We all have certain ‘anchors’ in life. We all have that particular sound, smell, taste etc. that takes us back to a certain place in our lives. I can still hear the creak in my living room door from when I was a child – a door that been at a landfill site for twenty […]
As a football coach you are always looking at ways to improve the performance of your players and maintain the highest level of coaching. I would like to put forward a proposal of how parental involvement can be encouraged in football. Cote (1999), found that children who become experts before the age of eight are involved in […]
We all talk to ourselves it is something we do every day. However our own awareness of this varies. If we are aware of our self-talk then we can utilise it to our advantage and adjust the negative self-talk into something positive and useful. Self-talk has been shown to enhance motor skills (Johnson et al, 2004; Cutton &Landin, […]
About 18 months ago a high court rulingdeemed lengthy gym membership contract tie-ins unfair. This may well have been one reason for the recent increase (in the UK at least) of several low-cost/no-frills gym groups. For too long gyms have happily taken our joining free and monthly standing order whether we do or don’t use the […]
An estimated 1.6 million people suffer from an eating disorder in the UK– 6.4% of the adult population, and the prevalence is even higher amongst athletes. Key Features of Anorexia Nervosa: Symptoms, Causes and Treatment Eating disorders are popular topics in the media and are frequently the focus of television programmes such as Supersize vs. […]
According to recent research it appears that professional footballers are in fact real human beings, with real emotions and accordingly, a capacity for mental health problems. Although the domain of Sport Psychology is primarily performance optimisation, while counselling/psychotherapy focuses on optimising people’s well-being, the two don’t- and shouldn’t- exist in total isolation from one another. […]
Positivism is a framework in psychology that encompasses positive emotions in a re-evaluation of strengths and weaknesses. Researchers such as Eid and Larson (2008), and Lyumbomrisky and colleagues have focused on pursuit of well-being in the development of mentally balanced and happy individuals. Thus the area endorses the move to enable individuals, societies and communities […]
“You never fail until you stop trying”. This is famous quote by Albert Einstein. It is used for motivation, for recovery from setbacks and, until recently, I loved the ‘never stop trying’ message it spreads. But what if trying actually leads to failure? What if we reworded the quote… “You’ll never fail IF you stop […]
Sports psychology, as thesportinmind.com knows, is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world. The ever-growing financial, mental and emotional pressures placed on athletes is leading to a more prominent role for sports psychologists in Western societies. Famous sports stars such as Marcus Trescothick and (tragically) Robert Enke have suffered depression, whilst coaches have […]