Grade 10- Hockey

Criterion D –Reflecting and Improving Performance

‘To succeed and perform their best, athletes need to use their mind as well as their bodies.
Knowledge of mental techniques help to control emotions, manage stress and improve
participation and performance.’

i. What feedback did you receive from your peers? What did the team change or implement?
So after the assessment test about our performance in hockey. We got an opportunity to give feedback to others
as well as receive the other feedbacks about our self. The feedback that I got is: I performed pretty well on both
offensive and defensive but lack in controlling the ball, I could not use precisely both faces of the stick. Because of
the disadvantage that I had, my team always shouted and called out loud “use both faces, Minh” every time I got
the ball. They have helped to fix that problem.
ii. How effective was your teams use of both verbal and non-verbal communication?
From my perspective, my team worked out very good during matches. However, we still didn’t communicate
much, we didn’t shout out or call for a person we want to pass to, that led to some misunderstanding and didn’t
know the appropriate strategy we should use. On the other hands, I think everyone in my team’d played better
without non-verbal communication. I don’t know the exact reasons but maybe they were shy and just don’t know
their name to be called.

iii. From the goals and strategies implemented into your game play, what were the strengths and limitations of the
performance?
First of all, starting with our strengths that we received from our strategies. I think out offensive lines is very
powerful because what we mainly focused was to let our members went as highest as they could and keep
attacking and scoring with we have a chance. But doing this kind of strategy did have some limitations. Because
what we were focused on was attacking, our defence lines were not that strong and reliable. Because the only
person who was defending is Nancy. So every time the rival team got passed the half court line, it became a thread
to us, because most of our members were to far to rush back to defence. What we can do to improve is balancing
between offence and defend, we could equally divide our members in both attacking and defending.

iv. If you were continuing with this unit how could you apply your knowledge of sports psychology to your hockey
development?
If I have another opportunity to continue with this unit. What I could do is applying the methods I have learned
from sport psychology, in this term will be “drive theory”. I could bring a Haka dance before our match starts in
other to create fear and anxiety to the rival team. Furthermore, I could raise the spirit and motivate my teammate
to increase their arousal level, which is coresponse with our performance.

Grade 10- Mind over matter

Criterion A – Knowledge and understanding

‘To succeed and perform their best, athletes need to use their mind as well as their bodies.
Knowledge of mental techniques help to control emotions, manage stress and improve
participation and performance.’

i. Outline one theory of arousal and evaluate its strengths:

It is about competing with others and the values of doing sports, But if you want to examine this subject quite in-
depth, then sports psychology will help a lot. When talking about sport, have we ever wondered how that player
could perform so well?. The answer is to deal with the arousal level. An example of this can be an inverted
hypothesis. The inverted U hypothesis is a technique which use to measure the performance of athletes. This
technique is relying on your arousal level. Your account will reach the top level if your arousal maintains at the
appropriate rate, which means the optimal point. The relationship between your performance and arousal level is
linear. The less your arousal level is, the worse you will perform, but your performance will be slightly off if your
arousal level reaches up too high. Since the inverted U hypothesis is a ruler for measuring athletes' performances,
sports psychologists can take advantage of this method to improve athletes' performance levels by keeping and
predicting the typical arousal level that a specific athlete must have to enhance his/her performance.
The inverted U hypothesis is a relationship between the arousal level and performance. The result you get from
doing this theory depends on your arousal level; the best performance is obtained when your arousal is
appropriate to what you are doing. This is when it reaches the optimal point. If our arousal is a bit low or you have
experienced a little pressure, your performance will decline. So what are the strengths of making an inverted U
hypothesis? The inverted U hypothesis can be used as a ruler or marker to estimate the performance of athletes.
Furthermore, for the performance to be always high, psychologists can use this method to predict how much
arousal an athlete needs to keep their performance routinely.

ii. What is the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and which do you think is the most effective in
motivating athletes?
Extrinsic motivation is a type of inspiration from external factors; we have these motivations because we want to
earn some reward or material values. You participate in a competition for this kind of inspiration, not because you
enjoy or are interested in it. You want to earn something from it or to avoid punishments. On the other hand,
intrinsic motivation is a type of reason that drives yourself; you motivate yourself to do it because you feel it is
valuable. You join or participate in competitions because you love and are interested in doing it; this motivation
doesn’t come from the external values, for example, medal, money, and certificates.
I think that extrinsic is the most effective in motivating athletes. Because not all the time, people will have their
desire to engage in an activity. When extrinsic comes to play an important role, it can get people to complete their
work or perform well in action they are not interested in

iii. How important is the role of sports psychology in preparing an athlete for performance? Explain your answer
using examples to support your points.

For an athlete, physical practices are not the only one that will contribute to your performance. Scientists have
found down that sport psychology does play an essential role in their performance. Sport psychology can teach a
player, depending on their experience and understanding. With sports, psychology can help players with
performance fear. It can help them to over fear or maybe embarrassment. This is often happening to players who
scare too much about how people think of their performance; this problem happened to me whenever I had a
basketball match. I am always scared that I will miss the shot, and everyone will disappoint with my performance.
Still, thanks to study sports psychology, I’m more confident and encouraged to give out every I got, so my
performance dramatically enhanced.
Furthermore, sport psychology can help an athlete to improve mental skills. It can teach them cognitive skills in
other to enhance their performance. Mental agility can enhance your concentration, focus, confidence in your
game. An example of this can be found with professional basketball players; these players spend plenty of time
inside the locker room before their match; what they do is listening to music, thinking, concentrating, visualizing
their performance out of the court. Lastly, sport psychology can make the athlete mentally prepared before
games; this includes the mental skills above but will apply to actual situations and the sports field.

iv. Imagine you were coaching an athlete with severe performance anxiety. Explain how you would help them
improve their performance using one90o0 or more of the following techniques:
-Progressive muscle relaxation
-Breathing techniques
-Positive self-talk
-Mental imagery/visualization
Suppose I have an opportunity to coach an athlete with severe performance anxiety. I would help them improve
their performance by using the self-talk method. So first of all, what is self-talk? Self-talk is your interior thought
inside of your head. Self-talk can be seen by someone who is muttering out his mouth. It comes from our mental
mind most of the time, which can modify your thoughts and belief. Self-talk can be resulted in both positive and
negative.
Positive self-talk contains good thoughts and words that will make you will better and confident. Furthermore, if
your thoughts are positive, you are looking forward to a promising result; this can also be considered motivational
talk. On the other hand, negative self-talk is the inside voice that contains pessimistic thought and belief. When a
player is doubted in themself; they are doubted about their potential, maybe because of depression or upsetting.
Negative self-talk can impact the player's performance. So why am I choosing this technique over the other? I'm
aware that this player's problem is not coming from his ability or potential to perform; this player could be a pure
talented athlete but are dealing with performance anxiety. Because this is a technique that this athlete can use as
a tool, it works as a motivation toward himself; it makes him confident and gets himself up for the fight, takes him
into the zone, and enhances performance. To archive this technique, I will apply it to the training session of that
athlete. Repeat it repeatedly until it becomes his habit when he can extend it into competitions and more. For
example, suppose that athlete is a professional basketball player. In that case, I will make him do self-talk when he
practices free-frow. I will also shift his attention from external distractions and only focus on internal experience
and encourage him not to have negative thoughts such as, "I can't do it," "I will miss it, "… And I will replace them
with optimistic thoughts and motivations. Furthermore, I will show him how to use positive self-talk to release his
anxiety before and during matches. By doing this, he will encourage himself and raise his spirit, which will enhance
performance.