Question

The volleyball team at Nike University has a tendency to clam up when the going gets tough (i.e., communication breaks down; the team loses its intensity, enthusiasm, and focus in critical situations and fails to make appropriate adjustments to things that are going on during competition). How would you intervene as either a sport psychologist or coach to deal with this situation?

If you were a coach or administrator, how would you minimize the problems faced by Olympic athletes who did not achieve their goals? How can a sport journal and performance feedback sheets be used to increase awareness?

Describe what might be included in a journal and feedback sheets. Describe what is meant by saying life skill goal-setting programs teach for goal-setting transfer. Think of your own sport and physical activity involvement and identify two goals you have set in the past. Evaluate your two goals relative to the 12 goal-setting guidelines presented in this chapter.

Briefly summarize and discuss the merits of the five different approaches that have been offered to describe the relationship between stress and performance in sport. Pick a sport and describe a typical “restructuring” stress management intervention with an athlete. Compare and contrast the concepts underlying an emotion-versus problem-focused coping strategy to manage stress in sport.

Develop an imagery program for an athlete in your sport using the imagery cookbook. Can imagery hurt athletes’ performance? Explain and then identify how athletes can avoid this negative imagery effect.

Answer 1

​​1. How would you intervene as either a sport psychologist or coach to deal with this situation?

In order to intervene as a sports psychologist, it is important to make the team members understand that in situations that are more difficult, keeping the calm is of utmost importance. It is important that communication is maintained within the team members , so that they could maintain their calm and devise strategies to get out of the intense situation. This would give them problem solving abilities and these problem solving abilities would allow the person to get out of the situation. It is very important that as a sports team, they should handle their calm and try to win.

2. If you were a coach or administrator, how would you minimize the problems faced by Olympic athletes who did not achieve their goals? How can a sport journal and performance feedback sheets be used to increase awareness?

In order to identify the problems faced by the sports team, it is important to look through the various areas and notice the difficulties that these players are facing. Going through sports journals and feedback sheets , we could go through the interviews and feedback of what problems the team members are facing or what extra facilities are required by them. Many a times these feedback’s go unnoticed by the authorities that should pay attention to these, and once noticed, facilities would be improved.

3. Describe what might be included in a journal and feedback sheets.

In journals and feedback sheets, there would be data published, done by the researchers, which would provide statistics and information about the present condition of what is being faced by the average sports person. This is important since it would become the mirror of what the actual condition is and how it impacts the performance of the players. The feedback sheets and journal might include past conditions and graphs indicating performance of the players along with the present conditions, facilities required and the facilities provided by other countries along with a performance comparison, such that performance could be improved.

4. Describe what is meant by saying life skill goal-setting programs teach for goal-setting transfer.

Goal setting programs are where a person is setting goals such that they could be established by a person and that these goals are achievable. These goals are desired by a person , from a long time or since a short time, and these desires make setting of goals. Once a goal is set, a person develops a protocol or steps in order to reach to that goal in a proper way. It is important to more than just decide, rather it is important to transfer the program into steps in order to accomplish the goals.