Although understated by the media, attitude exists as the underpinning mental construct in elite athletic performance.  It is a vital mental disposition that an elite athlete must possess to respond to various sports situations. Sporting achievements are only possible if the attitude is positive.

This article focuses on elite athletes, but you corporate diehards may want to stick around; it may provide some exciting insights to you as well.  

Let’s dive into a concept that is quite fundamental not only in sports but also in the corporate world, education, and military services. Like motivation and self-confidence, which we will discuss more profoundly in other blogs, the topic of attitude is something I use to explain to my clients whenever this is opportune. Because as you will realize, talking about this topic helps my clients empower themselves by understanding how they stay in control of their circumstances.

The word attitude is used everywhere nowadays. It appears simple on the surface but not so simple when you get below the surface. So, let's get clear on what we mean when we use the word attitude. Google offers a variety of definitions, such as:

·      A functional attribution that is also internal, changeable, and under the athlete's control.

·      An attitude is a negative or positive evaluation of an object which influences human behavior toward that object.

·      An attitude is a learned predisposition to respond in a favorable or unfavorable manner towards people, an object, an idea, or a situation.

The way I like to look at it is how an individual is prepared when facing the diverse situations offered by the environment. Effectively, it is the way we respond to all that affects us from within. In other words, attitude is a state of mind that is also transient. An individual can have the optimal attitude to manage a specific situation at a given time and a very different one to face the same situation at another time.

Following this line of thought, it is worth extracting one of the main principles of cognitive-behavioral psychology in general and the psychology of sport in particular: thinking-feeling-acting. More specifically, "positive thoughts generate positive emotions, and all these result in positive actions."

Attitude is a development process; this means it can be learned. As we saw before, it also has its ups and downs, which has to do with the interference of thoughts. The interference of thought is fundamental when talking about the development of attitude in the athlete. Choosing what to think, avoiding contaminating ideas, and advocating constructive ones are central pillars of attitudinal development.

Attitudinal development

To understand the functioning of the psyche in terms of attitudinal development, it is helpful to be aware of the main components of this process:

·      Amount of psychic energy: abundant or scarce.

·      Type of psychic energy: positive or negative.

·      Orientation of the objectives: towards performance (execution of the task) or towards result (attainment of achievement).

The four stages that make up the ladder of attitudinal development area:

·      Challenging State

·      Blocked and Explosive State

·      Apathetic and Avoidant State

·      Quitting State

‍
These four states are shown in the following figure.

In the Challenging State, the quality of the athlete’s sporting experience will be optimal. Under these conditions, the chances of continuity in the middle and long-term practice of the sport, sustainability in the acquisition process, assimilation and automation of the learned sports gestures and behaviors, and achieving maximum use of the teaching-learning process are increased. Within the sports sphere, certain personality traits are fomented in human beings, such as:  

·      High levels of frustration tolerance.

·      Conviction in attempts.

·      Perseverance in processes.

·      Flexibility in ways of understanding the situations to be managed.

·      Solvency in behavior, for themselves and their environment.

The Blocked or Explosive Attitude is the state that precedes the top step previously described in attitudinal development: challenge. The athlete attends and wants to perform but cannot find the proper procedures to succeed. Their focus is more on the outcome than performance.

This corresponds to an athlete who, from the cognitive (thinking) point of view, plans their actions based on unrealistic prospects (either by shortfall or excess), gives themselves inadequate goals (outcomes only), interprets their errors from a self-punishment perspective, understands defeats as their affirmation of what they cannot do, and shows evidence of managing their thoughts based on cognitive vices such as filtered thinking, mind reading, polarized thinking, catastrophizing and emotional reasoning.

The high energy levels experienced by an individual in the blocked or explosive state express their desire to improve their situation. The key is reversing the type of energy (positive instead of negative) and the focus of the objectives (from outcome to performance). This is done through cognitive restructuring, which consists in actively combating negative beliefs. For instance, this may include questioning these beliefs and realizing that they are possibly inadequate or even wrong. The following table shows other main guidelines.

In the avoidant or apathetic attitude state, the athlete is still present but cannot give a concrete, constructive meaning to their sports experience. It corresponds to low energy levels that are still positive and to performance objectives without concrete strategies for achievement. The characteristic thinking of the athlete in this phase is: Why should I keep trying? It’s all the same to me.

From the emotional (feeling) point of view, the avoidant and apathetic attitude creates an athlete with high levels of dissatisfaction, distance, loneliness, and lack of conviction concerning their sports experience.

For this reason, the importance of actively cooperating with the rehabilitation of athletes in the blocked and explosive stage is emphasized since the amount of energy available makes evolution towards the highest step more likely: challenge.

The quitting attitude sets up an athlete with high levels of suffering and displeasure, anxiety, and very low frustration tolerance from an emotional point of view (feelings). The set of these cognitive-emotional components is the riskiest of all. The quitting state does not start on the day that the athlete actually withdraws from the activity. The athlete may still attend, but internally they are already cognitively and emotionally withdrawn from their discipline.

Evidence shows that it is crucial to prevent reaching this state since the reversibility to other states of attitudinal development is complex.

Finally, concerning attitudinal development in general, it is noted that this ladder, like all ladders, can be used to either go up or down. Some athletes take steps down from ideal states to not-so-ideal ones and vice versa. The transience of all mental states allows the athlete to modify their levels and type of energy, as well as the orientation of their objectives and self-esteem levels, to approach and remain within an optimal challenging attitude.

A quick review of the central concepts presented in this article:

·      Think-feel-act: depending on how one thinks, feels, and acts.

·      Performance is the athlete's management focus, that is, their attempts at executing the task. This is the cause of their actions.

·      The outcome is the consequence of the management of the athlete about their executions and interaction with their external sports environment. The outcome should be separated from the central focus when managing the athlete since there are factors concerning the results that the athlete cannot control voluntarily.

·      Attitude is the determining skill that the athlete should possess to respond to various sports situations.

·      Attitude is a transient, not a permanent, state of mind. Therefore, attitude is dynamic and susceptible to changes in its levels. Hence it is relevant to understand the attitudinal development of the athlete.

·      There are four states in this attitudinal development: challenging; blocked and explosive; avoidant and apathetic; quitting.

·      The components of these four steps are the amount of energy, type of energy, and target orientation.

‍

‍

‍

‍