Episode 09: Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning in Climbing

Author – Allegra Maguire

 

It happens often that strong emotions are seen as hindrance for performance.

Regulating and managing emotions are an intrinsic part of training and performing.

Mental preparation in sport psychology is defined as those cognitive, emotional, and behavioural strategies athletes and teams use to arrive at an ideal performance state or condition that is related to optimal psychological states and peak performance for either competition or practice.

Various studies in the last 30 years showed that when athletes were given a specific mental training their performance was superior to when they were not provided. But when testing which one was the best, the evidence showed that no single technique was better than another. In fact, it emerged how different mental preparation suited better different types of situations.

Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning in Climbing

Going back to the research, Yuri Hanin developed the concept of Zone of Optimal Functioning to understand sport performance with regards to individual differences in personality. In fact, his decades of research showed that idiosyncratic differences in emotional states was associated with optimal performance.

The zone of optimal performance is “a recipe” of various emotions activating together with various degrees of intensity. Therefore, optimal mental training means create and train strategies that allows the athlete to tune their emotions to stay in the zone of optimal performance.

 

Note how emotions can have both positive and negative valence but can be functional or dysfunctional depending on the task that you have to perform. For example, in some sports cheerfulness can be considered dysfunctional. Think about team sports. In the same way, aggressiveness can also be considered functional in certain situations. For example, in some kinds of martial arts is actually a criterion to score points.

How do you discover your own recipe?

The best way it to have a training journal. While having a journal has shown to have an astonishing number of benefits, even a very simple journal can provide the needed information to know yourself better. The most important fact is to log every target session (could be a comp or even specific types of training if you want, like projecting sessions) and report both functional and dysfunctional situations. We have the tendency to select salient events, especially for the outcome (when it goes particularly well or bad) and tend to forget to process less intense situations.

Now, when you know your activation profile, you have the possibility to exploit it at your own benefit. This means you will need to develop and practice your skills to:

• Identify your actual state
• Assess the needs of the situation
• Employ the appropriate strategies.

Music is one of the means by which you can regulate your arousal state. Same goes for motivational phrases and stress management strategies. The important thing is not to create a mere ritual for committing, push yourself to the limit, but for “getting in the optimal zone”, depending on what you and the situation needs.

Do you need help when it comes to managing your emotions, fear and pressure? If you would like to find out more about the Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning in Climbing, or would like some coaching on your headgame in climbing, contact us at Climb in Flow!

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References

Borg, G. (1998). Borg’s perceived exertion and pain scales. Human kinetics.

Gould, D., Guinan, D., Greenleaf, C., Medbery, R., & Peterson, K. (1999). Factors affecting Olympic performance: Perceptions of athletes and coaches from more and less successful teams. The sport psychologist, 13(4), 371-394.

Greenleaf, C., Gould, D., & Dieffenbach, K. (2001). Factors influencing Olympic performance: interviews with Atlanta and Negano US Olympians. Journal of applied sport psychology, 13(2), 154-184.

Hanin, Y. L. (2007). Emotions in sport: Current issues and perspectives. Handbook of sport psychology, 3(3158), 22-41.

Orlick, T. (1986). Psyching for sport: Mental training for athletes (Vol. 1). Champaign, Ill.: Leisure Press.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2014). Autonomy and need satisfaction in close relationships: Relationships motivation theory. In N. Weinstein (Ed.), Human motivation and interpersonal relationships: Theory, research, and applications (pp. 53–73). Dordrecht: Springer.