Sport Psychology Pillars – Techniques, Perspectives, and the Professional Alliance
Stillness 1 – The field condensed to the essentials and how they collectively contribute to athletes' growth.
This is it – my first piece about sport psychology, Stillness 1, is here! I have created Stillness in Sport as a home for sharing genuine conversations and insights about sport psychology with occasional detours into photography and culture – parallel interests which keep me sharp in general and also when it is truly cold. Like -20C (-4F) with frigid winds kind of cold. But anyways, let’s not talk about the weather. We would rather just experience it, right?!
Summary
An important early realization that the best athletes and teams have and act on
One crucial mistake after defeats that does not necessarily lead to improvements
The three pillars of sport psychology and how they relate with pursuing increased performance and mental well-being
Purpose
Sport psychology has gained momentum in the sport ecosystem. We see not just an increased awareness, but also more importantly, an increased societal acceptance of its role and value in developing confident, composed, focused, and determined athletes and teams.
While the field is most certainly designed for guiding athletes to increase performance and support their proactive psychological development, that is not the only purpose. Sport psychology serves more equally pressing needs and goals of athletes and teams. The field supports sports persons to manage their mental well-being, enjoy and have positive experiences, and subsequently increase participation in sport.
The best athletes and teams are quick to realize their journeys are collective endeavours. They accept the value that sport psychology consultants (SPC) bring to high-performance environments — in supporting them to effectively prepare for competitions and manage the varied pressures (personal, performance, social, media) that accompany their careers, so they can play to their potential.
More practice, more hours, and more efforts after defeats? Maybe not
When on the verge of winning or losing a crucial match, holding one’s nerves, and approaching the situation with a complete focus on the present means understanding and embodying stillness.
The only component that changes drastically between the eve of a match or a race, and the performance day is the psychological preparation.
Yet, many of us may have heard or experienced athletes being told to put in more hours and efforts in practice as a result of their most recent defeats, be it neck-to-neck encounters or one-sided losses. The doggedly held belief in such circumstances is that fitness development, technical improvements, and tactical changes alone would lead to athletes turning their losses into wins the next time.
Sport psychology researchers Robert S. Weinberg and Daniel Gould in their book The Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology discuss how we forget the impacts of the heart and mind on the not-so-good performances and mistakenly conclude more hours on courts, fields and in pools would solely lead to overcoming defeats.
Pillars and Process of Sport Psychology
Sport psychology runs the risk of being distilled to only a handful of popular techniques, like relaxation and self-talk, while its deeper essence isn’t proactively integrated into academy and team environments. High-performance cultures that leverage this science to its capacity focus on the three pillars:
Techniques
Sport psychology has become synonymous with mental training techniques that equip athletes with vital psychological skills to become and remain confident, composed, motivated, and committed.
The most common set of techniques implemented are known as ‘The Canon’ – breathing, self-talk, imagery, goal setting, and concentration.
In more ways than one, mental performance techniques make the mental training process tangible, easy to understand, and exciting to pursue. Learning to apply these techniques across practice and competitions provides a good foundation for integrating mental training into the routines of sports persons. Similar to sport specific technical skills – be it free kicks in soccer, three-pointers in basketball, or hitting aces in tennis, learning mental skills take time, consistent efforts, and a commitment towards mastering them throughout one’s career.
While mental performance techniques are certainly crucial for an athlete’s growth and success, they form the tip of the iceberg.
Perspectives
High-performance situations demand that athletes not just learn how to benefit from mental performance techniques, but also realize the importance of identifying their own thinking patterns and attitudes and unlearning some of them. Playing at the highest level also requires sports persons to tap into their feelings – to become aware of how their emotions influence their thought processes and actions. A s we call it in the field, T-E-A – thoughts, emotions, and actions.
Perspectives here is an umbrella term for the various psychological approaches and therapies that provide extensive support to athletes as they navigate performance, sociocultural, financial, and personal barriers.
One avenue that SPC take is the Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). This approach seeks to evaluate and challenge the irrational beliefs of athletes to guide them towards heightened awareness about how they can improve their emotional responses to situations by changing their beliefs. The end goal is for athletes to have a higher likelihood of reaching their desired outcomes as a result of restructured beliefs and helpful emotions. For an exploration of REBT and how it forms part of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), check this article.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is another approach that has made its way into sport. As the name suggests, the essence of this perspective is to support athletes to accept difficult experiences, transitions and emotions and realize they are different from their thoughts and feelings. They are things that are not necessarily a part of their being. For an exploration of ACT, see this article.
Essentially, counselling athletes using a therapeutic framework helps diffuse performance and other life pressures and also challenges them to open up to new helpful ways of being and playing which may have been unheard of before.
Professional Alliance
Let’s get to the root of mental training and sport psychology services – the consulting relationship or professional alliance with the SPC. Don’t take my word for it. “Ultimately it comes down to the relationships.” The very techniques and perspectives that we apply, benefit from, and rely on have been developed by researchers and practitioners over decades of being at the heart of the field. How to practice deep breathing and when to do so along with realizing the importance of accepting situations and staying committed to taking value-based actions are skills contextualized and supported by the nature of the working alliance.
Making consistent, genuine efforts to get to know athletes beyond their sport identity and sphere conveys to them that the SPC cares about them as people first and athletes next.
No matter the level athletes play at, the fact does not change that they remain people who are high performers and high achievers. When athletes and those around them believe they are high performers first who may also be part-time people, that usually spells trouble. An exclusive athletic identity can make coping with life transitions difficult, especially when athletes feel they have lost control of their careers. By building rapport with the athletes, being approachable, fulfilling the knowledge needs of athletes and offering practical ways to apply mental training, SPCs contribute towards the effective delivery of services. Hence, paramount importance attached to developing honest, respectful, and trustworthy professional relationships between athletes and SPCs.
While performance enhancement and success is a distinct goal of applied sport psychology, the health, well-being, and general happiness of athletes form the foundation for the professional alliance built over time.
Taken together, the beliefs and attitudes of athletes towards mental training have an enormous influence on how they leverage the science to advance their careers. Sport psychology serves as a source of stillness, as it did for basketball players Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and others who worked with George Mumford to achieve excellence through mindfulness.
What are your thoughts on how sport psychology is applied? I’d love to know about your experiences and ideas.
Thank you for reading!
