The role of sport psychology in developing the high-performance athlete

High performance athletes regard the psychology of sport as one of the critical factors to becoming a champion and constantly refer to both physical and psychological preparation as
the predominant reasons for their competitive success. High performance athletes display high
levels of motivation, resilience, mental toughness, set high, challenging and achievable sports goals, sports confidence, utilise sports imagery, positive self-talk, high levels of self-regulation and high sport self-efficacy. There are many dimensions to human in sport psychology, which athletes, coaches and sport psychologists attempt to enhance competitive performance via psychological skills training (PST) programs both at the acute and chronic levels. A sport psychological skills training (PST) represents a systematic and consistent practice of mental or psychological skills for the explicit purpose of enhancing performance, increasing enjoyment, or achieving greater self-satisfaction in sport. The presentation will focus on implementing a PST program, which contains three phases as stage 1 – education, stage 2 – acquisition and stage 3 – practice and overlearning and articulating PST with the individual requirements of the athlete. Examples will include developing mental toughness, superior performance intelligence, optimal self-confidence and positive self-efficacy, self-regulation of sports arousal, positive sports imagery, sports motivation, setting process, performance and outcome goals via goal setting strategies, attention and concentration, and mapping strategic training and competition plans.