Having observed the similarities between soccer, basketball, hockey, and other sports that include a clear target for scoring and interacting team offensive and defensive positions, I’ve often wondered what mental skills help these athletes achieve high-level performance, and what are the best mental skills for scoring? Performers pursuing excellence in team sports such as soccer, basketball, and hockey face a complex set of challenges. When the goal is to kick, throw, or hit the ball or puck past the defense toward the target, opportunities to score must be weighed against passing and dribbling or moving to create a better opportunity. Success in these sports clearly requires physical speed, strength, and endurance, but also technical, tactical skills, and mental skills such as effective focus, creativity, flexibility, and effective decision-making.
External Focus
Although research generally supports the widely used cognitive behavioral sport psychology interventions for team sports including relaxation, imagery, and self-talk, but not necessarily attentional focus, very few sport psychology studies directly measure mental processes during sport performance, making it difficult to know how interventions help performance2,3. Specifically, should athletes in team sports focus internally or externally during sport performance? Some indications suggest that an external perceptual focus on the environment may be more beneficial in these sports, helping athletes recognize important meaningful patterns, allowing them to react quickly and effectively4,5. By contrast, internal focus may result in missing important external information and may even interfere with quick, effective decision-making1– in these sports, it may be better to maintain momentary focus on the external environment, so consider scanning the external environment and waiting until the time is right to pass, dribble, move, or shoot.
Creativity & Cognitive Flexibility
For games that require athletes to make simultaneous moves, being predictable clearly places one at a disadvantage as defenses focused externally quickly adapt. Not surprisingly, mixed strategies are predicted to be best by game theorists and shown to be the most effective6. After attending to the external environment, mental skills that allow athletes to change course and make different decisions allow them to adapt best to dynamically changing environments. In team sports, do whatever it takes in the moment to help your team, and be willing to shift strategies, so consider having a game planbut bewilling and able tochange your plan on a dime to pass, dribble, move, shoot, or score depending on whatever the best decision might be in the moment for your team.
Optimal Timing, Automaticity, & Decision Making
Research shows that external focus may improve performance in team sports by encouraging athletes to automatically react effectively to the environment instead of focusing internally and possibly overthinking their actions4,5. In addition, greater creativity, response inhibition, and cognitive flexibility are found in higher-level soccer players7. Taken altogether, to perform your best in team shooting and scoring sports, rather than forcing a shot, DON’T BE A HERO:
- focus keenly on the external environment, scanning it constantly for relevant information;
- be ready for the unexpected, and be unpredictable, mixing your decisions to see what works best;
- make it your goal do the right thing for your team, whatever it is, at the right time;
- wait for the opportunity to pass, dribble, move, shoot, and score, and react automatically;
- and attend to the results of your efforts, adjusting your strategies as needed.
References
1 Thelwell, R. C., Greenlees, I. A., & Weston, N. J. (2006). Using psychological skills training to develop soccer performance. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 18(3), 254-270.
2 Dickens, Y. L., Van Raalte, J., & Hurlburt, R. T. (2018). On investigating self-talk: A descriptive experience sampling study of inner experience during golf performance. The Sport Psychologist, 32(1), 66-73.
3Dickens, Y. L. (2007). Inner experience during golf performance (Doctoral dissertation, University of Nevada, Las Vegas).
4 Wulf, G., McConnel, N., Gärtner, M., & Schwarz, A. (2002). Enhancing the learning of sport skills through external-focus feedback. Journal of motor behavior, 34(2), 171-182.
5 Wulf, G., & Su, J. (2007). An external focus of attention enhances golf shot accuracy in beginners and experts. Research quarterly for exercise and sport, 78(4), 384-389.
6 Chiappori, P. A., Levitt, S., & Groseclose, T. (2002). Testing mixed-strategy equilibria when players are heterogeneous: The case of penalty kicks in soccer. American Economic Review, 92(4), 1138-1151.
7 Vestberg, T., Gustafson, R., Maurex, L., Ingvar, M., & Petrovic, P. (2012). Executive functions predict the success of top-soccer players. PloS one, 7(4), e34731.
