Which Psychological Skills to Train?
The ones that are most necessary in your sport.
Each sport, like each person, is different – with its own specifics and nuances.
In endurance sports, mental endurance and concentration skills dominate.
In technical sports, self-regulation and mental preparation skills dominate.
In team sports, attention skills and switching focus are dominant.
In combat sports, self-regulation and self-talk are dominant.
In each sport, of course, there are many other nuances and additions, but I mention these to illustrate that the mental training specifics in each sport can be very different.
Therefore, if you can define which psychological skills are most important in your sport, you can also search for methods to develop these skills.
I remind you that psychological training does not replace physical, technical, or tactical training in any way.
It would be foolish to expect an increase in results by training self-regulation while the explosiveness of the legs in one parameter develops less than needed.
Additionally, it should be considered that in each sport, athletes have different personal traits.
This means that a generalized approach will also not be the most effective.
In this equation, you need to look at both – the specifics of the sport and the athlete's personality. For example, in basketball, where it is important to switch attention from broad to narrow – one athlete may do it easily, and for them, this training won’t change much, while for another athlete, it will make a significant difference.
At the same time, the first athlete, who finds switching attention easy, might be very impulsive.
This means that they additionally need to work on self-control and maintaining attention.
Psychological work is a combination of the sport's specifics and each athlete's individual traits.