Psychological skills training as a way to enhance an athlete's performance in high-intensity sports
Open accessAbstract
The importance of psychological skills training (PST) in the development of athletic performance is widely recognized. This paper is a comprehensive review of PST in elite sports, with a special focus on high-intensity sports (HIS). The reviewed literature showed a lack of convincing evidence and theoretical underpinning concerning traditional psychological skills to enhance performance in HIS. Therefore, a model with three conceptual levels (psychological demands, skills and techniques) is presented. The model facilitates the identification of the psychological demands of a specific sport, which in turn enables distinguishing which psychological skills are required. This allows an expert to choose psychological techniques to improve the athlete's psychological skill. Considerations based on our model and the limited HIS-related literature available revealed self-skills, personal development and life skills, arousal-regulation skills, volitional skills, motivational skills and recovery skills as the most important skills to address in order to enhance performance. Development of harmonious passion, in-practice integration of volitional strategies, use of associative attentional techniques, pain management techniques, use of the mindfulness-acceptance approach and the facilitative interpretation of cognitive and somatic sensations are regarded as suitable to meet the psychological demands of HIS. They are recommended for systematic application by athletes and coaches.
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Elite sport offers a very different environment to daily life or clinical contexts and places high demands on athletes' behaviour.
“Elite sport offers a very different environment to daily life or clinical contexts and places high demands on athletes' behaviour (Birrer & Morgan, 2010; McDougall, Nesti, & Richardson, 2015; Swann, Moran, & Piggott, 2015).”
From Integrated mindfulness-based intervention: Effects on mindfulness skills, cognitive interference and performance satisfaction of young elite badminton players. (2020) · cites this paper as Birrer & Morgan, 2010
The ‘Psychological demands of HIS’ section describes demanding training schedules, high intensities and performance pressure, and says psychological skills help regulate athletes’ behaviour to meet sport-specific demands (page unavailable). It addresses elite high-intensity sports, but does not compare elite sport with daily life or clinical contexts, or establish the claim for elite sports generally. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredHigh-intensity sports, such as badminton, require advanced technical, tactical, physical, and psychological skills.
“High-intensity sports, such as badminton, require advanced technical, tactical, physical, and psychological skills (Birrer & Morgan, 2010; Lees, 2003; Phomsoupha & Laffaye, 2015).”
From Integrated mindfulness-based intervention: Effects on mindfulness skills, cognitive interference and performance satisfaction of young elite badminton players. (2020) · cites this paper as Birrer & Morgan, 2010
In “Psychological demands of HIS” (page unavailable), the paper describes demanding movement patterns, very high physical intensity, and psychological skills needed for high-intensity sports. It does not identify badminton as one of those sports or establish that they generally require advanced tactical skills; it describes their action complexity and variability as low. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredTo date, few MABI integrate in-session practice developed for targeted outcomes and in accordance with the specific demands of the task or discipline in a performance context.
“However, to date, few MABI integrate in-session practice developed for targeted outcomes and in accordance with the specific demands of the task or discipline in a performance context (Bernier, Thienot, Codron, & Fournier, 2009; Bernier, Thienot, Pelosse, & Fournier, 2014; Birrer & Morgan, 2010; Scott-Hamilton et al., 2016).”
From Integrated mindfulness-based intervention: Effects on mindfulness skills, cognitive interference and performance satisfaction of young elite badminton players. (2020) · cites this paper as Birrer & Morgan, 2010
In ‘Arousal regulation: overcoming pressure and fear’ (page unavailable), the paper says mindfulness-based intervention studies are rare in sport. In ‘Implications and recommendations’ (page unavailable), it recommends integrating psychological techniques into practice to meet task demands and says mindfulness may be valuable. It does not establish that few mindfulness-based interventions incorporate targeted in-session practice. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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- Authors
- Birrer, D., & Morgan, G.
- Affiliations
- Swiss Federal Institute of Sport Magglingen SFISM (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Birrer, D.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2010-09-14
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- s2
- Pages
- 78-87
- ISSN
- 0905-7188 (ISSN-L)
- 1600-0838
- OpenAlex
- W1715980267
- Cited by
- 342
- References
- 50
- Citations by year
- 2026: 38 · 2025: 41 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 36 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 27 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 14 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 0.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Sport Psychology and Performance
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation › Sports and Physical Education Research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Orthopedics and Sports Medicine › Sports Performance and Training
- Keywords
- mental training, high-intensity sports, athletic performance, psychological demands, arousal regulation, motivational skills, self-regulation, harmonious passion, attentional control, pain management, somatic sensation, elite athletes
- MeSH terms
- Adaptation, Psychological, Attention, Bicycling, Fatigue, Humans, Isometric Contraction, Pain, Pain Measurement, Running, Stress, Psychological, Swimming, Task Performance and Analysis
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