MentalConditioning
This section is Designed to help Athlete get into a positive mindset and learn how to harden their mind to the often uncomfortable experiences a good athlete must endure. It covers how to callus the mind in order to be able to push through adversity and struggle faced in training and competition so that you preform at your best. This is not a guide on mental health, although some of the methods may overlap it is not designed to be a help program for those who experience difficulties with mental health. Here is a link to those services: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/mental-health-helplines/
Exposure Therapy
Facing your Fears
Exposure therapy commonly used tool by psychiatrists to help relive and even eliminate fears and phobias people have, by making them braver.
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By allowing someone to voluntarily expose themselves to their fear, gradually, that person becomes more knowable about their fear and the thing they are scared of. This leaves them braver in the face of that fear, and less anxious about it when they next encounter it
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This can be used for anything and has had such success that it has become a tool for sport psychologist to help athletes perform better in competition and in training.
Controlled Agression
Using Adrenaline Effectively
Controlled aggression is the use of negative emotions and thoughts to power through in the face of adversity and anxiety in order to achieve your goal
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You can use controlled aggression to battle fear as you can convince yourself that you are capable of taking on whatever scares you or better yet that you are in fact the one to be feared. This confidence can be game-changing as you turn proactive in that situation instead of passive and reactionary
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The adrenaline and positive mindset that controlled aggression give you is an ever-useful tool for blocking out negative thoughts that would otherwise hinder performance
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Meditation
Control over what you think and feel
Meditation is a seemingly ever-useful tool for controlling one's own mind. It has been used in some form by almost every major religion and philosophy, most famously by Buddhist monks and Stoics of Rome and Greece. In Sport, meditation is a useful tool to help athletes control their arousal levels and have more power over the emotions they experience.
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The act of meditation often revolves around watching, studying and then realising that the thoughts and feeling you experience are often completely within your control. This can be sued to reduce stress and anxiety, increase arousal and aggression or simply be used to help visualise and focus deeply on what they are going to do next.
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Highly recommendable and almost universally effective, Meditation could give you that competitive psychological edge you need. whilst being generally good for wellbeing and all very Zen.
Internal
Motivators
True Strenght lies within
Being driven by external sources of inspiration and motivation are commonplace. External motivators often cause stress and anxiety as we try to live up to expectations outside our own control. This can be highly detrimental to our overall motivation to train, and can psyche out competitors when they are competing, having the feeling of everyone watching them, all those expectations and external ideals on their shoulders.
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By understanding the difference between external nd internal motivators, you can more effectively motivate yourself in your sport, reduce stress from uncontrollable factors and take far more enjoyment in activities and competitions.
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All the best athletes are strongly internally motivated, and becoming so yourself will be highly beneficial.l
Visualisation & Self Talk
Imagination is what makes us Human
Possibly the most well-known and commonly used technique, Visualisation is a very useful and very easy method you can use to get structure and confidence around achieving your goal. Visualising your goal can help give you the motivation to train. It can also be used to think ahead and plan a strategy, what will the challenges be on your path to said gaol, how should you navigate them, etc... Lastly, Visualisation before a competition is a very useful strategy as it can reduce the anxiety of the unknown, as you have already won the race in your head, so you know what to do.
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Self-talk is when you talk to yourself. Self-explanatory. You may use it to hype yourself up. Convince yourself of a truth you would rather not face. Play devils advocate against negative thoughts in order to win with conviction and vanquish them from your mind. It is like having a pocket coach who knows you better than anyone and many athletes use it regularly. From just saying "let's go!" to yourself in the changing room all the away to a breakdown of how you are going to perform, it can do it all
Routines and lifestyle
To Feel well you must Live well
It is very easy to get by at university on cereal and energy drinks, staying up late and napping all weekend. but these are very self-destructive and unhealthy habits that are detrimental to normal health in every aspect let alone the health of an aspiring athlete.
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Making sure that you do the little things right every day, having a routine, eating and sleeping well, having a social circle of some kind, having something you enjoy doing to keep the terrible things in perspective. Doing so will reduce unnecessary stress, improve your mental state and also promote positive physiological changes in your body as it realises it can start building for the future, rather than just getting by each day through the throws of sugar crashes.