Advancements in Mental Skills Training

Maurizio Bertollo, Edson Filho, Peter Terry, Maurizio Bertollo, Edson Filho, Peter Terry, Bertollo Maurizio, Peter C. Terry, Bertollo Maurizio, Edson Filho, Peter C. Terry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367111557
• eBook ISBN: 9780429655838
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Advancements in Mental Skills Training presents contemporary evidence-based intervention approaches from leading sport psychology researchers and practitioners.

The book comprehensively examines the use of mental skills training for athletic performance and well-being from a cross-cultural perspective. It begins by introducing theoretical advancements related to mental toughness, cultural factors, performance optimisation and mindfulness. It goes on to examine the technological advancements related to mental skills training, outlining how mobile technologies can be used to measure and train perceptual-cognitive skills, and the effectiveness of virtual reality in mental training. The book concludes by discussing emerging topics, such as how sports psychology can incorporate spirituality, minority groups in sport and the impact of prejudice, and referee career development.

This insightful text introduces the potential for sport psychology to be integrated into our daily functioning and provides strategies for athletes to optimize their performance and bolster their mental health. It will be an essential read for all sport psychology researchers as well as professionals working in the field.

1
ADVANCEMENTS IN MENTAL SKILLS TRAINING

An introduction

Peter C. Terry, Maurizio Bertollo, and Edson Filho

This book has been produced as part of Routledge publisher’s Key Issues in Sport and Exercise Psychology series, endorsed by the International Society of Sport Psychology. The book presents a range of contemporary evidence-based intervention approaches used by leading sport psychology researchers and practitioners from around the world. In this introductory chapter, we set out to provide past, present, and future perspectives on applied sport psychology, in particular, the use of mental skills training for athlete performance and well-being. In doing so, we offer both historical and current contextual overviews, followed by a forecast of future approaches to mental skills training provision in sport.

Most elite athletes recognize that their performance is influenced by psychological variables. Even the great Roger Federer, renowned as the epitome of on-court control, enlisted help in the early days of his tennis career: “At 17, my family decided that I had to go to a psychologist because I was so angry on the court. From that moment on, my growth has been constant” (Federer, quoted in Otway, 2017). It is increasingly acknowledged that sport psychology is not necessarily about developing sporting titans. In its broadest sense, sport psychology is about using psychological principles, knowledge, strategies, and techniques to address a wide range of performance and well-being issues in sport and in life.

Applied practitioners adopt many different approaches when working with athletes, coaches, and others in the sporting community. Some focus on optimizing athletic performance via the application of psychological techniques, an approach often referred to as psychological skills training, mental skills training, or simply as mental training. Others emphasize the psychological well-being of athletes and the avoidance of potential harmful consequences of involvement in sport, in the form of anxiety, depression, or burnout. Clinically trained professionals are often oriented toward mental health in athletes and the prevention of psychological disorders or the treatment of pathogenic behaviors, such as disordered eating or compulsive exercising, whereas other practitioners take a holistic approach toward their clients, implementing interventions to promote happiness, quality of life, and enhanced self-esteem, anticipating that such personal development may also provide benefits to athletic performance. More recently, multidisciplinary perspectives have led others to adopt a psychophysiological approach using brain/body technologies during practice for performance optimization (e.g., Bertollo, Doppelmayr, & Robazza, 2020; di Fronso, Robazza, Bortoli, & Bertollo, 2017).

Historical overview of sport psychology

The historical roots of sport psychology can be traced back to the 19th century and beyond. “Control the controllables” is a ubiquitous catchcry of modern sport psychologists, but it is not a new principle. The challenge of distinguishing controllable internal influences on physical performance from uncontrollable external forces was understood even in ancient times, as the words of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–180) testify, “You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

Moreover, some of the topics covered in this book were evident in traditional Chinese culture, particularly those related to “skill formation, physical competition, competitive tactics, and mental training” (Smith & Si, 2005, p. 397). Indeed, a number of the techniques applied by contemporary practitioners to assist physical and emotional control, including meditation, centering, and mindfulness, all have their origins in ancient Eastern philosophies. Similarly, the existential approach to sport psychology espoused by some modern writers (e.g., Nesti, 2004) has its origins in the Socratic tradition of Ancient Greece.

Uncertainty shrouds the exact birthplace of sport psychology, although its recorded origins lie in Europe. A publication appeared in Germany as early as 1830 on the psychology of calisthenics, written by Carl Friedrich Koch, and sport psychology experiments were conducted in the world’s first psychology laboratory, established by Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig in 1879. Some sources erroneously credit Norman Triplett of Indiana University as having published the first journal article in sport psychology in 1898, based on his research into social facilitation in cycle racing, but publications addressing the effect of hypnosis on muscular endurance (Rieger, 1884), the effect of mental fatigue on physical performance (Mosso, 1891), and the reaction times of fencers (Scripture, 1894) and athletes (Fitz, 1895) were produced prior to Triplett’s article (see Table 1.1).

TABLE 1.1 Selected Historical Developments in the Early Years of Sport Psychology

Date	Author	Development
1830	Koch	Paper published in Germany on psychology of calisthenics
1884	Rieger	Case study published on hypnosis and muscular endurance
1891	Mosso	Paper published on mental fatigue and physical performance
1894	Scripture	Paper published on reaction time of fencers
1895	Fitz	Paper published on reaction time of athletes
1898	Triplett	Paper published on social facilitation in cycling
1900	De Coubertin	La Psychologie du Sport published
1908	Yerkes and Dodson	Paper published on relationship between stimulus strength and rapidity of habit formation
1920	Diem	Sport psychology laboratory established in Berlin, Germany
1925	Puni	Sport psychology laboratory established in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia
1925	Roudik	Sport psychology laboratory established in Moscow, Russia
1925	Griffith	Sport psychology laboratory established at the University of Illinois, USA
1926	Ma	Paper published in Chinese on psychological benefits of sport
1926	Griffith	Psychology of Coaching textbook published
1928	Griffith	Psychology of Athletics textbook published

Adapted from Terry (2011).

In 1908, Robert Yerkes and John Dodson published their classic paper on the relationship between stimulus strength and rapidity of habit formation. Their experiments involved teaching mice to successfully navigate mazes of increasing difficulty, using electric shocks as a disincentive for making errors. They concluded that “an easily acquired habit, …which does not demand difficult sense discriminations or complex associations, may readily be formed under strong stimulation, whereas a difficult habit may be acquired readily only under relatively weak stimulation” (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908, p. 482). Somewhat bewilderingly, this was extrapolated by the sport psychology community as demonstrating an inverted-U relationship between physiological arousal and athletic performance that is moderated by skill complexity, and the Yerkes-Dodson hypothesis has been mentioned in most sport psychology textbooks ever since.

Pierre de Coubertin, the aristocratic French educator best known for organizing the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, was very influential in the early development of sport psychology (Kornspan, 2007), not least because his article La Psychologie du Sport, published at the dawn of the 20th century, may have been the first time that the term “sport psychology” was used (Coubertin, 1900). Carl Diem, a former athlete and fervent admirer of Coubertin, established the first laboratory dedicated to investigating psychological aspects of sport in Germany in 1920.

Avksenty Puni and Piotr Roudik set up similar laboratories in Russia during 1925, at the Institute of Physical Culture in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and the State Central Institute of Physical Culture in Moscow (see Ryba, Stambulova, & Wrisberg, 2007) around the same time that the celebrated University of Illinois psychologist Coleman Griffith established the first sport psychology laboratory in America. Griffith published two seminal books on sport psychology, the Psychology of Coaching in 1926 – acknowledged as the first ever sport psychology textbook – and Psychology and Athletes in 1928. Developments occurred in Asia during the same decade, with a paper on the psychological value of sport published in 1926 by Chinese sport pioneer Ma Yuehan, known in English as John Ma. The paper, titled “Transfer Value of Sports” in translation, addressed the character-building and personality development qualities of sport participation.

Key developments in sport psychology and mental skills training

Sport psychology gained considerable momentum during the latter half of the 20th century and has been organized on a global scale since 1965, when the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP; www.issponline.org) was formed during the 1st International Congress of Sports Psychology in Rome with Ferruccio Antonelli, an Italian psychiatrist, as its first President. Several continental organizations have followed, as shown i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Contributors’ notes (short bios)
• Foreword
• 1 Advancements in mental skills training: an introduction
• Section 1 Theoretical advancements
• Section 2 Technological advancements
• Section 3 Emerging topics and understudied populations
• Index