Sports Science

Chris J. Gee’s article on behavior modification, “How Does Sport Psychology Actually Improve Athletic Performance? A Framework to Facilitate Athletes’ and Coaches’ Understanding,” portrays the importance of sport psychology in athletics. He attempts to provide information about sport psychology to coaches and athletes and give sport psychologists the ability to sell their services to athletes and teams.

Gee begins by providing background for sport psychology and stating that many teams and individuals are still wary of sport psychologists and hesitant to go to them for help. He then tells why many people are skeptical of sport psychologists. These reasons include that the athletic community views sport psychologists like other mental health practitioners and a lack of understanding of what services a sport psychologist actually provides.

Gee has developed two terms, absolute performance and relative performance, and he takes time to describe these to the reader. Absolute performance is a person’s optimum ability to perform based on their genetics. Some athletes have genetic advantages over others; therefore some athletes will theoretically always be at a disadvantage to the superior athletes. Relative performance is how the athlete performed in a competition relative to his or her absolute performance potential.

In order to persuade readers that sport psychology is an important aspect of the athletic community, he argues that there is a mental aspect to sport performance. He states that an athlete’s attitude and mental state before and during the competition can affect his or her ability to compete successfully. If an athlete experiences anxiety before or during a performance, the athlete’s perception, ability to shift attention, and fine motor functioning are decreased. Gee argues that these psychological impediments can be controlled by the athlete unlike other external factors, and a sport psychologist is necessary to obtain control over the psychological impediments.

Gee then describes cognitive anxiety and somatic anxiety and their interrelatedness. Cognitive anxiety consists of worrying and apprehension while examples of somatic anxiety are the butterflies, cold hands, and short breathing. Cognitive anxiety can be reduced by restructuring the athlete’s thought patterns and showing the athlete that his or her self-worth is not determined by their athletic performance. Somatic anxiety can be reduced with relaxation strategies that relieve tension. Gee argues that because anxiety exists in many athletes and can impede performance, sport psychologists should be a more integral part of athletic teams.

According to Gee, sport psychology helps athletes perform closer to their absolute potential by increasing their relative performance. However, psychological impediments differ from athlete to athlete and the impact on performance differs greatly as well. If the athlete can increase his or her control over these impediments, their absolute performance will drop less than the athlete that allows psychological impediments to get in the way. Overall, sport psychology is meant to help athletes perform as high as their genetic and physiological potential will allow them to by not letting psychological impediments slow them down.