1. Sports Performance 15
Attentional Control

2. Attentional Control Attentional Control is about
concentrating on those things that are
important during training or competition
and avoiding all _______ __________.

3. Attentional Control Definitions:
Attention: is the ability to be aware of information
from inside or outside of yourself.
_____________: ability to stay focused on your sport
task or role.
Focus: ability to attend to meaningful or relevant task
cues.

4. Attentional Control Definitions:
Distractions: meaningless or irrelevant information
about your task.
______: ability to totally involve yourself in your
sport/task.

5. Attentional Control Any sport or physical activity requires
attentional demands.
There are two useful
dimensions to help you
understand your own
attentional control.

6. Attentional Control The two dimensions of attentional control are:
1. Broad Narrow
2. Internal External

7. Attentional Control 2 Dimensions of Attentional Control:
1. Is your attention narrowly focused or broadly focused?
2. Is your attention directed toward the external environment or internally, to the self?

8. Attentional Control
Broad
Internal
External
Narrow

9. Attentional Control With the two dimensions an athlete:
Can have a broad, narrow or somewhere in between focus.
Can have either an internal or external focus– no in between.
Focus
Narrow
Broad
Internal OR
External
Focus

10. Attentional Control
What kind of attentional focus would a sprinter have?
What kind of attentional focus would a quarterback have?
What kind of attentional focus would a batter up to bat have?
What kind of attentional focus would a striker in a volleyball match have?

11. Attentional Control A sprinter would need a narrow internal focus.
A quarterback reading a defense and looking for
recievers would need a broad external focus.
A batter getting to hit the ball would
need a narrow external focus.
A striker in a volleyball game about to
make a hit would need a broad internal
focus.

12. Attentional Control Attentional Styles: 1. Broad – Internal Style
2. Broad – External Style
3. Narrow – Internal Style
4. Narrow – External Style

13. Attentional Control Broad – Internal Style
These athletes are thinking players;
they plan the game well in their heads,
are quick to make tactical adjustments in the game, and are skillful at ________ ______ _________ of their opponents and making anticipatory responses.
They can get caught up in analyzing too much and tend to out guess themselves and miss important cues.

14. Attentional Control 2. Broad – External Style
Athletes are able to attend well to rapidly _______ ___, taking in a lot of information.
Are susceptible to information overload, which can result in their not being able to decide how to respond to rapidly changing events that they readily perceive.

15. Attentional Control 3. Narrow – Internal Style
Good at being able to focus on a single thought/idea with full attention but such diagnostic tendencies carry the risk of becoming highly critical self-analysis.
Athletes with this type of attention style perform better in sports where change takes place slowly

16. Attentional Control 4. Narrow – External Style
Are able to focus on one or two objects while blocking out distractions. For example golfers and bowlers.
Except when the environment changes and decisions need to be made about how to respond to the changes.

17. Which is your Attentional Style?
Attentional Control
Which is your Attentional Style?
Ideally you do not want to be dominant
in any one particular style. The ideal
athlete is strong in all four styles and
is able to readily shift from one
type to another.

18. Attentional Control Exercise 1: Identify a list of common or
recurring distractions that you experience
in your sport.
____________________________________

19. Attentional Control Exercise 2: What kind of things do you do
to get ready for a game? To get focused?
____________________________________

20. Attentional Control Scan the following sports carefully. Use your
powers of concentration and imagery.

21. Attentional Control _Baseball____ __Soccer____ __Tennis____
Now try and remember all the sports you just saw.
What were they?
_Baseball____ __Soccer____ __Tennis____
_Golf________ __Football___ __Rugby____
_Hockey_____ __High Jump_ __Basketball_
_Javelin_____ __Volleyball__

22. Attentional Control Too Focused, miss important cues Perfect amount of
Focus . Takes in
relevant cues and
Ignores irrelevant
cues.
Not focused enough.
Take in all relevant and
Irrelevant cues.

23. Attentional Control
Many athletes find it difficult to focus correctly,
especially when under competitive pressure. This
can result in:
Loss of concentration
Perception is hampered
Makes poor decisions
Performance deteriorates
Attention narrows, feel overloaded
Increased internal focus, more mistakes and tuned out

24. Attentional Control
Choking under pressure is mainly due to the fact athletes ____ ______of their ability to focus their attention. They rely on their attentional strengths and are not flexible to the changing environment.

25. Attentional Control There are two types of distractions:
External Stimuli: Fans yelling, noises in the crowd, playing environment (poor fields), coach yelling.
Internal Stimuli: worry, unrelated thoughts, think too much.

26. Attentional Control How do we lose out attention?
Attention is broken because
The performer entertains distractions (internal & external).
The performer attempts to attend to too many cues.
The performer loses motivation.
The performer becomes anxious/stressed.

27. Attentional Control Ways to improve attention:
Stay in the present moment. “Be here now”
Recognize the attentional demands and shifts involved in your performance.
Ie. passing vs. shooting.
Learn to concentrate under the worst conditions.
Develop pre-performance and performance routines or plans to keep you from being distracted.
Park all your problems and distractions.