Sports Psychology and Clinical Psychology News for 06-11-2019

Expertly Selected by Dr. John F Murray

Nice Video on the Psychology of Leadership Above

Enhancing Confidence in Football

Confidence is usually spoken of as being a key to performance. It’s hard to perform well without confidence. The key is to assist players to do as well in actual games as they do in practice. Sports psychologists emphasize that players constantly look to boost their mental skills, even as much as their technique. Although fans do no often realize this this, football players at all levels encounter troublesome periods in their careers for a range of reasons, and this has a negative impact on both their performances and their mental states. In order to encourage confidence, the sports psychologist needs to be confident him or herself, and to model it for the athlete. He or she must be accessible to the athlete and open enough to encourage openness in the client! It seems that more and more football players, and all athletes really, are beginning to take the reality of psychological state very seriously.

Sports Psychology Services for Football Players

If you’re performing great in practice and look like a star but find yourself choking in games, your mental game is definitely holding you back. Many athletes struggle with taking their practice to games because of fear of failure and other mental roadblocks. Sports psychologists teach parents, coaches, and athletic trainers how to help football players achieve peak performance through mental game skills. If you are not getting the most out of your performance at game time, it’s time to look at your mental game instead of do more reps in the gym.

You can get expert mental coaching from Dr. John F Murray from anywhere in the world. You can engage in a mental coaching program via Skype, phone, or WhatsApp video from the comfort of your home or hotel. Mental toughness coaching helps serious football players to uncover the beliefs and mindsets that truly affect potential and performance. You can improve your mental game in a big way. One-on-one mental coaching is the fastest and most effective method to improve your mental game, boost your performance, and make lasting changes and there are a variety of mental coaching programs to choose from.

Comments on the Psychology of Fantasy Football

I love fantasy football because it makes you familiar with all the players in the game, in any sport. The trades that are made, the players started or benched, the captains are chosen … all play a role in real sports, and the same thing can happen when we play Fantasy Football. How good a decision makes us feel plays an important role in the choices we make. In Fantasy Football, our emotions are often misleading, as when we over-value expensive players, and under-value cheaper options.

Given that we talk about ‘owning’ the players on our teams, the implications to Fantasy Football are interesting. A fear of mistakes can make us pursue strategies which limit the number of decisions we have to make, such as spending the absolute minimum on bench players. What really matters is the number of points you can acquire on gameday, not whether or not you played your perfect team each week. The effect is that we gain the false impression that a particular lineup is dominant, even though it is common for highly-owned players in the Fantasy community to be completely ignored by particular Fantasy managers.

Recency bias can often lead to ‘chasing points’, as we focus too much on a player’s latest performance, rather than on their overall prospects. Another example of Fantasy managers falling for recency bias occurs in pre-season, where we look for the players that match the characteristics of last season’s stars.