the effect sports psychology has on a young athlete

1 To fully understand sport psychology, we must ask
ourselves two very important questions, first, what is sport psychology
and second, who is it for? Put in the most sim-ple way, sport psychology
can be an example of psychological knowledge, principles, ormethods
applied to the world of sport. "Two psychologists, Bunker and Maguire,
say sport psychology is not for psychologists, but is for sport and its
participants." (Murphy &White, 1978:2) However, it can be argued that
sport psychology, can be for psycho-logy, just as it can be for sports
scientists, managers, teachers, administrators, coaches andlast but by no
means least, the athletes themselves. It is sport psychology that has
stood apart from the discipline of psychology as awhole. "Its history is
different, its concerns are often different, its centres of learning
andteaching are often different, and its professional training is different."
(Garfield, 1984:34) Yet despite this, sport psychology remains
permanently bonded to psychology through itscommon interest in the
fundamental principles of psychology, human behavior, andexperience.
No one can deny the significant role which sport and recreation
plays in every cul-ture and society across the globe. In the western and
eastern worlds alike, sport and lei-sure continue to support huge
industries and take up massive amounts of individual time, effort, money,
energy, and emotion. Within the media, competitive sport has gotten
enor-mous attention and despite this, the public's appetite for more sport
never is stated. "It hasbeen estimated that around two thirds of all
newspaper readers in Great Britain first turn to the sports pages when
they pick up their daily paper." (Butt, 1987:65) When one con-siders the
number of people who actually engage in sport or even take regular
exercise, then the significance of sport to all our lives cannot be denied.
A common problem with sport psychology research lies in its
somewhat myopic orshort-sighted appreciation of present day
accumulated psychological knowledge. As welook into sport psychology,
we are confronted by a landscape of knowledge which rises 2and falls

often suddenly and dramatically. "At certain times, massive peaks of
understand-ing rise up before out eyes yet at other times, huge tracts of
psychology remain untouchedto the horizon." (Garfield, 1984:6)
Around the 1960's, scientific traditions, institutions, and publications
which pros-per to this day first came into being, and it was this era which
truly marked the structuralgenesis of modern day sport psychology.
However, there are many untouched aspectsof sport psychology today.
In order for us to determine whether psychology plays a signi-ficant role in
the mind of a young athlete, we must look at the uses and techniques of
sportpsychology. Sport psychologists over the years have maintained a
keen interest in psychologicalprofiling and have been naturally drawn to
the quantification of personality variables. As sport itself revolves aroung
the measurement and reward of individual differences in per-formances, it
is no surprise that scientists quantify psychological differences rather than
sporting differences. "The research is often looked at in terms of three
primary areas, thesearch for the winning profile, a comparison between
athletes and non-athletes, and differ-ences in the personalities of athletes
either competing in different sports or playing in different positions." (Butt,
1987:97) Any discussion of personality traits in sports could not
ignore one particular traitwhich has occupied more time than any other,
competitive anxiety. Helping athletes dealwith pressure has become the
bread and butter of many sport psychologists. "The prob-lem of anxiety is
dealt with with two areas of research: test anxiety and achievement
moti-vation." (Hackfort & Spielberger, 1989:247) Presently, the test scale
which enjoys thegreatest popularity is the second version of the
Competitive State Anxiety Inventory orCSAI-2. It is this test that
psychologists measure the level of anxiety of an athlete. It consists of
questions in which each have four levels of severity with four being the
highest3level. The CSAI-2 has been the basis for many other modern
day anxiety questionaires."There remain so many fundamental questions

which have yet to be resolved that attemptsto quantify concepts such as
anxiety, when we are still not sure just what this term actuallymeans, can
seem rather premature at times, but the development of research
instrumentshas nevertheless proceeded rapidly." (Wolff, 1993:22)
Achievement motivation, competitiveness, and self-confidence together
withcompetition anxiety seem to form the cluster of core psychological
constructs which would seem to be most relevent to our understanding of
sport performance. With regardto achievement motivation and
competitiveness, recent advances have been predicated upon the
interest originally stimulated by the Atkinson model of achievement
motivation."Atkinson's nAch or the need to achieve was taken to be a
composite of two independentfactors, the motive to achieve success (M )
and the motive to avoid failure (M ), mediatedby the probability of
success (P ) and the incentive value of success (1-P )." (Hackfort
&Spielberger, 1989:251) This relationship is represented by the following
formula.nAch = (M - M ) x (P x [ 1- P ] ) Without exploring the subtleties
of this model in any depth, the single most impor-tant message to come
through is that high achievers will be drawn towards competition and
difficult yet realizable challenges. Low achievers will try to avoid personal
challengesor set unattainable goals where failure is a high probability. "In
terms of applied sport psy-chology, this motivational model can often be
very revealing of problems, particularlythose afflicting young athletes."
(Hackfort & Spielberger, 1989:252) There are some methods of
sport psychology that deal with cognitive psychology.Traditional behavior
modification techniques seek to change behavior by amending the
en-vironment in systematic ways. However, there have been claims that
it is not the environ-mental events themselves which are of primary
importance in behavior change but the
4 individual's perception of those events. "Cognitive coping
strategies may be amended by conventional behaviour modification but

involvement of the individual in expressing his orher own thoughts and
feelings has been held to increase the efficacy of treatment." (Mar-tens,
1981:57) Meichenbaum's Stress-Inoculation Training (SIT) is one of a
range ofstress management packages advocated as useful to coaches
and athletes for reducing stress and enhancing performance. Other
popular programs include Smith's Cognitive-Affective Stress Management
or SMT and Suinn's program of Anxiety Management Training or AMT.
"SIT and SMT have been adapted or developed specifically for use
insport and both outline essentially the same four stage process." (Smith,
1983:139) The first stage of the SIT or SMT is the educational phase
during which athletesexplore the stress reaction itself, including
antecedents of stress, nature of stressors, andown reactions and
consequences of action. The next stage is an introduction to copingskills
for handling stress which include relaxation training and the use of
cognitive skills toprepare for stress. The next phase is the practice
phase. "SIT encourages supervisedpractice in coping in increasingly
stressful situations, e.g., practice, game-like practice, andgames and
SMT introduces an induced affect as a major factor: the athlete imagines
dis-tressing situations which generate high levels of emotional arousal
and use coping skills."(Smith, 1983:141) The final stage is an evaluation
component which is included to assessthe effectiveness of the program in
meeting individual needs. Another method of cognitive sport psychology
is imagery and visualization. Manyself-help manuals for coaches and
athletes currently advocate the use of imagery for awide variety of
purposes including skill acquisition, skill maintenance, competition
prepar-ation, and arousal control. "Empirical investigations of imagery
have tended to focus onthe role of mental practice in skill acquisition, the
role of imagery as a pre-competition cognitive psyching-up strategy and
comparisons in the use of imagery by successful and 5unsuccessful
athletes." (Murphy & White, 1978:14) A number of these studies also

ex-plore the various variables thought to mediate imagery effects.
Studies have shown thatmore successful athletes have used imagery
than unsuccessful athletes. However, despitethese apparently supportive
findings, the recent research has not been without criticism. In particular
much of the work conducted within sport psychology as been accused of
be-ing methodologically flawed and lacking a coherent theoretical
framework to explainimagery effects. Although suggestions for
improvement in both these areas have beenmade, research efforts
ironically have tended to lag behind actual practice of interventionsand
practical guidelines for imagery use in sport. Another popular approach
to improving sporting performance which appears to beabove all else
psychological is that of the Inner Game. "Inner Game was an
expressioncoined by Gallwey in the 1970's, and has been the basis for a
considerable number of pop-ular sport psychology books by Gallwey
focusing on games including golf, skiing, and ten-nis." (Butt, 1987:78)
Gallwey claimed that the most formidable opponent a performer in
sports must face is inside his or her own head. Inner Game is essentially
a conflict be-tween two selves, self 1 and self 2. They are said to have
quite different characteristics.Self 1 is conscious, self-conscious, and
linguistic. It is the thinking self which evaluates,analyzes and criticizes
performance and it may be responsible for inappropriate responsesor it
may motivate the athlete towards counterproductive actions. Self 2, on
the otherhand, is described as unconscious and computer like, and deals
most effectively with visualand spatial information. "The self analysis and
self-criticism of an athlete during perfor-mance is a function of self 1 and
is symptomatic of the conflict between the two selves."(Butt, 1987:79)
Self 1 can express itself linguistically and, therefore, usually gains
thiscontrol inappropriately. According to Gallwey, it is not necessary to
analyze why doubtsand fears are away from the more relevant visual and
spatial elements of the task. The6Inner Game is directed toward

allocating the resources of the two selves to the functionsin which each is
more competent so that they can operate in harmony and therefore
pro-duce optimal performance. Some methods of sport psychology
deal with clinical psychology. Relaxation tech-niques are a good
example. "Self directed relaxation aims to release tension in each of
thebody's major muscle groups while emphasizing slow, easy breathing,
and encouraging vi-sualization of stress flowing away from the body."
(Murphy & White, 1978:13) Whileinitially it may take ten minutes to work
through instructions, with some practice, greaterand greater relaxation
should be achieved in less and less time. Progressive Relaxation
Training (PRT) was originally pioneered by EdmundJacobson, an
American physician working in the 1920's and 1930's, but has been
modi-fied over the years. "PRT is learning to feel tension in the muscles
and then learning to letgo of this tension." (Murphy & White, 1978:14)
The PRT procedure involves three steps. The athlete must be on a mat
with subdued lighting. The athlete is then asked to tense thefirst 16
muscle groups between 5 and 7 seconds. The tension is then released
and theathlete relaxes for 30 to 45 seconds. The same routine is
followed for each muscle set for15 to 20 minutes, twice daily, gradually
learning to combine muscle groups until only fourare used. Eventually
the athlete will be able to relax just by recalling the sensa-tion and
experience, even during competition itself. Another method that is
similar to PRT is autogenic training. "While PRT concen-trates on
relaxation alone, autogenic training brings in other sensations associated
with thestate of relaxation, and calls for some type of self-hypnosis on the
part of the athlete"(Butt, 1987:189) This type of training was developed in
the early 1900's by the Germanpsychiatrist, J.H. Schultz. Athletes are
tutored in self-relaxation, based on self-suggestions and imagery. This is
designed to create feelings of warmth, heaviness and7control in different
body parts and finally reach a state of mental equilibrium. Imagery

relaxation, like imagery itself, works well for some people but is difficultfor
others. "Imagery relaxation involves imagining yourself in some
environment or placewhere you have experienced feelings of relaxation
and comfort." (Hackfort & Spielberger,1989:146) This could be a place at
home or somewhere special that you remember fromholidays or
childhood such as a warm beach with a cool sea breeze, a grassy
mountainside,or just wherever you feel good. The better able the
individual is to put him/herself in theplace through imagery, the more
relaxed she/he is to be. With regular practice in imagi-ning this place
without guidance will allow the athlete to feel relaxed much more quickly.
Other methods of sport psychology deal with motor behavior.
Practice is an essential element in acquiring any motor skill. However,
many individuals may not beaware of the fact that the distribution of
practice conditions may have varying effects onhow much is learned or
how well a skill is learned. "Distribution of practice refers to thespacing
between different practice sessions." (Martens, 1981:103) A coach could
advise ayoung gymnast to spend one hour of a two hour practice session
trying to improve ahandspring vault, whereas another coach might favor
having gymnasts practice the vaultduring three 15-minute blocks
combined with other practice activities. Studies showedthat the hour of
the practice session was a better method. Another issue which is of
considerable importance to teachers and coaches alikeconcerns the best
method of practicing the skills being learned. "Should skills be present-ed
and practiced in their entirety (the whole method) or should they be
broken down intosmaller component parts ( the part method)." (Butt,
1987:165) The general conclusionthat was reached was that whole
methods of training were better and even today mostcoaches use whole
methods of training. A common problem facing teachers and coaches of
motor skills is how to teach 8several essential skills within a given
practice session. The teacher is faced with twochoices. She/he can

require the learner to spend a specified number of practice trials onone
task, correcting it before the next task (blocked practice). Alternatively,
the learnercould be required to rotate around the various tasks, never
practicing the same skill ontwo consecutive trials (random practice). "This
issue of blocked vs random practice hasgenerated a good deal of
research interest since the late 1970's. " (Garfield, 1984:199)Subjects
practicing under random conditions tended to perform worse than
subjects prac-ticing under blocked conditions during acquisition trials.
However, when all subjects weregiven a retention test to evaluate
learning 10 days after the experiment, it was the randompractice group
that proved itself more effective. These findings suggest that more
learningtakes place when random practice is used. The belief that
mental rehearsal will enhance performance has become popularamong
most coaches today. However, the effectiveness of mental practice in
relation tomotor learning is also given consideration here. "Mental
practice refers to a situation inwhich the learner thinks about or imagines
performing the task rather than physically prac-ticing it." (Wolff, 1993:193)
After reviewing over 60 studies of mental training, Feltz andLanders
concluded that performance can be improved by mental practice.
However, men-tal practice was better than no practice, but physical
practice was found to be better. "Tasks with a large cognitive component
seem to benefit more from mental practice thantasks requiring large
amounts of strength." (Butt, 1987:191) This would affect gymnas-tics, ice
skating, or any team sport where the performer is attempting to learn a
new gameplay or strategy. Given these findings, it is unwise to replace
physical practice with mentalpractice. Other parts of sport psychology
deal with social psychology. "It is generally truethat the presence of
others leads to enhanced performance on certain tasks, and specifi-9cally
tasks which call for well learnt, dominant responses." (Smith, 1983:4) If
you can dosomething well, the presence of others will improve

performance. On the other hand, ifyou are incompetent, learning a skill
or attempting something for the first time, then youmay perform worse in
company than alone. This deals with social facilitation. We feel weare
being evaluated by spectators and this has led psychologists to believe
evaluationapprehension is the key to social facilitation. Another
factor of social psychology is aggression in sport. "Aggression can be
ex-pressed in socially acceptable or unacceptable ways." (Murphy &
White, 1978:125) Ag-gression can be instrumental or rule governed or
angry/hostile aggression. Rule governedaggression is socially
acceptable in which an athlete is just displaying intensity in a sport.
Angry/hostile aggression is socially unacceptable in which an athlete
causes physical harmto the opposition. Psychologists still have much
work to do in reducing an athlete's ag-gression. Aggression is something
that cannot be fixed overnight. "Whenever there issports, there is going
to be aggression, but with some positive reinforcement, psycholo-gists
can maintain positive aggression." (Murphy & White, 1978:126)
Occupational Psychology is a branch of psychology that relates to sport
psycho-logy. One aspect of this is sports coaches. Many applied
psychologists have come toacknowledge that the most effective way to
get their message across is not by workingdirectly with athletes but by
working with the coaches. A psychologist can come and go,but it is the
coach that maintains the most contact with an athlete. "If the coach can
learnhow to convey messages which have a sound foundation in
psychological knowledge, andthus can act as the agent or mouthpiece for
sport psychology, then the messages are likelyto have that much more
impact." (Smith, 1983:166) More and more coaches are begin-ning to
take sport psychology courses and sport psychology guides have become
moreavailable for coaches to buy. This will help athletes tremendously.10
Alongside work on coaching, goal setting represents one of two
primary areaswhere occupational psychologists have made a direct and

considerable impact on theworld of sports, in both a theoretical and a
practical sense. "While the use of goal settingwithin sport is widespread,
the adoption of formal goal setting principles has not beenwithout
controversy and it is interesting that a recent review article actually refers
to goalsetting not as the blue-eyed boy of sport psychology but as its
Jekyll and Hyde." (Garfield,1984:63) Within psychology as a whole, the
idea of goal setting to guide or direct ourbehavior has a well established
history. However, the recent use of goal setting as a per-formance
enhancement technique can be traced directly back to Edwin Locke's
goal set-ting theory. His theory is the notion that behavior is regulated by
values and goals, with agoal defined as a conscious intention or what the
person is setting out to accomplish. "According to Locke, goals affect
performance by way of four mechanisms; first, goalsetting focuses
attention, second, it mobilizes effort in proportion to the demands of
thetasks, third, it enhances persistence, and finally, they encourage the
individual to developstrategies for achieving their goals." (Wolff,
1993:146) Another goal setting procedure is the
widespread use of the acronym SCAMP as away of teaching athletes
simple goal setting procedures. Specify exactly how much youwant to
improve and how you can measure it. Set goals that are challenging but
have pos-sibility. Set goals that are attainable. Set multiple goals to
increase probability of attain-ment. Set goals that relate to you, ones that
are personal. Over recent years, considerable attention has been paid to
the development of 11theories and models dealing with participation
motivation in sports. "The work deliberate-ly focuses on young athletes
and highlights the significance of intrinsic motivators in maxi-mizing an
individual's long term commitment to sport." (Butt, 1987:215) At the
sametime, the dangers associated with either parents or coaches
emphasizing extrinsic rewardsare openly acknowledged. In brief, the
history of research on work motivation has showna gradual shift from

traditional content models of work motivation which strived to list
orclassify motivators, and towards an appreciation of the complexities of
the process of mo-tivation. "The complexities of the process of motivation
are exemplified by the variousexpectancy-value models which describe
personal and environmental variables play theirpart in determining the
relationship between effort, performance, rewards, and satisfac-tion."
(Garfield, 1984:34) The argument advanced by Porter and Lawler is that
motivation is related to per-formance, to reward and to satisfaction in a
definable way. "Three principle componentsare taken to determine
motivation, namely expectancy, instrumentality, and valence."(Butt,
1987:86) Our motivation will depend first, upon our belief that we are
capable ofinfluencing our performance through increasing effort. Second,
our knowledge that anincrease in performance will result in more awards.
Finally, it will depend on the valuewhich we place on the reward that we
expect to receive. This is represented in the modelbelow.12 One
important feature of this model is the emphasis it places on feedback.
"Ac-cordingly in the context of coaching the model has considerable
practical utility for identi-fying and dealing with management problems
effectively." (Butt, 1987: 87) The modelalso has great learning value for
considering the interaction between a number of cognitiveand
environmental factors in determining satisfaction and future effort.
However, thecomplexity of the model also means that it is difficult to
develop a research project whichis able to look at each component
systematically or to take into account all other possibleintervening factors,
for example, attributional style. "Once more, occupational
psychologymay present genuine opportunities for understanding and
there is a need to ensure that anawareness of the many faces of sport,
both amateur and professional, voluntary and com-pulsory, are kept very
much to the fore in any further discussion of sport motivation."(Garfield,
1984:38) Using a very basic expectancy-value model to frame

discussion, a preliminarystudy by Kremer and Robinson (1992)
considered the attitudes and motivations ofprofessional apprentice soccer
players that were from Northern Ireland who had travelledto join English
and Scottish teams, often to return to Ireland after being rejected there.
"Contrary to predictions based on intrinsic motivation models, these
platers did not returndisenchanted and lost to the game, but almost
invariably they slotted comfortably into lifein the Irish League, often older
and wiser as to their potential but still continuing to take avery active part
in the game which they continued to enjoy." (Butt, 1987:88) Clearly
thereward structure which motivated these young professional athletes
was very differentfrom that which is described in relation to participation
rates and drop-outs amongstyoung, amateur athletes. Once more,
occupational psychology may present genuineopportunities for
understanding and there is a need to ensure that a knowledge and
aware-ness of the many faces of sport, both amateur and professional,
voluntary and compulsory, 13are kept very much to the front in any future
discussion of sport motivation. From this research that has been done
over some four years, one can understandthat psychology does play a
significant part in sport and in the minds of athletes, especiallyat a young
age. Sport psychology ranges from judging an athlete's personality all
the wayto his/her coach. We see the many methods and techniques
used by psychologists to keepan athlete in the right frame of mind to
participate in sports.We have seen methods dealing with the cognitive
side of sport psychology such asimagery and visualization to handle
stress in sports. We have seen methods of clinical psy-chology such as
relaxation techniques to release pre-game tensions and anxiety. We
haveseen methods of social psychology dealing with harmful aggression
of athletes. We alsohave seen methods of occupational psychology in
which the coaches of athletes get in-volved in psychology and motivation
models come into play for coaches to use in order tomotivate their

athletes. We can see that psychologists have not ignored psychology
in the world of sport,something that cannot be ignored with the growing
number in athletic participation byyoung people. "With each new year
comes an increase in new developments dealing withsport psychology."
(Murphy & White, 1978:9) However, there is still much work to bedone in
sport psychology. There are still many unresolved questions and even
some newquestions and even some new questions that have arisen over
the years dealing with sportpsychology. Take anxiety for instance.
Psychologists have found ways to reduce anxietybut not eliminate it.
Maybe there is no way to eliminate it since everyone has it.
Anotherexample is aggression. Wherever there are sports, there is
aggression. Psychologists havestated that sports are a way for people to
release their aggression. However, they still havenot been able to fully
eliminate the violence in sports. Psychologists are also working onnew
methods for motivating athletes because some athletes are harder to
motivate that 14others. Even though there are these unresolved issues
in sport psychology, the future ofpsychology in sports, especially youth
sports, looks to be on a very progressive track withmany new
discoveries.