January, 2020 - Desirée Mejía

Jan 29 2020

Cómo trabajar el miedo en el deporte

En el deporte se dan numerosas situaciones que pueden producir miedo y ésta puede ser elicitada por una gran diversidad de factores (personales, sociales, etc.). Por ello, nos encontramos ante una gran variabilidad – como ocurre con todo lo que se mueve en el plano psicológico – y eso dificulta su gestión.

Este miedo puede obstaculizar el aprendizaje de un atleta, su rendimiento competitivo, su readaptación tras una lesión,… y, es por ello, que debemos descubrir el modo más eficaz de moderar esta respuesta afectiva. Para ello, vamos a volver a poner el foco en técnicas conductuales: en este caso, la desensibilización sistemática y la exposición prolongada.

¿Puedo manejar el miedo en el deporte?

La respuesta es sí, y la metodología suele incluir técnicas cognitivo-conductuales. Dichas técnicas se fueron introduciendo al ámbito del deporte para ayudar a los atletas a alcanzar un estado mental óptimo. Más específicamente, se emplean técnicas de gestión de la ansiedad para trabajar el miedo en el deporte.

Y es aquí donde uno encuentra la utilidad de técnicas conductuales como la desensibilización sistemática de Wolpe y la exposición. La principal diferencia entre ambas es que en la DS el individuo se va exponiendo a sus miedos progresivamente a través de la imaginación; la exposición, por otra parte, se realiza en vivo.

Ambas técnicas buscan la extinción de la respuesta de miedo (que es la desaparición de una respuesta a un estímulo tras exposiciones prolongadas y/o repetidas), impidiendo conductas de escape y evitación.

¿Cómo se aplican estas técnicas?

Resumir estas técnicas conductuales en tres párrafos puede hacer pensar que su aplicación en un contexto real es pan comido… y nada más lejos de la realidad. De hecho, en casos muy extremos donde la ansiedad experimentada por el atleta le provoque un malestar significativo, lo más recomendable es derivar a un terapeuta especializado en psicología clínica.

Por eso – y para evitar desdibujar la línea que separa a un entrenador de un psicólogo – voy a detallar dos generalidades de ambas técnicas para su uso en situaciones específicas que puedan darse con nuestros atletas.

Jerarquizar situaciones temidas

La mejor forma de entender esto es con un ejemplo y, para ello, vamos a basarnos en una experiencia real: ¡la de mi madre! Ella, como otras muchas mujeres, tiene miedo a saltar al cajón. Tiene la capacidad física para hacerlo pero justo cuando debe dar el salto se frena y huye despavorida.

Tras varios intentos fallidos resultó obvio que no iba a pasar, así que me pregunté si habría alguna otra cosa que sí estuviera dispuesta a saltar. Quizá 40 centímetros eran muchos, pero a lo mejor un disco de 5 kg le resultaba más asequible. A partir de ahí empezamos a sumar altura de disco en disco hasta que volvimos a encontrarnos con esa secuencia de miedo-evitación.

Entonces cambiamos el foco y me pregunté si se veía capaz de subir al cajón con un “step-up” o si podría hacer un salto alternando pies (en lugar de saltar con los pies juntos). El salto no iba a ocurrir, pero el “step-up” sí que fue posible (teniéndome a mí como salvavidas al lado del cajón, aunque no fui necesaria).

Empezó a dedicarle los últimos minutos de cada sesión en el box a practicar el salto (exposiciones repetidas) hasta que un día me sorprendió saltando al cajón. Lo hizo alternando los pies pero ése fue un paso muy grande que, además de suponer un avance en su capacidad física, también tuvo una consecuencia muy positiva para su autoconfianza.

Impedir el escape o la evitación del atleta

Sobre el papel, la teoría funciona de maravilla. Sin embargo, existe un contratiempo: ¿a quién le gusta exponerse deliberadamente a algo que teme? Como humanos, nuestra conducta se rige por dos principios básicos: aproxímate al placer y evita el daño. Por tanto, tendemos a evitar situaciones aversivas. Y es precisamente lo que tenemos que impedir.

Veamos cómo se forma esta contingencia con otro caso hipotético. Tenemos a un futbolista que se rompió el ligamento cruzado anterior haciendo un cambio de dirección y lleva parado 8 meses. Cuando recibe el alta deportiva y vuelve para su programa de readaptación, muestra miedo a los ejercicios que implican cambios de dirección y los evita.

Cuando al futbolista se le plantea un ejercicio de dribbling con el balón (ver figura 1), éste empieza a experimentar síntomas de ansiedad porque su lesión se produjo en un cambio de dirección y teme sufrir una recaída. La ansiedad alcanza tal intensidad que el futbolista no es capaz de hacerlo y pasa a otro ejercicio. Escapar de la situación hace que su ansiedad desaparezca, lo que actúa como refuerzo negativo (para ver más sobre este concepto, mira este artículo).

Queremos romper esa contingencia y que la ansiedad no obstaculice la realización del ejercicio.

Nuestro trabajo será impedir que el futbolista huya de la situación y aprenda que el cambio de dirección ya no predice un peligro inminente (lesionarse).

En resumen…

El miedo en el deporte será una constante y debemos encontrar el mejor modo de gestionar esa respuesta en el deportista. En este artículo os planteo la posibilidad de basarnos en los principios de la modificación de conducta para este propósito y aquí os resumo sus claves.

Listar las situaciones temidas según mayor o menor aproximación a la situación original. Esto nos permite trabajar en aquellos casos en los que la intensidad de la respuesta de ansiedad sea demasiado elevada.
Impedir conductas de escape o evitación para romper la contingencia. Deben re-aprender que el estímulo temido no representa un peligro.
Exposiciones prolongadas y repetidas para asegurarnos de que se produce la extinción del miedo.

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- Chirivella, Enrique Cantón. "La Psicología del Deporte como profesión especializada." Papeles del Psicólogo 31.3 (2010): 237-245.
- Ezquerro, M. (2008). Intervención psicológica en el deporte: revisión crítica y nuevas perspectivas. In V Congreso de la Asociación Española de Ciencias del Deporte. León. 
- Foa, E. B. (2011). Prolonged exposure therapy: past, present, and future. Depression and anxiety.
- Mowrer, O. (1947). On the dual nature of learning—a re-interpretation of" conditioning" and" problem-solving.". Harvard educational review.
- Wolpe, J. (1968) Psychotherapy by reciprocal inhibition. Conditional Reflex 3, 234–240

Desiree Mejia-Naranjo 4 Comments

Jan 29 2020

Overcoming fear in sports using behavioral modification

In sports there are many situations that can produce fear in the athlete and this emotional response can be elicited by diverse factors (personal, social, etc.). Consequently, we face an immense variety – as it so happens with anything that moves on a psychological plane – and this represents a great challenge if we seek to manage this fear in our athletes.

This fear can become an obstacle for our athlete’s learning process, rehabilitation program or overall athletic performance. That’s why we must find the most effective method to modulate the affective response. To do so, we’ll turn our attention to behavioral modification techniques, more specifically: systematic desensitization and prolonged exposure.

Systematic desensitization and prolonged exposure

During the 70s, cognitive-behavioral techniques experienced an exponential growth in psychotherapy. Therefore they were applied to different contexts, including sports. The goal was to enhance an optimal mental state in the athletes to improve their performance levels. Anxiety management techniques quickly became relevant to help overcome fear in sports.

In this sense, techniques such as the systematic desensitization (Wolpe, 1968) and prolonged exposure proved their worth. They’re both heavily influenced by Mowrer’s two-factor theory (1947) which explains the process of avoidance learning: fear is acquired by classic conditioning and maintained by means of avoidance and escape behaviors (Foa, 2011).

Main difference between both techniques is that SD includes a personalized hierarchy of feared situations and the individual faces each situation progressively using visualization and imagination. During prolonged exposures, on the other hand, individuals face the feared stimulus in real life.

Both techniques rely on two premises: extinction of the fear response (the initial response of the individual will tend to disappear after prolonged and repeated exposure to the stimulus), impeding escape or avoidance behaviors to facilitate extinction learning.

How does this apply to real-life situations

Summarizing these behavioral modification techniques in a few paragraphs might lead you to believe this is easy to perform in real-life settings… but you couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that this is quite complex and requires supervision from a specialized professional. The best way to help in the most extreme cases is to derive your athlete to a clinical psychologist.

However, there are some common guidelines that can be useful for everyday situations that may arise with our athletes (at any level of expertise). So I’ll detail those that may help overcome fear in sports.

Hierarchy of feared situations

The best way to understand this is using a real-life example: my mom! As many other women, she’s developed an irrational fear of doing box jumps. She’s physically capable of doing it but right when she’s about to lift her feet off the ground she stops in her tracks.

After several failed attempts, it was quite obvious that it wasn’t happening. So I askd myself: is there something else she might be willing to jump? Maybe 40 cm are too many and a 5-kg bumper plate seems more achievable. We progressively started piling up bumpers until we ran into that fear-avoidance pattern again.

So I shifted my focus and wondered if she’d be able to step up to the box or perform a jump alternating her feet. She wasn’t confident about jumping but she did manage to step up to the box (I stood there beside her just in case but she didn’t need me).

She started practicing 10-15 minutes after every session (repeated exposure) until one day she finally jumped. She alternated her feet but it was still an amazing achievement. Not only because it meant she was progressing in her athletic development but also because it boosted her self-confidence.

Impeding escape/avoidance

On paper, theory works wonders. However, there’s something we should be taking into consideration: who enjoys deliberately experiencing fear? As humans, we’re bound to two general principles that guide our behavior: approach pleasure and avoid pain. Therefore, we tend to escape from aversive situations. And this is exactly what we mustn’t allow.

Let’s see how this “avoidance learning” works with another example. Here’s a soccer player who tore her ACL performing a change of direction and has been inactive for the last 8 months. When she’s allowed to begin her training again, she experiences fear when faced with drills that involve change of direction and she actively avoids them.

This is how it works (figure 1): when she must perform a dribbling exercise, she starts to experience anxious symptomatology because she tore her ACL changing direction and she’s scared of relapsing. Anxiety is so intense that she’s unable to complete the drill and skips it. Escaping the situation brings her anxiety levels down, acting as negative reinforcement (to learn more about this concept, read this post).

fear in sports — Figure 1: example of how we process fear in avoidance learning

We’re trying to break this contingency through which changes of direction indicate the presence of danger (relapsing).

Our job is to “force” her to complete the exercise and re-evaluate the situation in a safe setting. Once she performs enough changes of direction without suffering any injuries, she’ll realize there was nothing to fear.

Recap

Fear in sports is a given so we must dedicate our efforts to finding the best way to manage this emotional response. In this article, I consider the possibility of using behavioral modification techniques which can be broken down into three key aspects:

Listing fear situations according to their similarity to the original situation. This is especially helpful when anxiety levels are too high to expose the athlete from the get-go.
Impeding escape/avoidance behaviors to break the contingency. They must learn that feared stimulus doesn’t predict danger or pain.
Prolonged and repeated exposure to ensure full extinction of the conditioned response.

- Chirivella, Enrique Cantón. "La Psicología del Deporte como profesión especializada." Papeles del Psicólogo 31.3 (2010): 237-245.
- Ezquerro, M. (2008). Intervención psicológica en el deporte: revisión crítica y nuevas perspectivas. In V Congreso de la Asociación Española de Ciencias del Deporte. León. 
- Foa, E. B. (2011). Prolonged exposure therapy: past, present, and future. Depression and anxiety.
- Mowrer, O. (1947). On the dual nature of learning—a re-interpretation of" conditioning" and" problem-solving.". Harvard educational review.
- Wolpe, J. (1968) Psychotherapy by reciprocal inhibition. Conditional Reflex 3,234–240

Desiree Mejia-Naranjo 0 Comments

Jan 22 2020

Teaching CrossFit by using behavioral techniques

Human beings are born with a repertoire of innate behaviors as a result of millions of years of evolution. They’ve been hardwired into our brains to ensure our survival throughout the years. However, once we actually start interacting on planet Earth, we begin to learn a whole bunch of different skills.

This learning process is quite basic and it doesn’t really change as we fully develop into adults (yes, this means old dogs can learn new tricks). Understanding how human beings learn and acquire new behaviors can be quite useful for those of us who’ve decided to make a living out of teaching CrossFit.

In this article we’ll be talking about two behavioral techniques – reinforcement and punishment system and the shaping method – both of which can help us teach our athletes how to sharpen their tools and broaden their fitness in the process.

1 – Reinforcement vs. punishment

As active agents in our environment we can manipulate certain stimuli to elicit a desired effect, which can be to increase or reduce the chances of an individual repeating certain behaviors. This is how reinforcement and punishment can be used as teaching methods. It’s actually very common when teaching CrossFit but it should be noted that there’s a right way to do it.

First of all, when we say “positive” or “negative” we’re referring to either “providing a stimulus” or “withdrawing a stimulus”, respectively. On the other hand, if we say “reinforcement” or “punishment”, we wish to increase or decrease the chances of an individual repeating their behavior.

Positive reinforcement: this is the good ‘ol “here’s something you like cause you did something good”. We provide the athlete with an appetitive stimulus to try and get them to repeat their behavior. Any form of positive feedback after an athlete executed a training session at the desired level is an example of positive reinforcement.
Negative reinforcement: this means we withdraw an unenjoyable stimulus to reward a certain behavior. For example, imagine you programmed 8 intervals on the assault bike but your athlete is crushing the paces you wrote out and you decide to give them the opportunity to skip the 8th interval if they manage to stay consistent on the 7th.
Positive punishment: this one is pretty much a given in any CrossFit affiliate around the world… or haven’t you ever been hit with penalty burpees? Leaving unattended barbells rolling around the floor or being late to class are things we don’t want our athletes doing so we gladly provide them with something as aversive as the burpee (although I must confess I love burpees and don’t think of them as punishment).
Negative punishment: this means that you withdraw something the athlete enjoys as punishment for unwanted behavior. For example, if the athlete’s late for class and misses the warm-up, the coach may decide to leave him out for that session because he’d mess up the class flow for the rest of the members.

2 – The shaping method

The shaping method is based on gradual reinforcement of successive approximations to a pre-established goal behavior. When teaching CrossFit, this behavioral technique can be applied for any and every progression drill we would normally use to learn how to snatch, do a muscle-up or an air squat.

Executing movements in CrossFit hitting all points of performance can only rest on a solid foundation. We look for exquisite movement patterns in our athletes before we move to the coveted “high-intensity” variable.

Shaping programs are ideal when it comes to translating one of CrossFit’s greatest teachings to real-life situations (see figure 1) by using this method to guarantee excellent mechanics.

First, we choose a goal movement (clean & jerk, handstand walk, pull-up, etc.) and then we program a series of successive approximations to pave the road towards the end goal. Every time the athlete hits a milestone, we reinforce.

As the athlete progresses, we withdraw previous reinforcement. Ergo, the athlete will have to complete more difficult movement sequences in order to receive reinforcement as time goes on.

In order for the shaping method to be truly effective, the coach must be knowledgeable enough to identify execution errors and provide corrective cues for each case. These aspects will determine the affective valence of our feedback – positive, negative or corrective – (Carmona et. al, 2015).

Imagine one of the athletes at your affiliate doesn’t have a strict pull-up yet. The end goal is that non-kipping pull-up so we take a look at our progression drills and decide to have the athlete navigate through isometric bar holds, scapular pull-ups, ring rows with elevated feet, eccentric pull-ups, so on and so forth.

Once the athlete is able to hold onto the bar for more than 30″, you reinforce; once the athlete manages to perform scapular pull-ups with proper technique, you reinforce; and you continue in that fashion while simultaneously withdrawing reinforcement from previous steps. Throughout the process you provide negative or corrective feedback to avoid inadequate movement patterns because our focus must always be on enforcement of proper pull-up mechanics (scapular retraction, activated lats and core, etc.)

“If, as a coach, you don’t seek continuing education, don’t be a coach.”
Nat Diez

In the end, one of the most satisfying consequences of teaching CrossFit is that it often transcends the physical aspect. Not only do we aim to improve quality of life, we also teach values – which ultimately casts a larger shadow than we acknowledge -.

We must own up to that responsibility and avoid settling in on our present know-how. As representatives of a scientific-based training methodology we’re subject to constant renewal of our skill-set as coaches. That’s why we’re asked to re-up our coaching credentials every now and again.

This doesn’t mean you should start using reinforcements and punishments like there’s no tomorrow cause you read it on some blog or that you should drastically change your teaching style. It’s a lot easier than all that: drink from every fountain of knowledge you can find and thrive to offer your best version to those who enter your affiliate looking for their own.

Carmona, D., Guzmán, J. F., & Olmedilla, A. (2015). Efectos de un programa de formulación de objetivos y moldeamiento del pase en jóvenes jugadores de fútbol. Revista de psicología del deporte, 24(1), 81-88.