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>> Yeah, one of the reasons why I become interested
in sports psychology is firstly I wanted to get a job.
But in addition to that, I was interested
because as a former athlete, I wanted to know the kinds of,
why some athletes were achieved the most, the highest level
of sports performance and,
and why some athletes sometimes choked or failed in doing so.
So I studied sports psychology at Loughborough University
and there I was introduced to sports psychology and it was a,
a, a, a revelation to me because it provided me with some of the,
the useful strategies and techniques that athletes use
to try and overcome some of the mental pressures
and the stresses that they experience when they're engaged
in sport, sports, sport at the highest level.
[ Bell rings ]
>> So, this is, this is me as an athlete
and this is Sarah as well.
We used to, we'd do triathlons.
Sarah still does at the very high level and, as you can see,
this is some time ago by the,
the garish colours of the, the kit.
So when you talk about achievement
at the highest achievement in the highest level of the sport
and the psychology, many of us, as armchair athletes,
as athletes ourselves, as people who are involved in sport,
as people who train athletes, will be interested and focus
on some of the achievements at the highest level.
And the, what we'll also be, we'll also try
to understand is what makes a, what is the,
what are the mental processes
that influence people's psychology
and how they overcome problems
when they're experiencing stress within sport.
So here are some examples of athletes at the highest level.
We know from the most recent Olympics in London that a couple
of prime examples of athletes at the highest level, Usain Bolt
and Michael Phelps, they performed at the highest level
and they were champion athletes.
They performed, they may seem superhuman to you and I.
And, but of course, we need to understand, we need to recognise
that even though they achieved what many of us see
as superhuman feats in the arena of sport, they also had
to overcome serious problems prior to their events.
Even athletes at this high level have
to overcome drawbacks and setbacks.
So for example, Usain Bolt was beaten by his training partner
in the Jamaican Olympic trials prior the Olympic games,
and so there were question marks over his performance
and how he responded to that was extremely positive
and he achieved extremely high levels as a result.
And yet, there were question marks and it came
down to his psychology and the way he approached his event
mentally that enabled him to overcome those setbacks.
The same with Michael Phelps.
When he was, in, in the first race that he was, that he,
that he entered in the Olympic games, he was beaten
by his arch-rival, Ryan Lochte, and people were saying
that perhaps he's past his best.
Perhaps he's not in the same shape that he was.
People thought that he might have choked,
but of course he came back.
He responded to the pressure.
And responding to the pressure is what make a, a, a, a,
an elite-level athlete and in particular,
the way in which they approach the sport mentally achieve these
high levels.
We have other examples.
That's achievement at the highest level.
We have other examples.
For example, how, how do people, athletes, who are not expected
to win, take on the world champions,
the people who are expected to win
and be victorious all of the time?
So for example, the Brazilian National Team was expected
to win the gold medal in the Olympics at,
in the soccer tournament, in the men's soccer tournament.
And yet team Mexico beat them in the final,
against all expectations.
How does a team which is expected, effectively, to lose,
cope with the, cope with and, cope with taking on the people
who are expected to win, the team that is expected to win?
In addition to that, how does a team that is touted to win,
how do they deal with colossal failure when it comes to,
to performing at this high level?
So there are unexpected outsiders and sometimes
that comes down to the psychology.
Of course, there are also the near misses.
James Magnussen was expected to take the gold and certainly,
he talked his game, talked up his game very highly,
and yet he missed out by the narrowest of margins.
How does an athlete at the highest level bounce back
from such a colossal failure, particularly when they have
such high levels,
almost narcissistic levels, of self-confidence?
And then there are also times in sport when we observe people
who are performing
at the highest level encounter catastrophic detriments
in their performance.
They are expected to perform and they are expected,
usually expected to win or at least be amongst the winners,
and they experience these massive drops in performance
when actually those levels of performance,
they perform every day in practice and in training.
So here's an example, of Rory McIlroy,
who was leading the 2011 Master's Championship
by 3 strokes coming into the final day and he ended
up scoring an 80, which he could do in his sleep.
So this is the kind of person who can shoot on par
or several shots below par in practice every day and they do
that kind of thing every day, and he shot an 80, which was,
which, and he ended up being tied 15th, in 15th place.
And it was worst round of golf, it was the worst score, for a,
for a, a, a, a person who was leading the Master's
Championships into the final day ever.
He came back a few weeks later and won the US Open.
So it's his response to that colossal failure was
extremely positive.
How did he pick himself up?
What went through his mind when he experienced such a failure,
in his eyes, and what are the sort of processes and strategies
that he used to get himself back into the frame of mind
where he was able to win at the highest level?
Another good example that I frequently cite is, sorry.
Another example that I frequently cite is one of,
in golf, is one of John van de Velde.
And I talk about golf because it's a extremely cerebral sport.
The mental game plays as much importance
as practice and skill.
And John van de Velde, in the British Open in 1991,
took quite a historic example and that was also
around about the same time I was doing triathlons,
as you could probably tell by the kit.
He was again leading the British Open and needed, he only needed
to shoot, on the final hole he only needed to shoot a 6,
6 shots or 6 strokes, and he took 7
and forced a playoff, which he lost.
And many of the commentators and spectators were mystified
by his behaviour on that last hole.
He struck his shot into, into a, a water feature
and he tried to retrieve it.
In the end, he took a drop, a drop shot because he was unable
to retrieve the ball but he was clearly affected
by the situation because it was an irredeemable shot.
And in fact, if he'd a just taken the, taken his time
and taken the drop shot,
he would have probably have won the, the point, the final hole
and won the tournament.
He only needed to score 3 shots over par and again,
that's the kind of performance that he could do every day
in practice without the pressure of that last hole,
without the pressure of that performance.
So people experience, athletes experience,
these catastrophic drops in performance.
So when we talk about preparation for elite sport
and the mental side of elite sport,
there is increasing recognition amongst teams,
individuals that support teams, that support elite athletes,
that mental preparation is important
and some would say essential.
And at the highest athletes, at the highest level, athletes
and teams are extremely well matched in terms
of their skill level, in terms of their training,
in terms of their ability.
So often the difference can be psychological.
And athlete's teams are embracing sports psychology
so when you looked at the Olympic games in London,
you will have seen that all
of the teams would have been employing somebody informed
or versed in sports psychology.
They will have had a team sports psychologist
because athletes are professional and all aspects
of performance - physiological, training,
in terms of their transport, their kit - all of these kinds
of things are micromanaged to the highest degree,
and it doesn't make sense for the mental side
of sport preparation not to be managed in the same way.
One thing that's really important to stress is
that sports psychology is for all athletes.
What does that mean?
It means that sports psychology is not just for the lows
and the catastrophic failures, people who experience problems
or difficulties when it comes to sport.
Sports psychology can help all athletes improve,
just as all athletes can benefit from additional training,
additional practice and so forth.
So it's important to stress that.
Later on, Dr Sarah Egan will be talking a little bit about how,
one aspect of sports psychology which is how to manage people
who experience problems and difficulties when it comes
to participating in sport and in particular, one particular area
that she's interested in is perfectionism.
But I'll talk about sports psychology and the strategies
and means to promote better mental preparation for sport
which can be used for all athletes.
So what do athletes say about sports psychology?
Well here's a quote from Magdalena Neuner,
and she's a double gold medalists and one
of the most successful Olympic biathletes, so this is skiing
and shooting, so it's winter Olympics, of all time,
and she clearly places a lot of credibility and gives a lot
of credit to her performance to sports psychology
and mental preparation and she spends a considerable amount
of time doing so.
It's interesting how the media views sports psychology
and actually, a lot of the media tend to view sports psychology
as a means to, to, to patch up problems that athletes have.
So when athletes do experience catastrophic drops
in performance or they, they don't live
up to the expectations of the public or the media
or their own expectations, then the media generally seems
to think that sports psychology is there to solve those problems
and that's only for what it's for when actually, as I've said,
mentioned earlier, sports psychology is for all athletes.
There are some detractors in terms of sports psychology
and sometimes people don't really understand sports
psychology but also they buy into this notion that athletes
who require psychologists are head-cases
and so they therefore need the, when, when they, when they call
on the psychologist, the cause is already lost.
Clearly that's not the case and I'll try and argue
to the contrary to our Swedish [inaudible].
So what is sports psychology?
Well, it's the study and practice of mental preparation
for sports performance at the highest level
and what sports psychologists do is to apply
and develop strategies and,
and means to promote optimal performance in competition
for athletes but also in their training,
to get them in the right frame of mind so that they're able
to prepare optimally in order to perform at the highest level.
Psychology can also help athletes deal with stress
and cope with setbacks and when they don't perform
up to expectations.
So there are 2 aspects there.
So what do sports psychologists do?
Well, 1 of the things
that sports psychologists do is study athletes and try
to understand the kinds of factors
that influence good performance, the psychological factors,
and those studies will tell us what factors,
what mental attributes, coincide with successful performance.
So what are the factors that are linked to performing
at the most optimal level, the mental factors,
psychological factors?
And once we know what's linked to those, to, to high,
good performance and performing well, we can hopefully intervene
and develop strategies that will change those factors and,
in turn, promote better sports performance.
It also highlights the factors likely to contribute to low,
below-standard performance.
So what is linked also to these, for example,
catastrophic failures that we see sometimes in sport?
So what makes a, a, a good athlete in terms
of their psychological makeup?
What is the, the makeup, if you like, of a winner, okay?
What factors are linked?
Well, motivation is very important
and the sports psychologists talk
about athletes having high achievement motivation
and that's linked to their goals.
So it's important that athletes have clear goals in terms
of what they want to get out of their sport performance,
and that would depend on their level, okay?
And they need to be realistic goals.
They need to be clear goals, okay, and we'll get
onto goal setting as a strategy a little bit later on
but that is a clear aspect of motivation.
And people talk about performance motivation,
so being able to compete at the highest level
and being confident in doing so but also about being able
to perform those skills when under pressure.
Talk about a process orientation,
and that's also linked to goals.
Athletes with a process orientation know the steps
that they need to take to achieve their ultimate goal.
So they need to set goals along the way
which are stepping stones in order to gain,
to gain their ultimate goal, to achieve their ultimate goal.
And we'll talk a little bit about preparation
and goal setting a little bit later.
Clearly, a performer needs to know their sport extremely well
and that includes their support team of trainers, coaches,
physiologists, fitness trainers and so forth, and people talk
of total sport as a, a phrase coined in the 70s
when it referred to soccer and it was a, a term phrase
by Clive Woodward when talked about the,
the England Rugby Team,
he talked about total rugby, or total football.
Okay, and what that means is leaving no stone unturned
when it comes to performance
and so the mental preparation is clearly an integral part
to all of those aspects.
But actually, psychologists can help the planning stages
that coaches and athletes can use in order to get
to where they want to be, in order to get
to that ultimate goal that they set.
We talk a lot about confidence and confidence is one
of the key factors that has been associated and in fact,
probably the key factor,
associated with good sports performance.
In other words, performers performing at their,
their required level, at the best level,
the level that they achieve in training, in competition.
There are lots of athletes who don't perform as well
as they could in competition because the pressure
of the situation gets in the way
and confidence can help athletes manage
and overcome the pressure, the stress of the situation.
And things like knowledge of experience, feedback, modelling,
I don't mean walking down a catwalk, I mean being able
to visualise and replicate the movements of top athletes.
Visualisation and self-talk are extremely important
and it's also important to be able to have some strategies
to manage stress and in particular, manage the anxiety
that all athletes feel when they're about to walk
onto the pitch or when they're lining up behind the start line.
So what is motivation?
Motivation is people's propensity to be able
to pursue a goal and, and expend energy in order to,
in order to attain their ultimate goal,
which in athletes often is performing at their best
in a given competition or a given meeting
or achieving a personal best time and so forth.
So, psychologists often talk about things
like task orientation and performance orientation
and both are important when it comes to success.
So a performance orientation helps athletes judge themselves
against competition.
So if you have a performance orientation, you want to win,
you want to beat others, you want to be successful
against other athletes.
But a task orientation is also very important because it's,
it's important that athletes recognise the importance
of performing their skill and their job or their role,
whether it's in terms of their, their individual sport
or whether it's their role in a team sport
at the highest level, okay?
So being able to achieve the requisite number of rebounds
or steals in basketball or tackles or interceptions
in football, these are all clear,
clear performance indicators
that athletes need to strive for.
And having a task orientation and being extremely motivated
to achieve those jobs and those roles will mean that the team
or the athlete will perform well in a given situation.
So how do we create these sort of task
and performance orientations?
Well, it's all down to the environment that's created
when it comes to the, the training situation
and also the competition and coaches talk about things
like norms, so what is expected of athletes in the team.
And it's very important that coaches create those norms
in terms of performance when it comes to the training situation
and the environment that's created for the team.
So setting appropriate goals, giving feedback to athletes,
appointing people within the team
so that they take responsibility for the actions
of the team members and so on.
These are the kinds of strategies that coaches
and trainers use to promote this sort of task oriented
and performance orientations within sport.
So goals are clearly important when it comes to motivation,
as I mentioned earlier.
How do you promote motivation within an athlete?
Well, setting goals, using these, this kind of arrangement
or organisation, these kinds of features
of goals is very important.
And many of you, particularly those who are interested
in business psychology and so forth, will be familiar
with the sort of smarter acronym.
These features of goals which are,
which will be most motivating to an athlete, we shall want them
to pursue them because they have meaning, they have relevance,
they're specific, they are collaborative,
so they are agreed between the coach, the trainers
and the other athletes within,
whether it's just an individual athlete or the team,
they need to be relevant, they need to be specified in terms
of future time, they need to be engaging,
and they need to be recorded.
And actually, one of the, the strongest predictors
of whether an athlete will be clear in terms
of their goals is whether they've written them down.
And it's really important that these kinds of things are,
are done in a sports team.
So, for example, when we look at what a goal should not be, okay,
there are some features, if you like, there.
So, vague, meaningless, unilateral,
sort of just come up, plucked out of thin air by the athlete
or by the, the coach, or dictated by the coach
to the athlete, abstract, so not clear, being very general rather
than specific, being very mundane and not meaningful
to the athlete and unwritten, are all aspects of goals
which will result in undermining a poor performance.
And it's extremely important that athletes recognise
and realise the reason why they pursued certain goals.
The reason why all athletes should know and be aware
of why they do certain things in training.
So, a lot of the time when I coached athletes in the past,
athletes have said to me, "I hate this training session,
it's too hard, it's boring, it's too difficult,
it's too challenging," I have failed
because I haven't been able
to outline clearly why they're doing that training,
why they're doing a very tedious session.
Because ultimately, this is a session
that will get them somewhere, and it's important that coaches,
sports psychologists, people who are involved with athletes
at the highest level, outline why athletes perform certain
tasks and certain drills, certain practices and training.
And I think often athletes lose sight
of why they do certain things in practice and in training
and it's up to the sports psychologist and the coaches,
people involved in the sport, to point that out and to make sure
that athletes are on the same page
when it comes to, to their training.
And this includes athletes of all ages and of all levels.
So how to set goals, smarter goals.
Again, it's important to set the sort of open, the,
the sort of overall arching global goal needs to be specific
in terms of the, the, the particular competition
for example or the particular time, and it needs
to have meaning and relevance.
But then, it's also important
that once you have the ultimate goal, you work backwards
so that you're able to outline the process that needs
to be taken in order to get to the, to the ultimate goal.
So setting subgoals in training
and in practice is extremely important.
It's important that the goals are written down.
Many athletes, even athletes at the very highest level,
don't have a schedule,
they don't have a wall planner charting their progress.
It's important that athletes get used to recording their goals.
Diaries, charts, personal logs are really important
when it comes to developing an athlete's knowledge of the steps
that they're taking in order to get to their ultimate goal.
It seems very straightforward, but actually,
not many people do it.
And there's very good evidence that writing goals down
and keeping a record of past performances, of training
and practice, is a strong predictor
of a person's adherence to training
and their achievement of ultimate goal.
So again, a training session should never be just another
training session.
So, confidence is clearly an extremely important aspect of,
of sport performance, and one of the things that Steve Cram,
who was, for, for those of you who don't remember, Steve Cram,
who was extremely high-level world record holder for the mile
and the 1500 meters in the, the late 80s, an Olympian.
One of the things he said that when it comes to athletes
on the starting line of the 1500 meters,
there are probably 11 athletes who think they can win
and 1 athlete who knows they can win,
and often it comes down to that.
And there's a lot of, there's a lot to be said about that,
in that, about that phrase.
He's captured the importance of confidence to an athlete.
So how do we gain experience?
Well, sorry, how do we gain confidence?
Well, that comes from experience.
So, being able to recall successes in training
and successes in previous competitions is absolutely
essential and often athletes don't reflect on their successes
and don't think back to all of the work and the training
that they've put in in order to gain their ultimate goal.
So that's extremely important to highlight to athletes.
Modelling, watching others, imagery, we'll get onto that
in a moment, self-talk, talking to athletes,
talking to themselves.
Not just general gibber-jabber but being able
to use certain words and mantras
to activate certain movement patterns
or certain motivational patterns,
to get them in the frame of mind, to focus their attention,
is extremely important.
And feedback from the coach and then getting athletes
to get their own feedback from their, their competition
and from their performance, is extremely important
when it comes promoting confidence.
Many athletes use imagery and imagery is one of the key tools
in a sports psychologist's arsenal in order
to promote better confidence and better performance.
And actually, there's very good research that suggests
that the use of imagery is strongly linked
to increased confidence,
to increased motivation toward performance
and better sport performance, achieving personal bests,
scoring points and achieving all of the, the kinds of goals
that athletes will typically set themselves in order
to perform at the highest level.
So, imagery is, is all about preparing yourself mentally
for a performance and the kinds of things that athletes would do
and the things that a sports psychologist would advise an
athlete to do, is to find a quiet place prior to their match
or game, their event, and visualise the match
and some athletes become extremely competent at this
and sometimes they're able
to imagine their event in real time.
Now, I wouldn't advise an Ironman athlete to do
that because their competition lasts around 9 hours or more.
But, you know, many athletes, for example a 400 meter sprinter
in the pool or on the track, would be able to imagine
and visualise their event to the very second and know
where they are, for example, when you know, if they,
if they're a 400 meters hurdle runner, they'll know where,
what their stride pattern is and where they should be
when it comes to approaching the hurdles and so forth.
So being very specific about the, the video, if you like,
in your mind, is extremely important when it comes
to visualising the event.
And things like imagining sensations, kinaesthetic,
being very specific about the performance is
extremely important.
Using prompts, so for example, different time points,
steps to the event, all of those are very important
and should be included in the imaging,
in the visualisation that athletes do.
It's also important this is done on a regular basis,
so when athletes, for example, do a time trial in training
or a practice match, it's really important that they go
through the steps that they would do, that they would do
in competition, so they should use imagery and visualisation.
Some athletes also use visualisation just before
they're about to perform, extremely close to the event,
and some of them just need a few minutes, yeah,
or even a few seconds, in order to get, to,
to visualise their performance,
visualise their particular movement.
If you've ever watched athletes, for example, tennis players,
between points, often they'll engage in some visualisation
and that will get them in the right frame of mind.
And what are they doing?
They are imagining the perfect serve, okay, they're thinking
about all of the movements that is necessary from the toss
to the impact of the racket in order to get,
in order to get themselves familiar
and to recall those intricate movements that they've learned
over and, over and over again, for that next performance.
It's also important to imagine, imagine other contingencies.
You know, in open sport there are things that happen
which aren't expected, so it's also important to try
and play back or play over the possible responses
that you might make if certain things happen during the course
of an event, and so forth.
A good example, for the England Football Team anyway,
soccer team, is what if it goes to penalty?
Okay, so, what do you notice athletes do when they're
about to, to, to do their, their, their event, okay?
When they're about to step onto the track, or onto poolside
or onto the pitch and so forth?
They do the same sorts of things, okay?
They go through a routine.
They go through what psychologists
like to call a pre-performance routine.
Pre-performance routines are extremely important
when it comes to getting the athlete in the right frame
of mind and also capturing their attention
so that they're attending to the right aspects
of the environment, what psychologists call cues,
which enable to them to perform at the highest level
and to repeat the movements,
the intricate movements that are necessary.
So it's about getting yourself into the right state of mind.
So what kind of things do athletes do?
You will probably see, you will probably see this
when athletes are about to prepare for a performance.
They practice their movements.
They rehearse them.
Okay, so you see golfers will often do a, a, a,
a swing before they, several practice swings before they,
they, they do the, do, they actually tee off.
You will see that tennis players practice their serves
and so forth.
They might do some imagery or visualisation.
They'll close their eyes.
They'll picture their performance.
They'll engage in self-talk, okay.
We'll get onto that in a little bit.
And they will use the crowd
and sometimes athletes will use the crowd, an external,
if you like, cue to help them focus
on their particular performance.
For example, getting something like rhythm.
It's clearly important in things like vault or triple high jump.
They might use breathing or relaxation exercises to try
and calm themselves and to try and shake off the nerves.
Okay, a good example of a high jumper,
a Croatian high jumper Vlasic, who often uses a set,
who uses the same routine every time before she's
about to engage in, in the high jump, and it's very clear
and the kind of routine that she has and it helps her to focus.
What's self-talk?
Athletes will use this prior to an event.
They'll use this perhaps in their pre-performance routines.
You will often see athletes mutter things
to themselves under their breath.
Isinbayeva, a, a pole vaulter, she's Olympic champion,
4 Olympic champion, she got the bronze medal in, sorry,
I think she came 4th actually, in the London Olympics.
She always talks to herself prior to their event.
And often, you wonder what they're saying.
It doesn't really matter.
What matters, what, what is, what is important is
that it matters to the performer.
So it's not just gibber-jabber.
It's motivational talk.
It increases confidence.
So it can just be simple things like,
"Come on, you can do this."
So it's always in a, a positive frame.
It focuses on important cues.
It gets people to, to focus their attention
on important cues.
So, and it can also be things like being calm,
breathe, relax, and so forth.
So all of those things are there to manage,
to help focus attention and also to manage stress.
Anxiety management is also very important so breathing,
relaxation techniques.
These help athletes, some athletes perform very well
with very high levels of anxiety but often anxiety will get
to athletes and perhaps some of the catastrophes
like Rory McIlroy, like John van de Velde,
perhaps their catastrophic drops in performance
and failures were perhaps due to being overanxious
or not being able to cope with the stress.
So they were too physiologically aroused
to do the intricate movements
that are necessary to perform well.
And things like breathing, stretching, self-talk
and use calming words, a technique which is tensing,
progressively tensing and relaxing the muscles known
as PNF, or proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation,
and, is very important.
Things like music, you'll often see Olympic athletes walking
onto trackside, walking onto pitch-side with their iPods.
It may be that that music is motivational
but it could also be calming in order to reduce their nerves
and get them into the right frame of mind but also
so that they're not overanxious.
Things like meditation is also used.
So this Isinbayeva, you know, she has a very,
sort of unique way of coping with stress, but it works
for her, so she goes into an almost calming meditative state.
And it varies from athlete to athlete.
So, I remember looking at Linford Christie, okay,
who won the gold medal in the '92 Olympics in the 100 meters.
If you look at him before an event, he was very, very calm.
It was almost like he was in a sort of trance
or zen-like state before a performance.
So being calm worked very well for him.
Next door to him in the, in the, in the other lane,
his arch-rival, Donovan Bailey,
looked like he was up for a fight.
He was flapping himself about and he was, you know,
trying to get his, his, his drive up and trying to get
as physiologically aroused as he possibly could,
and both of them performed at extremely high level and both
of them have found ways to get themselves
to perform extremely well.
So it differs between athletes.
Just finally, one other aspect that is extremely important
when it comes to high-level sports psychology
and performance is performance profiling,
and it's getting athletes to understand what they're good at,
where their strengths are, but also identifying weaknesses
and how they can, can work on those weaknesses.
It's like, if you're in business psychology,
if you're in business or in industry,
it's like a SWOT analysis, a strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats analysis,
of an athlete's performance.
Why is psychology involved?
Because it's really important in terms of promoting a,
a holistic approach to performance
and a holistic approach to setting things like goals,
to understanding condition and training, technical abilities
and so forth, and it's about ongoing monitoring.
And athletes will often come up with profiles
and rate their performance on using different kinds of scales
in order to evaluate their, their performance,
and this is an ongoing, it should be an ongoing thing.
Knowing what you're strengths are
but also knowing what your weaknesses are
so that they can be worked on.
And this is what athletes,
or some athletes have done in the past.
They've used these performance wheels where they,
they colour in these performance wheels according
to certain attributes and that will tell them how well they're
doing at the moment on certain attributes
and where they should be.
So here's an example of that performance wheel completed.
The blue suggests where they want to be and the red suggests,
sorry, the blue suggests their current performance
and the red suggests where they want to be in terms
of those specific attributes.
There are lots of different versions of this
in the literature and this is just one example.
Now I hope what I've given you today is a whistle-stop tour
of some of the strategies and techniques
that athletes have used in order to promote, you know,
a high-level performance,
and they will work for most athletes.
Research suggests that's the case.
But of course, athletes do differ.
Athletes have different personalities
and different approaches and so some
of the techniques may not work for particular athletes
and it's a question of the sports psychologist working
with individuals and work with the team
that surrounds the athlete, the coaches, the trainers
and so forth, in order to, to, to, to ascertain
which techniques would be best for them.
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