What is Sports Psychology? Learn the secrets of a booming discipline

Sports psychology: an undiscovered and increasingly fashionable profession.

Sports psychology: an undiscovered and booming profession.Sports psychology is a growing profession, as more and more clubs and athletes are taking into account the psychological aspect when planning their training sessions and objectives.

Today we will explain what the discipline of sports psychology is based on, its methods and objectives, and other interesting facts to understand this discipline that aims to improve the performance and experience of athletes and teams.

Sports psychology: what is it?

There is no country in the world where some kind of sport is not practiced. Thousands of articles have been written about the benefits of practicing sports, whether amateur or professional, and how this regular practice is related to both physical and mental health.

A sedentary life with some excesses (tobacco, alcohol), coupled with a lack of sporting activity, often lead to serious health problems. often lead to serious health problems, so it seems a good idea to seriously consider practicing sport as a guarantee of physical, psychological and emotional health.

A little history of sport

Sport is considered to be any activity that is regulated and associated with competition, involving the physical and mental part of the person.

Sport and its disciplines have been practiced for millennia. It is known that the first to practice regulated physical activity were the Greeks around 700 BC. The ancient Persians were not far behind and were the first to play Polo in the 6th century BC. Sports activity has always been closely linked to the development of human beings. and their societies, which used physical activity for relaxing and beneficial purposes, or as a means for survival in certain social conditions, as happened with the slaves in ancient Rome.

Nowadays, with all the technology at our disposal, it is almost impossible not to be aware of what is happening with the great sports stars of the moment in the competitive sports that enjoy greater coverage in the mass media, such as soccer, tennis, basketball, Olympic gymnastics, Formula 1, etc. This particular media presentation of sporting activity has a great influence on the masses' perception of sport in general, through the expectations that great athletes generate on the basis of certain values and images.

The human need for sport

The human being is characterized by an incessant quest for knowledge and know-how, and sport has gone from being practiced as mere entertainment to being fully studied by sports science.Its mission is to unravel all kinds of questions about the influence of exercise on the body and mind, when it is not the competitive sport itself that is analyzed in order to discover rules to improve performance.

It is for that reason that one of the many branches of Psychology was created with the purpose of delving into sport activity and its interaction with the psyche, founding the sub-discipline known as Sport Psychology.

Psychology applied to sport: a new and vital discipline of knowledge.

Nachon and Nascimbene (2001), in their book Introduction to sport psychology, perfectly define the scope of study and the aims of sport psychology:

"Sport psychology is the science devoted to studying how, why and under what conditions athletes, coaches and spectators behave the way they do, as well as investigating the mutual influence between physical activity and participation in sport and psychophysical well-being, health and personal development."

The work of the sport psychologist

It is often mistakenly thought that the main (if not the only) function of the sport psychologist is to motivate athletesand/or to be in charge of containing and trying to manage those athletes with the worst temperament.

However, the work of a sport psychologist consists in knowing both the psychological phenomena experienced by athletes, as well as the specificities of character and personality of each athlete and sport context, in order to a series of structured techniques to optimize the athletic and psychological performance of the player or team. of the player or team. Most professional teams have the services of a sports psychology professional, who performs the aforementioned functions, thus collaborating with the coaching staff in the team's operation.

Sports psychology has a long history in some European countries and in the USA, being the North American state the one that has contributed the most to develop theories related to sport and its influence on the psyche (and vice versa).

At Latin Americathe history is quite different as far as the development of the sub-discipline of sport psychology is concerned. This specialty is just beginning to take its first steps, and it will be necessary to continue researching in order to develop schools and theories that can establish new paradigms and contribute to the construction of contents and knowledge in this field.

The delay with respect to the old continent and the United States is due to the indifference and ignorance of the Latin American sports and political authorities, who until recently had kept these lines of scientific research in total obscurity.

The way of working and intervening in this branch of Psychology has its particularities with respect to other specialties, although many affirm that the similarities with clinical psychology are numerous.The sports psychologist, due to the topics they both try to influence (motivation, personality), although it would be daring to relate them too much since the fields of study and intervention are very different.

• To better understand what a sports psychologist does, we invite you to read: "10 reasons to have a sports psychologist in your life".

The importance of having a sports psychologist in the team.

The functions and tasks of the sports psychologist can be extremely complex if he or she does not show a training to take on ambitious challenges. Hence the need to also master the mental health facet of the professional in charge of competition groups in team sports. This is also an area that falls within the scope of sports psychology.

It has been demonstrated the importance of having a sport psychologist when working with high performance sport groups. (Silva, J., 1984). In this sense, it has become almost indispensable in any sport or discipline. As regards the king of sports in most Spanish-speaking countries, football, it is notorious how every year clubs and national teams from all continents compete not only on the field of play, but also in a series of intellectual, communication, group management and talent detection and development fields, with the sole objective of going beyond what was achieved in sports the previous year.

Coinciding the writing of this article with the World Cup in Brazil, I cannot miss the opportunity to point out that each of the national teams manages a certain policy, whose command is the federation of each country, which are responsible for following the championship minute by minute to be able to subsequently make the respective analysis and thus obtain some conclusions. conclusions on how to improve in the future from the different facets that influence the game of the national team: strategy, management, tactics, team dynamics, selection, motivation...l: strategy, management, tactics, team dynamics, selection, motivation...

Knowing how to choose the right people for each specific function on the field of play in a team is a task as complex as it is decisive. Opinions and assessments, criteria and decisions should preferably be taken unanimously by both the executive side and the staff in charge of the group. Among them, including the sports psychologist, who must provide the nuance on the mood of the players, their fears and their motivations at every moment of the competition.

I am particularly of the opinion that behind the optimal performance of an athlete on the playing field is a sports psychologist doing the job effectively and professionally, managing to strengthen confidence and touching the necessary keys for an ideal mental health. It is necessary to continue providing support to this specialty in order to obtain developments to achieve cohesive, self-realized sports groups, which in turn are a source of collective wellbeing, both in elite and amateur teams, and emphasizing the need of a Sport Psychology for the base categories..

Bibliographical references:

• Fabre, F. (2006), Interview by the Iberoamerican Association of Sport Psychology.
• Nachon, C. and Nascimbene, F. (2001), Introduction to Sport Psychology.
• Silva, J. (1984) Personality and sport performance: controversy and challenge. In J. Silva & R. Weinberg