Sport Psychology & Mental Skills Training

To become the best athlete, football player or coach you can be, you must be motivated to do what it takes to maximize your ability and achieve your goals day in & day out. 

Motivation, simply defined, is the ability to initiate and persist at a task. From a coaching perspective –

• How do you maximise your players, athletes or staff’s motivation levels?
• What makes them tick?
• What is their main motivation to perform and how can you as a leader draw that out of them!

Understanding what gets your players prepared to perform is key as a coach, manager or leader of a department and ISSPF has the experts ready to deliver some key interventions and modules to help you progress within team sport environments.

Goal setting has received a lot of research-based attention and its use has been supported by elite-level practitioners, players and coaches as a way of focusing on motivational traits. 

ISSPF faculty member Sarah Murray in the ISSPF Soccer Psychology & Mental Skills Training Course covers this key topic and highlights how goal setting affects performance by directing individuals’ focus & attention, increasing persistence, and motivational strategy.

According to one report, goal setting & focussing on achievable targets are like magnets that attract soccer players & athletes to achieve more over time.

Bueno, Weinberg, Fernandez-Castro, and Capdevila (2008) suggested that both motivational and emotional mechanisms were important mediators in improving the efficacy & efficiency of goal setting in endurance-related sports.

Whereas researchers (Burton & Raedeke, 2008; Vealey, 2007) found that there is a close relationship between goal setting and imagery during practice and competition.

These are also 2 key focus areas within the mental skills training aspect of the ISSPF Soccer Psychology & Mental Skills Training online coaching course.

Interestingly, most individuals are involved within sport for a variety of reasons. Soccer players, staff members, coaches or head coach/manager’s participation in sport across all levels of ability and age groups generally fall into line with two major motivational categories: intrinsic and extrinsic.