Justin, interesting read. I read a lot about psychology/sociliology and sports pysch...
You should give "Blink" by malcolm gladwell a read. It will touch on aspects of conscious vs subconcious thinking. It isn't a sports psych book but it talks about some socioliology/psych topics that are applicable.
"Thin slicing" situations to make descisions... i.e. taking a fraction of an experience to "know" something... like a gut feeling.
From playing many sports myself... (especially beach volleyball)... I find this Thin Slicing mentality of subconciously knowing what's what is what is actually occuring behind the scenes in a brain during sports.
The more I try to "consciously" think... the more my brain seems to make mistakes when playing. When relaxed... and trusting your insticts/training/etc... you are replying on a pure judgement which attempts to strip away extra information. When that extra information is stripped, you can subconsciously make better descisions.
In sports, the "less you (over)think" while playing... the less prone to mistakes you seem to be.
Let's take soccer for example... when you take a penalty kick... all these thoughts are going through your head. Adding variables and variables of information. Sometimes the best play is the simplest one as it has less room for complication and your body to react.
These are all psychological influences that are going through your body/mind/game play. The more people practice and train... the more they are learning to:
a) refine their ability to thin slice a situation
b) trust their subconcious judgement/skills (i.e. ability to see the game with minimal information)
When you really think about what confidence is... it is just trusting both A and B which we all have the ability to do. In high level sports, that often just comes through experience (practice).
Anywho, this stuff easily translates to sports (the topics in the books). You should give it a look.
Last edited by icevenom; December 14, 2012 at 11:35 AM.
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