Have you ever wondered what psychological characteristics the most successful athletes have? A whole host of research has been conducted to try and figure out what characteristics successful athletes have. Let’s explore these characteristics and discuss the most important part, how to build them.

From all the research, we can identify five psychological pillars that need to be built for athletes to successfully develop and excel.

The five pillars are as follows:

Resilience
Intelligence
Self-management
Drive
Fortitude

These five pillars are made up of psychological attributes, in essence, the material that makes up the pillar itself. Just like a brick is made out of cement, these pillars require these attributes to be acquired to make the pillar strong. Let’s explore each pillar and its attributes.

Resilience

Resilience has many definitions, however, it can be identified as a crucial psychological factor contributing to our ability to adapt positively and overcome challenging situations. The resilience pillar is made up of the following attributes:

Confidence: A belief or degree of certainty that you possess the ability to be successful in your sport
Optimism: A mindset epitomised by having positive expectations about future outcomes. It is the way you interpret the situations and events that happen in your life.
Self-efficacy: The belief in your ability to organise and execute the things required to successfully complete a task.
Perseverance: Can be identified as not giving up when faced with overcoming adversity or challenges and consistently striving to achieve goals during these moments.

Intelligence

Intelligence can be broadly described as our ability to adapt to different objectives and environments and achieve our goals within these constantly changing environments. Simply put, achieving our complex goals in complex environments. What attributes make up intelligence?

Coachability: An athlete’s motivation to learn and improve, willingness to be a sponge and absorb as much information from coaches and other key stakeholders. Your capability to be easily taught and trained.
Adaptability: Our ability to anticipate and respond positively to changing and rapidly evolving situations.
Sport-Intelligence: Our sport-specific knowledge and our ability to search and identify relevant cues, use short-term and long-term memory, identify patterns of play and behaviours, possess a baseline level of knowledge about sport-specific tasks and make effective decisions. Knowing your sport inside and out.
Socio-emotional intelligence: An understanding and knowledge of the social and emotional environment and how to successfully navigate them. Our ability to be aware of our feelings in the present moment.

Self-management

Self-management can be referred to as our ability to respond effectively to the many situations we find ourselves in as athletes and cope with the many stressors, pressures, failures and discomforting thoughts and feelings. This overall pillar of self-management is made up of the following:

Equanimity: An even-minded mental state in which you are calm and composed. Allows us to remain grounded and mindfully present in the moment, rather than being consumed by emotional reactivity.
Self-Awareness: Understanding how your inner world works. How you respond to situations, what thoughts you have and where they come from, what thoughts, feelings and behaviours arise in situations.
Self-regulation: Our ability to plan, manage and adapt our thoughts, feelings and behaviours in the face of the challenging situations, demands and contexts athletes find themselves in to achieve their personal goals.
Accountability: Taking responsibility and ownership of one's development and performance. Focusing on the process and reflecting on how to improve.

Drive

Drive can be described as our intent towards achieving our personal goals in sport and how willing we are to achieve them. It is made up of the following:

Passion: Being an athlete is part of who you are in which you practice and compete because of the love for the activity. This allows you to fully engage in the sport you enjoy whilst maintaining a balance with other aspects of your life.
Purpose: This is your ‘why’. The reasoning behind your involvement in sport. Why do you play this sport? What is important to you in this sport? What values do you have?
Self-determination: A feeling of autonomy (being able to have control over what we do), competency (feeling we have the ability and mastery over the things that matter to you) and relatedness (a sense of belonging, feeling as though you matter to people and are part of something).
Focus: Our ability to concentrate on the tasks required for success, not become distracted and attend to cues in the sporting environment. Concentrating on the performance-relevant cues in your attentional field.

Fortitude

The firmness and strength of our mind can hold up despite the pressures, challenges or misfortunes. Having a firmness of spirit, being willing to go above and beyond what is required, and keeping on going despite what is happening or the outcomes. It is made up of the following:

Dependability: Regardless of what is happening, you will keep on going and not give up. People around you can depend on you to stick to the task or what needs doing. Staying true to your word.
Competitiveness: Our desire to win in our situations and the enjoyment of competitions whilst showing high levels of sportsmanship.
Humility: Being respectful, modest and realistic about your strengths and weaknesses. Helps you learn from mistakes, appreciate your achievements and acknowledge your limitations.
Courage: Doing what is needed to be done in the presence of fear. Courage is when we choose to do what is needed, execution after mindful deliberation. We choose to do something at some personal risk which is driven by the need or desire to bring about a positive outcome.

Stay tuned for “Part 2” where we’ll discuss 4 techniques to build each pillar.

When training for an important competition, there is a huge amount of emphasis on physical preparation - but what about preparing mentally? A method that can help athletes mentally prepare for competition and enhance their focus, self-confidence and overall performance is Psychological Skills Training (PST).

PST involves techniques that an athlete consistently practices in order to enhance and maintain their performance. Primarily, PST is composed of four main components; goal setting, relaxation techniques, imagery and self-talk. Today I will be focusing on goal setting, explaining my role as a performance psychologist in helping individual athletes and teams set and achieve their goals.

Goal setting is at the core of psychological skills training to improve an individual’s motivation, productivity and attentional focus on a specific task. As a performance psychologist, I help educate athletes on how to develop, monitor and evaluate goals.

Firstly, I introduce athletes to the “SMART” acronym when settings goals, explaining that all goals need to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. This is a major component of setting both short term and long-term goals for an individual to remain accountable for the goals they have set, as well as evaluating their goals to assess their progress.

The goal setting process is broken down into three different components comprised of process, performance, and outcome goals:

Process goals are the smaller steps an athlete takes to achieve their performance goals. They focus on the repeated execution of a specific skill or strategy during training that they the individual wishes to improve. By repeatedly practicing the skill, the individual is able to gain attentional control and improve their performance. For example, a process goal for a swimmer could be to practice not breathing out of the turn during the main set for the next four training sessions. After the sessions are complete, the individual would then evaluate this goal to establish whether they should adjust the goal to a more challenging process goal, such as practicing not breathing out of turn during prep set and main set for the next four training sessions.

Performance goals are the performance standards that athletes set themselves in order to reach their outcome goals. When setting performance goals remember that they should be aspects of your performance that you have control over. For example, a swimmer could set a performance goal of swimming 100M breaststroke in 1min 20s. If we refer back to the swimmer’s process goal of not breathing out of the turn, this goal is one of the steps to help them achieve their performance goal.

Lastly, Outcome goals are the end result that the athlete is working towards, for example, getting a gold medal at Nationals.

Some key points to remember when settings goals:

(1) Focus on the goals you can control

Focus on process and performance goals you can control instead of focusing on the outcome

(2) Write them down!

Individuals who write down goals are more likely to achieve them then those who don’t write them down Writing down goals help to monitor your progress

(3) Make them visible for you to read on a daily basis

Ensure your list of goals is visible for you to read them a couple times a day (especially before training/competition) to remind you of your objectives.

If you have any questions regarding setting goals, please email Serena at serenamacleodsportpych@gmail.com

Psychological Pillars of Optimal Performance: Part 1

A step by step guide to settings goals