Sport Psychology, in orienting the individual towards healthy growth, aims to expand personal limits to ensure that any difficulty is overcome with a view to improving communication with others and with one’s body in view of achieving satisfactory experiences (Orlick 1989). The methodology to aspire to these results consists of individual and group interventions which can consist of the administration of questionnaires, mental training, field work, cooperation and listening, specific sports strategies.
Specifically, the operational areas of Sport Psychology that we deal with concern:
- the psychic abilities relevant to sports performance, which is divided into: adequate determination of objectives (goal-setting), regulation of Arousal, i.e. the general state of activation and reactivity of the nervous system in response to internal/subjective or external/environmental-social stimuli, stress management, development of self-efficacy and self-esteem, acquisition of a routine for preparation for the competition, self-regulation and internal language;
- the acquisition of specific skills such as feedback methods, event management, technical learning, the development of practical techniques, the choice of the most suitable reinforcements, information processing, observation and motivation skills;
- information processing through the psychic processes involved in activities such as attention, memory, decision making, movement planning, feedback, etc.;
- clinical psychology, an area in which adaptation strategies (coping) have an important position to cope with crisis situations or to react to any forms of depression or panic attacks, to traumatic moments such as the end of one’s career, accidents, disabilities, or even performance anxiety, aggression, fear of success (nikephobia), drug use, doping, etc.
