Francesc Porta: "The athlete must balance body and mind"

If something characterizes the sport, it is that, although its most recognizable facet is based on movement, it is far from being limited to the purely mechanical. High-performance athletes become known among other things because they are not machines that execute instructions: both individually and in groups, behind They have a psychological facet that structures their behavior and that even makes tournaments and competitions have their own narrative, that they explain stories inspiring.

One of the implications of this is that To compete well, it is essential to take into account these psychological variables and know how to manage them. For this reason, this time we speak with an expert on the subject: the psychologist Francesc Porta.

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Interview with Francesc Porta: how to manage pressure in high-performance sports

Francesc Porta Nuñez is a psychologist and sports coach with experience both as a professional in behavioral science and as a professional competitive athlete. He currently works helping both individual athletes and sports clubs and federations. In this interview he talks about stress management and psychological pressure in the context of high performance sports.

Having competed in various sports, did training in Psychology change your perspective on what kind of challenge it is to be an athlete?

Without a doubt, practicing sports to have fun as a hobby is very different than preparing for a competition.

When you start to compete you need to systematically develop resources and strategies that allow you to face the competition with confidence. Many athletes develop them innately but the important thing is to know if they are adequate and if they help improve their performance.

In my case, psychology helped me to be more aware of this process and to enjoy competing. Later as a coach and sports coach it became clear to me that what differentiated athletes with the same physical and technical-tactical level was the psychological aspect.

Does the importance of knowing how to manage the psychological when playing sports tends to be underestimated?

Less and less, but it is true that the athlete, in general, is very pragmatic and simple The fact that psychological variables are not tangible means that they are not given the importance that have. I think that currently the world of sports is aware of the importance of the mental, but not so much of how it can be trained to integrate it into sports planning.

Is the pressure experienced by an athlete dedicated to an individual sport of a different type from that experienced by those who participate in team sports?

Yes, in team sports interpersonal variables (leadership, communication, cohesion ...) influence as much or more, in the athlete's performance, than the intrapersonal ones (self-confidence, activation, concentration…). In addition, among other aspects, the competition structure and the environment that the athlete lives is different.

Therefore, the preparation must be adapted to each circumstance in order to facilitate the positive activation necessary to face this pressure with guarantees.

And what aspects of the pressure that athletes feel do you think are not found in the pressure felt, for example, by those who work in an office?

The main differences are that the athlete must balance body and mind so that his technical gestures are coordinated and extremely precise in a given time. In other words, the athlete simultaneously stresses both the cognitive (thought and emotions) and the physiological (body) systems under pressure for a short period of time.

In other activities, the pressure is asynchronous and the cognitive system is mostly stressed. Sport is the only activity where the mind-body pressure is synchronous and intense. For this reason, to flow competing, the athlete must train mastery and automation of his resources.

What are some of the strategies and techniques that you consider most important when dealing with pressure in high performance sports?

We have to start from the basis that each person manages competitive pressure differently and what can work for one athlete does not have to work for another. The important thing is to establish a system of continuous improvement so that the athlete applies what provides return and performance.

The techniques that I train the most with my athletes are: pre-competitive protocols where we introduce psychological elements of interest, diaphragmatic breathing and Jacobson's relaxation technique with the aim of regulating positive cognitive activation, visualization with virtual reality, self-assessments and sensation records, rationalization of irrational thoughts, and self-instructions among other.

And as general guidelines and tips to manage concentration well in sport, what do you think is most remarkable?

From my point of view, the training of attention focuses is the guideline that facilitates more concentration in the athlete. Getting him to concentrate exclusively on the technical performance of the movement and on everything that he can control, facilitates the attention span and avoids deconcentration.

I have worked with teams that, integrating the work of the attention focus in the training, have substantially improved the percentage of throws. When the athlete knows what, when and where to focus on it, performance improves.