Factors of Interest
Sports psychologists address many issues: leadership, group processes, learning, development, stress management, motivation, self-confidence, personality assessment, and thought control. They may also confront traditional clinical and counseling concerns. These issues can be divided into three broad categories: clinical or counseling intervention, group dynamics, and mental-skills training.
Clinical Counseling
Athletes are typically thought of as high-functioning individuals. They are expected to maintain their poise and remain composed during stressful situations. Yet this population has its own set of accompanying psychological issues. Self-doubt and injury-related depression are prevalent even at the most elite levels, compounded by personality characteristics such as narcissism and entitlement.
Additionally, some sports promote harmful behaviors. Research shows that female endurance athletes are at high risk for eating disorders, while male athletes engaged in contact sports may develop antisocial aggressive tendencies. Such situations could disrupt an athlete's career and possibly cause public-relations difficulties for a sports organization. Many professional teams now employ diagnosticians who specialize in treating detrimental behavioral habits and in testing for potential psychopathology.
Group Dynamics
Most athletes -even those in individual-performance sports such as wrestling and gymnastics- compete as a team. Teammates have a common identity, common goals, and often a common fate, and they regard themselves as part of a formal group. Good team chemistry can facilitate performance, whereas lack of cohesion can subvert it. Sports-psychology consultants are sometimes called in to examine factors such as leadership and individual performance that can affect group cohesion and team success. Using knowledge borrowed from industrial psychology, social psychology, and conflict theory, these consultants attempt to build consensus, open lines of communication, provide feedback mechanisms, and instill a sense of pride and commitment in the common goal.
Mental Skills
Mental-skills training remains central to sports psychology. Many techniques -including imagery, goal setting, and attention control- are based on methodologies from cognitive psychology and behavioral sciences. Mental imagery, or visualization, involves mentally experiencing an action or event. Studies show that muscles actually respond during such mental exercises, supporting the sports-psychology axiom "If you can't imagine it, you can't do it."
Self-talk -silent, mental conversation- is a technique that can greatly influence motivation. Athletes are trained to monitor thoughts as they enter consciousness. They replace negative or irrelevant thoughts with more rational, positive thoughts.
While it might appear to be obvious, goal setting is an effective technique. Sports psychologists understand that specific and attainable goals provide direction. In sports, setting short-term and long-term goals can improve performance. Achieving each goal becomes its own kind of reward, providing valuable encouragement during training.
Attention control refers to the ability to focus for extended periods of time. A lapse in concentration or misdirected attention during a critical point in a contest can be pivotal in terms of outcome. Inadequate focus can lead to dulled reaction time, improper execution, and even injury. Sports psychologists help athletes learn to ignore distractions that break their focus. Often athletes regroup by using a specific attention-control routine they have learned.
Current Trends
Sports psychology has evolved as an interdisciplinary field since its inception. It is now part of the curriculum on many university campuses. A plethora of personal trainers and so-called life coaches use its techniques, and concepts such as "visualization" and "self-talk" are part of everyday conversation. And the field continues to grow.
Sports psychologists study the benefits of exercise as a form of stress management. A specialization area, psychophysiology, has contributed information about the ways in which vigorous physical activity and psychological well-being are related. Practitioners now view exercise as beneficial for overall mental health. The services of sports psychology have become more commonplace and better accepted worldwide among national sport governing bodies, coaches, and athletes at all levels of ability.
