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Part 1: Personality Part 2: Motivation Part 3: Anxiety and Arousal Part 4: Stress and Coping This is the final installment in my series of “Psychological Characteristics of the Elite Performer”. I hope you’ve enjoyed this oft-forgotten aspect of sports performance. While many of the concepts I’ve addressed may have seemed quite simple, its theoretical bases have been [...]
Part 1: Personality Part 2: Motivation Part 3: Anxiety and Arousal STRESS AND COPING Like anxiety, stress is a commonly discussed topic in sport performance and takes both the internal and external environments into account. Stress can be defined as an experience produced through a person-situation relationship that is perceived as taxing or exceeding the athlete’s resources. [...]
Part 1: Personality Part 2: Motivation Part 3: ANXIETY AND AROUSAL Athletes with a high tendency to perceive competitive situations as threatening, likely experience greater levels of “moment dependent” anxiety during game situations. This type and level of anxiety may lead to a predisposition to detrimental performances and therefore may not be evident in elite [...]
Part 1: Personality Part 2: Motivation Motivational constructs must also be considered as one of the distinguishing psychological characteristics of elite athletes. Looking at motivation, it is evident that motivation is best understood by the interaction of the individual and his/her situational influences. There are many theories that attempt to explain motivation, however, certain factors [...]
Although no exact definition of an “elite performer” exists, this next series of posts will attempt to determine the psychological characteristics that may lead to the classification of an athlete as being elite. This will be stepping out of my element somewhat, but its a topic that anyone working with athletes must be familiar with. [...]
