You would be hard pressed to find an athlete who doesn’t react in some way to imminent competition. This article focuses on the feelings of anxiety and stress that some athletes encounter before and during performance. It will explain how anxiety is defined, how different sports people react to it and also how it can […]
If you take a look at children, they hop and skip and jump, they run and bounce and roll, they move freely with energy, enjoyment and enthusiasm. But as we grow older we seem to lose our zest for movement. We begin to see exercise as a chore – we ‘work out’ with a goal […]
As a committed and passionate coach, you probably care deeply about the success of your team. But how do you define “success” for your team? Different coaches define “success” in various ways. For some it may be an undefeated season. For others, it may be seeing skill and character development in their players or team. […]
In the wake of the Lance Armstrong confession, the question on peoples minds is why do athlete risk their own health to cheat? The history of professional cycling is rife with doping scandals involving many top named cyclists including the likes of Contador, Valverde and Schleck. So what is the motivation of administering performing enhancing […]
It is natural that change is hard; it is human nature to struggle with change whether it is in jobs, personal relationships, moving etc. However, it could be argued that change is a necessity as it relates to success and the conscious effort that making changes requires make you that much further ahead as it […]
Talent has been at the centre of much deliberation over the past few years, not only with research experts, but also with general consultants in the dynamic field of sport psychology. Taking into consideration research material and psychology books, this article aims to discuss talent and the components which surround this phenomenon, providing implications and […]
With Injury comes a loss of confidence (Doran, 1984). Whilst low confidence can be a result of injury, it can also cause injury e.g. not fully committing when going in for a rugby tackle. Magyor & Chase (1996) conducted a study looking at the consequences of having low self-confidence pre- and post-injury in gymnasts and […]
In almost every sport the top level performers are all similar in their level of ability, for example they all have similar attributes of being strong, fast, skilful, and have as much stamina as each other. Yet in every sport some performers emerge as winners while others never quite reach this level. The difference between […]
Jones, Evans and Mullen (2007) recently suggested that texts which choose to adopt the perspective of trainee practitioners within sport psychology “have the potential to not only inform the supervision of trainee sport psychologists but also enhance the effectiveness of sport psychologists’ professional practice” (p.211). Amongst others, Holt and Strean (2001), Tonn and Harmison (2004), and Tod and Bond(2010) have […]
The above question has been posed countless times and explored in many ways since the advent of talent identification in professional sport (and other domains for that matter e.g. music). Many early theorists believed that talent was innate, you either have an inborn ‘gift’ or you don’t. This, on its own, is a dangerous viewpoint […]