Mental and Physical Preparation for Sport

Introduction



Success starts with one most powerful asset: ones brain. Strengthening this tool is paramount for success. As the premise states, “the role of the mind in sports performance is crucial for success…” It is important to acknowledge that successful athletic performance is a function of not only what the athlete does, but also what the athlete thinks. In turn, the ultimate athletic performance can only be realized when both the mind, through psychological training, and the body, through physiological and skills training, attain their fullest potential. Beggs (1990) asserts “when an athlete goes out on the field, for a contest, he does not leave his mind tucked away in a locker with his shoes, his watch and his hat…the best athletes use almost every faculty of their minds when they go into a contest” (p 56).


There has been much speculation on how to define motivation. One version explains it as ‘an intervening process or an internal state of an organis...