Practical Sport Psychology

Course details

This course is comprised of several sections: the first section has two colleagues who work with athletes and coaches discuss their respective approaches teaching clients sport psychology skills, including Motivation, Arousal Control, and Mental Imagery. Sections 2-4 have a series of interviews with three athletes/coaches about how they use these approaches in real life, and Section 5 has a presentation Michelle gave on 'psyching up and psyching down' to Amersham-Wycombe College students in Dec 2015. Section 6 discusses how one might put together a Psychological Skills Training program based on the requirements of the sport and the needs of the participants, and Section 7 discusses a hierarchy of PST skills, and the concept of evaluation of PST training. Section 8 is comprised of two questions designed for you to give feedback to the authors, based on your perceptions of the effectiveness and usefulness of the content, examples and resources. There is no right or wrong answer - we value your feedback.

The course is designed to be a resource for teachers and students completing BTEC National's Unit 20 (Applied Sport Psychology), but would support many vocational and higher education sport psychology or sports coaching requirements.

If a student wanted just to know about the skills alone, completing this course would take about 2 hours, but video interviews with coaches and athletes are also included to aid the students' understanding of how to apply these skills in real life, so the total content for this course is about 6-7 hours worth of listening. These interviews would be useful for students thinking of creating their own 6 week psychological skills program. There is no formal assessment for this course.

By the end of this course, students will be able to create and evaluate a 6 week Psychological Skills Training session for an athlete, team or coach, using the skills described herein, based on knowledge of a sport's requirements, and taking into account the needs of their (hypothetical) client.

Who is this course for?
* Athletes and Coaches
* Judges, Officials and Referees
* Parents of athletes
* Students of sport psychology courses at universities and colleges around the world, and
* Corporate / Management personnel wanting to adapt sport psychology concepts to the performance of staff in business settings

Although this course is designed to be used in a sports setting, however it could equally be applied to the corporate world where top performing businesses use exactly the same skills (such as having a vision of success, controlling nerves during presentations, building team cohesion, using effective communication styles, setting goals etc).