The use of concentration routines in competition.

A tool that can make all the difference when participating in sports competitions.

Nowadays, it is obvious to anyone the importance of psychological variables in the the importance of psychological variables in the performance and experience of sport.. It is difficult to explain from a technical or physical point of view that a team considered "small" eliminates a "big" team by coming from behind at the home of the latter. That a team goes from flirting with relegation to winning the League, the Cup and reaching two Champions League finals cannot be explained if we do not allude to some concept taken from psychology.

Nerves, motivation, pressure, team spirit... are elements that can decide a result, and all of them can be optimized after mental training. One of the most important is based on concentration routines.

What is concentration in the sports field?

Concentration is the psychological variable that involves the capacity to maintain the attention in a concrete stimulus.. In sport, it is of vital importance to ensure that all our skills and knowledge are available to us at the necessary moment. It is what we colloquially call "being plugged in".

There are several ways to train this variable. The main one is to create artificial situations that may require it to be put into practice during training sessionsThe psychological variables are like a muscle, the more we use them the more we will develop them (and if we stop using them, they will reduce their performance).

There are many dynamics aimed at exercising attention, but the most basic is the classic handkerchief game (each participant has an assigned number and has to run for a handkerchief when a moderator sings that number, competing with the participant with the same number from the opposing team). The tenths of a second it takes to recognize our number can make the difference between getting the point or not for our team, similar to the tenths of a second it takes to see where a teammate is unmarked in a game. The session can be adapted to the sport in question substituting the handkerchief for a soccer ball, basketball, etc.

The dynamics can be sophisticated with the only limit of one's imagination, for example, dividing the field into three parts and setting different rules in each third of it (only play with the first touch in the first part, do not return the ball to the player who passed it to me in the second part, etc.). In this way we train the concentration muscle, getting it ready for when we need it at its maximum potential in the matches..

However, in addition to training concentration, there are strategies designed to invoke it in the moments of greatest need (taking a free kick, a penalty, a service...), due to the importance of the situation or its vulnerability to distracting elements.

Concentration routines

For this purpose there are the so-called concentration routines. These routines consist of a sequence of two or more simple behavioral gestures, the last one leading to that state of concentrationthe last of them leading to this state of concentration (e.g., putting on the left sock, putting on the right sock, bouncing the ball and shooting a free throw).

The underlying functioning is that of stimulus association, and therefore it is important to emphasize the importance of systematicity in the training of these routines.In training, it is the athlete himself who provokes this state of concentration after the sequence and, after many rehearsals, the sequence will end up being associated with this state, being able to use it in the moments in which it is more difficult to concentrate voluntarily during the competition, in a similar way to when a smell reminds us of a person or the song that we have in our alarm clock ends up provoking rejection by itself if we hear it at any time of the day. The most famous examples of routines in elite sports would be those of tennis player Rafa Nadal, before serving, or that of soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, before shooting free kicks.

It should be noted that a routine does not have to be a visible behavior, but can consist of a thought or self-talk phrase.

The ability to focus our attention on each moment of the game can be a variable that makes the difference, and the dynamics or training routines in sports psychology are a resource that can mean the added value between our team and the rivals.