The effects of a ketogenic diet on athletes
Nutrition plays an essential role for an athletes’ performance and health. One of the nutrients athletes pay more attention to, are carbohydrates.
SIGN UP FOR THE CERTIFICATE IN PSYCHOLOGY FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE SPORTS
join nowThe success of team leaders has a lot to do with their ability to inspire and empower the team1. It seems that those who are able to transmit confidence to what each player and team can do, are much better than those leaders who express doubts or fear when facing a challenge2.
Research3 has analysed how the confidence of a team leader influences performance and the confidence of other members in the squad. The research team created an experiment whereby they manipulated the level of confidence that the team leader expressed with his teammates in two different training sessions. They had to complete as quickly as possible an exercise which involved passing, dribbling and scoring. The sample was made up of 144 players with young players ranging from 12 to 17 years old (average age of 14.2 years and 7.9 years of accumulated practice) and they were randomly distributed in 36 groups with 4 players in each group. Each team was then assigned a leader, who was not previously known to the participants. In the first session, the team leader’s interventions were directed towards demonstrating a neutral level of confidence: he did not encourage his teammates, nor did he express any positive or negative feelings. In the second session, the teams were distributed into three groups according to the level of confidence shown by the team leader:
Neutral – The leader acted exactly the same way as in the first session.
High – The leader demonstrated positive body language (enthusiasm, confidence) to the team’s ability to complete the planned tasks by providing individual positive reinforcements (for example: “good pass”, “keep up like that”, “perfect ball control”) and to the group as a whole (for example, “well-played team”, “Keep up with the good work and we will win the competition”).
Low – The leader’s body language emphasised discouragement (groans, ducking his head) and they communicated negative messages to the group and teammates (for example: “your level of performance is poor, even my grandmother can do it better”, “again, another bad control”, “you’ve been lucky”, “this team can never win”).
When the performance from the first and second sessions was compared, the results demonstrated that a team leader who shows confidence towards other individuals and the team, there’s a significant improvement in:
On the other hand, if the team leader showed little confidence towards his team, the results were negative compared to the previous scenario.
So, it seems that leaders who confess their belief in “us” are able to achieve a greater identification of its team members to the group as a whole, which can lead to a better individual and collective performance. The positive confidence that leaders can convey, improves the player’s perception of individual and collective self-efficacy.
In any case, we should remember that the psychological needs of a team can be covered at least by five types of leadership4: the social leader (the one who creates a work environment that favours learning and performance), the emotional leader (the one who is capable of changing the mood of the team), the leader who exemplifies through commitment (the one that shows to the rest of the team members that what the coach has asked is possible to do), the strategic leader (the one that is an extension of the coach on the pitch) and the decisive leader (the one that determines a game thanks to his talent).
Carlos Lago Peñas
References:
1 Bass BM, Riggio RE. Transformational leadership. 2nd edn. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006.
2 Fransen K, Coffee P, Vanbeselaere N, Slater M, De Cuyper B, Boen F. The impact of athlete leaders on team members’ team outcome confidence: a test of mediation by team identification and collective efficacy. Sport Psychol 2014, 28: 347-360.
3 Fransen K, Steffens N, Haslam S.A., Vanbeselaere N, Vande Broek G, Boen F. We will be champions: Leaders’ confidence in ‘us’ inspires team members’ team confidence and performance. Scand J Med Sci Sports 2016, 26: 1455-1469.
4 Marí, P. Liderar equipos comprometidos. Barcelona: Plataforma Empresa, 2017.
Mental abilities, although not yet fully appreciated, are already considered a relevant part of performance. But their importance could go beyond that: Do they also influence the injury risk, including recurrence, once the player returns to play?
Although several studies have tried to evaluate the characteristics of the risk of injury in handball players, they have been unable to reach sufficiently reliable conclusions. A new study of all the FC Barcelona handball categories has attempted to shed more light on the subject.
Although there are several studies on this topic, many of them have analyzed these demands by looking at just a few variables or using very broad timeframes. A new study completed by physical trainers from F.C. Barcelona has analyzed several of these details more closely.
An article published in The Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine —in which members of the club’s medical services participated— now suggests to consider the detailed structure of the area affected, and treating the extracellular matrix as an essential player in the prognosis of the injury.
In this article, Tim Gabbett and his team provide a user-friendly guide for practitioners when describing the general purpose of load management to coaches.
For the first time, it has been demonstrated that it does not take months of training to significantly improve both muscle volume and strength; instead, two weeks of an appropriate exercise are enough.
Training using eccentric exercises is important to prevent possible damage. However, intensive training can also cause muscle damage, so it is critical to be vigilant in order to keep injury risk to an absolute minimum.
Cardiovascular endurance manifests as a moderator of the load result to which the athlete is exposed.
Through the use of computer vision we can identify some shortcomings in the body orientation of players in different game situations.