The winning mindset can be learned, says the sports psychologist from Debrecen – with video – Debrecen news, Debrecen news | Debrecen and Hajdú-Bihar county news
The winning mindset can be learned, says the sports psychologist from Debrecen – with a video
Author: Dehir.hu | [email protected]
Year of publication: 19.11.2022. 11:00 | Updated: 19.11.2022. 11:07 a.m
Debrecen – Not only athletes, everyone sometimes needs guidance, admits Danica Keczeli, who has been working with the members of Loki’s adult squad and youth players since 2014.
In connection with her performance at the Hungarian women’s national handball championship, the press wrote for days that our players are not mentally strong enough to withstand the pressure of a similar world tournament, but the same was/is mentioned in many cases, for example, in relation to soccer players.
Photo: György Gurban
Does the negative Hungarian mentality exist? How much help can the specialist provide? How exactly do elite athletes need this kind of training today? Clinical and sports psychologist Danica Keczeli, who has been dealing with members of the adult squad and youth players since 2014, also talks about these in Debrecen Televízíó’s Evening Close-up program. He is also the sports psychologist of the DVSC Handball Academy, and regularly holds group and individual sessions for professional players.
According to Danica Keczeli, all people, including athletes, need help and guidance. The specialist drew attention to the fact that it is important to distinguish between a mental trainer, a psychologist and a psychiatrist: while the former has much less basic psychological knowledge than a psychologist, a psychiatrist is already a doctor who treats with drugs and psychotherapy.
– The sports psychologist deals with mentally healthy people. Elite athletes are mentally healthy individuals, because they are capable of high performance, but they also need some guidance
he highlighted.
He added that although it seems that there is some progress, there is always some minor resistance towards the professionals.
Do clubs also need a permanent sports psychologist?
– This is how it is here in Debrecen, we have been doing it this way for years and a pretty good system has developed – said Danica Keczeli. He added that he deals with adults and youth on both an individual and group level. The extent and quantity of this is always determined by the situation.
The expert pointed out: as in everything, regularity is the most effective here.
Negative spiral, failure avoidance, success orientation
During the mental preparation, you can learn how to regulate and interpret the player’s emotions, how to handle stressful situations. There are various tools to prevent or reverse a “negative spiral”.
– How to think about it, how to develop a winning mindset, this is completely learnable. You can see this in the foreign teams, they are brave, they see everything as a challenge, they dare to make mistakes, because mistakes are part of the game. You have to strive to have more good than bad
he pointed out.
Danica Keczeli also talks about the learning process of personality development, no one is born a failure avoider or a success seeker, so these are their changeable qualities. As he said, he works with the players to get to know their own performance status, learn to get the most out of themselves at the given moment, and learn to handle situations properly.
– Everything is connected to everything. Performance depends on many factors: at the lowest level is the physique, motor skills, movement coordination, followed by technical elements, dexterity, then tactical, and finally mental preparation, he explained.
Hungarian mentality
Danica Keczeli pointed out that you can see that every nation has its own mentality, and we Hungarians should think about why we are so critical, why we are not more understanding and patient.
– If we are very critical of our child, he will later see only negative things in himself. Somehow, the focus is always on performance, but a ten-year-old child should not earn a million
he highlighted.
For a child or a young person, the most important thing should be how they relate to training, how seriously they take it, how they can learn – they need to be helped in this and develop their individual physical and mental abilities.
– The role of sports psychology is also very important in children’s sports, because it is in the youth that the child learns to be anxious, experiences failures, and cannot handle stress, which is completely normal. If we don’t manage it well, it will only accumulate in the future, the specialist pointed out.
The full conversation can be found in the video below: