Session Two

Mindset/Mental Preparation:

To be able to correctly perform a pre-shot ritual there are 2 things in which I find important. This is Motivation and Arousal, allowing all of these factors to come through in the pre-shot routine is allowing your mind to be mentally prepared for the free throw shot.

Motivation

Motivation can be defined as simply as the direction and intensity of one’s effort. The more motivation one has to a task the more likely they will succeed with the task. Achievement motivation refers to a person’s efforts to master a task, achieve excellence, overcome obstacles, perform better than others, and take pride in exercising talent (Weinberg & Gould, 2007). There are two main forms of motivation: Intrinsic and Extrinsic.

Intrinsic motivation is from within, it is a desire to perform well and succeed. It is the following: a desire to overcome the problem or task, development of skills and habits to overcome that problem, rehearsal of successful habits until they are perfect, a feeling of pride and enjoyment in performing the skill and the repeated goal setting in order to progress and maintain motivation (PE, 2014).

Extrinsic motivation is that comes from a source outside of the performer, these are thing which can encourage the athlete to perform and fall into two groups, Tangible rewards and intangible rewards. Tangible rewards are physical rewards such as medals and money. Intangible rewards are praise, recognition and achievements (PE, 2014).

Arousal

Arousal is a blend of physiological and psychological activity in a person and it refers to the intensity dimensions of motivation at a particular moment (Weinberg & Gould, 2007). Hardy’s Catastrophe model addresses the performance on the complex interaction of arousal and cognitive anxiety. Physiologically arousal can have markedly different effects on performance, depending on the amount of cognitive anxiety one is experiencing. It is stated that when one athlete is aroused before the activity they are more inclined to perform better in their activity, if their arousal levels are too high then there will be a catastrophic decline in perform (Weinberg & Gould, 2007).

Design of session:

1.     Have overall consistency throughout shots, block all surrounding noise, have motivation and positive thought that ball will enter hoop

2.     Attempt all these factors in each shot, complete 20 shots

3.     Have break shoot ball around like in game mode

4.     Attempt 40 more shots working on all factors

Results of session:

·      Was able to block out noise and have positive thoughts before shooting hoops

·      10 out of 20 shots went into the hoop, had all factors incorporated into each shot

·      Lost focus when I was shooting around like in game mode

·      25 out of 40 shots went into the hoop when I regained focus and overall mental preparation for each shot

Overall 35 out of 60 shots went into the basket.

Reflection:

This session was really beneficial to me, as I found that using these two factors helped me concentrate more on the pre-shot routine and the thought of the ball entering the basket. Although my stats from the session are not much higher than my first session I believe that if I keep practicing these skills I will improve over time.

References:

PE, T. (2014, May 17). Sports Psychology: Motivation. Retrieved May 17, 2014, from Teach PE: http://www.teachpe.com/sports_psychology/motivation.php

Weinberg, R. S., & Gould, D. (2007). Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology (4th Edition ed.). United States of America: Human Kinetics.