2. Sports Psychology Approach to Powerlifting
• There is many ways to reach the correct mental state for a sporting
performance.This next section will look at some of the theories on
how to reach the perfect mental state to achieve your sporting goal.

3. What is Sports Psychology?
• Sports Psychology is defined as “the study
of the psychological and mental factors that
influence and are influenced by
participation and performance in sport,
exercise, and physical activity, and the
application of the knowledge gained
through this study to everyday settings”.
• Looks at motivation, anxiety, stress,
arousal, intrinsic, extrinsic and cohesiveness
themes within the literature.
• Few will be touched upon in the next slides.

4. Short Term Psychology Preparation
• Bandura developed the principle of
self efficacy which is defined as the
self confidence of an athlete/individual
in a specific situation.
• There are four factors that influence
an athletes self efficacy which then
affects their performance.These are
PerformanceAccomplishments,
Vicarious Experience, Social
Persuasion and Physiological and
Emotional States.

5. • Performers Accomplishments
• I recall past experiences from training and competing to keep me motivated and
focused.This makes me want to replicate these moments but performing them at
bigger/higher level of competitions. One of these is getting three personal bests at
the Irish Championships for Powerlifting.
• Vicarious Experiences
• I researched my sport by watching other Powerlifters train on the television so I can
learn from what they are doing.This ranges from monitoring their technique to
what sort of training they are doing to improve their performance.
• Social persuasion
• Self reflection and I get advice from my coach and other Powerlifters which helps to
improve my technique, training or nutrition.They give me advice on how to prepare
for a competition and what to do during it, for example what weight I should start
at for my opening lift.
• Physiological and Emotional States
• When I am training and competing I deliberately focus on not becoming anxious
and I remain calm as possible. I just listen to music and I think on the task at hand
so I am not losing focus or worrying about what is everyone else doing.

6. Powerlifting is very much using the DriveTheory which
was created by Zajonc (1965).The more aroused you
are, the better your performance should be.This theory
fails to take into account the individual’s personality
and their performance.
Powerlifting requires a high arousal level when
compared to other sports such as tennis. However,
another theory is more effective to use.This is the
Inverted-U Hypothesis which was created by
Yearkes and Dodson (1908). Image was sourced
from
It needs to be said each individual athlete will have
their own individual psychological make up and will
react differently to pressure. Each athlete has their
own zone of optimum performance.These zones
will be influenced by their sport. Some athletes are
more introverts and others extroverts which again
affects their performance in a particular sport.

7. Hanin describes it well with the ZOF
with three different athletes. A poor
performance will occur if arousal levels
are either too low, or too high.To
produce the best performances the
arousal level has to be in between high
and low.This is the “zone of optimal
functioning” where maximum
performance occurs.
When there is a complete loss in
performance due to being too over
aroused.This is known as choking and
it is defined as “the inability to perform
to an athlete’s optimum performance –
sudden impairment of failure of sports
performance due to anxiety”.The
theory for this complete loss in
performance is called the Catastrophe
Model created by Hardy (1996).This
theory is linked with both the Inverted-
U Hypothesis and the DriveTheory.

8. • Anxiety is defined as a natural reaction to threat in the environment – part of our
preparation for flight or fight.There are 3 dimensions for anxiety which are:
• Cognitive Anxiety
• Worry and negative feelings about your own performance
• Somatic Anxiety
• Physiological symptoms such as raised heart rate, increased perspiration, shortness of
breath.
• Behavioural Anxiety
• Experiencing tension, agitation and restlessness.
• Sports performers can suffer from two types of anxiety linked to performance, these are
state and trait anxiety.

9. The 3 dimensions can be influenced by
the following factors of anxiety;
• State Anxiety
• This is situation specific and can be
linked to a particular role such as
taking a penalty kick in football.
• Trait Anxiety
• This is a general and enduring feeling
of apprehension. When I am
competing in a Powerlifting
competition I am not thinking about
what others are lifting or what their
score is. I am focusing about my own
performance and what goals I have
set myself for example, to attain new
personal bests. I use relaxation
techniques such as listening to music
to prepare me for each competition.

10. Long Term Psychological Preparation:
• When planning my training. I have used the SMARTER principle to help plan my goals.The principle is
defined as; Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic,Time-Bound, Exciting and Recorded.
• Specific; Its goals are specific to the Sport
• Measurable; Its concerned with the performer must be prepared to evaluate their progress critically
and adjust their goals as necessary.
• Agreed; Goals set should be discussed with others such as your coach.This will help you set realistic
goals and achieve them within a set time frame. I sat down with my coach and was designed this
programme around me to help develop my muscular strength for Powerlifting.
• Realistic; Goals are sensible and can be achieved by the performer.
• Time-Bound; All of the goals of any athletes programme should be divided into short and long term
goals.
• Exciting;The goals set need to motivate the performer so he/she wants to keep improving their
performance.
• Recorded; By recording down what I do within the Plan I will be able to see my progressive from day 1

11. • With the SMARTER principle and my Periodisation I have divided my goals up, these are: -
• Outcome goal: are concerned with the end product e.g. getting onto the Ireland team for
Powerlifting.
• Performance goals: relate to the achievement of a performance e.g. getting a personal best lift in
the Bench Press.
• Process goals: are centred on the technical elements that underpin performance as a focus for
development. E.g. a weak grip caused a foul in the deadlift, this needs to be addressed and fixed
so it does not occur again.
• ShortTerm goals: the building blocks that need to be achieved consistently leading to the
successful realisation of long term goal/goals.
• LongTerm goals: have a larger objective and only can happen once short term goals have all been
completed.

12. • To further enhance my performance I am using the
Profile Cycle.The cycle is made up of 4 stages:-
• Stage 1: Introduction- learn the importance of the
programme to you, undertake an honest appraisal, and
agree a commitment.
• Stage 2: Construction- construct a performance profile,
and undertake a series of strategies to enhance your
desired/optimum profile goals
• Stage 3: Implementation- make the psychological skills
training programme an automatic daily routine and
apply it to actual competitive environments
• Stage 4: Assessment- review and reconstruct your
profile.

13. What a Coach needs to do for his/her
athletes:
• Below is an example of a Performance Profile.
• 1/ Set Goals and set areas for Psychological Skills
training
• 2/ Achieve optimal motivation
• 3/ Develop Decision Making
• 4/ Understand the attribution process
• 5/ Evaluate and review
• 6/ Begin Performance Profiling

14. Pre Performance Routines
• Pre-Performance Routines are something an
athlete takes part in before a game situation
• Pre-Performance Routines are regularly used by
athletes to assist in the preparation of self-
paced skills (Cohn, 1990).
• Pre-performance routines can be defined as
repetitive and sequential behaviour (Foster et
al, 2006).
• They are usually used in closed skill sports such
as:Weightlifting, Basketball Free-Throw, &
Tennis Serve (Cohn, 1990)

15. • As Mental Rehearsal/Imagery is a versatile tool,
it can be employed to virtually an sport.
• Imagery/Rehearsal assists athletes to
imagine/play out scenes of a
competition/practice, in which they can develop
a sense of feeling for the movements required .
• To perform PPR with Mental Rehearsal/Imagery
an athlete must focus to attempt to re-create
movement.The movement formed is how
athlete perceives the situation and how they
would like it to plan out (Burton and Raedeke,
2008)

16. Where can
Pre-Performance Routines be used?
• Pre-Performance Routines have seen to be
performed up to 48hours prior the task and as
close as 5 minutes before the task is executed
(Mesagno, Marchant & Morris, 2008).
• This is closely linked to our final theory of the
Sports Psychology which is self talk.

17. Definitions of Self-Talk
• Self-Talk is the flow or thoughts and sometimes conversations
in our minds (Burton and Raedeke, 2008).
• However Hackfort & Schwenkmezger (1993) provides a more
explanatory definition.They have described Self-Talk as
dialogue, used internally where an athlete understands their
feelings, controls their evaluations and can also instruct the
athlete whilst giving positive reinforcement
• Said to be used as praise, Positive Self-Talk assists athletes to
maintain focus on the present, excluding past errors and
mistakes (Weinberg, 1988).
• Examples can be

18. Key Study using Positive Imagery to
Enhance Performance.
• Article:The Effects of Elevated Arousal and Mood on Maximal
Strength Performance inAthletes
• The study was looking at the reversal theory research to see if high
arousal levels contribute to inhibited athletic performance.They used
22 male and 6 female elite level athletes and divided them into
paratelic (non-goal directed and processed focused) and telic groups
(goal directed) each subjected to scripts of these states. Each group
whilst listening to their script will perform a max hand grip test.
Guided imagery techniques where sued to change physiological and
psychological arousal levels. Results showed significant increases in
strength when in the paratelic state (high positive arousal) compared
to the telic state. Heart rate and other indicators of parasympathetic
and sympathetic nervous system were not found to mediate between
psychological arousal and performance.They used the following tests,
Telic State Measure,Visual Analogue Scale,Tension and Effort Stress
Inventory and the Motivational Style Profile Questionnaire.
• Perkins, D,Wilson,G.V, Kerr, J. H (2001). ‘The effects of elevated
arousal and mood on maximal strength performance in athletes’.
Journal of applied sport psychology. 13 (3) 239-259
https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=7xsfjxVXoEo
Video of MikeTyson and
his psychological
approach to getting into
the ring
Which is applicable to
getting onto the
platform.