It has long been recognized that physical components are not enough to make athletes excel in their fields. One of the latest concepts being applied to enhance the performances in sports is called cognitive psychology – the study of brain mechanisms or human mental processes in relation to the way we perceive things, feel about things, solve problems, and the probable root cause of our behavior.
This paper will contain a detailed ten hour soccer team training plan and discuss the relationship of cognitive psychology to athletes’ over-all performance focusing mainly on the information processing model of Whiting, Welford, and Schmidt. The contribution of cognitive psychology to enhancing the players’ understanding and performance levels, the application of different theoretical approaches to a variety of sporting situations and the use of theory to enhance individual and team performance, specifically in soccer, will be explored.
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