Minerva guest speaker Ian Gummery from London Metropolitan visited the school this week to discuss his specialist topic, sports psychology.
Ian started off talking about ‘psyching yourself up’ when under pressure, essentially hyping yourself up by thinking positive things and saying positive affirmations to yourself mentally or out loud. This approach helps improve performance in matches without pushing your ego too far which makes your performance drop.
He then went on to talk about the importance of controlling the mental images that appear in your mind when under pressure, for example when football players are in a penalty shootout, imagining scoring the goal in the top corner makes them more likely to score.
“We all thoroughly enjoyed the talk and look forward to applying his advice to our own sports performances.” Sienna, Year 10 GCSE PE pupil