SISU

🔷 HOW TO BUILD YOUR CONFIDENCE 2.0🔷

We’ve previously discussed how sport confidence can be defined as the belief in possessing the internal skills and resources required to perform optimally.

Your confidence level depends on how good you think you are or can be in your sport.

This belief has an impact on your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

The more confidence you develop, the higher the likelihood of playing without fear of making mistakes.

Athletes with high efficacy expectations for a specific task are likelier to try a new skill and be less likely to let initial nonsuccess reduce their motivation. 

Here are three sport confidence resources you can use to increase your ability to believe in your skills!

1. Mastery Experience. Think about all the work you’ve put in so far. Remember your best past performances. If you’ve done it once, you can do it again!

2. Team support. Trust your teammates and use them as a resource to build your confidence. As Michael Jordan said: “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”

3. Self-efficacy. High self-efficacy describes the belief that you have what it takes within yourself to complete whatever challenge you face.

If you have any questions on how to develop your sport confidence levels, let us know in the comments below 👇 or send us a DM📥 !

This past Monday we had the opportunity to show the benefits of business coaching to .

We talked about the importance of applying effective communication skills within a team environment while also implementing specific strategies to foster the individual overall well-being (using a gratitude and growth-mindset model).

🔷🟢MENTAL HEALTH🟢🔷

Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being.

It affects how we think, feel, and act.

It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.

Mental health is important at EVERY stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood (mentalhealth.gov)

Within the sport context, is an optimal state in which every athlete:
- realizes his or her own potential
- can cope with the normal stresses of life and sports
- can work productively and fruitfully
- is able to contribute to her or his team

Data from the American College of Sports Medicine indicates that 35% of elite athletes struggle with eating disorders, burnout, depression, or anxiety.

There are different risk factors that might impair mental health as well as some barriers reported by athletes to seek help.

Providing programs for increasing help-seeking actions among athletes is a critical step toward fostering awareness of mental health programs.

Whatever your al going through, please remember that you are worthy of love 💚

IT IS OK, NOT TO BE OK

YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

For this 2nd post on sleep hygiene, has great tips and strategies for you to improve your sleep quantity and quality time!

Every athlete knows that sleep😴 is important!

But how does sleep quality affect performance?👇👇

While optimal sleep:

- improves brain function, reaction time, and, skill acquisition
- allows for muscle growth and tissue repair
- improves hormone and immune system function

Sleep deprivation:

- leads to cravings, throws of appetite, and metabolism
- decreases your body’s ability to combat disease
- can delay recovery for up to 10 days
- will decrease speed, accuracy, and reaction time both physically and mentally

Multiple studies have shown improving sleep and reducing accumulated sleep debt result in:

- 9% increase in Free Throw shooting %
- 12% faster reaction time 9%
- increase in Three Point shooting %
- Foster sprint times in NFL combine drills
- Decreased fatigue levels and daytime sleepiness
- Improved RPE ratings of practices and games

Here are some fundamentals for you to foster sleep hygiene:

- Prioritize making a regular commitment to sleep at least 8-9 hours
- Give yourself transition times, get up as soon as you hear the alarm, and avoid the snooze button
- Be consistent by establishing a regular bedtime and waking hours
- The more sleep you get before midnight the better

There are some specific strategies as well that will help you improve sleep and recovery:

- Make your bedroom like a cave: dark, quiet, cool, and comfortable: blackout curtains, white noise machines, utilize a fan to circulate air. Cooler temperatures are better for sleep quality
- Wake up with morning sunlight: get sunlight upon awakening and always eat breakfast (routine)
- Power down by making your room a technology-free zone
- Establish a 20-30 min routine before bed: you can include reading, stretching, yoga, or breathing exercises. It will help you to set an alarm 30 mins before bedtime to wrap up your day and head to bed

Do you have a specific bedtime routine?

Let us know in the comments below👇!

🔷Sleep Hygyiene🔷

Sleep hygiene can be described as the habits we have before going to be.

With the aim of improving performance and overall well-being, we want to make sure we establish a specific set of healthy habits before bedtime during the sporting year.

Before bedtime, try to avoid:

- Consuming caffeine, stimulating drinks, alcohol, and ni****ne (6 hours)

- If possible, extreme exercise sessions (above 3 hours)

- Consuming a large amount of food or drinks

- Blue light exposure (phone, TV, laptops...)

A set of habits that will help improve our sleep hygiene:

- Use of dim light instead of room light

- Make sure you get enough sleep to feel rested (at least 8-9 hours)

- Glass of whole milk. The tryptophane content of whole milk helps melatonin and serotonin production

- Substitute phone use for book reading, meditation, or breathing exercises

What’s your sleep hygiene routine?
Let us know in the comments below👇!

🔷HOW TO BE MENTALLY TOUGH 3.0🔷

For this 3rd and final post on how to be mentally tough, these attributes are expected to be a mentally tough performer:

* Accepting that competition anxiety is inevitable and knowing that you can cope with it

* Not being adversely affected by others’ good and bad performances

* Regaining psychological control following unexpected, uncontrollable events (competition-specific)

Comment 🔥 if you are finding this information useful and we’ll send you the complete mental toughness attributes and importance rankings table!
 
If you have any questions on how to develop your own mental toughness plan or how to assess your mental strengths/areas of improvement, let us know in the comments below 👇 or send us a DM📥 !





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🔷HOW TO BE MENTALLY TOUGH 3.0🔷

For this 3rd and final post on how to be mentally tough, these attributes are required to be a mentally tough performer:

* Accepting that competition anxiety is inevitable and knowing that you can cope with it

* Not being adversely affected by others’ good and bad performances

* Regaining psychological control following unexpected, uncontrollable events 66 6 (competition-specific)
 
Comment 🔥 if you are finding this information useful and we’ll send you the all the mental toughness attributes and importance rakings!

If you have any questions on how to develop your own mental toughness plan or how to assess your mental strengths/areas of improvement, let us know in the comments below 👇 or send us a DM📥 !





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🔷HOW TO BE MENTALLY TOUGH 2.0🔷

For this 2nd post on how to be mentally tough, research shows that mental toughness is a result of how strong-mind athletes are capable of:

* Having an insatiable desire and internalized motives to succeed

* Thriving regardless of competition pressures

* Pushing back the boundaries of physical and emotional pain, while still maintaining technique and effort under distress (in training and competition)
 
Remember that you can develop your own plan to achieve this critical aspect of top-performance athletes!
 
If you have any questions on how to develop your own mental toughness plan or how to assess your mental strengths/areas of improvement, let us know in the comments below 👇 or send us a DM📥 !

🔷HOW TO BE MENTALLY TOUGH🔷

Mental toughness can be defined as having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to: • 

- COPE better than your opponents with the many demands (competition, training, lifestyle) that sport places on a performer. • 

- Specifically, be more consistent and better than your opponents in remaining determined, focused, confident, and in control under pressure.

Based on Jones et al., 2002, mentally tough athletes show 12 different attributes. 
 
For this post, we’ll focus on:

- Believing in your own ability

- Bouncing back from performance set-backs

- Remaining fully focused on the task at hand

Inherent within the definition is the notion that athletes can possess a “natural” mental toughness that they bring with them to the sports environment. 
 
However, it is also possible to develop mental toughness so that sports psychologists and mental performance coaches can play an important role in this respect. 
 
You can develop your own plan to achieve this critical aspect of top-performance athletes!
 
If you have any questions on how to develop your own mental toughness plan or how to assess your mental strengths/areas of improvement, let us know in the comments below 👇 or send us a DM📥 !

🔷HOW TO BUILD YOUR CONFIDENCE🔷

Sport confidence can be defined as the belief in possessing the internal skills and resources required to optimally perform

It has been recognized as a critical psychological characteristic influencing the development of elite sports performance (Durand-Bush & Salmela, 2002) with a number of studies associating high levels of confidence with a range of desirable cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses.

3 types of sport confidence (O.Thomas Et Al., 2019) are discussed in this post:

- Skill ex*****on I (physical/technical skills)
- Skill ex*****on II (tactical skills)
- Physical factors
- Psychological factors

A specific goal-setting approach, where strengths and weaknesses are assessed, will help athletes, coaches, and parents design a specific plan, which can be used to improve their psychological, physical, and skill abilities with the aim of improving sports performance.

If you have any questions on how to develop your own goal-setting plan or how to assess your strengths/areas of improvement, let us know in the comments below 👇 or send us a DM📥 !

Self-care strategies have been shown to improve athletes' performance and overall well-being.

They can be defined as positive actions that promote wellness and effective coping with life and sport stressors

Here are different strategies that can be used to build a self-care plan:

- Exercise (non-sport related, e.g., yoga)
- Proper nutrition (following a plan that meets the sports energy-specific demands)
- Time in nature (keep your phone at home!)
- Develop supportive social relationships
- Stress management (e.g., breathing skills)

Specific to the individuals' needs and preferences, athletes will experience multiple benefits from applying these strategies during the season.

If you have any questions on how to develop your self-care plan or how to use these strategies with your team, let us know in the comments below 👇 or send us a DM📥 !

Resilience can be defined as the capacity of the team/individual to sustain prolonged stress and maintain optimal performance levels.

Exposure to increased pressure is an option when looking to improve the resilient skills of teams and players.

In this study conducted by Kegelaers and colleagues (2018) with female basketball players, different strategies were used during 8 training sessions to increase the training pressure.

There are multiple ways in which coaches can manipulate the practice sessions to increase game pressure:

-Mental (e.g rewards and consequences)
-Physical (e.g. induced fatigue)
-Environment (e.g distractions)

The group exposed to the resilient training showed:

- Reduction in the team-level vulnerabilities
- Increased awareness, emerging leadership, stronger communication channels, and the development and ex*****on of collective plans

It is important to notice the role of formal and informal pre- and post-training reflections (e.g., post-exercise discussion), so the players can understand WHAT is required of them, WHY they are doing it, and HOW they can succeed!

If you have any questions on how to develop your resilience skills or how to use this type of training with your team, let us know in the comments below 👇 or send us a DM📥 !

🔷 “If you don’t know where you are headed, you’re probably going to wind up somewhere other than where you want to be.” - Mack Casstevens 🔷

Goal setting is vital for athletes as it provides them with a clear path to reach optimal performance.

To learn more about goal setting check out our blog post!







https://sisumpc.com/goal-setting-sisu-approach/

Goal setting – SISU approach – SISU

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