Integrated Mental Training for very young athletes: the combination of performance, psychological and educational development thanks to Enhancement Psychology
Posted by MindUP News on 29/08/2022

Let's take insights from the two days of assessment carried out with two very young pilots, Qarrar Firhand and Josuè David Gilles Polo to talk about the application of Integrated Mental Training in the pre-adolescent age group.

Qarrar (2011), a young Indonesian driver who has already been involved in motorsport for a few years, like many foreign kids, has decided to move to Italy to grow within the Italian karting context, that has been recognized for years as the best in the world, with the purpose to boost his international professional racing career. Josuè (2012), of Colombian origins, has lived in Italy for some years now, he approached motorsport last July attending the Summer Camp of the Federal School of Karting ACI Sport directed by Raffaele Giammaria.

Both have gone through two days of assessment, alternating between exercises, tests, reflections-stimuli on mental aspects concerning life skills (educational part), with moments of fun and play (fundamental when we work with budding young sportsmen, both for the relational climate and is created both to consolidate learning)

The purpose of the assessment is to discover together with the athlete what are his areas of strength that can be further enhanced and what are the critical areas to be improved or optimized with Integrated Mental Training. All this, in line with the style that distinguishes us, supported by data collection and the basic scientific theory of Functional Psychology.

When we work with very young athletes, as in this case, we foresee a subsequent meeting where we share information and explain the data collected also to the reference figures who are around the kids: driving coaches, parents, athletic trainers, in a synergistic perspective for us always useful and constructive.

Speaking of pre-adolescence and adolescence, of course, we cannot fail to focus not only on the performance aspect, but also on those aspects related to the psychological and educational development of children. We firmly believe that the mental management of an adult athlete, but even more specifically of a teenager, must be entrusted to professionals with a background of specific studies in developmental and developmental psychology, while we still attend interventions (in developmental age) carried out by self-styled motivators or mental-coaches without any recognized specific competence concerning childhood and adolescence.

Thanks to our model of Enhancment Psychology, what can we guarantee to a minor in whom the family invests so much from a competitive point of view?

• balance and harmony between performance and healthy development;
• management and professional evaluation of the balanced identity growth of the boy;
• specific training to interact with the professional figures around the young athlete;
• relationship and interface with the family: it must be supported in learning to give the correct emotional-educational support to children, avoiding incorrect behavior (often involuntary or unconscious) that can hinder both proper emotional development and excellence in sports performance itself;
• professional control of the healthy development of the whole self of the child and enhancement of Life Skills;
• assessment of psychological maturation times and connection with what is required by the external competitive environment;
• psycho-educational work on defeat, on the acceptance of error and on the culture of work.

Pictures from the two days assessment available at this link.