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Mental Strategies for Peak Performance

March/april 2006 a key to controlling competitive anxiety under pressure is to develop an effective attentional strategy to use before competition. Without pre-competition routines of attentional control, many athletes will become overwhelmed and succumb to competitive pressure. During competition, an athlete must focus his or her attention only on the most important and useful information. irrelevant and distracting stimuli must be replaced, discarded, or ignored prior to and during performance (Wang, Callahan, & goldfine, 2003). it is common for athletes to be bombarded with numerous stimuli including relevant and irrelevant elements. By practicing attentional training, the athlete can learn to filter and select appropriate information, and then attend to the skill at hand. Such ability can be learned through proper training. athletes who have physical talent and excellent technical ability may not necessarily reach their athletic potential due to psychological barriers. athletes sometimes lose control in competition because of internal stimuli (distracters) such as negative thoughts or external stimuli, such as the audience or pressures from the coach (Wang, Callahan, & goldfine, 2003). extensive sports psychology research has attempted to find ways to help athletes deal with competitive anxiety for peak performance (Hardy, Jones, & gould, 1996; giacobbi & Weinberg, 2000; Murphy & Martin, 2002; Miller & Donohue, 2003; and Nietfeld, 2003). Such efforts have made a positive impact on understanding anxiety and mental preparation for performance enhancement, but athletes in general still do not believe in, nor do they use, psychological strategies as often or as effectively as they should. the major reasons athletes do not implement attentional strategies are that they: (1) neglect the value of psychological training, and (2) lack knowledge of how to implement mental strategies. Without extensive training, both coaches and athletes feel incapable of implementing mental strategies in competition. When competing, athletes often feel helpless in controlling competitive anxiety, and likewise, coaches are embarrassed of their inability to help their athletes. Coaches, the main influence on their athletes’ mental state, are responsible for knowing how to positively prepare athletes for peak performance during practice, pre-competition, or competition. Coaches should integrate mental training into their daily skill training to enhance the athletes’ ability to effectively control their optimal mental state. the way that coaches communicate with athletes before competition is also a vital component of how they can positively or negatively affect the athletes’ mental state for the up-coming competition. For example, most coaches emphasize the importance of the up-coming competition and encourage athletes not to make mistakes, because the team could lose due to one athlete’s small mistake. this kind of threatening speech usually has the opposite effect of mentally preparing athletes to achieve peak performance, and instead, only heightens the athletes’ anxiety level, which is detrimental to their athletic performance. Unfortunately, many coaches are not aware that their speech can have such a negative effect on their athletes’ mental condition for the competition. in addition, oftentimes when a team loses, the coach will condemn the athletes instead of thoroughly examining the game, and the areas where the team needs to improve. thus, the development of a specific and easily understandable mental strategy would be truly helpful for both coaches and athletes. this article will: (1) examine the causes and psychological mechanics of pre-competitive anxiety, (2) provide athletes with an easily understandable mental strategy for practical use, and (3) provide coaches with specific guidelines for proper behavior.