Focus in sports: Strategies to enhance and maintain focus during competition

Pages:20-22
Ravinder Yadav (Government Medical College and Hospital, Chandigarh)
Parwinder Singh (Department of Psychology, Punjabi University, Patiala)

Focuses is a phenomenon of attending to particular internal and external cues that positively or negatively influence one’s performance (Taylor & Wilson, 2005). In sports, ‘Focus’ refers to a state of consciousness in which athletes are totally absorbed in the activity in which they are engaged. Enhancing and maintaining Focus during Competition helps athletes to keep their mind and body at one place, acquire essential information, process it, make effective decisions & perform optimally. Assisting athletes in improving and maintaining their focus involves understanding components of focus; assessing focus style and then using specific strategies e.g. process focus, reset procedure, simulation training etc. to keep them in focus. Some of the important psychological interventional techniques to optimize focus were discussed in the paper