What It Takes to Become an Elite Athlete

A Look at the Mental Ability of Top Sports People

Feb 9, 2009 Matthew Cotterill

An elite athlete's ability to deal with the stresses of top level sport, from overcoming injuries to dealing with last minute nerves, is what separates him from the rest.

Watching any professional or elite level sport on TV often raises the question, why are the best so much better than everyone else? Despite the fact that, say, two players in a given sport have probably played the game for the same amount of time and have had fairly similar training for the event, one player always seems to out class the other and sometimes on a consistent basis. While genetics are often named as the main reason for this athletic discrepancy, the mental ability of the players also has a great impact on performance; how the players deal with stress, how they visualise the game going and how they prepare themselves minutes before the start are often the key deciding factors to winning and losing.

Patterns of Cognition

A study published in the Journal of Cognitive Therapy and Research, questioned thirteen male gymnasts during the final trials for the US Olympic team. Using their final competitive grouping as the primary variable, correlations were performed to assess the relationship between psychological factors and cognitive strategies with superior athletic performance.

The study suggests that “varying patterns of cognition may be strongly correlated with successful and superior gymnastic performance”. Factors such as dream frequency, self-verbalizations, anxiety patterns, different methods of coping with competitive stress and certain forms of mental imagery defined the best gymnasts of the group.

A similar study was published in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology examining the psychological characteristics and their development in Olympic Champions.

Ten US Olympic champions were interviewed, as were one of their coaches and a parent, guardian or significant other. The athletes also underwent a number of psychological tests. Once the results were analysed the psychologists characterised all the athletes by:

• The ability to cope with and control anxiety
• Confidence
• Mental toughness/resiliency
• Sport intelligence
• The ability to focus and block out distractions
• Competitiveness
• A hard-work ethic
• The ability to set and achieve goals
• Coach ability
• High levels of dispositional hope
• Optimism
• Adaptive perfectionism

The study also showed that outside influences on the athlete, particularly community/coach/family, had positive affects, both direct, from teaching valuable psychological lessons, and indirect from “modelling or unintentionally creating psychological environments”.

Dealing With Injuries

One aspect that also demonstrates the psychological differences in elite athletes, is their ability to overcome obstacles such as injuries.

A study published in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology investigated the psychological characteristics and reactions of injured athletes and to examine the change in the these reactions through their rehabilitation.

136 elite injured athletes from 25 sports were examined during four phases: Upon injury, partial recovery, semi-recovery and full recovery. Athlete demographics, injury appraisal and emotional and psychological variables were all measured and changes were examined through a series of repeated measure MAN-OVAs with polynomial contrasts.

What they found in the athletes over time was, “increased confidence and vigour and decreased negative emotional responses over the recovery period”, though changes over the recovery period were not always constant. “Confidence of adhering to rehabilitation, passive and emotion-focused coping, remained stable over time”.

It seems that all elite athletes share common characteristics in dealing with the pressures of full-time sport. An unwavering self-belief and resiliency that allows them to focus on the task at hand is what separates them from the rest, allowing them to consistently produce top athletic performances.

Sources

Psychological Characteristics and Their Development in Olympic Champions – Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, Gould; Dieffenbach; Moffet

The Changes in Psychological Characteristics and Reactions of Elite Athlete From Injury Onset Until Full Recovery – Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, Quinn; Fallon

Psychology of the Elite Athlete: An Exploratory Study – Cognitive Therapy and Research, Mahoney; Avener

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Elite Athletes