Psychotechnical games and exercises.
Play, as part of a child's healthy development, helps them loosen up and gradually deal with difficulties that seem insurmountable to them at the time (playing at competing, for example). Using psychotechnical games and exercises appropriate to the athletes' age satisfies their need to play and, at the same time, serves to activate and develop the relevant mental functions, to adjust their psychological state, and to build and maintain relationships within the group — while also being a means of pursuing a dual career.
"Psychotechnical games" sounds like "games not to be taken seriously", and points to a limited application — "in sport"; while "self-regulation" suggests the familiar, permitted forms — a kind of psychotherapy with a muzzle on.)
In fact these exercises were devised, tested, applied and described in a variety of settings: in psychotherapy with neurotic patients, in work with elite athletes, in personal growth groups — everywhere a good psychologist's foot could tread, and everywhere it was then thought it could not.
The book "PSYCHOTRAINING: GAMES AND EXERCISES" (by Nikolai Tszen and Yuri Pakhomov), on which this article is based, is full of episodes of practice, of the joy and discovery of meeting what is human in yourself, of a growing interest in our capacity simply to be — alone with ourselves and together with others.
Why play psychotechnical games with athletes?
Every coach feels the need to lift a young athlete after a poor performance, or to help them handle the nerves before a start, or to say something bracingly sharp that lets the athlete pull themselves together. Over long months and years of intensive work together, a coach inevitably finds an approach to each athlete. Day after day, working against the resistance of the "human material", the coach becomes more perceptive and wiser. He comes to know his students' minds and characters in fine detail. He knows who to say what to, and when. To get inside each of their inner lives he acquires a whole set of psychological keys and lockpicks.
In most cases the coach solves all the practical questions usually assigned to psychology perfectly well himself. He solves them better than a psychologist with a diploma would.
But a coach's intuition and experience are not all-powerful. And not every coach can boast of them. So alongside a masterly command of practical psychology, coaching also shows us the exact opposite.
Psychotechnical games and exercises are a universal psychological tool for a coach working with athletes of primary school, adolescent and youth age, because:
- Applied systematically, they can develop the core cognitive processes, the ability to self-regulate unhelpful mental states, and the building, maintenance and repair of relationships within a team or training group.
- They can reduce the subjective sense of fatigue and build and sustain athletes' motivation.
In the next few posts we will present several well-proven psychotechnical games and exercises, in the authors' own modification, for coaches to use with young athletes.
Here are 2 exercises, one modified and one not.
The exercise "The fly" (the original), for improving athletes' attention:
For this exercise you need:
- a board marked out with a nine-square 3 x 3 playing field
- a small suction cup (or a piece of plasticine).
The suction cup plays the part of a "trained fly". The board is stood upright, and the facilitator explains that the fly moves from one square to another in response to commands, which it obediently follows.
On one of the four possible commands ("Up!", "Down!", "Right!" or "Left!") the fly moves accordingly to the neighbouring square.
The fly's starting position is the central square of the field.
Participants give the commands in turn. Following the fly's movements closely, the players must not let it leave the field. After all these explanations the game itself begins. It is played on an imaginary field which each participant pictures in front of them. If someone loses the thread or sees that the fly has left the field, they give the command "Stop!" and, returning the fly to the central square, start the game again.
"The fly" demands constant concentration from the players: the moment one of them is distracted or thinks about something else, they lose the thread of the game and have to stop it.
The game usually goes along briskly, generates interest and encourages participants to go further. Some athletes tend to overrate their own attentiveness. The psychotechnical exercise "The fly" can be particularly useful to a coach when that illusion needs dispelling.
In groups without much experience of working with attention, watching the moving fly for a long time usually produces tension and fatigue. Participants slip off the object of their concentration more and more often, lose track, and eventually break off the game. So the facilitator should watch the players' state and end the exercise before irritation starts building and interest starts falling in the group.
Working to exhaustion is only justified when the group has set itself the specific task of testing and training the steadiness of their attention — that is, their ability to concentrate on something for a long time.
An important characteristic of attention is its span — the breadth of the area it can cover at one moment. When, looking over your best suit, you suddenly notice a moth hole, the area of attention instantly narrows to the size of the defect you have found. It happens by itself. But we can also regulate the breadth of our attention deliberately.
"The fly", modified.
The exercise suits the development of concentration. Draw a field on a sheet of paper as if for noughts and crosses. Place the fly in the centre square (you can draw it, use a piece of plasticine and so on).
Instructions: You see a field with the fly in the central square. It can move on the commands "up", "down", "right" and "left". I will now start controlling this fly; follow it closely and tell me which square it ends up in once I stop giving commands. Ready, go!
Now let's number the squares: top row — 1, 2 and 3; middle row — 4, 5 and 6; and bottom row — 7, 8 and 9.
The fly always starts from the centre! Now close your eyes and picture the field in front of you. When I stop, you have to say the number of the square the fly ended up in. The fly can fly away: if it is in the centre and the commands are "right", "right", then you should say "the fly has flown away".
Variations:
- imagine the fly is your opponent (or a tennis, volleyball or basketball ball) and the field is the opponent's side. The task is to keep your opponent running for as long as possible;
- the field is the opponent's side; picture playing shots into the squares, always returning to your own baseline;
- before the commands start, name the square the fly will begin from.
Conditions: gradually increase the number of commands and the speed at which they are given, and move on to the other variations.