Elite sport performance/Concentration/Errors and distractions

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Distractions and concentration errors

Shooting is one of the most psychologically challenging of all sports, requiring a level of precision and consistency that must border on perfection to challenge for medals at the international level. As an example, to score a 10 in the air rifle event, it is necessary to hit an area with a diameter of only 0.5 millimetres from a distance of 10 metres. Maintaining absolute concentration is therefore paramount.

Secrets of Asian Sport Psychology includes a chapter on Shooting in India, which can be downloaded below.

Some typical distracting thoughts that can affect shooters in competition are identified in the chapter. Examples include:

  • The crowd behind me were too noisy.
  • The light changed during the round.
  • Sweat dripped on to my glasses.
  • My heart was beating too fast.
  • Why did that target not break?
  • I always have a problem with the second round.

Key details and distractions

During any sporting contest an infinite variety of things compete for your attention. Experience eventually teaches you to distinguish what is central to performance and what is best ignored, but this can take many years.

A short-cut to this learning process is to spend some time identifying the things that are indispensable to performance and those that are potential distractions. In the activity below you can try this yourself.

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Activity

In a sport of your choice, think about key details that are central to performance and distractions that can divert attention. Examples from shooting are listed as a guide. Once you have done this, click on the box below.

Key details
  1. The target.
  2. The sight.
  3. Finger pressure on trigger.
Distractions
  1. My own thoughts.
  2. Wind changes.
  3. Other competitors.
  4. Background noise.


More
Many things can happen to drag your attention away from the relevant to the irrelevant. Excitement, elation, anxiety, anger, self-doubt, and a host of other emotions can cause attention to wander. When this happens, performance starts to suffer. Identifying key details on which to focus can assist with concentration, but there is still a long way to go to perfect your attentional control.




Exploring dimensions of concentration

Another important feature of attention to remember is that, in addition to selectivity, it also has direction and width. At any given time your attention can be directed externally to objects around you, or internally towards your own thoughts and feelings.

Also, attention can have a narrow focus on a single object or thought, or a broad focus on a range of objects or feelings. Hence, there are four attentional dimensions:

  • Broad-external.
  • Narrow-external.
  • Broad-internal.
  • Narrow-external.

During a sporting contest, attention will shift across these dimensions. At times you will be reading the game, noticing opponents' positions, or anticipating the action (broad-external). The next moment you may need to focus on a specific object such as the ball or target (narrow-external).

At other times you may be planning a play, recalling a successful move you made in the past, or imagining yourself overcoming an opponent (broad-internal). Alternatively, your thoughts may be drawn to your feelings of fatigue, or a specific thought, or your heart rate (narrow-internal).

As you can see, attentional processes can be be quite complex and it is not helpful to think of concentration as something that just comes and goes. The process of controlling the direction, width and selectivity of attention lies at the heart of skilled action in sports performance.

Typical errors in concentration

Errors in concentration can be considered not only as problems of attention selection, but also as choosing the incorrect type of attentional focus for the precise task at hand. For each type of attentional focus, one type may assist peformance whereas the other types may prove detrimental.

In field hockey, for example, if at the precise moment when your attention should be on taking a penalty flick (narrow-external), you are thinking about previous missed opportunities (broad-internal), you greatly increase the chance of missing again.

Here are some examples of typical errors:

External focus too narrow
  • Failing to notice tactical movements of opponents.
  • Failing to notice a team mate in a good position.
  • Ignoring environment conditions when initiating a play.
  • Missing opportunities.
  • Hogging the ball when passing is the correct choice.
External focus is too broad
  • Making simple errors; e.g. mis-hitting, mis-shooting, inaccurate throws.
  • Failure to focus on the ball or target.
  • Wasting time by focusing on things peripheral to performance.
  • Getting distracted by external noises or crowd chants that are irrelevant to performance.
Inappropriate broad-internal focus
  • Over-analysing situations.
  • Indecision under pressure.
  • Thinking about the past rather than the here and now.
  • Thinking about the future rather than the here and now.
Inappropriate narrow-internal focus
  • Recurring negative thoughts.
  • Fixating on a particular thought or feeling and missing important things that are going on.
  • Not letting go of a mistake.
  • Focussing on fatigue or pain that could be ignored.




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