Psychological Demands Of A Rugby Union Game
Over the past 20 years the number of athletes and coaches, who look to sport psychology to gain edge over competitors has dramatically increased. One of the highest psychologically demanding sports is Rugby Union. Rugby Union is an interactive, continuous contact, 15-man, team sport that requires athletes to participate in frequent bouts of high intensity activity separated by short bouts of low intensity. This continuous change in intensity during an 80-minute game requires athletes to make modifications to their physical actions and emotional reactions, through the use of psychological skills. Three key psychological skills athletes utilise before, during and post a Rugby Union game are; imagery motivation and goal setting.
Motivation
Motivation is the foundation of an athletes optimal sport performance and achievement. Motivation refers to personality factors, social variables, cognitions, act in situations where one is evaluated, competes against others or attempts to attain a standard of excellence. That is, the personal drive that leads individuals to initiate, direct and sustain human behaviour in the pursuit of ultimate glory. In the sporting field motivation is a crucial tool used by athletes and to increase energy, concentration, communication and work rate levels within a task. Within motivation theory there are two key types of motivation; intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation occurs when athletes engage in activities voluntarily in absence of material rewards or external pressures or constraints. Thus, intrinsic motivation is when an athlete participates because, Rugby Union is inherently interesting or enjoyable. A player with a higher level of intrinsic motivation can rally through a drop in performance and sel-esteem. Extrinsic motivation refers to an athlete playing sport in the sole pursuit of some outcome separate from involvement in the actual activity, for example; financial benefits. Rugby Union coaches need to identify and understand the reasons for the athlete participating in rugby. In order to inspire their athletes with the aim to achieve the state of mind that produces peak performance and skill acquisition.
Empowerment of Rugby Union players is key to improving and sustaining long-term team motivation. Motivating athletes to play Rugby Union to the best of their ability cannot be solely focused on objectives or results. One of the most important aspects of Rugby Union coaching is ensuring that athletes continue to work together collectively and individually towards a goal. A good coach will make it their goal to be empowering to their pupils and once this is achieved, Rugby Union players will strive hard to return this for their coach. Rugby Union coaches can ensure that all their athletes continue to stay motivated during long seasons by giving their players a voice on game plans and training designs. This action provides individuals and the team a sense of ownership thus decisions such as; goal targets are heard and valued.
Imagery
Another psychological skill that is crucial in helping rugby players restructure precompetitive symptoms is mental imagery. Mental imagery is one of the best and most common psychological techniques used to enhance an athlete’s confidence and help to reduce anxiety. Imagery is an experience where an athlete re-creates and/or creates performance and emotional/ mental experiences as multi-sensory images or ‘sees the tackle’ before they perform it.
Imagery assists athletes in turning debilitating nerves into more controllable and facilitating images. This process allows athletes to be mentally prepared and confident ahead of and during a competitive game or training session. Imagery is an extremely vital psychological tool used by goal kickers within Rugby Union. A recent study conducted by Lewis Down in 2015 looked at ‘the effect of cognitive specific imagery on confidence within placekicking in Rugby Union’. The study found that 100% of studied athletes believed that imagery aids their mental rehearsal and increases their levels of self-confidence which is extremely vital to their goal kicking results and routines. However, the study also found that 50% of the studied participants saw missed goal kicks when practicing their mental imagery techniques leading to slightly reduced levels of self-confidence. Overall, imagery is seen to increase an athlete’s confidence and standard of performance.
Coaches can also use this information to create workshops with athletes within their teams to increase a goal kickers self-confidence and overall performance. A further key study ‘The effect of a motivation general-arousal imagery intervention upon preperformance symptoms in male Rugby Union players’ conducted in 2009, further supported the hypothesis that imagery is extremely important to the psychological state of athletes. The study found that imagery decreased stress levels by 1. 98 points and increased self-confidence levels by 5 points. Participants also suggested that imagery acts as a stimulus to help them with their thoughts and feelings and enables them to focus on their own performance prior to competing. A participant stated that imagery taught them “that the worries weren’t necessarily a bad thing as it (the imagery) taught me that this was natural and all part of getting me ready to play. ”
The study conclusively, highlights that athletes can utilise mental imagery to enhance self-confidence and protect against potentially debilitating anxiety symptoms. Athletes and coaches should therefore, implement imagery practices and skills into their team and individual performances and trainings to assist in building self-confidence, controlling competitive nerves and enhancing the overall successful performance of athletes and the team. Contradicting, imagery can also have significant negative effects on athletes. Johnny Wilkinson an ex-international England fly-half experienced extremely negative and debilitating images during his 2007 Rugby World Cup campaign. “I cannot find any other way of dealing with this non-stop barrage of thoughts and negativity”.
Whilst there are negative elements of imagery athletes and coaches alike should continue to explore their own imagery styles and experiences because, the team who can effectively handle any debilitating images and their associated emotions that will ultimately become more successful.
Goal Setting
Goal-setting is one the most important psychological skills that all rugby coaches and athletes utilise throughout a season. Goals are a specific standard of performance that usually is aimed to be attained within a specific time-frame. Goals set should be directly related to the vision or ‘big picture’ and values that an athlete or team aspires to. The process of Goal-setting aims to help coaches and athletes direct their energy and intensity into improving performance and enjoyment within a task or sport related activity. The primary successful framework for athletes and coaches setting goals is the SMART framework. This framework ensures that goals set are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based.
The two primary types of athletic goals are process and performance. Process goals are important as they allow the athlete or coach more control and clearer short-term targets. Process goals can be thought of as being steps to help achieve performance goals whereas performance goals focus on doing the task or skill well. The process of setting performance and process goals is vital for athletic performance as it gives the athlete or coach a pathway for short- and longer-term success and improvement. One of the primary studies conducted in recent years ‘The Effects of Goal Setting on Rugby Performance within the Journal of Applied Behaviour Analysis’ by Stephen D Mellalieu and Sheldon Hanton found that goal-setting is one of the keys to a successful athletic performance in Rugby Union. The intervention consisted for 3 key stages, firstly, the goal determination stage where each participant met with the researcher during the preseason period and indicated one aspect of performance that they wanted to target for improvement. The second stage, was the goal-setting stage, this is the stage in which the intervention was administered. The researchers used a goal-attainment scaling method to generate a series of numerical values for targeted performance. The final stage was the goal reviewing, in this stage the researchers met individually with each participant 48hrs before each match during the second half of the season and reviewed the goal-attainment scaling score for each targeted skill improvement. The results collected conclusively showed a dramatic improvement in performance pre-intervention to post-intervention. One participant averaged 5. 12 ball carries per game pre-intervention and during the second half of the season average 9. 10 ball carries per game, a 77% increase. All participants postintervention performance increased dramatically. The researchers then studied how individual improvements due to goal-setting effected the teams overall performance and the results showed that the team improved their winning percentage by 20% from 50% to 70%. Thus, the intervention was extremely successful in improving individual athletic and team performances.
Wanlin et al. (1997) and Ward Carnes (2002) both suggest that a goal-setting intervention enhances specific performance behaviours and consequently team outcomes. Both sources indicate that if coaches can implement a structure into their teams from the start of the season to the end of the season whereby athletes are able to choose and self-guide their own targets, this can be extremely beneficial. The process of setting-goals can also assist athletes in maintaining intrinsic motivation in the short-term with targets per week to be achieved by the athlete. This will enable an athlete and team to not become disillusioned with the extensive and rigorous demands of competitive rugby over a long season and allows teams to easily re-focus and re-evaluate. Furthermore, setting goals wilth an athlete who is injured will allow them to stay motivated during the rehabilitation stage before they are able to play rugby again. However, goal-setting can also become quickly detrimental to performance. Setting goals that do not follow the SMART framework are less effective.
Goals that are heavily outcome focused may result in a shift of motivation from a healthy intrinsic/extrinsic balance to being highly extrinsic. The knock-on effect is that these poor goals and shift in motivation will increase the likelihood of an athlete being nervous under pressure and not being able to focus attention when it is required within a game. Young rugby players enjoy playing the game and performing at their best to please their teammates, the coach and their parents. However, if a coach suddenly decides to go through a goal-setting intervention where all goals set for young athletes are focused directly on the outcome of winning every game the young athletes will become negatively impacted, reduce their intrinsic motivations to play the game and ultimately may decide to give up playing the sport.
Coaches have a huge role within youth Rugby Union teams to ensure that performance and process goals are set of athletes however, monitored closely to ensure the goals are skill acquisition based not outcome based. Goal-setting is one of the most important and key psychological skills that effect all athletes within rugby and can excel an athlete’s improvement or significantly psychologically affect them and stunt their skills acquisition and improvement processes.
