It is not easy for them to attain excellent results during important events, especially when extended over long periods. Peak performance is an umbrella term used to classify positive states surrounding performance 1 1 KimiecikJC, JacksonSA. Optimal experience in sport: A flow perspective.

In: advances in sport psychology. Champaign, IL. Human Kinetics, Improving and reaching optimal performance during training and competition is one of the main goal for coaches and athletes.

Unfortunately, optimal psychophysiological and psychosocial states do not occur frequently; competitive pressure can disrupt task execution and dysfunctional unpleasant states can appear.

Preventing motor skill failure through hemisphere-specific priming: Cases from choking under pressure. J Experim Psychol: General.

We strongly advocate the development and adoption of idiosyncratic approaches for performance enhancement. Individualized strategies are also a main focus of the individual zones of optimal functioning IZOF model in which pleasant and unpleasant emotional states can exert beneficial, detrimental, or both effects on performance, depending on their individual meaning and intensity 3 3 Robazza, C.

Emotion in sport: An IZOF perspective. In: Literature reviews in sport psychology. Hanton S, Mellalieu SD Eds. Drawing on the IZOF model, Robazza and colleagues 4 4 Robazza C, Bertollo M, Filho E, Hanin Y, Bortoli L.

Perceived Control and Hedonic Tone Dynamics During Performance in Elite Shooters. Res Q Exerc Sport ;87 3 recently proposed the multi-action plan MAP model, an idiosyncratic approach aimed to enhance and optimize performance based on both emotion and action self-regulatory strategies.

This model, in particular, places emphasis on the interaction between performance level and attentional control level during task execution. This 2×2interaction i. Type 2 performance is typified by a higher level of attentional focus and functional performance. Compensatory resources need to be recruited for this performance state that can be obtained by consciously focusing attention on the core components of the action, such as pedaling rate in cycling 5 5 Bertollo M, di Fronso S, Filho E, Lamberti V, Ripari P, Reis VM, et al.

To focus or not to focus: is attention on the core components of action beneficial for cycling performance? The Sport Psychol. My heart is racing! Psychophysiological dynamics of skilled racecar drivers. J sports sci. Neural markers of performance states in an Olympic Athlete: an EEG case study in air-pistol shooting.

Proficient brain for optimal performance: the MAP model perspective. Type 3 suboptimal performance is characterized by an excessive attention focus that leads to over-controlled task execution, movement disruption, and dysfunctional performance.

Type 4 performance is characterized by lack or task-irrelevant attentional focus and dysfunctional performance. Paying attention to the core components of the action should help the athlete to recover from suboptimal performance states.

Moreover, an appropriate focus on the core components should facilitate the switch on a less consciously controlled and more automatic task execution, and increase flow experiences.

A comprehensive assessment of performers implies the knowledge not only of those strategies to reach and maintain good performance i. The study of human behavior in a holistic perspective, based on the assumption that measuring the processes of body-mind interaction can shed light on the human mind 9 9 Cacioppo,JT, TassinaryLG, Berntson,G, editors.

Handbook of psychophysiology. University Press, Psychophysiology is not devoted to a better knowledge of isolated components of the body, but rather it is addressed to gain insight on the functioning of the entire organism e.

Mechanisms of mind-body interaction and optimal performance. Front Psychol. The psychophysiological monitoring consists in the assessment of the activation and functioning level of the body.

In sport, it can be used to better understand the underlying processes of performance and to subsequently increase or optimize it 11 11 Hatfield BD, Kerick SE. The psychology of superior sport performance. In: Handbook of sport psychology.

Hoboken NJ : Wiley, Techniques used for this type of monitoring include, for example, electromyography EMG , electrocardiography ECG , electroencephalography EEG , as well as other simple techniques to measure electrodermal activity EDA or respiratory rhythm.

Electromyography EMG is a technique to analyze muscular signals generated by physiological changes in the state of the muscle membranes. Surface electrodes are mainly used for the study of neuromuscular activation in postural tasks, functional movements, working conditions, or workout.

The analysis of these types of data provides useful information to improve performance in motor and sport activities. From a psychophysiological point of view, muscle tension has often been associated with emotional experience, and there are some target muscles, such as trapezium, which are often monitored for information about the level of anxiety and general tension of the athlete.

Electrocardiography ECG measures heart electrical signal and provides parameters such as Heart Rate HR or Heart Rate Variability HRV; i.

In order to simplify the use of these measures, a pletismograph is placed on the finger of a hand instead of traditionally connect electrodes to the chest. In this way, blood flow variations in the finger capillaries, that faithfully represent the heartbeat, are recorded.

Nowadays, chest strains wireless data assessed with the use of a computer are also used to monitor heart rate. Heart rate variability may vary in response to factors such as breathing rhythm, emotional states, anxiety and stress.

Linear analysis of HRV provide indices considered expression of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity and of the balance between these two branches of autonomic nervous system 9 9 Cacioppo,JT, TassinaryLG, Berntson,G, editors.

Examples of these indices in the frequency domain are: Very Low Frequency VLF , usually associated with temperature regulation; Low Frequency LF , usually associated with blood pressure regulation; High frequency HF , associated with respiratory influences.

The ability of the body to modify its balance toward one or the other activity sympathetic or parasympathetic is very important for a good cardiac functioning and is a mechanism that tends to a dynamic balance.

High HRV is associated with good heart health and best sports performance, while periods of mental stress can reduce it 12 12 Wilson VE, Somers K. Psychophysiological assessment and training with athletes: Knowing and managing your mind and body. Heart rate variability can be attributed to changes in parasympathetic control associated with breathing and can be used as a vagal-heart rate index.

In detail, HF linked to respiratory frequency reflects variations in the vagal control and is thus used as a parasympathetic activity index. In the field of sport psychophysiology, there is a great interest in HRV as it relates to arousal: HF increases, indeed, under high stress and anxiety conditions, especially with focused attention and motor inhibition.

Other kind of linear and non-linear HRV-related indices e. Heart Rate Variability Discriminates Competitive Levels in Professional Soccer Players. Electrodermal activity EDA represents the electrical conductance that can vary according to the skin sweating level.

Since the sweat glands are controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, the assessment of skin conductance skin conductance level and skin conductance response through specific sensors is considered an indicator of psychophysiological activation.

EDA has been used in different studies: from the baseline evaluation of activation levels to the study of emotions and characterization of best performances 14 14 Bertollo M, Bortoli L, Gramaccioni G, Hanin Y, Comani S, Robazza C. Behavioural and psychophysiological correlates of athletic performance: A test of the multi-action plan model.

Appl Psychophysiol Biof ;38 2 In most cases, changes in EDA occur as a set of responses mediated by the autonomic nervous system. Increments of skin conductance level SCL are due to increased activation also related to emotions and anxiety.

Stimuli with strong positive or negative affective value or associated with decision making are able to evoke electrodermal responses. Munro and colleagues 15 15 Munro LL, Dawson ME, Schell AM, Sakai LM.

Electrodermal lability and rapid performance decrement in adegraded stimulus continuous performance task. J Psychophysiol. noticed that SCL increased during the execution of a task and suggested two possible explanations: 1 tasks require a lot of attention resources and this may be associated with a higher activation of the autonomic nervous system; 2 stress and emotions are responsible of the increased SCL rather than attention and effort.

Another useful physiological parameter is respiratory rhythm, usually evaluated through a strain gauge below the chest cage. During task execution, breathing alterations can often be observed. For example, a superficial respiration involves mainly shoulder muscles and not abdominals; in other cases, the athlete may hold the breath or, conversely, voluntarily increase the respiratory rate.

Such variations, also influenced by anxiety and stress, have been associated with poor performances 16 16 Wilson WS, Somers K. Psychophysiological assessment and training with athletes. Knowing and managing your mind and body.

Typically respiratory rhythm analysis is associated with heart rate variability, and idiosyncratic 6 6 Filho E, di Fronso S, Mazzoni C, Robazza C, Bortoli L, Bertollo M.

respiratory techniques are used to develop specific heart rate self-regulation training 17 17 Lagos L, Vaschillo E, Vaschillo B, Lehrer L, Bates M, Pandina R. Heart rate variability biofeedback as a strategy for dealing with competitive anxiety: A case study.

Surface electroencephalography EEG in the scalp is the mostly used neuro technique in sport setting to record the electrical potentials produced by pyramidal cells.

These measurements are obtained through electrodes placed on the head according to standard systems of positioning. EEG studies showed that specific frequency bands of brain oscillation alpha, beta, theta, etc.

are associated with precise mental states calm, arousal, attention, etc. Indeed, a great deal of research demonstrated an association between particular electroencephalographic patterns and performance in specific cognitive tasks and activities.

For this reason, electroencephalography is used as a high-resolution temporal technique to understand performance and its improvements in the context of sports sciences 18 18 Park JL, Fairweather MM, Donaldson DI.

Making the case for mobile cognition: EEG and sports performance. Neurosci Biobehav Rev ; Psychophysiologists generally use a multidimensional and multimodal approach to investigate performance, integrating physiological measurements with behavioral and psychological data.

Measures such as skin conductance or those derived from EEG, EMG and ECG are linked to cognitive processes such as attention and emotional states. The modulation of physiological parameters can be used to control and increase performance. For example, heart rate increase and decrease has been studied in relation to the cognitive processes involved in motor performance 19 19 Abernethy B, Maxwell JP, Masters RS, Van der Kamp J, Jackson RC.

Attentional processes in skill learning and expert performance. Lacey and Lacey 20 20 Lacey BC, Lacey J Cognitive modulation of time-dependent primary bradycardia.

According to Tremayne and Barry 21 21 Tremayne P, Barry RJ. Elite pistol shooters. Physiological patterning of best versus worst shots. Int J Psychophysiol. Radlo and colleagues 22 22 RadloSJ, Steinberg GM, Singer RN, Barba DA, MelnikovA.

The influence of an attentional focus strategy on alpha brain wave activity, HR, and dart-throwing performance. Int J Sport Psychol. An external focus of attention was associated with a pronounced heart rate decrease immediately before a task shot , while internal focus was linked to increased heart rate.

Better performance was obtained with the use of an external focus, associated with heart rate decrease. Other authors have also considered HRV indices in relation to cognitive processes.

Cooke and colleagues 23 23 Cooke A, Kavussanu M, McIntyre D, Ring C. Psychological, muscular and kinematic factors mediate performance under pressure.

observed how heart rate variability in LF increased under augmented pressure during golf putting. The authors attributed this result to the increase in respiratory volume under pressure. In this case, an increased heart rate variability in HF band is explained by its sensitivity to breathing rhythm changes.

However, researches have not observed any change in HF, despite the increased pressure and perception of greater effort during the task. It seems that the impact of the physical and postural demands of the putting on cardiac measurements, even minimal, is higher compared to that of mental activity.

Neumann and Thomas 24 24 Neumann DL, Thomas PR. The relationship between skill level and patterns in cardiac and respiratory activity during golf putting. Int J Psychophys.

Mullen and colleagues 25 25 Mullen R, Hardy L, Tattersall A. The effects of anxiety on motor performance: a test of the conscious processing hypothesis.

gave a different explanation of the meaning of HRV. They conducted a study on amateur golfers using a putting task performed with and without a concurrent distracting task. They found that HF was higher during the putting condition with distracting stimulus and attributed this result to breathing relaxation strategies adopted by participants that affected the high frequency component of HRV.

Regarding EDA, Tremayne and Barry 21 21 Tremayne P, Barry RJ. Electrodermal activity data showed a decrease in the values of expert shooters before the shot; it could reflect a quiet state of the body in the last seconds before the shot, immediately followed by a return to the initial values.

SCL was recently used to identify individual zones of optimal functioning and typify optimal-poor and controlled-automatic performances in the framework of the MAP model.

Specifically, an increase of SCL during more controlled performances Type2, Type3 compared to the automatic ones Type1, Type4 was found. These results suggest the existence of different mechanism of energy regulation and mobilization as related to the different types of performance states; an alternative explanation relies on the concept of attention and stress in a controlled situation, which leads to an increased electrodermal arousal 14 14 Bertollo M, Bortoli L, Gramaccioni G, Hanin Y, Comani S, Robazza C.

Electromiography has been used to evaluate neural activation during fatiguing isometric motor tasks, or different muscular activity related to internal and external focus.

In this regard, Zachry and colleagues 26 26 Zachry T, Wulf G, Mercer J, Bezodis N. Increased movement accuracy and reduced EMG activity as the result of adopting an external focus of attention.

Brain Res Bull, ; showed that the accuracy of the throw in basketball players was greater with an external focus toward the basket compared to an internal one toward the arm. In addition, electromyographic activity of some muscle groups was found to be slower with an external focus compared to an internal one.

This suggests that an external focus could increase the movement economy and reduce the elements in the motor system that impede movement control and impair the outcome. Moreover, neuromuscular data obtained through EMG analysis in a study about motivational cues on performance, interestingly indicated that this kind of stimuli partially blocked the effects of fatigue on the central motor command; indeed, participants that were administered these stimuli were able to sustain or even increase the neural activation of the working muscles during the final moments of a fatiguing isometric motor task 27 27 Bigliassi, M, SilvaVB, KarageorghisCI, BirdJM, SantosPC, Altimari LR.

Brain mechanisms that underlie the effects of motivational audiovisual stimuli on psychophysiological responses during exercise. Regarding the monitoring of brain activity in sport setting, electroencephalography is the most used technique because it can be used also outside the laboratory environment.

Indeed, some types of equipment make possible to collect data even in more ecological settings. This enables researchers to describe optimal pattern of cortical activity during performance in various sports, such as archery, shooting, or golf 11 11 Hatfield BD, Kerick SE.

Electroencephalography in shooting sports allows detecting optimal performance predictors through electroencephalographic differences in pre-shooting conditions between experts and novices, and between optimal and non-optimal performances in the same athlete. This technique allows the study of some brain wave characteristics and frequencies, linking them to specific situations as mentioned before.

In their review chapter on superior sport performance, Hatfield and Kerick 11 11 Hatfield BD, Kerick SE. observed that there was a cortical asymmetry in the temporal area in the alpha band of rifle shooters during a 7. Alpha power showed a noticeable increase over the 7.

These authors interpreted the increase of alpha activity in the left hemisphere as a decreased activation of the same hemisphere. The same authors noticed that the left temporal hemisphere is devoted to language processing and suggested that increased alpha activity might indicate a reduction of the symbolic and verbal activity as well as of self-talk, and an allocation of more resources to the visual-motor stream in the right hemisphere.

This interpretation seems to be congruent with the idea that self-talk can be a potential performance "disturbing" process. An ecological approach to assess differences in skill level and the related mental states is useful to examine the differences between expert and non-expert athletes in a specific task.

Del Percio and colleagues 28 28 Del Percio C, Babiloni C, Bertollo M, Marzano N, Iacoboni M, Infarinato F, et al. Visuo-attentional and sensorimotor alpha rhythms are related to visuo-motor performance in athletes. Hum Brain Map. found that elite pistol shooters are characterized by an increase in the power of high alpha band Hz and beta band Hz , probably linked to attentional processes.

In a subsequent study, results suggested that elite athletes are characterized by a stabilization in the functional coupling of preparatory waves alpha-beta between the frontal visual-spatial areas and parietal-occipital cortical areas 29 29 Del Percio C, Iacoboni M, Lizio R, Marzano N, Infarinato F, Vecchio F, et al.

Facebook Instagram Linkedin. Triathlon Coach Services Triathlon Coaching Cycling Coaching Run Coaching Swim Analysis Lactate Testing Consulting Athletes Team Highlights Testimonals Case Studies About the Coach My Philosophy Blog Menü. This, combined with access to qualified coaches and research, has led to improved performance for athletes of all ages and abilities.

Moreover, athletes today have learned to optimize their training and recovery strategies, as well as monitor their training progress through lactate testing or urea testing urea is a waste product of protein metabolism, in the blood. Elevated levels of urea can indicate increased muscle damage and stress on the body.

In addition, access to psychological support and mental training has also helped to further enhance performance, and these resources are not just limited to young athletes but available to everyone.

However, despite these advancements, it is still necessary to put in a lot of hard work and training in order to achieve success.

That is to say, training methods have not changed, and it still requires a large amount of aerobic training volume and interval training to be fast over almost all endurance distances.

To be a successful athlete, it is important to train smarter, not necessarily harder. This means listening to your body, avoiding bad training decisions that could lead to overtraining, burnout, or injury, and finding a balance between high intensity and low intensity training.

So, Athletes of all ages need patience and guidance from themselves and their coaches, as it is tempting to train too hard and push too far. Certainly, the principle of speed still holds true for athletes who want to be faster over longer distances. In order to be fast over longer distances, it is necessary to also be fast over shorter distances.

For example, this has been demonstrated by the faster marathon and Ironman finishing times from athletes who were previously fast over shorter distances.

The combination of speed and endurance is crucial in achieving success in longer races, and these principles apply to athletes of all ages and abilities.

Athletes today have access to better equipment and more knowledge about proper fuelling and hydration, but they are still susceptible to making the same mistakes as past generations.

To clarify, training is not as complicated as it may seem, and by combining talent, hard work, passion, and patience, athletes of all ages can go far. Despite advances in sport science, nutrition, and equipment, it can sometimes be overwhelming and stressful for athletes to keep track of everything.

It is important to remember that the best computer is your own brain and not your smartphone or any apps. Similarly, focusing on keeping things simple and not getting caught up in all the latest trends can be more effective in the long run, and this applies to athletes of all ages.

Athletes should strive to find a balance between utilizing modern technologies and methods and relying on their own instincts and experience. Furthermore, another important factor that has contributed to the improved performance of athletes is expert coaching.

Qualified coaches provide athletes with the knowledge and guidance to optimize their training and avoid common pitfalls such as injuries or overtraining.