that training gives him the peace of mind that he is ready to compete at the level he wants.

Nervousness is related to the variable anxiety or stress and the level of activation. With techniques such as relaxation or thought control, we try, colloquially speaking, to avoid your nerves and achieve the appropriate level of activation for maximum effect. When you train your head, you prepare yourself to reduce stressful or nervous situations. Nevertheless, frustration is a part of sports and comes when desired goals are not met. We must prevent it and preempt it by recomposing expectations in case the indicators show that we are not on the way to achieving them.

In case we have a frustrated athlete, we do cognitive work, to know how they perceive reality, to give it a very rational nuance and to live it correctly, with appropriate thoughts.

In addition, all athletes have a competition plan that they stick to literally, but it must always be flexible because not everything depends on it. We work on situations that can be controlled, but also on those that cannot be controlled, for example, if a rival pushes you or closes you and you cannot go out into the street. The flexibility of the plan is a guarantee of success. If I can’t follow the initial plan, I have a B or C that I can resist in all kinds of races and be very clear when to hit my change to win the gold medal, as Adrián Ben did excellently.

In very social modalities, where the influences go beyond family and friends because they are the media, it is important to manage the environment, to know what the negative and positive influences are.

Joaquin Dosil is a professor of psychology at the University of Vigo