According to Butler (1996) Performance Profiling is based on a model of human behaviour called Personal Construct Theory. It is a way of understanding how athletes rate the skills and qualities of their own performance in relation to their sport (Butler, 1996).
Clark (2005) states Performance profiling is useful to identify an athletes’ strengths and weaknesses and is also useful for the implementation of goal setting strategies and performance enhancing strategies. The Performance Profile provides a visual display of the athletes’ assessment of self, plotted onto a series of aspects the athlete believes to be important for optimal performance (Clark, 2005).
Key Sports Psychology Issues arisen from the Interview: …show more content…
Therefore the following steps should be taken to identify and modify an athlete’s negative self-talk: First ask the athlete to simply notice self-talk through-out their day and see what is triggering these mental pictures, feelings and words. Once the athlete has an awareness of their inner voice ask them to identify and record their self-talk at the same time each day, ideally just before their training session (Earle & Baechle, 2004). Ask the athlete to make a list of all these negative thoughts that is affecting his or her performance. Once he/she has identified all these negative self-talk phrases he/she should then try to substitute in a positive statement for the negative one (Renstrom, …show more content…
Thought stopping is a self-talk technique and involves the athlete recognising when negative self-talk is occurring and immediately using a trigger to stop the thought and clear the athletes mind (ASEP, 2011). This trigger can be saying simple words such as ‘stop’ and ‘no’ to yourself (Renstrom, 2002). Athletes may also incorporate a colour or image such as a red light or stop sign to stop this negative thinking (Burton & Raedeke, 2008). Some athletes find that behavioural cues such snapping their fingers together or wearing an elastic band and snapping their wrist at each negative thought works much better (Taylor & Wilson, 2005). According to Klarica’s (2001) journal on Performance in Motor Sports some drivers use the clicking of their seat belt as it fastens as a trigger to block out any distractions and “switch on”. After this the driver’s deep breathing while using the force of the seatbelt could be used as a cue to relax and focus at the task at hand (Klarica,