Exploring the Functions of Self-Talk: The Effects of Self-Talk on Sports Performance in Collegiate Athletes

Abstract

Athletes are often faced with tasks that demand high levels of focus, success, and performance. Professional athletes, specifically, are expected by many people to be the best and perform exceptionally well. Their lives often revolve around their sport, with long hours of training, strict nutrition, and different types of therapy. However, these athletes are human and experience stress from various factors. Athletes can experience external stress (e.g., from the audience or coaches), or internal stress (e.g., negative thoughts or anxiety). These are only a few examples of the stressors that athletes face throughout their careers. Numerous other factors may cause athletes to stress, and consequently, perform poorly. Therefore, athletes may have low levels of confidence, experience anxiety, or lose focus during high stake moments. However, there is a great body of research that shows mental skills training helps athletes overcome stressors and perform better. Self-talk is one example of an intervention for the mental skills found to help individuals perform better through relaxation, goal setting, self-regulation, self-reflection, flow, and self-efficacy. To better understand the effects of self-talk on sports performance, there is a need to identify how self-talk affects athletes in certain sport skills and situations, as there may be important differences or similarities to discover. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to explore the effectiveness of self-talk on collegiate athletes’ performance across various sports. The findings of this paper suggest that the self-talk is a positive aspect of improving flow, self-efficacy, motivation and stopping general competitive anxiety and a nervousness. In addition, the fact that pairing a challenging statement to negative self-talk would be the effective way to promote athletes’ performance in some situation was found.