Condor Performance Blog - Performance psychology

I’m always fascinated when the term “Old School Coach” is used – a surprisingly common happening in the Australian sports industry at least. Sometimes it’s used as a positive (“we need an old school coach, these players are soft and need someone to toughen them up”) and sometime as a negative (“she’s an old school coach; she’ll never go with such a radical suggestion”). I’m not sure of where the School bit comes from – I suppose it’s to avoid sounding ageist – but I like to think that it refers to different waves (schools) in the development of sports science. In other words a coach who mostly uses methods suggested by 1960s sport science (did it exist then?) in 2011 might be described as Old School. If this is a correct assumption then I have two disputes with it. First, proper science (sport or otherwise) if adhered to correctly will still suggest the best parts of coaching from 50 years ago but eliminate that which has proved ineffective since then. Second, it over plays the importance of experience. Regardless of if you are a technical, mental or physical coach it’s the combination of the best possible (quantity and quality) experience with the best possible (quantity and quality) qualifications that will ultimately prevail. Outside of our profession of sport psychology our aim is to simply continue to improve at our ability to build mental toughness. Within the profession it’s to establish a critical mass so that everyone can see that Q X E is better than a whole bunch of E. Old School Coaches are overrated.

As sport / performance psychologists one of our biggest challenges is people confusing performance psychology with welfare (clinical / remedial) work such as counselling and psychotherapy.

Below are some statistics which not only explain the massive difference between them but is also a clue into why we are confident that in the future every “performer” will use a (good) sport / performance psych!

• About 10 % of Australians will be affected by anxiety disorders at some point in their life and would benefit from psychological treatment.
• 100% of performers will be affected by over or under confidence and would benefit from mental conditioning.
• About 20% of people will be affected by depression and 6% will experience a major depressive illness and would benefit from psychological treatment.
• 100% of performers will be affected by lack of concentration and would benefit from mental conditioning.
• 3% of Australians are affected by psychotic illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar mood disorder at some point in their life and would benefit from psychological treatment.
• 100% of performers will be affected by over or under motivation and would benefit from mental conditioning.
• Approximately 2% of Australians will experience some type of eating disorder at some stage in their life and would benefit from psychological treatment.
• 100% of performers will be affected by over or under arousal (nervous energy) would benefit from mental conditioning.