This is Your Brain on Sports: Beating Blocks, Slumps and Performance Anxiety for Good! by Dr. Alan Goldberg & Dr. David Grand

Author:Dr. Alan Goldberg & Dr. David Grand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports Psychology
ISBN: 2940013310285
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Published: 2011-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

Mahala overcame her fears

Many parents, coaches, and sports psychologists mistakenly believe that they can make sense out of an RSPP by simply examining the athlete’s recent performance history. An assumption is often made that there must be a direct relationship between the problem and something specific that recently happened to the athlete on the court, on the field, or in the gym. Although this is occasionally the case, usually it’s not. This is why the athlete’s trauma history both in and out of his or her sport must be closely examined to understand and resolve the performance difficulty.

A final example of the struggling athlete’s need to be seen as a person with a personal trauma history is the story of Stacey, a 14-year-old level-7 gymnast. She was referred to us because of her fear of going backward on the balance beam. Stacey had stopped doing her back walkover on beam two years before. Her fear had more recently spread to backward moving skills on two other events. The young gymnast was terrified that she would fall off the beam, hit her head, and sustain a serious injury. Her fear of back walkovers had mysteriously appeared shortly after she had mastered the skill as a level-5 gymnast. During warmup, Stacey’s coach spotted her for the first few moves, but when Stacey went to do her beam routine, she panicked, realizing she would have to do the back walkover without a spot. Despite her intense fear, she was able to force herself to go for the skill; however, as she put her right hand down on the beam, her hand slipped and she fell. An instant before her head hit the beam, Stacey managed to get her left hand down and push herself away before getting injured. This close call left her badly shaken, convinced that if she attempted another back handspring, she would miss and hit her head on the beam.

Over the next year, Stacey refused to go for the skill. On the rare occasions when she mustered up the courage to try, she invariably ended up reinforcing her fear by falling, yet two years later, she finally recovered the back walkover at a gymnastics camp and was able to comfortably execute it for almost the entire competitive season. One week before her level-6 sectional end-of-season meet, however, she inexplicably began to balk again as her fear became incapacitating. Since that time, she had been too terrified to attempt the skill.

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