Resources for new sport psychologists

When I started out in sport psychology a long time ago, the best advice I had given to me was to create materials that could be easily adapted to give to a team (or group of students) in a 30-60 minute presentation. Have diagrams available in an electronic form that you could print up at a moment's notice, and stick them on your usb and keep it with you at all times. Make sure you include relevant examples, and using props if possible, makes the talks memorable.

The types of talks I've got up my sleeve include presentations on Leadership; Anger Management; Decision-Making; Team Building; Fear of Failure; Career Planning; Goal Setting; Mental Toughness; Success in Sport; and, Emotional Control. Here are ways I use my two most popular presentations (which probably account for 80-90% of the presentations I do).

For the goal setting talk, I run through the Lifetime goal setting plan (ie split up into sections to demonstrate long and short term planning over 5+ years, 2-3 years, next 6 months), the Spider-web profile (to show how important it is to choose goals with a defined purpose), and then the Achievement Management Plan (to demonstrate micro-management).

With the Spider web profile, I have the team nominate the qualities they judge to be important for the team (or in AFL football, we would do that in groups where the forwards, midfield and backs might have their own key performance indicators) and then they nominate where they are at on the 'spokes' ranked 1-10 (10 being the best). Once they've written down how they think they perform on the KPIs, the group then get to dissect each player's contributions - some frank discussions have often resulted there, but the feedback I've received is that players prefer to earn the respect of their team mates than anyone else, and now know exactly what they've got to do to impress them!

Probably my most requested talk is on looking at strategies a person can use to get themselves in the right mental state to perform to their best. In this talk, I touch on the Inverted U (to show how basic it is, but it's the one everyone knows), and spend a little time on Catastrophe theory, before moving on to describe Telic and Paratelic states (Reversal theory). They love this part because they can see exactly how to make adjustments themselves (ie altering heart rate via music or exercise or visualisation, or cognitively restructuring to re-interpret the situation to make it appear more - or less - stressful).

I always make sure people walk away with a diagram or a summary of key points on paper I've provided, so they can listen to me speaking rather than working with their heads down taking notes.

When you start seeing clients, I've found it really helpful to have a tool on hand to help reveal the client's mental strengths and weaknesses. I've always liked Jim Loehr's Psychological Performance Inventory, because the client gets to draw up their own profile and have input into why they might've answered in a particular way (and you get to see whether they believe the profile is the way they see it too). This 'self reveal' aspect is important - it's not just something we've plugged into a computer and generated seemingly at random. Because of the 'face validity', it leads to some interesting discussions about 'why', 'when' and 'how' the areas identified as 'weaker' on the profile came about, and it gives some pointers as to the priority of working on different aspects of behaviour. Together, you can negotiate which areas you want to work on first (because there's usually more than one).

Last year, I ran a conference in Melbourne where, at the end, we discussed types of resources that were easy to get one's hands on and I said I'd put the suggestions up on the website. I'm running another conference from 21-23rd January 2009 if anyone's planning on being in Melbourne around that time for the Australian Open (Tennis), or come down from Sydney if you've been following the Test cricket. It's the Australia Day long weekend (24th -26th Jaunuary) the founding of our country as an English colony, so there'll be celebrations going on all over the city.

For a long while, I've been investigating how sport psychs provide services to clients when and where they need it. The internet has been a great resource for players away from support they might receive at home, but it was listening to free Podcasts that really got me thinking. As sport psychs, we talk all the time about visualisation and using key words and images, and I had the idea of combining these into short 'movies' (words, not pictures, set to music that are less than 2 minutes each) that go onto iPods or other hand held devices (eg mobile phones, PSPs etc).

I've seen players get beaten before they even step onto the track because their head isn't in the right frame of mind. I figure that if we can give them 'the right voice to listen to', that will help them. So very recently, I've developed Pocket Sport Psychology  - take a look at the 'confidence' demo on the website to see what I've done, and I also developed general psychology and health psychology tracks (because our clients, being human beings, often have more than one issue).

My background was in track and field athletics, but when I started developing my skills as a practitioner, I chose to be involved in a different sport - 'a prophet is never accepted in their home town'. I worked for free with a team for two years, honing my skills working with actual people. They were thrilled to get someone with skill, and I was thankful I didn't scar too many for life! No seriously, it was a terrific grounding that gave me confidence to become more pro-active in my practice later. Don't expect to work for fee (especially in the early days).

I'd also recommend aligning yourself with someone a different range of experiences than yourself. It doesn't have to be a formal mentorship arrangement, but I know I can count on a number of people to give me great feedback on my ideas. I have been lucky enough to have terrific friendships with my mentors, and I consider it to be a two way relationship.

Lastly, 'put in' to your profession. We're still pretty new, and we can't afford to disparage one another. Each of us has strengths and weaknesses, and we need to find ways to work together. Be on committees. The networking is invaluable, but listening, contributing to, and acting upon good ideas moves us forward. If the workload is left to one or two people, they get burned out pretty quickly. If we all 'do our bit' the job isn't onerous. The idea is to leave the profession in a better state than when you started. We're in a 'helping profession' - let's not neglect our colleagues.

Michelle Pain (Melbourne, Australia)
http://web.mac.com/michellepain/

Put a sport psychologist in your pocket
http://www.pocketsportpsychology.com