Recent Sports Psychology And Performance Psychology Articles

Powered by Purpose

By Alexandra Mapstone

Unlock The Power Of Your Purpose

Some big philosophical questions will come up at some point, if they have not already. For example, ‘Who am I?’, ‘What am I meant to do here?’, and ‘What am I trying to achieve with my life?’

I have always been intrigued by the concept of purpose. We go about our daily tasks, but when asked why, most of us are stumped.

At this point, we may think about things of meaning or significance to us. For example, an athlete may find meaning in playing a leadership role in their team. Or a sports coach may love helping an athlete achieve their goal.

But This Is Only The Tip Of The Iceberg

Richard Leider, an international bestselling author and coach, describes purpose like this.

“The deepest dimension within us- our central core or essence– where we have a profound sense of who we are, where we came from and where we’re going. Purpose is the quality we choose to shape our lives around. Purpose is a source of energy and direction.”

Our purpose is the reason we do something or why something exists. It is having a clear direction or goal that drives our choices and actions. The Japanese call it ikigai, – a person’s reason for being.

A real sense of purpose is one of the most fundamental human needs. It is vital in shaping our lives and bringing us satisfaction. It is the subjective perception that one’s daily life is worth living and full of energy and motivation. There are three core components of purpose:

Goal orientation
Personal meaningfulness
A focus on aims beyond the self

Purpose Is Unique

There isn’t one definite area that needs to be fulfilled to live a more meaningful life. People derive purpose from various activities. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger continued to pursue his plans to become a great bodybuilder despite reservations from his parents and others.

https://condorperformance.com/powered-by-purpose/

For the Okinawan community, a sense of purpose involves working in their garden to bring vegetables home, working a stall in the morning market, or giving social support to the elderly.

Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, explored the idea that purpose is essential for human well-being and resilience. Even when faced with extreme suffering and adversity. He suggested that having a purpose gives people a reason to keep moving forward, providing a sense of direction, motivation, and fulfilment.

Purpose is unique and arises from one’s values, passions, and sense of responsibility.

Why Purpose Matters

Research has shown that having a sense of purpose is connected to experiencing less conflict when making decisions and can help overcome stress, anxiety, or depression. It is also shown to increase health and decrease mortality rates. In the Netflix documentary Live to 100, having a sense of purpose is believed to be one of the most influential factors contributing to individuals’ longevity.

Companies driven by purpose are also shown to have better growth, increased employee productivity, and higher success rates. A sense of purpose in life has ripple effects on most areas of life.

Benefits of Purpose for Sports Performance

Greater goal engagement: Setting goals that motivate you to work hard towards achieving them helps to provide a sense of purpose. This old but still helpful article by the Founder of Condor Performance, Gareth J. Mole, delves into this topic in more detail.

Higher emotional resilience: You will inevitably encounter challenges and tough moments during your sporting career. This makes it even more important to return from these testing times more robust than before. Having a clear sense of purpose helps us remember our reasons for doing what we are doing and continue working towards becoming the athlete and person we want to be, even after disappointing performances.

Higher levels of internal motivation and passion: Having a strong sense of purpose can help maintain a high level of internal motivation that draws on the core reasons you became involved in your sport and your inner desire and enjoyment when feeling that sense of achievement. It may help to reinvigorate your passion for participating in your chosen sport and spark new areas for achievement. It has been suggested that when athletes can play sports and live their lives with a sense of purpose, they feel connected to something bigger than themselves.

Why Don’t I Know My Purpose?

Knowing about purpose and its benefits doesn’t automatically result in knowing yours, and often, people will struggle to define their purpose in life. This is because we are usually distracted from our goals or pressured to follow a path away from our core passions.

It is estimated that only 20% of adolescents report having a sense of purpose. And that 59% of American adults felt they had found a purpose and meaning in their lives. This suggests that developing a sense of purpose is complex and may take a long time. Our sense of purpose needs to be discovered, and it is only by working on purpose and consistently asking ourselves, ‘Why do I get up in the morning?’ that we inch closer to finding the answer to this question. We must commit to discovering our sense of purpose, as without purpose, we will find ourselves lost and far away from our true fulfilment in life and work.

It goes without saying that there will never be a substitute for working one-on-one with qualified sports and performance psychologists (like the growing team at Condor Performance*). However, I have compiled some quick tips below that may at least help you get started.

5 Tips To Help You Find Your Purpose

Explore what is personally meaningful to you about sports.
Set personal goals that align with this meaning.
Explore what is beyond self-motivation. For example, I want to improve the life of my family or be a positive role model for children.
Share your thoughts with others in your inner circle (e.g., family, friends, coaches).
Live your purpose by exploring how you can bring it to life.

* For more info on our services, fill out our Contact Us form here.

Mindfulness and Routines

LONDON, ENGLAND – August 25: Michael Clarke plays a shot as Matt Prior looks on during the Investec Ashes cricket match between England and Australia played at The Kia Oval Cricket

Mindfulness and Routines – Combined!

In the past, we have written articles on these two sports psychology mega-concepts separately (see here and here) but never about how they work together. This new article by psychologist and guest author Zach Churchill will explore mindfulness and routines as synergistic concepts. As always, if you have questions or comments, add them to the section at the bottom, and Zach will address as many of them as possible.

Cricket is a game of situations that constantly change depending on the state of the game. Generally speaking, whoever wins the most situations will be victorious. Cricket, much like golf and tennis to some degree, is a sport that has significant chunks of time between these situations.

What is the problem with this? The issue is that the mind can do a lot in 30-45 seconds, approximately how long a batter has before facing their next ball. Where a player’s mind wanders off can significantly impact how they perceive, feel about, and relate to a given game situation. This may subsequently affect how an individual performs during a game, thus impacting the outcome.

This article will first distinguish the difference between pre-ball and post-ball routines and then explain how mindfulness can be helpful in the post-ball routine.

Obviously, in these bat-and-ball sports, the bowlers/pitchers and fields also have (or should have) routines, but for this article, I will focus only on the batters.

Distinguishing The Routines

There is controversy over whether one can distinguish between pre and post-ball routines for sports such as cricket and baseball. I argue that this is quite easily distinguishable. The pre-ball routine encompasses behavioural and cognitive actions only seconds before the bowler starts running in. One of the most common, by way of example, is tapping the bat on the ground a few times.

The post-ball routine begins after the completion of a shot or delivery, and the ball becomes dead. It typically extends to the point where the bowler is about to leave their mark again. This is the space of approximately 30-45 seconds where a batter’s mind is most susceptible to wander into territory detrimental to performance.

For example, they might overthink the previous or next shot, overanalyse a game situation, or listen to the slips cordon sledging, which is done to distract the batsmen from their game.

Can the pre and post-ball routines overlap?

Yes, if the mind allows it to. This is a crucial reason why the post-ball routine is so important. Suppose a batter thinks about their previous shot or begins to internalise what the fielders say while sledging. In that case, this will likely bleed into the pre-shot routine and may impair their ability to focus on the only thing that matters when the bowler bowls… the ball!

Therefore, this short space during the post-ball routine is crucial for a batsman to get right.

The Myth Of “Switching Off”

What should the athlete do in this short window if the post-ball routine is so essential? The most common answer I heard while playing elite cricket was, “You need to switch off”. Switching off is impossible, so asking performers to do this is psychologically damaging. Let me prove it.

I want you to set a timer for 45 seconds and close your eyes. I want you to tell yourself to switch off and not think about anything. After this exercise, you should appreciate how far the mind can take us in 30-45 seconds.

If a batter is told to switch off, it allows their mind to run wild. We demonstrated how your mind can wander when sitting in a chair with a timer. Imagine putting an elite athlete amid a high-pressure game situation, where they are fatigued and possibly emotionally dysregulated depending on what is happening. The mind runs wild!

Contrary to the “switch off” philosophy so commonly taught by coaches, batsmen need a way to pay attention in a relaxed way while also regulating any fatigue or emotion dysregulation occurring at the time. And this is where performance mindfulness comes in.

Why Is Mindfulness Ideal For These Routines?

Mindfulness is the process of intentionally focusing on the present moment with less judgment and more curiosity than is typically natural.

An athlete can be mindful of anything occurring naturally in the here and now. One great focal point of mindfulness is the breath and the five senses. Feeling their spikes dig into the turf, making a fist with their gloves, or noticing their muscles as they walk away from the crease after playing a shot are great examples of this type of attentional focus.

They can look around and notice the trees in the background or all the people in the crowd wearing blue shirts. We are trying to ground the athlete into the present moment, which will allow their mind and emotions to be balanced. When the mind runs, fatigue sets in, and emotions are dysregulated. This is the time when batters are most susceptible to making poor decisions. Poor decisions lead to worse execution of game situations, making it less likely to win the match.

Get In Touch

If this article has piqued your interest about what it might be like to work with a qualified psychologist on the mental aspect of sport and performance, get in touch via one of the below to find out more about who we are and what we do:

Fill in the form via our Contact Us page or
Complete one of the MTQs via this link or
Send a regular old email to [email protected]

Want to learn more about how we work before getting in touch? Watch this two-minute video by our General Manager, David.

Excuse-Making Explored

Excuse-Making *and* Mental Toughness – Are They Opposites?

Excuse-Making: An Interesting Concept

The human mind is remarkable and fascinating. It is capable of so much, maybe too much. This short opinion piece will explore the concept of excuse-making. More specifically, it will try to untangle the difference between excuses and genuine reasons as it might relate to the mental side of competitive sport and performance.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines an excuse (noun) as “an explanation that frees one from fault or blame.” So, excuse-making is the act of doing this, and habitual excuse-making is doing this a lot. When I read this definition, I was a little surprised. I was expecting it to be more about facts versus fiction. But apparently not. It appears as if excuses are more like the opposite of “taking responsibility” than about accuracy.

From a sport psychology and performance psychology point of view, it’s essential that we also separate excuse-making into the outward and inner types. By this, I mean saying something just to oneself (e.g., thoughts) designed to free the thinker from fault or blame is not the same as an excuse that is vocalised to another person (or group).

Spoken Words Are Actions, Not Thoughts

Technically speaking, when you open your mouth, and words come out, these are actions. Yes, these words probably started as thoughts. And yes, the time gap between having the thought and then doing the talking can feel so quick that we believe they are the same. But they are not the same. The reason why it’s so important not to confuse them comes down to the vastly different ways we want to handle thoughts, feelings, and actions, as explained in the video below.

Thoughts, Feelings and Actions Are Different

If you take this explanation and put it into the context of inner excuse-making, then really, what we, as sport psychologists, are suggesting is to become more aware of just noticing these cognitions. Ideally, with practices like mindfulness and journaling, we can all become better at lengthening the gaps between the stimulus (the autonomic thought we have little influence over) and response (which action, if any, to take).

Because I am a diehard advocate for Psychological Flexibility as a better approach to sport, performance, life, and everything else, it’s easier to assume that I have no interest in influencing thought processes. This is not true.

Let Me Explain

Consider thoughts as either past, present, or future-oriented. The first two categories are ideally treated with extreme acceptance. Changing a past thought is impossible, and changing a present one is complicated and unnecessary for the critical stuff (actions) anyway, so leave them be.

But future thoughts are different. They have not taken place yet, so there are actions we can take that might lessen the burden on our psychological flexibility later.

Some clients will know I am a big fan of using swimming as an analogy, not just swimming but swimming in the ocean. One way to become a better ocean swimmer is to become more adept at doing your strokes whilst waves are smacking you in the jaw. We can do thousands of things to become stronger ocean swimmers. But at some point, we’d need to accept that looking at future sea conditions – to avoid the most extreme conditions that mother nature can throw at us – is also intelligent. Reduce the probability of extreme burden despite excellent preparation.

How do we reduce the burden on our psychological flexibility? There are many ways to do this, but there is no substitute for monitoring our efforts in the context of learning to make fewer excuses.

Example Please!

Peter has decided he wants to improve his short game in golf. So, instead of smashing balls at the range (which he finds much more enjoyable), he plans to use this time to work on this chipping instead. He decides to get specific and designs some drills that take 40 minutes, and he adds them to his time management plan to do this three times a week.

In simple mathematical terms, he’s aiming for 120 minutes a week of intentional effort. However, the amount of actual effort can range anywhere between 0 minutes and 120 minutes. Of course, it could go above 120 minutes, but this is less likely as Pete is somewhat of a “do what’s necessary kind of guy.”

Peter creates a simple chart to measure how many minutes he does each week. When this number is below 120 minutes, there is a space for him to put why he fell short. Below are three hypothetical entries – can you identify which (if any) are excuses?

Are These Excuses?

~ The practice pitching green was shut for some kids’ lessons on Wednesday evening, so I could not do my standard drills when I arrived. So, I went to the range instead and fell 40 minutes short of my short game practice this week.

~ I just experienced a considerable dip in motivation for my overall Golf, not just my short game. I played poorly on the weekend, so the idea of investing even more time into a pursuit that is so inconsistent seems ridiculous. Maybe a couple of weeks off is what is needed. I got 0 minutes done this week, 120 minutes less than my commitment.

~ Blast, I picked up a slight shoulder niggle whilst playing touch footy with the guys on Monday night. The physiotherapist instructed me to practice at least 20 minutes during every session (half my usual amount). I didn’t quite manage to double the number of sessions to get to the 120 minutes, so I managed 100 minutes this week instead of 120.

Instead of sharing my insights about which of the above contains more legitimacy than others, it might be more attractive to ask our loyal readers. Please add your comments in the space at the bottom of this article, and I will endeavour to reply to every one of them as they come through. Which of the above (if any) do you believe is an excuse and why?

The Mind Is Not So Different From The Body

Both benefit from some very similar rules. One commonality between the parts above and below the neck is that they both require repetition for changes to become permanent.

This simple monitoring process described above is the most effective method I have ever encountered during my 20 years as an applied sport psychologist in assisting future thoughts to become less burdensome. Let me reiterate something fundamental here to prevent the flurry of comments about me contradicting my preference for psychological flexibility while wanting my clients to have more beneficial future thoughts. Because they are future thoughts (yet to happen) and are potentially influenced by present actions, there is no risk of what we call meta-cognition “distracting” the performer during the present moment.

Ideally, weekly reflections on why an athlete or performer fell short build greater awareness of how they can creatively work towards greater consistency of practice in the future. Maybe the very simple little internal dialogue is something like this.

“It’s gonna be hard for me to practice this week due to the weather. What can I do instead of letting these adverse weather conditions reduce our intended practice? Maybe I could do something inside or practice in the rain, knowing my skin is waterproof. Better still, maybe this poor weather practice will help me when I have to compete in similarly adverse climatic conditions.”

Accepting Thoughts, Especially The Crappy Ones, Is Hard.

So, we’re looking to reduce the workload required for methods such as mindfulness. Developing great psychological flexibility is fantastic and will serve you very well in the future. Still, it is not a magic bullet that makes all future endeavours bulletproof against all challenges.

At the beginning of the article, I clarified that dialogue related to why we don’t manage to do what we intended to do is not the same as when we say this to another individual. What does this second version most commonly look like?

In a sporting context, it is probably most common in elite developmental sports programs. Imagine a softball team with athletes aged between 14 and 17. The coach helps the squad design a combination of group-based practice and tasks that the players must do independently.

A simple self-monitoring system allows the Coach to see which athletes are doing the individualised practice. For the players who don’t enter this data or enter numbers far less than what was agreed upon, conversations can occur about why.

Why would an athlete use an excuse verbally when, in their mind, they know it’s far from a legitimate reason? There are potentially many reasons, but the most common is a lack of sound team dynamics, as described in these past articles here and here.

If you are a sporting or non-sporting performer and would like some professional help with making fewer excuses, then contact us now via this Enquiry Form. One of our team will get back to you within a couple of days.

Potential In Performance – Is It A Myth?

For me, potential in performance is one of the most fascinating topics to debate in modern-day sports psychology. This article is my opinion on the subject. If you take the time to read my ramblings below, you’ll see that I lean heavily towards the view that there isn’t really such a thing as potential.

From a performance psychology perspective, I would even say that it can often be detrimental. But this is just my viewpoint. Please add your counterargument below in the comments section for those who read and disagree. Debating these topics healthily and respectfully is crucial to improving our understanding. So don’t be shy.

“You Have Some Much Potential”

The word ‘potential’ is used extensively across sports and other performance domains, such as music, art, performing arts, and academics. It is used so frequently that it will almost always be regarded as ‘real’. The context in which it is most commonly heard is to describe an individual performer. Someone who can and should be much better in the future based on current or past ‘glimpses’. For example:

“Our starting quarterback has so much potential but often falls short on game day.”

In other words, according to the individual who said these words—let’s say the coach—this athlete has done things that suggest they could be much better later on but are not right now.

All too often, this is down to moments of brilliance. Maybe it’s moments of brilliance during a practice session with little or no competitive pressure. Or perhaps it was one or two unforgettable moments in a game that made everybody sit up and take notice.

The issue with these moments of brilliance is that they are only moments. Even the sports that last the least time (e.g. 100 m sprint) are made up of dozens of moments. Some sports, like cricket, comprise tens of thousands per match. So, if only a few of these moments are brilliant, then it suggests the rest were not, which is the definition of inconsistency.

So, if consistency is the most sought-after aspect of performance (as my colleague Chris argued in this brilliant article), then moments of brilliance count for diddly–squat.

Genetics and Potential

Not always, but often, potential in performance is used to describe genetic or inherited advantages. In other words, if you go back to the good old nature versus nurture debate, we often label performers as having ‘huge potential’ when they have all the genetically inherited ideals for that sport—a naturally taller basketball player or a heavily set forward rugby union forward.

In these scenarios, being labelled as naturally talented can often be a significant handicap from a mental toughness point of view.

Think about it. Our effort is one of the few areas of performance over which we genuinely have considerable influence. Therefore, consistency of hard work (in the right areas 😬) would have to be the most significant predictor of future success in sports and performance.

Imagine that from the age of seven, you have been told by all the significant people around you that you have genetic advantages. “Tommy has so much potential and natural talent”. If I were Tommy and I heard this repeatedly, it would be easy to believe that I don’t need to put in the same level of effort as some of my competitors to succeed. When you combine this with humans naturally wanting to take shortcuts (see more here: Principle of Least Effort), Tommy is in trouble. His dreams of making it to the top are pipe dreams.

Inside Knowledge

One of the absolute joys of working as an applied sports psychologist is that many of our loyal clients are already competing and performing at a high level. We had/have the privilege of helping some of them get there. For others, we have joined them and their team while they are already at the pointy end, and we have been brought in to help increase the probability that they stay there.

Irrespective, we have conversations with some of the best athletes and performances in the world virtually every day. As I am only one member of the current Condor Performance team, I can’t speak on behalf of all of our uber-elite clients worldwide, but the ones I have worked with rarely talk about potential.

Most of these exceptional athletes were not told they had potential or natural talent during their developmental years.

Due to this, they developed a rock-solid belief system that consistency of effort was the number one ticket to the top. Hard work was above everything else. This work ethic became a habit, and as the years rolled on, it became a much more critical ingredient to performance consistency and excellence than anything else.

Practical Takeaways

What does this mean regarding practical takeaways for those reading this article? I will leave you with some straightforward and hopefully game-changing advice on this subject of potential in performance.

If you’re a coach, I would cease to use the terms potential and natural talent. Just ban them from your vocabulary. If you are an athlete or non-sporting performer, I would encourage you also to move away from these dangerous labels. When you think you are full of potential, notice those thoughts and return to work. If others tell you it, thank them and get back to work.

Consider this if you have been labelled as someone with huge potential. Does hearing this make me want to work harder or not? If you’re one of the lucky few who views your potential in a motivational way, then make sure you have strategies to continue working hard even when those around you stop describing you in this way.

Amount of Influence

From a mental toughness point of view, one of the most fundamental ideas is how much influence we have on stuff. When we look at this in the context of time, it is elementary.

We can not influence the past at all.
We have a vast amount of influence over the present.
We have some influence over the future (due to the amount of influence we have over the present and the impact the present has on the future).

Potential in performance, as well as in any context, is a future-orientated construct. It is a prediction about the future. So, in the same way that putting a considerable amount of mental energy into the past is detrimental (“things were so much better last season why Coach Bob was around”), so too is focusing too much on the future.

So, we want to spend most of our energy in the present moment. My response to working with an athlete who believes they have enormous potential is the same as when consulting with an individual who believes they have absolutely none. Ask yourself the following:

“What is my plan for this week, this training session, so that afterwards, there is no doubt that I have improved in one or more meaningfulness areas.”

Permission granted to write this on your bathroom mirror.

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.

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.

Post Competition Reviews

Chris Pomfret, Senior Performance Psychologist from Condor Performance looks at the pros and cons of Post Competition Reviews.

*“Oh Boy, I bet coach is going to show the mistakes I made on the big screen.”*

What Are Post Competition Reviews?

Recently, I received an excellent question from one of our monthly clients regarding post-competition reviews. This person competes in an individual sport and has just finished a big weekend of racing… living the dream. A disappointing overall result was causing great frustration, and they were second-guessing themselves as a racer and wondering exactly where all the hard work this season was leading them.

They realised this was in complete contrast to a competition only one week before, where a strong result prompted positive emotions and had them feeling optimistic about the future. Many of our discussions had been about taking a consistent approach before every competition, and their question was how they should approach the hours and days following a competition – win, lose, or draw.

The first thing we reflected on was enjoyment and ensuring that they did not lose sight of what drew them into the sport in the first place. These things have kept them participating and want to maintain this in the long run. Given that they compete in a physically brutal sport, we distinguished between the fun elements (e.g., the things that elicit a big smile) and the deeper, more meaningful elements (e.g., the things that make them proud and challenge them).

Self-Reflection Is Key

Next, we reflected on the nature of the results themselves. No matter how easy or difficult, we can only influence results to a certain degree. We can impact the various outcomes in our chosen sport (a fast lap time, winning a heat, making a podium, being selected in a representative team), but we can never guarantee them. This isn’t to give ourselves an excuse for a disappointing performance or pretend that it doesn’t matter to us but to bring our focus back to our weekly effort so that we can keep improving and ultimately shift results in our favour.

We then spoke about strategies for emotional release. Emotions are neither good nor bad – they are a primitive way of understanding our experiences. Of course, I would rather feel happy than sad, but that doesn’t make happy ‘better’ than sad. The key thing is the intensity of the emotion and how we manage it. Most athletes do think about – and practice – regulating their emotions in the lead-up to a competition or when performing. Most athletes don’t consider how to handle intense emotions (desirable or unwanted) once they have finished competing.

Whatever works for you in the lead-up to a competition is probably a good place to start in learning to handle yourself post-competition. As a general rule, feelings are expressed through the body, so often the quickest and easiest way to release that emotional ‘steam out of the kettle’ is by physical means such as deep breathing, movement, warm-downs, physical focus points such as stretching, or sensory stimulation such as showering. No matter the emotion you are experiencing, work on empowering yourself by releasing the emotion on your terms. Unreleased emotions can be problematic in the long term.

A Possible Framework for The Analysis Of Performances

Next, we discussed a specific framework for reviewing competitions mentally. We put aside important physical considerations such as fitness, strength and conditioning, training loads, flexibility, amount and quality of sleep the night before performing. Then, we set aside non-sporting factors such as family, friendships, school, work, finances and life stressors. We also put aside technical aspects of the performance (the biomechanics and tangible skill execution within races). Finally, we also set aside tactical considerations (decision-making) as these are issues that are constantly being reviewed by the coaching staff. This left us with the following categories, to which I posed the following questions:

Commitment:

How strong was your desire to perform well in this competition? How much importance did you place on this weekend’s events? Looking back, what signs tell you that your heart was really in it? If we were to say this was just another set of races in a long career, why did you push yourself to do your best again? How are you rewarding yourself for putting in so much hard work? Can you put into words what makes weekends like this so special, especially when things do go to plan?

Concentration:

How well could you focus on what you wanted to focus on? What things captured your attention before, during and post-race? Were you aware of this happening? Have you practised dealing with distractions? What are a few simple but relevant things you can focus on when next competing?

Confidence:

If confidence is knowing that you can do something before you try, where is the evidence (e.g. through practice and past competitions) that tells you what is possible? How well can you feel what you want to before and during races? Do you have a Plan B for when you don’t feel confident just before the green light?

Communication:

What messages were you sending yourself? What messages were you sending other people (verbally and non-verbally)? Were these deliberate? Have you practised them? Do you have a sense of how effective they are?

Consistency:

Were your thought processes systematic, simple, clear and well-rehearsed? Were you viewing external factors such as opponents, officials, weather conditions, equipment, facilities and spectators in a manner that suits you and your individual needs?

Culture:

How were you viewing your coaching staff, support crew, team members, and the wider group of athletes coming together? What was your sense of connection and belonging like? Are you feeling part of a broader community, and does this need to be worked on somehow?

Summary

Like so much in elite and competitive sports, Post Competition Reviews can only really be considered useful or not when we look at how they’re done. In my experience, these reviews are too often used for the coaching staff to vent about poor results and performances. The Monday morning horror show of the weekend’s mistakes being edited and spliced together. Why? To show the players how they f*%$ed up so they won’t do it again 🤬.

I hope this short article gives readers insight into a potentially better way.

If you’d like one of our psychologists’ assistance with your performance, complete one of our four Mental Toughness Questionnaires here. A member of our team will be in touch with you to discuss options normally within two or three business days.

Pre Shot Routines

Pre Shot Routines might be the most common of the short routines used before closed sporting skills, but they’re not the only type of short routine.

A good pre-shot routine can be half the battle with improving the mental side of target-based sports such as shooting, lawn bowls, golf, etc.

What Are Pre Shot Routines (PSRs)?

Pre Shot Routines are the most common short-performance routines, but they are not the only type. Any closed motor skill required constantly during a sporting context could and should have a routine beforehand. A closed motor skill is an action or series of actions typically ‘performed in a stationary environment, where the performer chooses when to start the skill’.

If we did some brainstorming, we could probably come up with dozens of labels suited to different sports, but in my work as a sport psychologist, these six are the most common:

Pre Shot Routines for Golf, shooting sports, table sports, lawn bowls.
Pre-Point Routines (or you can have Pre-Serve Routines and Pre-Receive Routines) for all racquet sports, such as tennis, squash, table tennis, badminton, and paddleball (pickleball), to name the most common.
For AFL, soccer/football (set shot takers), rugby league, rugby union and American football (kickers), we’d use the term Pre Kick Routine.
The term Pre Start Routines is probably best for most racing sports, from swimming to motorsports to track and field.
Pre-Ball Routine … you guessed it – cricket and baseball.

What Is The Generic Term?

To my knowledge, no agreed term describes all of these mental skills. Probably because Pre-Shot Routines tend to be the most common, they are often used to describe most others. This is reasonable for all of the above examples other than racing sports. Most tennis players will instinctively know what you’re referring to if you use the term pre-shot routine instead of pre-point routine. But I suspect you might not get a great response if you tell a 200-meter sprinter that you’ll be working on their pre-shot routine during the sessions.

Pre Shot Routines Before Closed Motor Skills

For all closed motor skills, the athletes will always have at least a few seconds before attempting the action. Left ‘to wing it on the day,’ these few seconds (or few minutes) can often become fertile grounds for overthinking. This tends to lead to underperforming in high-pressure situations.

There is one main rule for constructing or improving any pre-shot routine. Only include easily repeatable actions. In other words, the only premeditated aspects of the routines are body movements. Thoughts and feelings are left to occur naturally at the time. You have too little influence on them to ensure you can “do them” when it counts.

Intended actions are far more reliable than thoughts and feelings. Indeed, they are so reliable that we can (with a lot of practice) virtually guarantee them. We can never guarantee that we will be able to think a certain way in certain situations. So, trying to do so is fraught with danger from a psychological point of view.

The Classic ‘Pre Shot Routine’

Start with this question. Is one Pre Shot Routine enough, or do I need several? For most sports, one is normally sufficient. Attempting a 3-foot putt versus a long drive in sports like golf might seem too different to justify having two different PSRs ready to go. For racquet sports, starting the point or receiving the ball from the server is very different, so I would encourage at least two.

The start of the Pre Shot Routine benefits from ‘a trigger action’. This helps us switch it on at that moment. For a sport like lawn bowls, maybe this is wiping your hand on your pant leg.

After this initial action, add three to five other steps that naturally lead to the “shot”. Any more than this, and you run the risk of overcomplicating it.

For example, one of these steps in clay target shooting is to shout ‘pull’. A baseball pitcher and a cricket bowler have no choice but to include correctly gripping the ball during their pre-ball routines.

Pre Point Routines

Of course, we have all seen Rafa going through his pre-point rituals. It might seem more like a set of ticks to the untrained eye. But Rafa’s Pre Point Routines are amongst the many aspects of his tennis that make him so good.

Racquet sports are interesting as only the serve is a closed skill because the receiver doesn’t decide when to receive the ball. However, I have always found that having a Pre-Serve Routine and a Pre-Receive Routine is a good plan in my work with tennis players.

The good old face clean with a towel is hard to beat as a starting trigger for both the server and the receiver. The rest of the routine needs to be aligned with what is required in a few seconds. If you’re about to receive the ball, walking to the right spot and taking the right body position might want to be included. If you’re serving, bouncing the ball, pausing, and slowly looking up can be great inclusions.

Ball Bouncing

Ball bouncing (waggling the golf club, same as) is a double-edged sword. Most players do it “until they feel right,” but this assumes you’ll always feel right at some point. I am in favour of picking a range of bounces. For example, 2 or 3 and then sticking to this 100% of the time. Yes, even in practice and when doing it as part of your visualisation.

If decision-making is taken seriously as part of the practice, this will become as automatic as the skills developed around them. In other words, choosing where to serve only becomes cognitively demanding if you have excluded tactical preparation as part of your practice.

Pre-Kick and Throw Routines

Because these actions are part of fast-flowing sports, they are often not considered in the same group of closed skills as the previous examples. In my opinion, this is a huge missed opportunity for the kickers and free throwers of these sports.

In the 1-on-1 work we do with kickers and throwers, I treat them like golfers. But instead of a golf club and ball, they have their leg, feet, arms, hands, and an inflated ball.

First, as with golfers, we agree on the ideal number of routines after going through the pros and cons of one versus several. For example, a rugby union player may need one for set shots and another for kickoffs.

After this, we follow the same rules as before. Only use actions to build the Pre Kick/Throw Routine. If you must include a thought, keep it as simple as possible.

Is It A Good Idea To Visualise As Part Of My Routine?

I have received criticism for my lack of enthusiasm about including imagery in routines 😬. Some of this comes from the famous Jack Nicklaus quote about visualisation. “I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head,” Nicklaus said.

Here is the issue, Jack. We can’t guarantee cognitive processes such as imagining the path of a ball. Even with repetition, it will be very vulnerable under pressure or high levels of distraction.

The solution to this conflict is two-fold. First, practice the visualisation part as part of your PKR in practice 100% of the time so it feels automatic (second nature). Second, don’t stress if it’s hard or impossible come game time. It’s not that you are weak, it’s the thoughts are weak. Your action-based Pre Shot Routines will get the job done regardless of your thoughts or feelings.

If you’d like the assistance of one of our psychologists with your short routines, then complete one of our four Mental Toughness Questionnaires here. A member of our team will be in touch with you to discuss options normally within two or three business days.

Sport Psychology Into The Future

Sport psychologist Gareth J. Mole muses about where sport psychology is headed and guesses what the field will look like in 2050.

What will sport psychology look like in the year 2050?

Back From The Future

Ok, readers, I borrowed a time machine and just returned from the year 2050. And you will not believe what I saw. Doncaster Rovers F.C. won the English Premier League yet gain. And sport psychology is nothing like it is in 2024. It’s mainstream, normal, and regarded as the most important part of competitive sports.

Forecasting the future is one of the most remarkable aspects of being human. No other species can do it quite like we can. But it’s both a blessing and a curse. The upside is our ability to plan and do things three moves ahead of our opponents. The downside is wasting mental energy, such as “I just know I am going to play poorly tomorrow”.

Sport Psychology In 2050?

During several interviews between UK sport psychologist Dan Abrahams and his guests on the highly recommended The Sport Psych Show, he asked them to imagine using a time machine to go back in time. I thought it might be fun and thought-provoking to use it to go into the future instead!

In this article, I will predict what the sport psychology landscape will look like 25 years from now. Like Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (creators of the Back To The Future Trilogy), I will make some educated guesses. Feel free to save a copy and then get in touch in 2050. This might be hard as I plan to be fully retired by then.

Let me know how accurate or inaccurate they turn out to be. I will not, in this article, focus on the problematic aspects of future-based thinking. But I will say this. We now know that one of the key aspects of sporting mental toughness is being able to focus at will on the present moment. In other words, there are many occasions in a competitive sporting situation in which we literally want to ‘turn off’ our ability to think about the future. More on this will be discussed in another article (which, when written, I will link here).

3 Majors Changes To Sport Psychology Are Coming

I hypothesise three major changes in the coming decades to dramatically change what sport psychology looks like. My predication is that the following will occur or have happened by the middle of this century.

The phasing out of generic (non-sport specific) sport psychology.
The phasing in of much greater checks about qualifications (or lack thereof).
A spike in sporting coaches working 1-on-1 with sport psychologists/performance psychologists. And the first few head coaches are, in fact, sports psychologists themselves.

I will now go into more detail about each of the above.

Phasing Out of Generic Sport Psychology

By the end of this decade, it will be universally accepted that the ‘interventions’ used to help someone with clinical depression are different from ‘the mental tools’ used to motivate a mentally well athlete whose training enthusiasm has dropped. For those who are reading this who think this has already happened, trust me, it hasn’t. But we are getting there.

This move towards more specificity will continue past 2030. More and more people will accept that snooker and boxing are too different to be aided by the same psychological tools. There are so many sports now, and we can’t pretend they all have the same mental requirements and solutions.

Let’s Consider A Couple Of Key Questions

How much do the general strategies used by most (non-sport) psychologists apply to athletes and coaches who are trying to improve the mental aspects of their performance or coaching abilities?
How ‘transferable’ are various mental skills from one performance area to another? Or even from one specific sport to a different sport?

When trying to answer the first question, we must be careful not to imply that all psychologists use the same models. However, some well-established frameworks are likely to be more prevalent than others. That is for sure. So, how easily do these methods apply to sport and performance? The simple answer, in my opinion, is ‘about one-third’.

For example, if the athlete is functionally well (without a recognised mental illness) then at Condor Performance we would not focus significant attention on a long and detailed history of the client’s mental health and wellbeing. We would most likely measure it via the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale every couple of months to keep an eye on it. However, most sports psychology sessions would be related to the mental aspects of the client’s sport.

This is not to say that some mental methods we often use from the get-go don’t have clinical origins. But the final versions presented to our clients would be largely unrecognisable to our non-performance colleagues.

Examples

A great example of this would be our approach to goal setting. When we help our clients set goals, we often introduce a level of accountability to these targets that some mental health practitioners might find objectionable.

But from our standpoint, this level of accountability is a key ingredient in helping them get to the next level. It can be confronting for the client (‘You committed to 5 hours of practice a week, this didn’t occur, what happened?’), and we will use that to further the discussion by asking lots of ‘why’ questions.

A practitioner with more of a mental health angle might default to just making the client feel better about this type of non-compliance. (‘You committed to 5 hours of practice a week; this didn’t occur, totally understandable given the current challenges’).

Another example might be mindfulness. Mindfulness looks rather different when doing something at home with few outside distractions than the version you might use in the arena. And the version you might use on the golf course is hopefully only partially the same as what a competitive tennis player might adopt.

How Transferable

So, how ‘transferable’ are mental skills from one performance area to another? Or even from one specific sport to another? In answering this question, I often use the rule of thirds. About one-third of the mental ideas are due to generic sport psychology principles. Another third wants to acknowledge that although Olympic Bob-sleighing and Clay Target Shooting are both sports, they are vastly different pursuits. And the final third is further adapting the mental training program to that individual. To that person’s personality and learning styles. Two clay target shooters should never be treated the same.

In other words, the sports psychology services we’d deliver to a competitive pro golfer with a drinking problem and a rugby league coach looking to improve their coaching abilities might only have a 15 to 20% crossover. One of the commonalities between these very different hypothetical clients might be the use of some key aspects of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

For example, educational processes around “we are not our thoughts” might be useful for both. I have found a Behaviour-first approach universally beneficial in my sports psychology work regardless of who I am sitting in front of.

Some Sports Are Mentally Very Similar

Although I predict a phasing out of generic sport psychology, we need to remember that some sports are psychologically very similar. When you put the technical and tactical aspects to one side, the same mental tools should work for certain sports. The best example that comes to mind is the work we do around Short Performance Routines to aid concentration and execution under pressure. In helping a golfer create or improve his or her Pre Shot Routine(s) the principles will be almost identical in working a snooker player on their PSR.

Greater Checks about Qualifications

This is how I think it will work in 2050. If you want to charge a fee for advice on X then you need some approved qualification in X. No exceptions. So, if you want to be a personal trainer who goes to people’s houses and gives fitness advice in exchange for a fee, you’ll need to be genuinely qualified. I gather the whole physical conditioning industry is trying to make this happen.

Psychology for elite sports is years behind our S&C friends, but we will catch up. Over the next 30 years, there will be a gradual phasing out of entities charging a fee for psychological advice (even if they call it something else) who don’t have some kind of approved training in psychology.

This is a very difficult area, and I suspect that more than a few tears will be shed along the way. The hardest part will be to get everyone to agree on what ‘approved training in psychology’ means. And then afterwards, educating the public in such a way as to reduce assumptions that Mindset Coach and a Sport Psychologist are one and the same.

More Coaches Working 1-on-1 With Sport Psychologists

This has already started to happen. In 2005, I worked with no sporting coaches. In 202,4 roughly a third of all my monthly clients are coaches. The premise is very simple. Coaching education programs worldwide lack highly effective mental toughness training elements. We could try and improve all of these coach ed programs or even ask the coaches to do ‘approved training in psychology’, but there is an easier and better way. All sporting coaches, especially at the elite level, will be working behind the scenes with a genuine expert in sporting mental toughness.

This coach-sport psychologist collaboration will eventually result in sport psychologists taking up positions as assistant coaches. Then eventually getting the ‘top job’ themselves. When this happens, and these professionals are successful, and stick with the title of sport psychologist over Head Coach or Manager whilst in the top job, we can then say we’ve made it.

If you are a sporting coach and want to get ahead of the curve, then start by completing this questionnaire. This questionnaire will assess, amongst other factors, your current mental coaching abilities. One of our team will then contact you within a day or two with details about how to work alongside of of our team of sport/performance psychologists.