Sport Psychology as an Applied Sport Science: A Practical Demonstration

by Joseph Tedesco, PCC

I teach psychology at a large private university in the mid-west.  The students and faculty have heard that I am in training to become a sport psychologist.  Hardly a day goes by without students and faculty alike asking me, “What does a sport psychologist do?”  Often I answer with a line found on my business card for the Dayton Institute of Sport Psychology, it reads, “Helping Athletes, Coaches, Teams and Their Families”. Of course, the next question is always, “ HELPING? HOW?”  I wrote this article as an attempt to answer these questions. It will show the what, the how, some of the sport psychology principles and applied research, and of course creativity, that goes into helping an athlete.  Sport psychologists are both artists and scientists. They are students of sport and athletes as well of human nature and human performance, particularly human performance under pressure.

What and How Do Sport Psychologist Help?

I will answer this question by discussing a case history of an athlete who sought help through sport psychology.  John is a nationally ranked racket sport competitor who needed the diagnosis and corrective help of a sport counselor. He hoped to correct a problem hoping to boost him past his annual third ranking  in his sport.  John is what is called in sport psychology an “elite athlete”, and what separates this player from his opponents is a very minuscule set of differences—on any given day, his opponent is his equal.  John’s performance records showed that during some competitions he suddenly had a slight let down, made a mistake, or watched the opponent make an exceptional shot or recovery play, and from that incident on the momentum of the match shifted.  This trouble often occurred while he was winning, apparently in good rhythm, and seemingly in control of the match’s momentum.  Nevertheless, it happened, he lost his focus and sometimes even lost the match. 

In summary, John wants help getting the edge, and keeping the edge, helping him win and reach his ranking goal.

The athlete who repeatedly struggles to be his/her best yet seems to have difficulty during the competition might be becoming negatively emotionally aroused, somehow losing concentration, or shifting concentration.

The psychologist might first assess John by asking a series of questions designed to consider the primary principles of athletic performance.

• Does your making a mistake get in the way of winning?
• Does the opponents, sudden success get in the way of your momentum and cause a turn around in fortune?
• Do your mistakes undermine your confidence? 
• Does the opponent’s success cause you to doubt your play and make you make shifts in thought and play?
• Do your mistakes make you to turn your focus on yourself and start talking to your self? 
• Does the opponent’s success make you angry?
• Do you talk to yourself about how your mistake is your fault? 
• Do you think that the opponent is lucky, and suddenly luckier than you are?

After John has had time to hear his own answers to these questions, often a certain “aha” or enlightening experience occurs.  The athlete understands what is happening, and what in fact he is doing that causes his trouble. Like all psychological interventions, the awareness on the part of the client goes along way in offering corrective strategies.

It is here that the sport psychologist applies all he/she has learned from sport research and application to help this athlete understand himself better formulating a plan and strategies aimed at reaching his desired performance objective.

Sport Psychology Applied Research

In a book by Sue Halden-Brown’s (2004), Mistakes Worth Making, she says that an athlete can learn how to turn mistakes from obstacles into catalysts for better performance. Halden-Brown suggests that one can constructively analysis sport mistakes so the athlete can increase his/her mental toughness and improve his/her concentration. Vitally important to rethinking mistakes is keeping your emotions in check and your focus on the game.

When an athlete makes what they perceive as a blunder, missed opportunity, a dumb mistake, or whatever name he/she has for less than perfect performance, staying focused on the moment of competition is crucial.  The athlete’s training, past experiences, and confidence all effect how he/she talks to his/her self after he/she has committed a performance error.  

Sport counselors and psychologists have devised methods to help the athlete return to focus after an error is committed.  The primary strategy is to avoid the negative self-talk that might occur. This self-talk represents a shift in focus from the external attention on the ball, the opponent, the developing play, and the like, to the internal focus where self talk takes place.  Self-talk is often a negative criticism about why, how, and the shoulds and coulds of missing the opportunity, the ball, or the move that caused the mistake. 

Sport research has shown that avoiding both negative self-talk (“I made a stupid mistake”) and switching to internal loci of thought (“I should have. Could have made that shot”) is important (c.f. Conroy, D.E., Metzler, J. N. 2004)

A sport psychologist knows the best thinking and application of sport science to help an athlete. The psychologist has to make an intervention that matches the specific athlete’s problem. Here is where you really get to understand what a sport psychologist does and how he/she does it.  It is a creative combination of carefully listening, working with the athlete’s needs and areas of concern, as well as applying a certain intuitive sense and use of the research and sport knowledge in the actual situation. 

So how do we apply this research to John?

I will give this plan a fancy sport psychology name.  This name helps us acknowledge that sport psychology is about the application of sound scientific principles representing what has been researched and discovered about athletic performance.  The title of our intervention strategy is

“Reframing an Athletic Mistake, Competition Momentum Shift, or an Opponents Success in Terms of ‘Likely Probability’”

John is the type of athlete who makes few mistakes during competition.  Usually both competitors are well matched having the same potential or potency. As the play continues some subtle shift in the advantage and the point scoring occurs.  Once in a while, one of the players will even play beyond their usual level of play, and yes, maybe even get lucky.  The mental and emotional shifts that occur will most likely make the difference between wining and being defeated, or adding to your opponent’s advantages and defeating yourself.

After something happens, such as the opponent hits three aces in a row, the first thing John needs to do is to not lose composure and avoid the emotional response that comes from negative self-talk. Knowledge and respect of the opponent, and knowledge and understanding of “probability”, is the key.

Many sport psychologist talk about what follows a sudden turn of events in competition, where the opponent suddenly does better than we do, or we make a slight error or adjustment that backfires.  The list of things that can happen to us on the inside that effects the outside is long and always potentially disastrous to our next play, serve, volley or action of any kind.  That list of emotional reaction includes self-anger, anger about the opponent’s luck, disappointment with self, embarrassment, worry about sudden shifts in momentum, or anxiety.  The athlete’s coping style and susceptibility to choking becomes very important (c.f. Wang, J, Marchant, & Morris, T. 2004). A way John can cope during competition is to develop the reframing (think differently) strategy of probabilities. This is the ability to calmly, and cognitively put the event or mistake into the proper perspective. Saying to yourself something like:

•  “In all competitions things like this happened.”

•  “In all competitions I will make an error-it is probable”

• “ In all competitions, it is probable the opponent will make an impossible shot or recovery.”

The sport psychologist can teach John about probability—lets call this “normalizing” what could otherwise be thought of as a catastrophe. On this level of play,  John has to become aware of the law of averages or the distribution of possibilities of play over time.  The athlete’s knowledge of this reality should facilitate retaining proper focus, emotional acceptance, and even respect of the opponent that allows for staying focused in the present. This should facilitate quick recovery and control and return John to high performance play.

Research has found that brief cognitive interventions can help athletes cope during and after competition (c.f., Arathoon, S.M., Malouff, J. 2004). The strategies of thought stoppage and thought direction are simple.  As the momentum suddenly shifts, the opponent gets the best of you in a moment or even after you have made a wrong guess or play that even looks like a mistake, the recover comes from correcting the self-talk process and the cognitive aspect of the game.  The proper self-talk is simple

One only has to study the game of baseball to understand the likelihood of something happen or the distribution of probability.  Baseball has a probability that less than 70% of the time the batter succeeds.  In fact, you are an elite athlete in baseball  if you can hit the ball 30% of the time.  In racket sports, for elite players the probability of success is usually very high maybe even 80%, so why do most players focus on the 20% of the negative probabilities that happen to them.  It is not logical as far as mathematics is concerned but is unfortunately part of our human nature and learned experiences about how we are to react.

Switching thoughts process to the “Probable” helps us to accept mistakes, the turn of events or momentum, or even the talent of our opponent.  Switching to the probable also helps the athlete to stay in the moment and to move on while being in his/her best play, that is, the next play.

As I demonstrated, this method is a normalization of the fact of probability introduced into the mathematically reality of play between two athletes of relative strength—It is a solution-focused therapy approach in a sport situation (c.f. Hoigaard R. & Johansen, B.T, 2004).  The reframing of this is to take the action in terms of 3’rs.

• Respect your opponents hitting the probability, he/she is also elite·      

• Respect who you are and how well you have been playing, so stay focused on the play-outside

• Retain right thinking and make your own probability happen

This technique for refocusing offers John a resilient approach to mistake recovery. The most important thing to remember about mistakes is that they are inevitable and thus probable.  An elite athlete must accept that you cannot get through a competition without making what appears to be a mistake.  However, maybe a reframing of what looked like a mistake into a probability will help the athlete to understand better and thus react more calmly, to what has just happened. In this technique, John was invited to form a “cognitive appraisal of challenge” (Skinner, N., Brewer, N. 2004.), turning what could have been negative emotions into a positive result.

John’s reading the situation correctly, rightly understand the arithmetic of probabilities and staying focused on the normal nature of his play is a must.  The ability to choose the appropriate attentional focus, the ability to maintain that focus, control of self-talk, and control of tension levels is essential.

All this needs to happen within 1-2 seconds. Naturally, as John begins this process it will feel unnatural and his mind will want to resort to self-talk and blaming behavior.  He might even resort to a very unhelpful thought and self-talk that goes something like this, “My opponent was just lucky!”  If you start to think about luck than you might start to think that the momentum of the game is shifting because of luck.  There is no luck, just probabilities. Accepting the probability and retaining a focus that allows you to operate controlling your own destiny by working the odds of the probability in your favor is the solution. 

Like any athletic skill, the more John practices this reframing regime in training, the easier it will become to do it within the pressure of the competition. Like any new learning it will not appear reasonable, natural, or part of his understanding of how things operate during competition, or even worse, how they should operate according to his old manner of understanding himself.  With time the reasonableness, and just common sense nature of the opponent’s and your probabilities will help him play in better rhythm, stay focused, spend little to no time in negative self-talk,  play in the grove believing that he is one of the best, and today maybe even the best.

John learns to place in his skill set the ability to look forward without pausing to rethink, catastrophize, look back, chide self about what should or could have been. The wisdom of understanding the probability of the actions helps him not to be stuck in the consequences of the moment but to stay in the present, within the action on the court or field. .

The sport psychologist might help the player in the actual play setting maybe even joining him at his competition.  This really helps the athlete who is working on issues of an emotional nature.  The sport psychologist can point out how to recover from emotional reactions that sometimes overwhelm the logic of redirecting thinking about the probable. The athlete needs to understand that they might need some time to get themselves under control and to practice the cognitive type refocusing and reframing that is necessary to let the ultimate wave of emotion flow over and out of them. The sport psychologist will teach them to take the time they need, of course this does depend on the ownership of the ball and the type of game you playing.

As you have reached the end of this article, I hope you now understand what and how a sport psychologist helps an athlete.  Good luck as you think about or begin this exciting field of study.

References      

Arathoon, S.M., Malouff, J.M. (2004). Journal of Sport Behavior, Vol. 27, No.3, 213-229.

Conroy, D.E., Metzler, J. N. (2004). Patterns of self-talk associated with different forms of competitive anxiety. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology. 26, 69-89.

Halden-Brown, S. (2003). Mistakes worth making. How to turn sports errors into athletic excellence. Champaign, Il.: Human Kinetics.

Hoigaard R. & Johansen, B.T. (2004) The solution-focused approach in sport psychology. The Sport Psychologist. 18, 218-228.

Skinner, N., Brewer, N. (2004). Adaptive approaches to competition: Challenge appraisals and positive emotion. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 26, 283-305.

Wang, J, Marchant, & Morris, T. (2004). Coping style and susceptibility to choking. Journal of Sport Behavior, Vol. 27, No. 1, 75-92.

About the Author

Joseph Tedesco, LPCC is a university professor at the University of Dayton, a sport psychology instructor, coach, and director of the Dayton Institute of Sport Psychology.  He has been a past board member of the National Lacrosse foundation now USA Lacrosse and Ohio’s Boys Lacrosse State Commissioner. He is credited with brining the boy’s game of lacrosse to Southern Ohio. He is doctorial candidate in sport psychology at San Diego University for Integrative Studies.

The technique described was first developed for squash players so they have all kinds of things they can do during a match to reframe the probabilities and the stop thought process about emotional responses. You could bounce that ball, tap your racket, and shift side from side, all the while letting what just happened pass and staying in the present ready for returning to your original excellent performance.

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