July 2024 - Condor Performance

Performance Momentum for Elite Sport

Chris Pomfret, a performance psychologist based in Queensland (Australia), looks at the fascinating concept of performance momentum.

'Momentum in Sport' is a fascinating concept but with very little research — ‘Momentum in Sport’ is a fascinating concept, but with very little research

Performance Momentum: The Basics

As with many phenomena in the world of sports psychology, it’s interesting to observe people talking about momentum. If you listen closely, it’s almost as if they’re chatting about something tangible, something real.

Listening to commentators, it seems beyond question that there is a mysterious yet unmistakable energy. Something that ebbs and flows through each match like a tide. There is an energy that has the potential to sweep a player towards glory or to leave them stranded. But in truth, things aren’t that straightforward.

As most of our sporting clients will know, we often stress the importance of clear and workable definitions for all performance components. If we can quantify something, we can understand it and, therefore, improve it.

Momentum can be defined as changes to cognition, feelings and behaviour as an athlete moves towards a goal.

Positive and Negative Momentum for Performance

Positive momentum is typically described in physics-related terms such as ‘surging’ towards victory within a single contest. Or ‘riding the wave’ across multiple contests towards an end-of-season championship.

Negative momentum is often described as a ‘tide-turning’ against an athlete. Some resistance is experienced or of a ‘pendulum swinging’ against them and energy being ‘lost’.

Momentum Is Not The ‘Hot Hand’

Note that momentum differs from the ‘hot hand’ effect often described in basketball. This represents those freak moments when it suddenly seems a player can’t miss a shot. Their teammates start to desperately feed them the ball before this shooting streak suddenly vanishes. As much as the hot hand effect captures our imagination, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence to back it up. Making a successful shot does not appear to increase the chances of making the next shot.

The fascinating thing about the concept of momentum is that it is almost universally accepted as fact. Research into the topic shows that people perceive momentum as real. They act based on this perception and past experiences supporting it. Simply put, athletes genuinely believe in momentum. When they think positive momentum has occurred, they see it as a direct cause of their success. However, there is surprisingly little evidence to justify this belief.

But Perception Is Reality

If researchers question the existence of performance momentum and the everyday sportsperson struggles to express in words what momentum even means to them, why is the concept so popular? One explanation is that for most human beings, perception is reality. We want the world to seem as structured and predictable as possible. We find it hard to accept the idea of randomness. It’s hard for us to realise that our thinking is biased and that these biases impact how we process information. We look for explanations in events, particularly where underlying meanings might help us in the future. Plus, we are just very poor at calculating probability.

There is a certain appeal to the idea that with some luck and hard work, one small action we take can trigger a chain reaction that will sweep us towards glory. On the other hand, perhaps there is also some small comfort in the idea that sometimes we are faced with forces working against us that can’t be controlled, and we simply have no choice but to hang in there, do our best, and then see what happens.

Performance Momentum: The Downside

The most apparent issue with believing in the concept of performance momentum is when you feel like you lack some. Mentally, if you think some past success had much to do with any success before that, you have a mental weak point. Let me explain more.

Let’s say you are a golfer who has started to believe that birdies and bogeys come in groups. Now let’s imagine you need to par the final three holes to make the cut, but you bogey the 16th hole. Instead of moving on and trying to play the best possible golf for the final two holes, you might feel that the bogey on 16 has set the tone.

“Perhaps there is something to those old clichés about taking things one play at a time or week-to-week?“

In Summary

Please be clear that I am not saying momentum is a myth. Various studies support the existence of momentum in sports. Not surprisingly, positive momentum plays a role in performing at one’s best. However, some findings suggest that negative momentum is, in many ways, ‘stronger’ than positive momentum. It seems to be triggered faster and more quickly and is more challenging to escape. Is this due to the sense of helplessness it can provoke?

In the case of positive momentum, there is a suggestion that athletes may occasionally ‘coast’ or ‘ease up’, which can, in turn, actually impair their performance. In the case of negative momentum, athletes may use this to force themselves to improve focus and boost motivation.

When momentum comes up in the one-on-one work I do with my sporting clients, this is how I approach it. I liken it to an emotion or physical sensation—like frustration or hunger. I then encourage them to notice it and move on, as per the A.C.T model.

We love getting comments. If you have any anecdotes related to Performance Momentum, please add them to the comments section below. Exclude your details if you’re not keen on people knowing it’s you. Can you recall when your best performances seemed to all be clumped together? That you could do no wrong. Or the opposite? No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get any momentum going.

Willpower And Performance

What exactly is willpower? More importantly, can it be improved and if so, what does the sports psychology research say about how? Condor Performance Stalwart Chris Pomfret looks at these key performance psychology questions and more.

Did you have the **willpower** to keep going through all the obstacles?

Willpower: What Exactly Is It?

Willpower is not an uncommon word in the English language. A quick Google search produces roughly 76,300,000 results. However, as is the case with so many concepts in psychology, there is not a tremendous amount of clarity about precisely what willpower is.

Articles discussing its usefulness and ways to enhance it are even less common. So, I will try to remedy that with this thought piece.

There are some attempts to clarify willpower in this excellent article on the American Psychological Association website, but I like this clue the most:

The ability to delay gratification, resisting short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals

Let’s Run Some Examples

Although technically, willpower is not considered a mostly sport psychology concept (not in the same way, for example, goal setting and visualisation are), maybe it should be. I struggle to think of any other sub-discipline of psychology where the above definition is so relevant. Below, I will use two fictitious athletes as examples to get my points across.

Meet Larry

Larry (not a real person) is a talented Division Two college baseball pitcher. When he was younger, he was the standout player in the Little League. Where he grew up in a remote part of Louisiana, baseball was all the town seemed to care about. And there were few distractions, so Larry would spend hours and hours after school and on weekends throwing his dishevelled bag of balls at a graffitied rectangle on an old gymnastics propped up against the garage wall.

He wouldn’t have known if Larry had been asked why he spends so much time working on his pitching. He wouldn’t have heard about willpower. Instead, he was simply a living, breathing example of it.

A Change In Environment

Things changed once Larry moved across State lines to Texas to start college. For a start, he was older now. He became interested in girls, but maybe more significantly, from a willpower perspective, there were plenty around for him to be interested in!

Due to his upbringing and the importance of work ethic imposed on him from a young age, he still found it relatively easy to attend compulsory team practice. But suddenly, even this had a slightly different motive. You see, a handful of young ladies at Larry’s college would always watch the baseballers in training. This was a far cry from the Larry of a decade earlier, who would thunder his Rawlings into the dusty gym mat with an audience of zero or one. (Sometimes, his neighbour would watch from across the fence).

Not All Practice Is The Same

Larry’s baseball team coach clarified that additional practice was entirely voluntary. However, all the players would have access to the facilities should they want to do some extras. At first, Larry did some extra pitching after training, but soon, this stopped when he worked out that it would start to encroach on his social life.

Little did Larry know that the baseball coach was psychologically very astute. Despite saying it was voluntary, he would ask one of the assistant coaches to track which players would do additional training and how much. He would classify those who did as being more internally motivated. Due to this invaluable psychological trait, he predicted more extraordinary things for these athletes and, in turn, tried to give them more opportunities during games.

Larry would tell himself that part of the college experience was to have fun. Indeed, science now is unequivocal in that neglecting a social life entirely to support excellence is a terrible idea. However, he failed to realise that with a little bit of time management, he could bake his cake and eat it. In other words, he could easily have squeezed in 2 to 3 hours of additional non-team practice (early mornings, for example) while having a rich and fulfilling social life as well.

Like hundreds of thousands of elite college athletes, Larry never quite fulfilled his dream of playing in the big leagues. His diminishing willpower during his teenage years ultimately got in the way.

A Different Example

Wendy (a made-up person, too) came to squash late and by pure luck. When she was 14, her family moved from the South Island of New Zealand to the North Island. By pure coincidence, the house that they rented was a four-minute walk to the local squash courts. Wendy had not been an especially sporty kid before the family moved, but the squash club seemed to provide the best opportunity for meeting new people. So, they signed Wendy up for some group classes.

Wendy quickly realised that she enjoyed most of the elements of this sport. She loved that it did not depend on certain weather conditions, which in New Zealand can cause havoc with the more popular outdoor sports such as rugby union and cricket. She also loved the decision-making aspect of squash and the speed of play.

There was no easy way to take extra classes, as private tuition was too expensive for Wendy’s family. So, instead, she asked the court manager if she could help clean them in exchange for after-hours access. She was allowed to do this, so she went to work.

During most mornings, before school, Wendy would get up at 5 am and walk to the courts. For the first hour, she’d sweep and mop the four courts. For the second hour, she’d practice. Sometimes, this was alone; Wendy would creatively devise drills that would allow for solo practice. Occasionally, one of the older male players would join her for the second hour and play practice matches.

Then, She Started Competing

At age 16, a sport psychologist came to run a Mental Toughness workshop at the club and suggested that those “interested in getting to the very top” should at least keep some form of performance journal. Wendy did not need a second prompt and started reflecting after each training session and her growing number of squash competitions.

A massive feature of her journaling was willpower-related. When her motivation to train dropped, she’d write about this and remind herself that some of the growing number of distractions—such as the two (not one, but two) fast food joints in town—would make her feel good for a few minutes, but what she was working towards would be far more satisfying for a much more extended period.

Obstacles

When obstacles got in the way of her improvement endeavours—for example, the entire squash club was closed for three months for refurbishment purposes—she would always creatively work around them. She set up a home gym to ensure she stayed in top physical condition and would gorge on YouTube videos of the world’s best to solidify technical and technical brilliance in her mind’s eye.

When Wendy started playing squash professionally, her willpower was second nature. She did not need to work on it. Unlike in Larry’s case, where a lack of willpower ultimately got between him and his potential for Wendy, it was her secret weapon. It was the difference between her becoming great as opposed to just good.

7 Ways To Boost Your Willpower

Read this article a second time 😃!
Keep a reflection/performance journal of some sort.
Set some long-term goals – but at the same time, remind yourself you’ll only ever have some influence over these.
Design ready-to-go backups for your most common training sessions before they’re needed.
Accept that external motivators such as prize money and trophies are fragile. Willpower and internal motivation are “best mates”, so if you improve the latter, the former should also benefit.
Vary your practice as much as possible, as monotony will lead to boredom, and boredom is the biggest threat to willpower by far,
Work with one of our team of sports/performance psychologists for at least a month. During the initial Kick Start Session, ask them to target willpower. The best way to get started is to watch this explanatory video below and then get in touch by filling in your details here.

Baseball Psychology

Baseball Psychology Is A Ten Minute Read by Performance Psychologist David Barracosa On The Mental Aspects Of Baseball

There Is A Lot Of Psychology In The Sport Of Baseball

Introduction

This article will focus on the mental side of baseball (or Baseball Psychology) by exploring its mental challenges. I will also take a deep dive into some of the different approaches that we, as performance psychologists, tend to use a lot when working with our growing number of baseball clients. As with all of our articles, if you have any comments or questions, please add them at the bottom. I will endeavour to reply to every single one within a few days.

Why Is Baseball So Psychologically Challenging?

Since joining Condor Performance, I have worked with hundreds of baseball players at all levels of the sport. This has allowed me to see how individuals react to the challenges thrown their way (literally and metaphorically) and determine what works and does not work in strengthening performance.

Analysing baseball performance and determining player strength is a big deal in baseball, maybe more so than any other sport. If you have already seen the movie Moneyball, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. If you have not seen it, you should.

Through these practices, baseball has become obsessed with statistics. This obsession has filtered down into the mindset of the players. These stats, as important as they are, are outcomes, and the players only have some influence over them. As explained in far more detail in this article by my colleague Gareth, an ‘outcome focus’ can and usually does distract from the process.

The other aspect of baseball that makes it so tricky psychologically is how much time the players have to think. Of course, there are other sports similar to this—think golf—but baseball’s relatively slow pace compared to many sports is a massive hurdle from a mental point of view.

Process, Process and Process

This means a significant part of improving any baseball player’s mindset is shifting their attention away from being statistically motivated to being process-orientated. Statistics muddy the waters. Focusing on them means trying to control too much of what happens in the game.

This generally leads to overthinking, concentrating on the wrong stuff and a drop in motivation. All of these factors are the kryptonite to consistency, which wants to be the goal that we are all striving for. Of course, this is true for many sports, but baseball is particularly susceptible to an obsession with outcomes (both large and small).

It’s How You Handle The Stats!

Many people might be reading this and thinking that statistics are crucial. To an extent, this can be true. They should be seen as clues to potential improvement.

Most stats assume too much and don’t represent the cog in the machine that we have the most influence over. Statistics are the taste of your favourite meal, whereas processes are the recipe that allows you to reproduce that taste repeatedly. I am much more interested in knowing whether we executed the recipe correctly.

In baseball psychology terms, I’m more interested in knowing that you approached the plate aggressively and followed your pre-pitch routine.

In a statistics-only (mostly) frame of mind, we can get distracted from the essence of baseball: skill execution and enjoyment. To put our best foot forward in the contest, we want to be focused on the present moment, routine-based, and active with our processes. Strengthening these three mental skills will help take any baseball player’s performance to the next level.

Psychological Flexibility and Baseball Psychology

Focusing on the present moment aligns with the primary approach in the sport psychology consulting we do here at Condor Performance: psychological flexibility.

Focusing on the past can generate an internal experience of frustration, disappointment and regret. The future can provoke stress, anxiety, and worry.

These can distract or cause an individual to rush, which is not the mindset we want to have. Baseball is a stop-start sport, which means there is a clear distinction between the present moment and this pitch.

This pitch is the only one from a mental toughness point of view. As a pitcher, it’s the only one I have influence over throwing. As a hitter, it’s the only one I can look to hit. And as a fielder, it is the only one I can make a play on.

All the previously thrown pitches are done and cannot be changed. All future pitches are irrelevant because we have no idea what will happen. It’s this pitch (and only this pitch) that matters.

Repeatable Routines Are Key

We can increase that present-moment focus by making it routine-based. When the play pauses, there is a small window for all players to reset. Having repeatable routines can help by ensuring the players use actions to ready themselves for the next play.

Think of David Ortiz at the plate or Craig Kimbrel on the mound as exaggerated but practical examples of having a routine before every pitch.

Irrespective of what has happened, the routine is roughly the same and ensures a mental state of readiness.

Once we have readied ourselves and locked in that focus, we give ourselves a better opportunity to land a punch in this contest. Baseball comprises split-second decisions and moments, so being primed for these moments is a core aspect of mentally strong baseballers.

I see players who often alter their intentions based on previous events. The most common is a tendency to play conservatively when things have not gone their way. Here are a few classic examples:

Let a ball drop in the field instead of laying out for it.
Not throwing an off-speed pitch when there’s a runner on third.
Waiting for the pitch rather than looking to attack it at the plate.

In these situations, we have drastically reduced our chances of showcasing our strengths and skills. If this sounds like you, get in touch, and we’ll see if we can help you through one of our 1-on-1 sport psychology monthly options.

Staying True To Our Processes

Staying true to our processes is designed to help us be aggressive and look to command the moment. Getting caught focusing on something else means we lose that command. We begin to play like we have something to lose instead of playing like we have something to win. Playing to avoid mistakes instead of creating success becomes a habit. We catch ourselves worrying more about the opinions of others than the pride we have in ourselves.

The strength of our processes ultimately comes down to how we practice. If we reinforce our processes and routines in that space, they will appear in a game. Think about throwing a bullpen or taking batting practice; often, it’s about volume and repetition. Make sure your routines are embedded in your preparation.

Diversity in Team Sports

Diversity: A Definition

As one scrolls the internet, one sees numerous definitions of diversity. The Oxford English Dictionary defines diversity as the ‘practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.’

Down the road, Cambridge defines diversity as a ‘situation in which many different types of things or people are included in something.’

My favourite definition, however, is from Ferris University in Michigan, United States. They state that diversity is ‘the range of human differences, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, social class, physical ability or attributes, religious or ethical values system, national origin, and political beliefs.’

The point is that diversity is multifaceted. It’s both visible and invisible. Michigan and the others could also have added personality, values, interests, and other attributes.

Why Embrace Diversity in Team Sports

Diversity is about the visible and invisible characteristics that make us different. These differences allow us to see the world differently from the others in the locker room. Handled correctly and professionally, these various perspectives are highly advantageous.

The NSW Government and the international consulting firm McKinsey found that diverse workplaces produce better outcomes across many areas. The Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport also found that diversity in team sports enhances performance. In addition to improving performance, diverse teams lead to the following:

Increased productivity.
Better decision-making.
Improved team member well-being by ensuring everyone ‘fits in’.
Greater innovation.
Creative problem-solving.
Healthy and constructive conflict

Sports teams that embrace diversity enable a wide range of perspectives and experiences. When individuals from different backgrounds come together, they bring unique ideas and approaches to training, strategy and problem-solving. This can lead to more creative solutions and innovative tactics and give the team a competitive advantage. But it’s not just diverse backgrounds. Diverse sports teams value the contributions and differences of everyone, from the most junior rookie to the seasoned campaigner; they respect each other, see differences as strengths, and challenge biases.

Bringing Unity To The Sports Team And Community

We live in an increasingly global community. Play by the Rules, developed by the South Australian government, highlights that 25% of the Australian sporting population is born overseas. 50% have one parent from another country, 260 languages are spoken across sports teams, one in five has a disability, and over 50% are women and girls. The sporting landscape is extraordinarily gender, culturally, and linguistically diverse.

Diversity in team sports fosters a sense of unity and mutual respect among team members. By working alongside individuals from different cultures, races and genders, athletes can learn to appreciate and celebrate differences rather than letting them create barriers. This can improve team communication and foster a more cohesive unit. Enhancing diversity within the team enables the team to more broadly reflect the community it represents, increasing engagement and buy-in of fans. Diverse sports teams can become role models for inclusivity and acceptance. Athletes from under-represented groups can inspire others to pursue their dreams and break down stereotypes.

Diverse Teams And The Neuroscience

Embracing diversity does not come naturally. While our conscious brain knows its importance, our unconscious brain quickly categorises input to avoid mindful thinking, save energy, and increase efficiency. Our brain prefers the familiar and has an unconscious bias to like individuals who look, sound, and act like us. Those who are not like us can be registered as a threat. This happens within 200 milliseconds of meeting someone.

Our unconscious bias significantly limits our ability to empathise with others and embrace diversity. The good news is that self-awareness, education and curiosity can counter this pre-encoded condition of our brain and challenge our predisposition.

To overcome cultural differences, language barriers, and unconscious biases, sports organisations must prioritise education, communication and training programs that promote diversity and inclusion.

Being Excluded From The Team

Dr Kipling Williams from Purdue University, Indiana, highlights that being excluded threatens our fundamental human needs, such as belonging and self-esteem. Being excluded activates our pain system, and the pain we feel is experienced in the same part of the brain as physical pain. While physical pain feels different, the networks processing it in the brain are the same. Feelings of exclusion from the team are likely to cause performance to suffer, impacting well-being, engagement, feelings of worthiness, and even our immune system.

Diversity on the world sporting stage (using gender as an example)

A great example of diversity in world sport is provided by looking at gender differentials. In 2019, European Parliament research found that 85% of sports media coverage was devoted to male athletes. At the same time, men wrote 90% of sports articles. But is the tide changing in terms of public and, by association, media interest?

In 2014, the Matildas (Australia’s Women’s Soccer Team) drew 2,583 fans against Brazil. Fast-forward less than ten years, and at the 2023 World Cup, the Matildas drew 75,784 at Sydney’s Stadium Australia—a far cry from the 2500-odd who showed up to watch them a decade earlier.

In 1991, about 500,000 watched the Women’s World Cup matches live. That number grew to 2 million in 2023. The men’s World Cup attracted 3.4 million in 2022. The women are catching up. Disappointingly, women’s prize money for the cup is still a quarter of men’s.

In Conclusion

Diversity in team sports is a powerful force that can drive success, unity and positive change. It also reflects the increasingly diverse community we all live in. By embracing differences and creating an environment where all athletes feel valued and respected, sports teams can unlock their full potential and achieve greatness on and off the field. Embracing diversity and a more inclusive sporting culture can lead to a brighter future for all sporting codes and the communities they represent.

Diversity At Condor Performance

Huge credit needs to go to our General Manager, David, and Founder, Gareth, for insisting on diversity as they have slowly added to the team of sport and performance psychologists here at Condor Performance. We have the broadest range of genders, locations, ages, sporting knowledge, and ethnic backgrounds of any sports psychology consultancy we know.

The advantages of this are both internal and external. Within the team, these differences allow for some fantastic brainstorming and professional development. Externally, those contacting us to work on their mindset and mental toughness have many options when considering which type of psychologist they may want to work with. If you’d like to chat with someone about how one of our diverse team members could help you with your performance, get in touch via this form.

Self-Compassion In Competitive Sport

Self-compassion can be as simple as keeping a gratitude journal.

What Is Self-Compassion?

Self-compassion is understanding our pain and demonstrating kindness and care towards ourselves. It involves accepting our flaws and shortcomings. Self-compassion in competitive sport is not the same as complacency. Athletes may worry that demonstrating self-kindness following a mistake may make them complacent or lazy. However, research has shown that self-compassion usually does the opposite. It makes us more honest with ourselves and more motivated to follow our goals. Self-compassion involves having an inner voice that resembles a blend of a kindly coach and your closest teammate.

What is Self-Criticism?

Self-criticism involves an inner voice that evaluates and scrutinizes oneself harshly and punitively. A tendency toward self-criticism can result from strict parents, peer pressure at school, and demanding authoritative figures. Self-criticism can result in strained relationships, as people who are highly self-critical may withdraw from connections or constantly voice their inner harsh critiques, which can be taxing for the receiving person. Self-criticism can also distract individuals from progress and self-improvement. Research has demonstrated that self-criticism reduces athletes’ self-regulation, emotional recovery, stress management, and performance.

Is Self-Compassion In Competitive Sport Common?

Athletes frequently believe that self-criticism is required to prevent complacency. There is an expectation of toughness and a common belief that harsh criticism is vital to motivate improvement. Self-compassion is growing in momentum as an empirically based mental skill. Since 2004, growing research studies have demonstrated that self-compassion in sports leads to better outcomes and psychologically healthier athletes.

Is Self-Compassion In Competitive Sport Beneficial?

Athletes constantly put themselves in physically and emotionally demanding situations. They regularly experience setbacks, whether it’s a missed goal in a penalty shootout or an extra second in a 200-meter sprint. If athletes treat themselves less punitively and put mistakes in perspective, they can experience adaptive coping and a healthier stress response.

Research has demonstrated that individuals who are kinder to themselves have less fear of failure. When an error does occur, they are more likely to try again. Athletes who demonstrate self-compassion have more adaptive thoughts, emotions, and behavioural responses to stress. Self-compassion has also been found to increase athlete’s motivation to learn and grow.

What Does Self-Compassion Look Like?

Self-compassion involves three main facets:

Self-kindness,

Common humanity and

Mindfulness.

Self-kindness involves treating yourself as you would a good friend. Self-kindness encourages self-warmth and acceptance rather than a critical or disparaging inner dialogue.

Common humanity involves the recognition that mistakes are a common part of human life. This helps us acknowledge that everyone is in the same boat and that life’s challenges and personal failures are all part of what it means to be human.

Mindfulness is about being present in the moment and not letting our thoughts drift off to the future or the past. It involves a curious, nonjudgmental stance.

Techniques for Greater Self-Compassion

Several techniques can help athletes to develop their self-compassion. These include compassionate letter writing, compassionate imagery, self-compassionate thought records and encouraging self-compassionate behaviours. These practices involve expressing concern, non-judgement and genuine caring towards the self. It requires sensitivity to one’s pain and suffering. It includes sympathy for one’s struggle. Thought processes may shift from “I always make mistakes, I’m a terrible athlete” to “everyone makes mistakes, I work so hard, and my mistakes are an opportunity for me to learn”.

Acceptance Commitment Therapy techniques can also help people let go of self-criticism. Athletes who fuse with a harsh inner dialogue can be so focused on their thought patterns that they make even more mistakes. This often facilitates a nasty cycle of distraction and continued errors.

Defusion is a process that allows individuals to see thoughts for what they are, a string of words that we can choose to pay attention to or not. Thoughts do not have to be necessary or accurate, nor do they need to be threatening. They cannot boss us around, and they are not reality. When one recognizes this, one can get some distance from one’s thoughts and be present in the moment, which leads to improvement in one’s chosen sport.

Athletes can insert “I notice I’m having the thought that” in front of their self-critique. Or they can sing their self-critique to a catchy tune. They can imagine their harsh judgement being spoken by a funny cartoon character like Sponge Bob Square Pants!

How Can Coaches Help?

It should come as no surprise that sporting coaches are best placed to foster self-compassion in athletes or prevent it. And guess which coaches tend to be better at the former? Yes, those who practice S-C on themselves. If you are a sporting coach and want to learn how to do this, amongst other mental skills, fill in this quick 10-minute questionnaire. One of our team will be in touch with your results and basic details about how you can start working with one of our performance psychologists/sport psychologists.