Sport psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses on the entire field of sport, from the management of sports organizations to work in therapy the problems of athletes in relation to the sport they practice, through the evaluation of groups and their roles, stress of sport, etc.. Therefore, a detailed answer would be too extensive for the purpose of this article.
What personally attracted me most to this branch is that it is not about “curing” or “fixing something that is wrong”; which also happens in many cases; but, in many cases, it is about improving the performance of something that is already working. That is, it is intended to reach its maximum potential, without the need for something to fix or go wrong.
What does the process consist of?
Well, it depends on each house. It can range from help in the management and organization of management positions and their tasks, to individual therapy of athletes, to analyzing group relations, personal profiles of athletes, etc. The specialist in psychology tries to see what is to be achieved and looks for the best way to get there.
How do we deepen our personal self-knowledge?
The most common is to connect with our body and what it feels. Physical and physiological sensations, and emotions. All this gives us a lot of information about how we experience different situations. And with the right tools we can learn to decipher all this information and use it to our advantage.
Having said that, each person is unique and genuine, so the way of working with each person, entity, club…. will be different; adapting the way of working to the needs of each situation.
How do you help your tennis players?
Regarding this field, specifically for tennis I have designed a special program that helps players to work on improving performance in terms of concentration and how to maintain it in the most complex moments of competitions. It is based on the technique of the sport, so it also helps to make improvements in this area.
It is based on different stages, through which the player goes through to become aware of what is relevant in the different moments of the game and learn to focus his mind on what will give him the best performance. I will not reveal more about this technique, which is exclusive, I will only mention that part of its bases are born from the observation and assimilation of principles of other forms of training in different sports such as karate katas or Taichi, among others.