Dear Parents and Students:
I came across this interesting article. Especially
now, that the school is beginning to build a sports program. I hope it helps
parents and students realize that it is only through hard work and discipline
that you can become a great athlete and student. We all want to win from the
get go and we dislike loosing; nonetheless, loosing is part of becoming a solid
and well rounded human being.
HOW TO DEVELOP MENTALLY TOUGH YOUNG ATHLETES
Developing winning attitudes toward
competition
Posted Oct 05, 2015
By: Frank L. Smoll Ph.D.
Frank Smoll,
Ph.D., is
a professor of psychology at the University of Washington. His research focuses
on coaching behaviors in youth sports and on the psychological effects of
competition on children and adolescents. He has published more than 135
scientific articles and book chapters, and he is co-author of 22 books and
manuals on children’s athletics. Professor Smoll is a fellow of the American
Psychological Association, the National Academy of Kinesiology, and the
Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP). He is an AASP Certified
Consultant (inactive) and was the recipient of AASP’s Distinguished
Professional Practice Award. Dr. Smoll has conducted more than 550 coaching
clinics and workshops for parents of young athletes.
One of the highest compliments an
athlete can get is the label "mentally tough." Mental toughness
isn’t a quality people are born with. Rather, it includes a set of learned
attitudes and ways of viewing competitive situations in productive ways.
Coaches and parents are in an ideal
position to help young athletes develop a healthy philosophy about achievement and an ability
to tolerate setbacks when they occur. By teaching mental toughness lessons to
kids, adults can give them a priceless gift that will benefit them in many
areas of everyday life. Here are some specific attitudes that can be
communicated to young athletes.
1. Sports should be fun.
Emphasize that sports and other
activities in life are enjoyable for the playing, whether you win or lose.
Athletes should be participating, first
and foremost, to have fun.
Try to promote enjoyment of many
activities in and of themselves so that winning is not a
condition for enjoyment.
2. Anything worth achieving is
rarely easy.
It’s important to recognize that the
process of achieving mastery is a long and difficult road. According to Vince
Lombardi, the famous coach of the Green Bay Packers, "The dictionary is
the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must
pay for success."
Becoming the best athlete one can be is
not an achievement to be had merely for the asking.
Practice, practice, and still more
practice is needed to master any sport.
3. Mistakes are a necessary part
of learning anything well.
Very simply, if we don't make mistakes,
we probably won't learn. John Wooden, legendary UCLA basketball coach, referred
to mistakes as the “stepping stones to achievement.”
Emphasize to athletes that mistakes,
rather than being things to avoid at all costs, are opportunities for
performance enhancement. They give us the information we need to adjust and
improve.
The only true mistake is a failure to
learn from our experiences.
4. Effort is what counts.
Emphasize and praise effort as well as
outcome.
Communicate repeatedly to young athletes
that all you ask is that they give total effort.
Through your actions and your words,
show youngsters that they are just as important to you when trying and losing
as when winning. If maximum effort is acceptable to you, it can also become
acceptable to young athletes.
Above all, don’t punish or
withdraw love and approval when kids don’t perform up to
expectations. Such punishment builds fear of failure.
5. Don’t confuse worth with
performance.
Help youngsters to distinguish what
they do from what they are. A valuable lesson for
children to learn is that they should never identify their worth as people with
any particular part of themselves, such as their competence in sports, their
school performance, or their physical appearance.
You can further this process by
demonstrating your own ability to accept kids unconditionally as people, even
when you are communicating that you don't approve of some behavior.
Show children that you can gracefully
accept your own mistakes and failures. Show and tell them that as a fallible
human being, you can accept the fact that, despite your best efforts, you are
going to occasionally bungle things.
If children can learn to accept and like
themselves, they will not unduly require the approval of others in order to
feel worthwhile.
6. Pressure is something you put
on yourself.
Help young athletes to see competitive
situations as exciting self-challenges rather than as threats.
Emphasize that people can choose how to
think about pressure situations.
The above attitudes will help to develop
an outlook on pressure that transforms it into a challenge and an opportunity
to test themselves and to achieve something worthwhile.
7. Try to like and respect sport
opponents.
Some coaches and athletes think that
proper motivation comes from anger or hatred for the opponent. That’s totally
wrong!
Sports should promote sportsmanship and
an appreciation that opponents, far from being the "enemy," are
fellow athletes who make it possible to compete.
Hatred can only breed stress and fear. In terms of emotional arousal, fear
and anger are indistinguishable patterns of physiologic responses. Thus, the
arousal of anger can become the arousal of fear if things begin to go badly
during competition.
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