Sport Psychology 101

When I tell people I am a sport psychology consultant, I am often asked if I work in physical therapy or know what someone is thinking. While I would love to be a mind reader (scratch that, I absolutely do not want to be a mind reader) or fix your creaky shoulder, the truth is that I can do neither of those things. Trust me, you don’t want me to try.

My goal as a consultant is to help you reach your goals in sport and help you find the joy in competing. I’ll talk more about how these skills are implemented in the next post. Still, we’re going to start by going over what the primary sport psychology skills are for right now. Individually or in combination, these skills can help you stay focused during tough competitions, build confidence and self-esteem, find motivation after years in the same sport, perform well under pressure, and a whole lot more. I like to consider these as general themes that guide what we are working on together.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Self-Talk

 Self-talk is one of the foundational skills of sport psychology. What you say to yourself and what is going through your mind will impact every single aspect of your performance. Self-talk is also a significant component of all of the other mental skills. In a way, self-talk is precisely what it sounds like: what you say to yourself. The hard part is identifying your thoughts and recognizing which ones are helpful and which ones are hindering. Your thoughts drive your emotional and physiological states, aka your body is listening to what your mind is telling it. Ever wondered why you felt more confident before certain races and more anxious before others? It comes down to what you are telling yourself, leading up to each performance. Self-talk includes the stories you tell yourself about your abilities as an athlete. It consists of the cue words and mantras you use to help you stay focused or motivated.

Nerves & Anxiety

Nerves are a normal part of the competition experience. For some of us, however, our nerves or anxiety are preventing us from performing to the best of our abilities. Among other things, nerves can look like butterflies, shaky hands, racing thoughts, high heart rate, needing to go to the bathroom, and having trouble sleeping. Many people don’t know that the nerves we feel are actually a part of our biology. Heard of the fight or flight system? Yup that is what is responsible for all those symptoms listed above. When you have too much adrenaline flowing through your body, you get undesirable effects that show up as nerves or anxiety, thanks to your fight or flight response. So yes, I am saying that it is totally normal to experience nerves. Here’s the kicker though, there can also be a point at which your nerves are so intense that they hurt your performance. My job is to help you learn what amount of nerves is the ideal amount for you and how to have that ideal amount when you compete. I also help when your nerves are kicking into overdrive and preventing you from performing to your best ability.

Motivation

What motivates you to wake up at 5am when it’s still dark out and cold? Or how about when you’ve been riding your bike for four hours in the hot sun and have two more hours to go? Sources of motivation come and go. Sometimes all you need to motivate yourself is the promise of stopping for some coffee on the way home from the gym. Other times your most significant source of motivation will be remembering your goals and why putting in the work to train matters to you. Some motivators are external, meaning they come from outside yourself, and others are internal, meaning they come from within. Internal motivation will be more long-lasting because it is pulling on your values and identity as an athlete. There is nothing wrong with finishing that race you’re doing because you want the finisher medal, though. The critical thing with motivation is knowing that it can come from a lot of different places. Think of it as a take which one you need kind of approach.

Focus & Attention

Have you ever heard the phrase “look where you want to go”? This phrase pretty much sums up why focus and attention are so vital to our performance. The people, events, weather, courses, and thoughts we give our attention to will dictate how our performances go. It might seem obvious that you need to learn where you want to place your attention before and during a performance. Where this starts to get tricky is when the distractions start trickling in. It’s not enough to know what you want to focus on. If you want to maximize your performance, you’ll need to learn how to shift your attention when it starts to wander. The objective isn’t to stop your mind from wandering. It’s to teach your mind to recognize that it has wandered and how to bring it back to where you want your focus to be.

Imagery

Imagery, or visualization as it is more commonly known, uses your senses to create or recreate an experience in your mind. Using imagery allows you to mentally rehearse your performances in your mind. The cool thing about imagery is that there are seemingly endless ways to utilize it. In the weeks and months leading up to your competition, you can practice imagery while training to increase motivation and build confidence. Imagery doesn’t have to only be for seeing things perfectly. You can also imagine your performance not going well or going according to plan and mentally rehearse responding to or handling the “failure” more constructively. There is some really fantastic science behind why imagery works and how powerful it is. Trust me when I say that practicing imagery is one of the most impactful tools that you can have to prepare for upcoming performances.

You might be wondering why confidence wasn’t mentioned anywhere in this post. Building confidence is the most requested sport psychology topic that I am asked to go over across all genders, sports, and age groups. My take is that there are many different ways to build confidence, but one way is through preparation. Preparing physically and preparing mentally. Confidence is built by knowing that you are putting in the work. One of the main ways I work with my athletes on building confidence is through practicing and incorporating all of the skills listed above. Keep your eyes peeled for next week’s post about what it is like working with a sport psychology consultant and how you can take the skills explained here and put them into practice.