James Beale's Blog | iStadia.com

A positive experience of mobile phones????????????? Surely Not!!

James Beale — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:59:57 GMT

Hi All, Thought I'd write very quickly to let you all know a positive experience that I had that you may well be able to benefit from as well. My mobile phone contract came to an end and I came across STR8 talk communications. http://www.str8talk.info/mobiles.htm They beat my providers deal and got me a new phone thrown in. They also did all the leg work for me. I imagin that others could benefit from this too. My contact there is Dave Milton who is contactable on 07772008444 or davemilton@str8talk.info. He was very helpful and looked at what was best for me and my uses rather than just trying to sign me up. He is crazy about sport and maybe that was why I got such a good deal as he was eager to speak when he found out what my company Total Performance Consulting do. I am sure that we can all chat about sport!! Great to see that good service does still exists!! James Beale

Total Performance Consulting BASES Supervised Experience Group: Vacancy for 2 New Members

James Beale — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:42:17 GMT

In my capacity as applied sport psychologist and director of Total Performance Consulting I lead a training group that takes potential sport psychologists through the BASES supervised experience process (the process that leads onto BASES accreditation as a sport and exercise psychologist). The group is normally formed of 8 people and there are currently 2 places available for this September. The course is based in London with the group meeting 8 - 9 times per year between September and June with the occasional social outing to facilitate team cohesion. The course has been very successful with group members developing portfolios working with premier league football teams, national governing bodies as well as a range of other professional and amateur sports clubs. The group meetings are in place to facilitate progress through the BASES supervised experience process and to ensure that you are able to be effective in supporting athletes and teams with their psychological approach to sport while working as a probationary sport psychologist. The group meetings take place in a challenging supportive environment to enable members to develop their skills as a consultant. I am looking for 2 more members to join the group and go through the process of growth with the current members. You should normally have a post graduate degree in an area related to sport psychology (those starting a post graduate course this year would be considered). You must be passionate about sport be willing to work away from the seminar days to build a portfolio of clients that will enable you to go on and become a BASES accredited practitioner. Should you be interested in discussing the possibility of joining the group please call me on 07985414942. James Beale C.Psychol

Social Networking At Its Best!

James Beale — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:29:29 GMT

Social Networking Success!

Before joining this site I was a little cynical that I would actually get any real benefit from it. However I am pleased to report that this has not been the case and am writing to let everyone know how being a member of this site has directly enhanced my applied practice.

2 weeks ago I was asked to see an athlete who reported the yips. In my 7 years experience of being involved with sport psychology this was something that I had never been faced with. I bought some time for myself by telling the player that this was something that was rare but can be overcome. I told him that I due to the fact that it is so rare I wanted time to consider how I could best assist him to overcome this issue. One of the first things I did was place a note up on the Istadia sport psychology interest group club forum. This lead me to the mobile telephone number of someone with a vast amount of experience of working with people with the yips.

I was slightly apprehensive calling a complete stranger. However when I did the psychologist was very willing to speak to me. He summarised the literature quickly and asked specific questions which quickly confirmed my thoughts that it was the yips and offered a way of dealing with the situation which was slightly different to what my initial thoughts were.

I would wholeheartedly encourage others to utilise Istadia in this way. I would never have got the psychologist in question mobile phone number had I not used this system and it clearly demonstrates that through knowing someone who knows someone I was able to assist my client in a much more effective way.

Thanks to the site and everyone that commented on the club forum!

European Federation Of Sport Psychology Conference 2007: View of a Delegate

James Beale — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:19:59 GMT

European Federation Of Sport Psychology Conference 2007 Review Last week I attended the aforementioned conference and thought that it may be of interest to Istadia members and guests to hear a review of the conference. All to often I am sent conference invitations that incur a significant cost. I almost always decline as I am not sure of the benefits of attendance. As an applied sport psychologist I must confess that I was slightly worried that I would have to sit through large number of presentations that were packed with statistics that, a) I wouldn't understand (the stats not the overall messages) and, b) Did not really add anything to the applied field. I did sit though a few of these presentations and on a few occasions asked the inevitable question 'what are the implications of your research to the applied field?' to which one presenter responded 'I am not really sure'. I chose not to push this point further. The benefits to me as an applied practitioner were that these times were very limited and there was very often things happening that were directly relevant to me and made me think about dealing with clients and developing as a sport psychologist in ways that I had not thought of before. I also met and hope to stay in touch with a number of European Sport Psychologists that have a slightly different take on sport psychology which I consider could be very useful to me personally in developing in my chosen career. With so many topics on offer it was almost inevitable that sport psychologists regardless of their theoretical persuasion or whether they consider themselves applied or research sport psychologists would find something that was of interest to them and would benefit from a conference like this. I have every intention of attending the next conference in 2011. At the request of one of the founders of Istadia I add to the end of this post the abstract to a presentation that I gave at the conference. At the end of the presentation I said that my personal learning from the intervention was that perhaps we as sport psychologists should focus applied research on ways and means of developing relationships before beginning with athletes so that any intervention is well received rather than focussing on techniques that will enhance performance whilst in. My rationale for this was that all to often sport psychologists find themselves in situations where athletes refuse to take interventions seriously and my suggestion would be that it is difficult to be effective when this is the case. I would genuinely welcome any feedback! James Beale Paper 3. Evaluation of an inter-disciplinary sports science intervention (SSI) to the Great Britain under 16 korfball team preparing for the Youth World Cup (YWC) Beale, J.T.*, Johnstone, J., & Williamson, A *University of East London Korfball is a mixed gender invasion game with the objective to score points through shooting a ball into afree standing basket. This paper aims to gain a qualitative appreciation of the recipients' perspective of aninter-disciplinary SSI. The evaluation is a qualitative assessment after a proposition by Biddle et al (2001)that more diverse methods such as qualitative research is required within the sports science domain. The 3month SSI provided evidence based support to enhance performance through utilising the areas of psychology,nutrition and physiology. The SSI, adapting methods from Halliwell et al, (2003) worked with the squad 8 timesover the time period to achieve the objective in the lead up to and during the YWC. Post YWC InterpretivePhenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Smith, 1997) was conducted on a representative sample (n = 4) of the squad.Interviews were transcribed and analysed independently by 2 of the authors before coming to agreement onthe themes, clusters and master themes. IPA analysis identified 2 master themes, empowerment and improvedperformance. Master themes were identified through 9 clusters. Empowerment master themes were derivedfrom, education, learning, knowledge and engagement clusters. Improved performance were derived from,coach reinforcement, outcomes, coach endorsement, general effectiveness and effectiveness. Results from theIPA suggest that the intervention had a direct positive impact on performance over the intervention period,thus suggesting this form of analysis can be applied to assess an inter-disciplinary SSI. Further qualitativeresearch on the recipients of such interventions is necessary to gain a wider appreciation of athletes andcoaches perceptions of SSIs.