Applying Sports Psychology in Children Essay

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Introduction

The involvement of students in sporting activities in their respective school is a crucial element of their education, either in private or public-school settings. Encouraging sporting activities in schools is backed on educational basis by educational results and educational philosophy. Several educational leaders are of the opinion that students who take part actively in school sporting activities enjoy better psychomotor, cognitive and affective development (Zaichkowsky, 2006). The rapidly developing concept of sport psychology is loaded with benefits for schools, especially regarding the provision of much-needed expertise for increasing the likelihood of exercise and sport bringing about positive experiences for the school children. Importantly, sport psychology applies research and theory to advise and teach coaches, athletes and even parents with the aim of engendering optimal sport performance and participation (Zaichkowsky, 2006; Anshel, 2011).

Generally, three commonly intersecting sectors form the basis on which sport psychology is built on, and these can be seen in the chart below. The biggest interest is on the first focus area namely “performance enhancement”. In this area, sport psychologists, either trained sport scientists or psychologists with huge sport experience, advise their clients via experimentally proven methods so as to improve their performances (Zaichkowsky, 2006). The next focus area is known as the health and exercise psychology. The last focus area is known as social psychology. In this area, sport psychologists study and teach on subjects like diversity and gender, athlete career growth, fan behaviours, moral development, motivation and leadership and this also intersects with health psychology and performance enhancement.

Sports psychology in dealing with sports loss

Normally, athletes go through intense training for performance improvement. If they do not take enough time to rest however, they could suffer from declines in their performance. Intense exercise without proper rest and recovery, a phenomenon called overtraining, is now a real danger athletes from all sporting sectors face (Kreher & Schwartz, 2012). With improvements in athlete performances, there is a corresponding increase in physical demands specifically higher number of training hours every week and even more demanding training exercises. Present day cultural demands have caused even higher training intensity, for instance, via higher competition, expanded athlete performance duration, from the youth till professional level and selection of players while younger. Oddly, especially when considering the psychological benefits physical activity has, in the case of athletes being over trained, they are in danger of fatigue, poor performance and mood swings.

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A “syndrome of physical/emotional exhaustion, sport devaluation, and reduced athletic accomplishment” ” (Kreher & Schwartz, 2012; Hays & Baltzell, 2016) known as burnout, is caused by overtraining coupled with intense sport stress (i.e. unrealistic demands and precompetitive nervousness) and this can also cause sport termination. Whenever athletes feel trapped or under obligation, instead of attraction, for a particular sport, then they are at higher risk of experiencing burnout.

To take part in sports means to put oneself in danger of injury. A large part of the attention on sport injuries have been focused on the physical injury. Nevertheless, over the last two decades, significant research has tackled the psychosocial effects injury has. This research laid emphasis on the connections existing between sport anxiety, injury, management resources and other common life stressors (Hays & Baltzell, 2016). Injury could be seen as a kind of fault, a kind of betrayal by one’s body or a form of embarrassment. Injury could equally cause non-beneficial emotions such as sadness, guilt and anger. As well as the pain and physical limitations caused by injury, the regular mental responses include mood problems and worries about resuming play or getting another injury. Athletes need to tackle physical damage and mental responsiveness as well as social effects like distance and/or new relationships with teammates and the team in general and even their athletic personality.

A sport injury, in most cases, causes psychological irregularities which prevent the athlete from recovering normally. These adverse responses are popular across the globe, as seen in elevation on various scales of the Profile of Mood States. Conditions that can cause concern could be mental reactions or states like stress/anxiety, anger, depression, treatment noncompliance, general pain and exercise addiction (Gill, Williams & Reifsteck, 2017). Fear is also quite common among athletes nursing injuries. It could be fear of losing jobs, friends, positions, family, income or fear of getting injured again or not fully recovering. Another well-known reaction is shock and surprise at sustaining an injury.

A specific sports injury currently enjoying huge media attention and generation huge referrals to medical sports psychologists is sport-related mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). There are rising numbers of reported cases of mTBI aka cerebral concussions even though this could be partly caused by man-made or a product of higher public awareness. In college and high school athletes, the most reported number of concussions in young….....

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