Sports Psychology Paper

Sports like golf and baseball especially at the professional level are said to be more like games of the mind rather than talent, in many cases athletes who seem very evenly matched are challenged by mental factors. Sports psychologist study human behavior to understand motor skill performance, with this information applied sports psychologist can give athletes a competitive advantage to achieve their physical and mental potential.

In Tartakovsky’s (2016) article reviewing the history of sports psychology, in the late 19th century early 20th century psychologist like Norman Triplett did studies related to cycling testing the times of cyclists competing against others versus when they cycled alone (Tartakovsky, M.,2016). He found that the

Griffith. He started studying sports psychology in 1918, he focused on how vision and performance can foretell performance in football and basketball. In 1925 he published an article called “psychology and its relation to athletic competition” he said that in athletic competition when athletes more or less learn to use their minds, it will not only improve the skill of these athletes but also improve sportsmanship and competitiveness for the betterment of the game. With these studies it broke ground for research in sport psychology, sparking interest of coaches and players to gain a competitive advantage over their opponents. Today Sports Psychologist work to consult with sports teams to enhance performance, cope with pressures of competition, recover from injuries, increase motivation, and enjoy sports

Researchers found that female athletes use emotional focused problem solving, while males use problem focused coping. According to the study females tend to seek more social support for emotional reasons which increased effort to manage frustration than did males (Madrigal, L., Gill, D. L., & Willse, J. T. 2017). It further stated that females generally felt like they were more in control and self-efficient than males did. But this model showed that mental toughness was a better approach to measuring coping mechanisms and it showed that males and females did not differ. The article confirmed that mental toughness is a unbiased measure for both males and females, more studies can be done with athletes and coaches to help develop mental toughness to fight stress of competition using appropriate coping mechanisms (Madrigal, L., Gill, D. L., & Willse, J. T.