Psychology of Sports is still a relatively new concept and ideology, and when I say new with in the last 30 to 40 years, and it really has only been the last two decades that people have began to study what things make athletes excel, what kind of behaviors and what kind of thought processes high performing athletes exhibit. There are two types of sports psychology, one is the theory behind sport psychology which would fall mostly in the academia world of psychology, mostly full of theories and research, then there is the applied sports psychology aspect, which in tails more of the teaching and training of specific mental skill sets that help athletes and individuals achieve greatness. These skills can include, visualization, relaxation, confidence, motivation, reducing interference, increasing assertiveness.

Here at visualizeone.com we have outlined 5 essential steps to high performance, these steps are found in a book written by Dr. Craig L Manning called the Fearless Mind.

What the main focus of sport psychology is shifting towards is less on theory and more on application, what makes the greats great. This is something that I have wondered all my life, I was an athlete and I watch sports, I noticed a number of people who were very athletically gifted, but then there were a few who were just a notch about the rest of the competition, and I could tell that it was not because they were more athletically gifted, in fact in some of these sports there were athletes that were more gifted than the greats. I always wondered what is was the made these individuals great. People like, Micheal Jordan, Larry Bird, Wayne Gretzky, Pete Sampras, Nolan Ryan, more recently, Kobe Bryant, Alex Rodriguez, Peyton Manning. These athletes are a notch above the rest, turns out it is because of the mental skills that they have developed over time. These mental skills are what allow these players to out perform their competition on a daily basis. I wanted to know what these skills were. Because I was an athlete I actually sought out a sports psychologist, he was good at diagnosing and specifying what skills a high performing athlete exhibited, but he was poor at teaching me how to develop these skills.

Here at Visualizeone.com we focus on mental skills training, research has shown that there are specific skills that people do to perform at a high level. We have actually published what these skills are and how to apply them in a book called The Fearless Mind, written by Dr.Craig L. Manning, we also train people how to develop these skills.

Psychology of sport is the study of the thoughts and behaviors that are exhibited in sports by individuals associated with those sports. This can be coaches, athletes, fans, and parents. But we all can develop the skills necessary to perform at a high level, no matter what area of life we wish to apply those skills whether is it sports, family, or business.