How Perception Impacts Sports Performance
Change Your Perception – Improve Your Game : How we perceive things in life greatly impacts the thoughts and behaviors that follow – for better or for worse. When athletes “see” challenges instead of seeing threats, their mind and body flow in synchrony and often the athlete improves mental toughness and reaches his or her full athletic potential as a result. Conversely, sport psychologists have found that otherwise talented athletes can actually offset their athletic abilities by perceiving sport situations as scary, intimidating, or threatening…
“Focus your PERCEPTION, on how you want to translate the world around you!” – Jennifer Heistand
How Your Perception of Reality Affects Sports Performance
If reality is perception, then you have the ability to affect your reality. But you must understand your own perception and how it affects your performance. Take adrenaline, for example. Admittedly, you’d have a hard time performing at your very best without some adrenaline pushing you. Think back to your last really great performance. Chances are you had a fair amount of adrenaline coursing through your body. However, athletes often perceive these feelings of adrenaline negatively prior to a performance. Why?
Sports Psychology: Self-Talk in Sport
The Athletic Mind, Part 1: The Role Of Perception In Athletics
The mind is weaker than the body; so just imagine what the body could do with the right mindset. Fears and self-doubt can stop an athlete in his or her tracks long before the body quits. Mental fitness is absolutely key to performance, and without it there can be no true optimal performance of any task or skill…
“Why talk about yesterday’s loses, when you can be concentrate on tomorrow’s WINS!” – Jennifer Heistand
Protect your Athlete – Body Image Perceptions and Consequences
Anxiety surrounding body image and exercise is related to muscle gain, weight control and attractiveness leading to the question “Does this manifest in sport?” In short, yes it does, while athletes and coaches should be aware that personal sporting identity and body image are vulnerable to damage due to a perceived failure to meet the ideal body shape and physical self worth…
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” – ― Napoleon Hill
Jennifer Heistand, CBT, HMCT – Mental trainer to athletes using technology that demonstrates how emotions are effecting their accurate decision making.
Experienced Performance Coach and Emotions Specialist with a demonstrated history of working in the Sports industry coaching athletes how to perform their best under extreme emotionally charged situations. Skilled in Coaching, Leadership Development, Athletics, Sports, and Public Speaking.
Reaching the next level of athletic performance depends upon your ability to regulate emotions and manage stress. Athletes who combine mental and emotional training with physical training have a competitive advantage and are better equipped to enter into the peak performance zone more consistently.
Thoughts and emotions have a profound effect on the heart’s rhythm, and this rhythm impacts performance. Under pressure, stressful thoughts and emotions cause the heart’s rhythm to become irregular and jagged. This incoherent pattern inhibits brain function and diminishes the visual field, reduces reaction speed, and impairs decision making.