How can concentration improve your performance?
After coaching and training athletes for years, it is clear that focus and concentration levels athletes have during competition have a significant impact on sports performance. The difficulties athletes have concentrating have a considerable effect on their ability to perform their specific sport and respond under pressure.
Many internal and external factors influence your ability as an athlete to focus on. Most athletes allow themselves to take on too much information; they choose an environment with repeated mental disruptions from cell phones, Instagram messages, Facebook likes, instant messages, emojis, and email. The average person can have hundreds of these disruptions during the day.
These interruptions cause stress and take your focus, attention ways from goals and actions that will produce the results you desire in life. Over time, athletes get used to living a disrupted life, a life without presence and focus.
Also, you create a habit of living distracted.
Implementing a Personal Mental Training Program
Mindset, concentration training, mental focus development, or mindfulness as man people call it is about you as an athlete becoming intentional and connected with everything you do.
Concentration will improve all areas of your life. If you are in a classroom, it can make you appear smarter than others because you are engaged and focused on everything that is said versus having the intelligence or solution but being unable to communicate it because you are distracted.
As an athlete, you must train yourself to focus on the tasks without distraction and concentrate on execution.
Concentration training for sports
Mental preparation for sports and life training helps you to learn more about your spiritual thinking ways, which ultimately helps you to sustain attention. Also, spend more time controlling your environment. When you have hard work to do, shut off your email program and put your smartphone out of arm’s reach. Start removing the mental distractions from your environment.
External and internal factors provide the athlete with information sometimes necessary information, but in today’s environment, often unnecessary data. Some of the data is highly valuable, such as what opposing players are going, how they are moving, and what players they are calling. Whereas negative trash talk and comments by opponents are not worth paying attention too.
NBA Players and Distractions
Additionally, listening or allowing yourself to talk fro fans can get you completely unfocused. Take Russell Westbrook, for example; last year, during the 2018 – 2019 season, he got in quite a big harmful inaction with a fan of the Utah Jazz. As a collegiate player, I played BYU and Utah several times, and I know Utah fans can be vicious. For most sports observers, this may be a surprise as the typical Utah fan looks like the perfect blonde hair blue eyed neighbor out of Jim Carrey’s Turman show or Tom Hanks Mr. Rogers.
But the reality is fans will be fans, and you as a player must completely block it out. This will require you to train your mind for what is to come. You must prepare ourselves for the slaught of negative comments. You will need to put the fans and the comments in a proper perspective if that means defining that fans are crazy, unintelligent, zombies that do not deserve your energy during games. Then that must be your mindset during the games.
Dealing with Confrontational and Disrespectful Interactions
It especially difficult when someone is looking to disrespect and attempt to create an altercation for the sake of taking advantage of your position. Some fans are crossing the line, but you must be prepared for such negativity. Mental training for concentration requires you to walk through the positives and how you will respond adequately.
Allowing yourself to get aroused increased the chances of interrupting concentration and broken focus. I am a supporter of Westbrook; he is an incredible basketball player. But he cannot give such distractions any energy.
In day to day life, people are being faced with more distractions and negative interactions. We must have the mental fortitude to withstand the onslaught of distractions and remain focused on your daily tasks and life goals.
High arousal may also lead to distractibility. In addition to blocking out the noise, athletes must stay on task and focus. Allowing yourself to be distracted will reduce the chances of peak performance and increase the probability of failure during competition.
How does concentration affect sports performance?
- Bad performance
- Misses assignments
- unnecessary injury
- Teammates may lose trust in you
- Teammates lose respect
- Opposing players gain confidence
- Inconsistent gameplay
- Lack of consistency
- Appearing tired
- Unable to use the physical ability to maximum potential
- Play may appear careless
- Increased feelings of anxiety
- Taking on more stress than you should
What kind of problems do athletes experience off the field due to lack of focus?
- Unwanted or unexpected Pregnancy
- Alcohol or drug abuse
- Sleep disorders
- Multi-tasking or taking on more than you should
- Boredom
- Distractions ( seeking popularity over purpose)
- Poor diet due to fast-paced living an undisciplined life off the field
Smoking
How can I train my mind to focus?
The question, how can I improve my concentration and focus on sport? It is about organizing your life so you can focus on the daily tasks that will propel you towards your athletic goals and life vision.
The first way to train your mind to focus is by identifying the distractions:
- Possible distractions include bad habits, drinking, overindulgence
- Spending too much time on the internet
- Wasting time on social media
- Worrying or giving to much energy towards a negative relationship
- Too many personal interactions; too many people in your circle
Once you identify what is directing you, you must then put time limits or remove that distraction from your life to you can focus. The best way to do this is just to limit the time and energy you give towards these areas and additionally define the words you use when engaged in distracting conversation. Remove them!
Why is concentration important in sport?
It is important because your level of concentration during sport-specific tasks will ultimately determine your athletic achievement ceiling. At some point, your athletic attributes and gifts will top out. It is at this point when your concentration levels will determine your success. Consequently, it is hard to maximize your athletic gifts without maximum attention and concentration on your sport.
What are the simple ways I improve concentration?
When you are going to begin a sport, for example, basketball, football training, soccer combine, or individual evaluation, ask yourself what you need to perform at peak performance, your best, and then create an atmosphere that will allow for peak sports performance.
The methodology involves focusing on what tasks you need to do to; complete reach your sports specific goals and reach your athletic ceiling.
Presence and mindfulness are defined as focusing on the now rather than the fans, evaluators, critics, past coaches, past failures, and possible future outcomes.
Lastly, you must focus on performance and playing at a high level, which involves focusing on sports specific tasks and blocking out all the madness and noise associated with high-level sports.
Are attention and concentration the same?
Attention and concentration are two critical cognitive abilities characteristic of human beings. One has to do with effort, and the other has to do presence.
Let’s start with attention. Attention is being aware of what you are doing. Are you present? And mindful of the tasks you need to accomplish.
Attention versus Concentration
It is a joint statement of elementary classrooms that students are having a problem staying attentive. The reality is that elementary students are not focusing on what is being taught; they let their minds wander around all the time.
Their attention is changing from one subject to another student, their phone, to the attractiveness of a person, or how cool their shoes are. In sports, attention can be related to looking into the stands, worrying what your coach is thinking, concerned about the girls/guys in the positions, and if everyone is watching you. Your attention is continually changing.
Concentration
Concentration is the level of focus. It is the amount of attention you apply. So you must look at concentration as a scale from 0 to 100. 0 not concentrating at all and 100 being all the committed and entirely focused on the tasks at hand. Micheal Jordan like concentration would mean 90 – 100 versus child-like classroom concentration is 0 -10. Controlling one’s attention is the ability that we call concentration. We cannot concentrate on an object or an activity unless we pay selective attention to it.
Why is focusing so hard?
Focusing is so hard in today’s landscape because there are so many distractions. Let’s list all the daily madness that a person can receive.
None Important distractions
- Instagram account
- Twitter account
- Facebook account
- YouTube account
- TikTok account
- TV
- Radio
- Internet News ( politics, sports)
- People
- Texts
- Instant Messages
- Commenting and liking on random content
Important distractions
- Text from parents
- Responsibilities of family
- Texts to and from children
- One urgent verbal phone call (20 minutes)
If you gave 10 minutes to each of the listed distractions, it would add up to 2 hours and 50 minutes. That is two hours and 50 minutes that you have lost or gained, depending on how you look at it.
Now add in work, taking care of the kids and the family. Additionally, add in quality time with family and working out. And you are quickly at a 12 hour day.
If you removed all nonsignificant distractions that could add 2 hours to your day for essential activities.
What can you do daily to renew and recharge yourself?
A simple way to recharge and renew yourself is to implement at least 10 minutes of prayer/meditation and silence to your day. Create a time in your day that you can pray, meditate, and focus on what you want to accomplish in life. Give yourself the time to not only recharge but to clearly define what you want in life, sports, and how you will execute during competition. Improving concentration in games must first start with having order in your life. If your is chaotic, that will often impact your play at some point in your career. To improve focus and concentration, you must also create an organized life off the court.
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