Kris: Peter you’re a sports psychologist at Brunel University. Can you tell me what exactly do you do?
Prof. Peter Terry: Well, if you think about performance, there are three components to it; there’s the skill of getting over that hurdle efficiently; there’s the conditioning side of things and there’s what going on in the mind. My job is to control the latter or help the athlete control that bit.
Kris: So how does sport psychology actually help the mental attitude of an athlete?
Prof. Peter Terry : If there was an Olympic final on three different days, you might get three different winners and the reason is that, on the day somebody has got it right mentally, and the others haven’t. During any sort of voluntary muscle contraction, we only use about half of our muscle fibres, what that says to me is, that we’ve got this vast amount of strength and power that is being untapped and it’s trying to find the key that opens the door to everything that’s inside you.
Kris: I don’t know how near we are to the limit of the human potential, but if we’re going to break these barriers, do you see it more as a physical barrier to be broken, or is it actually the mental barrier?
Prof. Peter Terry : If you go back to the era of Roger Bannister for instance, people thought the 4 minute mile was impossible, people got close to it but just couldn’t get to it and that was because there was a huge mental barrier there. People didn’t believe it was possible so they didn’t make it happen. Once Roger got through that barrier, everybody came following through within weeks, several people have broken it and now of course 4 minute mile is a training run almost. So there’s a natural inhibition in the body, the muscle contractions are limited by how much of your muscle fibres actually contract as a safety mechanism. But some things happen that help you overcome that inhibition.
So from this we can see that body power is all about strong muscles, training, nutrition, and being in tiptop mental shape.
If you would like to find out more about these subjects, here are a few suggestions.
Books you can read
Ultimate Sports Nutrition, Frederick C. Hatfield, Contemporary Books Inc; ISBN: 0809248875
High-Performance Sports Conditioning, Bill Foran (Editor), Human Kinetics Publishers; ISBN: 0736001638
Sports Speed, George B. Dintiman, Robert D. Ward, Tom Tellez, Human Kinetics Publishers; ISBN: 0880116072
Links You Can Surf
Also on this site: join Anita Roddick as she investigates just how powerful is people power and philosopher Jon Pike as he explores Machiavelli’s tips for how to achieve political power
If you think you might be interested in studying more about these subjects, find out what the Open University has to offer.
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