Athletes and coaches ask this question a lot. And because I get asked often, I decided to write about it and offer information that will be informative for you, the athlete, or coach. I will keep it brief. In the end, I will offer you 5 benefits for how sport psychology can not only help you to improve your performance, but also help you to enhance your overall quality of life.
Lesson: Sport Psychology in the Beginning
In a nutshell, the field, study of, or application of sports psychology is basically a sub discipline of the field of psychology. The American Psychological Association (APA) only recently (2003) came to recognize sports psychology as a proficiency of psychology. It is a skill that you earn through specific education and training after learning to become a psychologist. However, since the APA’s recognition a lot has changed in the field mainly because sport psychology has been around a lot longer than 2003.
The Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP, 1985) emerged as the premiere association directly dedicated to the promotion and continued development of applied sport psychology. In fact, the association offers a certification that a person can earn after they have completed specific educational and mentorship requirements in sport psychology.
Further, with the association’s continued advancement over the years, many academic programs, undergraduate and graduate, began to pop up offering specialized education and training in sport psychology. Many people took to the field.
Because of sport psychology’s foundation in both exercise science and psychology, over time, the field of sport psychology began to morph and split, becoming either educational or clinical, meaning a practitioner practiced one way or the other, or sometimes both.
As a result, two sides emerged, exercise science vs. clinical or counseling psychology, and predominated bringing with its misconceptions. The first misconception was that performance related issues could be separated as either psychological from those due to insufficient mental skills.
Second was the misconception that those licensed in psychotherapy could treat the former while those only having a degree in sport psychology or exercise science could consult the latter.
These divisions still exist today, and have spawned intense debates over the required competencies to “do” sport psychology. While there is much effort in argument on training and competencies, what has become lost is the focus not only on how best to help athletes perform, but also how best to improve their well-being.
It is typically assumed by some in the sport psychology field that athletes are well-functioning and come from a population that is strictly defined by their sport prowess or need to enhance themselves athletically.
It is also assumed that athletes will voluntarily come forward, overriding their pride, with any relevant issues that are affecting their performance or their daily grind of living.
And finally, some sport psychology practitioners assume that the evidence accumulated on self-control strategies (psychological mental skills) supports their efficacy for performance enhancement.
By knowing the misconceptions and assumptions about sport psychology, the information will help guide you to make an informed decision on how sport psychology might benefit you.
Why the Sport Psychology Lesson?
If you understand how a person who “does” or “offers” sports psychology services came into their position, then you are in a better position to make an informed choice on who to hire and to understand how sport psychology can help you.
For example, what is their education and experience? Are they licensed as a psychologist or counselor? Are they certified in sports psychology? What is the scope and style of their approach? Knowing the answer to these questions will help you to dig deeper into the person’s underlying philosophies and theoretical stance on sports psychology delivery.
Since it hit mainstream in the mid-1980s, sport psychology lacked abundant research or theory on how best to do sports psychology. Therefore, those in field adopted theories, mainly self-control strategies from the field of psychology, and applied these to aid athletes.
This made intuitive sense, since what works in the mainstream of psychology should surely work to help competitive athletes. The belief and push, along with some changes, became the mantra for the new budding field of sports psychology.
And so, this became standard practice, despite ongoing advancements in behavioral psychology that evolved beyond these early principles. However, because practitioners used these skills-based (self-control) strategies before useful research was available and whether they aided athletes in enhancing performance, these strategies have become questionable.
Further, say within the last 35 years, research has not shown these strategies as effective with the athlete population; at best, these strategies have shown “equivalent” outcomes, meaning they may or not be effective.
However, some in mainstream sport psychology have resisted new behavioral research because, logically, these self-control strategies should be effective.
In time, the field of sport psychology became oversimplified into categorizations: educational or holistic, and who can do sports psychology and how should they apply it.
This oversimplification created tensions about who qualifies for offering services and to which athletes; meaning, should sport psychology be applied from someone who just wanted to educate or should application come from someone who is holistically trained in clinical methodology.
When comparing the proficiency and definition as outlined by APA Division 47 (Division 47 is the APA sport psychology branch) and AASP, the APA has included a broader scope for practitioners that not only includes helping athletes improve performance, but also includes helping them to improve their psychological health and well-being. AASP has limited its proficiency and definition to an educational approach for performance enhancement.
What Is Important to Know?
This issue is that there is a lot to consider when your talking about sport. For instance, a person who does sport psychology must consider all the interactions that take place for an athlete such as background, learning histories, physical skills, personality, environmental constraints, mental schemas (behavioral rules athletes follow), self-regulatory processes, and performance demands.
The interaction between all these elements forms the context for their behavior and the choices made during performance that determines whether they perform effectively.
However, the common strategies used for performance enhancement does not target specific processes and mechanisms of action; rather, these strategies focus on modifying outcomes with little understanding or connection about how these processes affect athletic performance and life’s demands.
For example, if you talk to yourself with positive affirmations you will elicit a certain outcome. This is often used as a strategy without understanding the athlete individually, the context, or the underlying processes involved and how change actually comes about.
While the debates continue to focus on the educational background (exercise science vs. clinical approach), what athletes should focus on when seeking help is how a sport psychology practitioner theorizes his or her scope and style of practice.
Scope: For instance, is it a practitioner's belief that issues are nothing more than performance concerns needing a resolution? Or, does the practitioner logically focus on a comprehensive understanding of the psychosocial elements and mechanisms of action that besets an athlete?
Style: An equally important aspect as well. Style entails the ethical and effectiveness of the services denoted by two critical aspects. First, is the practitioner’s approach evidence-based guided by theory, which then informs their style of practice with empirically sound intervention strategies. Second, performance issues are not narrowed to just what the athlete presents, sometimes the athlete’s entire context that includes background, learning history, self-regulatory rules, and other pertinent elements are important; conceptualizing and linking these elements with the athletes’ performance concerns and his or her outcome goals provides the basis for a sound intervention strategy.
5 Benefits of Sport Psychology!
Now that you have some basic knowledge about sport psychology and what it entails, how can it help you? Well, as you can imagine, there is a lot that goes into selecting a competent practitioner. Are they licensed? Are they certified? What is their experience and educational backgrounds? What theories do they adopt? Do they only offer consultation or are they holistic in their approach? So, it depends on a lot of factors.
Sport psychology is basically psychology applied to sport. Athletes are neither immune from the stressors of daily living nor are they, even the elite athletes, void of the competitive stressors unique to sport. So, how can sport psychology help?
With a competent practitioner, psychology can help you manage anxiety and depression, worry, doubts, fear of failure or success, and perfectionism
It can help with athletic performance issues and help you find workable solutions so you can take action on what matters most
Psychology can help those athletes who are facing career termination transition out of their sport
Psychology can help with the psychological response to injury and its effect on performance, and finally…
It can help with managing your personal and private life outside of sport so that you can thrive and be your best!
Conclusion
Sport psychology has become a complex and complicated field over the years and continues to do so. However, the field has made great strides since its early mainstream start and I presume it will continue to evolve and improve. But until the field can define itself, confusion and misconceptions about what sport psychology entails and how it can help athletes with their performance and overall psychological well-being will continue.
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