Sports Psychology
Physiopsychology Training For the Shooting “Off Season”
By Lindsay Thornton, USOC Sports Psychologist/Psychophysiologist The Olympic Training Center is
in the fi nal stages of designing its forthcoming psychophysiology training space (to be opened in the spring of 2014). The training space will be equipped to moni- tor athlete brain and body re- sponses at rest and under com- petitive simulation and provide feedback to the athletes so they can self-regulate. The majority of the work in the training space will be guided by the Psychophysi- ological Principle which states, “every change in the physiologi- cal state is accompanied by an appropriate change in the men- tal or emotional state, conscious or unconscious, and conversely, every change in the mental or emotional state, conscious or unconscious, is accompanied by an appropriate change in the physiological state.” In other words, this means that the mind and the body are connected, or what happens above the neck affects what happens below, and vice versa. The goal in work- ing with athletes is to help them build awareness of processes in their minds and bodies that im- pact their performance, and to provide opportunities for them to gain greater control over these processes. In a closed-skill sport such as shooting, where there is a clear beginning and end to skill execution, self-regulation of the mind-body state is crucial. There are sport scientists, and likely many shooting athletes and coaches, who believe that what
The goal in working with athletes is to
help them build awareness of processes in their minds and bodies that impact their performance, and to provide opportunities for them to gain greater control over these processes. In a closed-skill sport such as shooting, where there is a clear beginning and end to skill execution, self-regulation of the mind-body state is crucial. There are sport scientists, and likely many shooting athletes and coaches, who believe that what happens in the mind and body in the time immediately preceding a shot is al- most as important, if not as important as, the shot execution itself.
happens in the mind and body in the time immediately preceding a shot is almost as important, if not as important as, the shot ex- ecution itself. We haven’t been sitting and
waiting for the psychophysiol- ogy training space to be up and running for us to get to work at the Training Center. Athletes are working on the mental side of their game and training their awareness and self-regulation skills daily. You don’t need to be in Colorado Springs to do psy- chophysiology training. Here are a few simple ideas that you can incorporate in your “off-season” training:
38 USA Shooting News | Year in Review 2013
1. Attention You can learn to monitor
when you are paying attention, and to eventually control the intensity and duration of your attentional states. One way of doing this is putting brain wave sensors on your head, and get- ting information about how fast the neurons in certain areas of your cortex are fi ring. Another way of doing this is to start pay- ing attention to the way your brain attends to things. One example of this is being mind- ful, and paying attention to the present on purpose. When doing this, you’ll likely notice your mind wander. If you’d like feedback on just how your mind wanders, you
can incorporate a cognitive task, for example, you can play a few free brain training games on lu-
mosity.com each day (or pay the equivalent of a couple overpriced cups of coffee each month and pla
y more. By the wa y, there are
a number of online programs out there. Lumosity and Posit Sci- ence seem to be two more well researched options. You should know that no company has pub- lished data that indicates that pla
ying computerized cognitive
games leads to athletic gains, never mind boosts elite athletic performance). Caveats aside, if you do play
these games, you will have im- mediate feedback regarding your attention. Look for patterns. How does your performance vary? Ac- cording to time of day, the num- ber of things you have on your mind, with your score expecta- tions? Do you notice these pat- terns in shooting? Practice using visual and
physical cues to anchor your at- tention prior to the games start- ing and throughout when you notice your attention wandering. That means that you can focus on how your lungs feel as they fi ll with air in order to slow your thought processes down, or how your fi ngers feel on the keyboard, or details in the images on the screen. You might draw from your pre-shot routine, or you might fi nd something that works at the computer transfers to your shot process. You’ll fi nd that your goal
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84