sports psychology faqs
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about our Sport Psychology Services
What Qualifications Do Sport Psychologists Have?
“Can you tell me about the minimum credentials and qualifications that your sport and performance psychologists have?”
Absolutely. Before I address that, I would just like to mention that this is one of the questions that I would like to get asked more!
The reason being there are a concerning number of pseudo-professionals out there working and charging a fair amount of money as mental coaches who have little to no formal qualifications.
So, that’s all I’m going to say about that.
Our performance psychologists are all registered psychologists with the Psychology Board of Australia.
This is not an easy thing to achieve. In order to become psychologist in Australia you to complete a seven year sequence of higher education.
By higher education, I typically mean that they all spent four years at a good university, and after that, they would have spent either two years doing a Masters or two years doing supervised practice.
That’s the minimum credentials of our entire team.
And of course, after they became fully registered, then between them (when you combine it) they have accrued almost 50 years worth of consulting in applied sport and performance settings.
Can Others Take Part In The Psychology Sessions?
“Can somebody else sit in during the sessions taking place with the sport and performance psychologist?”
This is another excellent question. For example, when there is a younger athlete who may want to have Mum or Dad take part in the sessions. Or maybe a sporting coach has referred an athlete to us. And that coach feels like it would be beneficial if they were privy to the conversations that we were having regarding that athlete’s mental development.
The answer to this question is yes but with an asterisk.
There are a few conditions or recommendations if you are going to have other people take part in your psychology sessions.
Firstly it’s normally a very good idea if you let your performance psychologist know that multiple people will be taking part in the session(s) beforehand.
Now there are a few different reasons for that, but one of the main ones is that irrespective of whether or not you are having face-to-face sessions or they’re taking place via video conference, there are a few things that we would do differently if we were delivering sessions to one individual compared to if we were delivering sessions to two or three people.
It’s All About The Client
The second recommendation is really just a reminder that we are trained to make sure that 100% of our energy and effort is put into helping only the client.
And so with that, it’s imperative to remember that the psychologist will be really assessing whether or not the other people in the session are helping that process or whether they’re making it harder.
The great news is the overwhelming majority of the time that other people do take part in the sessions, they help and often contribute very important insights.
Some of them choose to say nothing during the sessions and are purely there to observe, and that’s absolutely fine.
But from time to time, such contributions can have a negative impact on what we are trying to achieve which, of course, ultimately is to help the client to improve their mental toughness and overall well-being.
And so in these circumstances, it likely the psychologist will recommend after that session has completed that the following session be better off with simply the client and the sport and performance psychologist taking part.
How Many Sessions Will I Need?
How many sessions will I need is another common question. But as we work on a month-by-month basis then a better question is ‘is there a minimum number of months that I have to commit to”?
So, the answer to that question is yes. The minimum number of months that you’re obliged to work with us is one. How many sessions will happen during this time? Typically about three.
Unlike a gym membership or a telephone contract which might lock you into 12 or 24 months at a time, we simply ask you to give us a full month in order to prove to you what kind of impact we can make on your mental toughness and overall performance.
And then after that first month is completed, it’s entirely up to you how many months you decide you would like to work with your sport and performance psychologist.
Do Your Psychologists Work 1-on-1 with Coaches?
‘I am a sporting coach. Do I work one-on-one with you myself or do I refer my athletes onto you so that you can help them become mentally stronger directly without necessarily involving me?’
It probably boils down to how much time you have available as well as how much knowledge you’ve managed to accrue at becoming better at coaching the mental side.
Having said that, it’s hugely advantageous for us as sport and performance psychologists to work with sporting coaches.
The main reason for this is basically because it doesn’t matter how hard you try, teaching yourself to become a better mental coach is incredibly difficult and is a little bit like trying to teach yourself to become a dentist.
The reason why we really like to work with coaches is because of the pickle that most of them find themselves in whereby they realise the importance of the mental side but they simply can’t justify going away for six years in order to become [qualified] psychologist themselves.
And therefore the coach-sport psychologist relationship really is a special one. It allows them to continue coaching, and at the same time, to have a genuine expert in the mental aspects of sport guide them. Almost like a mentor on how to become better at improving mental toughness.
Of course, as these gains are made, they can be immediately injected into the athletes that the coach is working with.
Will The Sport Psychologist Replace My Current Coach?
“Will you replace my coach?” Is it sport psychologist instead of a coach or sport psychologist as well as a coach?
Let me just start off by saying if you are an athlete of a team sport, then the answer to that question is a categorical ‘no’.
We obviously cannot assist sporting teams to do a whole bunch of tasks. From logistics to player selection and a host of other team tasks.
However, if you are an athlete of an individual sport, then it is possible for us to become your main coach.
The situations in which this is most likely to take place is with elite athletes. Top level performers often don’t need much assistance with their technique anymore. A tennis player who really doesn’t need to work on how to serve, how to hit a backhand, a forehand, a lob shot, and a volley may be inclined to choose someone whose area of expertise is the mental side as their main coach.
Ultimately, if you are an individual athlete, it is completely up to you.
We are very comfortable with being either the main coach or being one of your coaches who focuses only on the mental side of what you do.
What Do Sport Psychologists Do?
Qualified sport psychologists can assist sporting clients with both Mental Toughness (performance) and Mental Health issues (everyday life).
One of the most common questions we get is ‘exactly what do sport psychologists do?’.
A simple way of answering that particular question is to look at the people who we work. Also, what kinds of areas we assist them with.
As the name would suggest, we typically work with those who are involved in some kind of ongoing competitive situations.
It’s very common for those to be athletes. However, it can be sporting coaches, sporting officials and what we like to describe as “non-sporting performers”.
Non-sporting performers are not necessarily just everybody else in the world. It would really include groups of people who have to endure the same kind of mental challenges that elite athletes might but in a non-sporting context.
Performing artists who have to perform in front of other people, medics, paramedics, ambulance drivers, those in the military, for example.
Our expertise really comes to the forefront when we’re assisting people who are normally preparing for some kind of upcoming assessment or competitive situation as opposed to just everyday situations.
The next question is ‘what do we assist them with’?
And a nice way of understanding that is basically to split the mental side into the clinical and the performance aspects.
In other words, with many of our clients, we assist them only with the mental aspects of their performance.
For example, people who are mentally very fine (they don’t have any clinical issues) but they are struggling a little bit with aspects such as managing their emotions [pre competition nerves, anxiety for example – which is a very normal, non-clinical aspect of performance].
Maybe there’s been a dip in motivation. Maybe they’ve become aware of the fact that their thought processes are not ideal for their particular circumstances. Obviously, team chemistry for those involved in teams and groups, and finally, the ability to focus and concentrate.
athletes are humans before they are athletes and therefore, it is not uncommon for us to also assist our clients with their mental health and wellbeing.
One of the advantages about the fact that our work is almost always one-on-one is that we can really help those who we work with to find the right balance between working on mental health as well as working on the mental aspects of performance.
What Sport Psychology Services Do You Offer?
So another question we get frequently is ‘what options are available to us if we decide to go ahead and work one-on-one with one of the sport and performance psychologists from Condor Performance?’.
We have a number of monthly options for you to choose from, and the monthly options only differ in two aspects.
One is the amount of flexible consultation time that you would spend with your psychologist over a one month period, with five hours being the maximum and one hour being the minimum.
And the second aspect is the cost associated and of course, it should come as no surprise if you spend longer consulting with your sport psychologists or performance psychologist this is going to cost more.
Why the monthly options? Why don’t we just do what most psychologists do and have standard one-hour sessions with a standard cost with no contact in between?
The main reason for the monthly options is really because we feel like it allows us to have a much greater impact on your mental toughness and your overall mental health and wellbeing.
One of the reasons for that is because it allows you to determine how long the sessions are.
We Work By The Month Not By The Session
What you’re essentially doing with monthly options is paying for a block of session time a month in advance, and then having paid for that, you can then divide that block of time up in pretty much whatever way you want.
It may be that, for example, you want to have a five-minute phone conversation just before a crucial competition and, of course, we can easily schedule that in and simply deduct that five minutes from your overall block of prepaid consultation time.
Another reason why we prefer the monthly option is because it includes unlimited email and SMS contact between the sessions [without additional cost].
And from our point of view, this is really, really important and useful. For example, after a session, you may have a question that only requires a very short answer about something that you juts thought of.
In most situations, you would need to then book another one-hour appointment with the psychologist in order to bring up that question, but because our monthly options have unlimited email and SMS contact, you can then just text or email your psychologist with that question and they’ll get back to you as soon as they can.
Can I Book In For A Single Session?
If you haven’t done so already then watch our 70 second Introduction Video here. This video will, in part, answer the question ‘Can I book in for a single session?’
The transcription of the above audio is coming soon and will be added here shortly.
Can I / We Claim a Rebate from Private Health Insurance / Medicare?
Information PDFs
For more infomation about Private Health Funds please read or download the below PDF:
For more infomation about Medicare please read or download the below PDF:
What Happens During Performance Psychology Sessions?
If you haven’t done so already then watch our 70 second Introduction Video here. This video will, in part, answer the question ‘what happens during performance psychology sessions?
‘Can you give me an example of what one month of one-on-one mental toughness training with one of your psychologists looks like’?
Of course. So a quick reminder that one of the big benefits of the month-by-month approach is that it’s not all about the sessions, and that means that although the one-on-one consultation time with our psychologists is important, it’s not the only aspect of the program.
A simple way to look at it is that the month will typically be made up of three components. The first is the session time, and as mentioned previously, the amount of session time that you have with your psychologist during a month will range from one hour to five hours.
The second aspect is the unlimited contact that you have with your psychologist via email and text message.
You can send your psychologist a question or a comment or an observation every single day over that one month period, and that is not something that’s going to cost you anything extra.
Another aspect of the month by month approach, which is very important to emphasise, is the fact is that a lot of the general explanations that we will give you will take place via pre-recorded videos.
What I mean by that is that we don’t need to use 30 minutes of your very valuable, flexible consultation time explaining to you how goal setting works (for example).
Free Access To Metuf For All Our Clients
Instead we will is send you a [password protected] video which will allow you to watch how we go about goal setting meaning you will then be able to use your time with your psychologist specifically asking him or her questions about how to adapt the ideas to your particular circumstances.
So, there are a few other things to mention. The most obvious is that the sessions typically take place via Skype or FaceTime video or Google Hangouts or one of the many other video conferencing technology.
Despite the fact that we work from Australia, the majority of our clients are from all around the world.
And it’s purely because we can have a very, very good conversation as long as both parties has access to the internet and know how to access one of the several free video conferencing technologies that is out there.
Which Of Your Psychologists Is Best For Me?
If you haven’t done so already then watch our 70 second Introduction Video here. Who is your best sport psychologist is not covered in this video.
‘Which of the psychologists from Condor Performance would I work with if I decided to go ahead’? Who is the best fit?
This is a very important question to address right at the beginning.
The first thing to mention is the vast majority of people who contact us do so by either filling in one of our Mental Toughness Questionnaires or filling in the form on the Contact Us page.
In doing this they provide us with a fair amount of information about who they are, where they are, and what sport or performance area they’re involved in.
This allows us to predict which of our sport psychologists or performance psychologists is most compatible. This is one the main advantages of contacting a group of psychologists instead of one man / women band.
A Growing Team of Psychologists …
We have a team of nine psychologists that we have a huge amount of confidence in. We really do believe that despite their variances that all of them have been extremely well-trained in order to provide you with the best possible service.
From our perspective it doesn’t actually feel like it makes a huge amount of difference who you would be working with.
We will always factor in several aspects such as your sport and your location when making that decision. It may be that one of our psychologists is better placed to have sessions in your time zone. Or it could be that one of the psychologists has a lot more experience working with athletes of your particular sport.
All of this will be taken into consideration. You can rest assured that whoever you work with will do an excellent job!
Why See A Sport Psychologist? I Don’t Have Any Mental Problems!
If you haven’t done so already then watch our 70 second Introduction Video here. This video, in part, will answer the question ‘Why See A Sport Psychologist?’
One of my favourite questions of all time is one that typically gets asked from younger athletes who are pretty resistant about the idea of working with a psychologist.
And the question is from the young athlete, “I don’t have any psychological problems. Why on earth would I want to go and see a psychologist?”
The answer to this question is very simply. Because we’re not clinical psychologist.
So as sport and performance psychologists, we will essentially determine at the very beginning what your overall mental health is like.
If like the majority of athletes you are mentally fine, then we will focus our attention entirely on the mental aspects of your performance. Areas such as motivation, how you handle the emotions of competing, your thought processes, the unity of your team and your ability to focus.
I hope you can understand how despite being mentally very well, huge gains in your performance can be made by helping you become better at working on those five areas.
And of course, if you are one of the athletes who is also struggling with some mental health concerns, then we will assist you with those as well.
But the answer to the question, “Why on earth would I want to go and see a psychologist if I don’t have any mental health problems,” is very simply you don’t need to have a mental health problem in order for us to have a significant impact on your sporting goals by targeting the mental aspects of what you do.
