What is Sport Psychology and What Does a Sport Psychologist Do?

According to Division 47 (Exercise and Sport Psychology) of the American Psychological Association, sports psychology encompasses a range of topics including "motivation to persist and achieve, psychological considerations in sport injury and rehabilitation, counseling techniques with athletes, assessing talent, exercise adherence and well-being, self-perceptions related to achieving, expertise in sport, youth sport and performance enhancement and self-regulation techniques."

The article,What is Sport Psychology? by Kendra Cherry, points out that  lot of people assume that sport psychology only has to do with professional athletes, but what they are ignoring are the scientific, clinical, and applied topics dealing with sports and exercise.  The two main parts of sport psychology are using psychology to increase motivation and improve performance, and figuring out how sports and exercise can help one's mental health and well-being.  

A sport psychologist requires at least a masters or a doctorate degree in clinical, counseling, or sport psychology to practice.  They also need training and experience for them to be able to use psychology in terms of sports and exercise.  Once they have this education, a sport psychologist can perform various tasks.  They can work with athletes to improve their performance and motivation regarding their sport as well as becoming a professor in the field.  A sport psychologist can also offer client counseling, athletic counseling, and do scientific research.  

There are some positive and negatives to choosing sport psychology as a profession.  Sport psychologists usually work as a team, so it may not be the best path for a very individual minded person.  It is a good profession since one can take so many paths, but again this can only be done once one has all the training and credentials necessary to practice. 

Exercise and Sport Psychology Books

There are a plethora of options if you're looking for Exercise and Sport Psychology books. Some of the best-sellers include:

• Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology w/ Web Study Guide- 5th Edition by Robert Weinberg and Daniel Gould.

This book contains seven parts:
Part 1 is an introduction to the field, detailing its history, current status, and the various roles of sport and exercise psychologists.
Part 2 focuses on personal factors that affect performance and psychological development in sport, physical education, and exercise settings.
Part 3 concentrates on two major classes of situational factors that influence behavior: competition and cooperation, and feedback and reinforcement.
Part 4 focuses on group interaction and processes.
Part 5 pinpoints how psychological techniques may be used to help people perform more effectively.
Part 6 addresses the various roles psychological factors play in health and exercise.
Part 7 deals with topics of psychological development and well-being that are important to both society and sport and exercise psychology, including children's psychological development through sport participation, aggression in sport, and moral development and good sporting behavior in sport and physical activity contexts.

• Group Dynamics in Exercise and Sport Psychology: Contemporary Themes by Mark R. Beauchamp and Mark A. Eys.

Can a better understanding of group dynamics raise individual and team athletic performance or improve the outcomes of exercise interventions? Much human behavior in sport and exercise and exercise setting is embedded within groups where individuals' cognitions, emotions, and behaviors influence and are influenced by other group members.

• Single-Case Research Methods in Sport and Exercise Psychology by Jamie Barker, Paul McCarthy, Marc Jones, and Aidan Moran.

This is the first book to fully explain single-case research in the context of sport and exercise.
Single-case research is a powerful method for examining change in outcome variables such as behavior, performance and psychological constructs, and for assessing the efficacy of interventions.
Including case studies and examples from across sport and exercise psychology, the book demonstrates the advantages and common pitfalls of single-case research for anybody working in applied or behavioral science in a sport or exercise setting.

• Judgment, Decision-making, and Success in Sport (W-B Series in Sport and Exercise Psychology) by Prof. Dr. Michael Bar-Eli, Prof. Dr. Henning Plessner, and Prof. Dr. Markus Raab.

This is an introduction to the fundamental approaches of Judgment and Decision-Making (JDM) research in psychology and application directly to a variety of JDM problems in sports.
Specific judgment and decision-making problems encountered by athletes, coaches, managers, and referees are considered, and recommendations are made for their effective resolution.
Among the many topics addresses are:

1. the evaluation of athletic performance
2. motivational and emotional judgments
   
3. optimizing judgment processes
4. the decisions of coaches, managers, and referees
5. the prediction of sports results
   

• Sport and Exercise Psychology (Active Learning in Sport) by Joanne Thatcher, Melissa Day, and Rachel Rahman.

This is a comprehensive and accessible text on Exercise and Sport Psychology for students on sport science/ sport and exercise science degrees.

All of these books can be found at Amazon.com

Preparation to become an Athlete

Yeung Shing Cheng

If you are serious in becoming an athlete I highly suggested that you continue reading. Besides simply playing a sport, athletes also have to worry about many other things. You will be surprised at how psychology is involved when it comes to being an athlete (depending on the sport you play). Athletes are people too! They deal emotional problem like other people, but such problems will revolve around their sport or activity.

Put yourself in the shoes of professional Rugby player. You are the scrum half, a very important position and you break your ankle. You understand that you are going to feel bad about being unable to play the game. You are going to miss time to practice, missing the chance to work at becoming a better scrub half. Such thoughts are common in the average athlete. The largest problem an athlete would face is replacement. If you were to be replaced because of an injury, you would probably feel depressed because all that hard work from the past season would be for nothing. That’s when the psychology comes in and keeps you from feeling down.

There are many other types of temporary problems that athletes deal with, such as insomnia, emotional outburst, withdrawal and anxiety. The list does go on but the point is that if you are going to become a serious athlete it is suggested that you should have your own Sports Psychologist. It doesn’t mean that you are going crazy; it just means that a psychologist will try to give you a better solution to dealing with your problems.

http://www.iaaf.org/mm/Document/imported/42036.pdf

Music? Sports? What?!

Yeung Shing Cheng

http://www.thesportjournal.org/article/music-sport-and-exercise-update-research-and-application

Working out and running are ways to lose weight and boost self confidence, but during the course of working out, one experiences fatigue and negative feelings. For example, when one is running, one can run out of breath, feel pain in their legs and dryness in the mouth. Along with all that, there will be negative feelings to go along with fatigue. Well what if I say that there is a way to lessen the physical and emotional struggles of working out without the use of a pill?

Music relieves the pain from your everyday workout routines. Studies show that while listening to music you can focus more on what’s playing through your headphones can distract you from fatigue. This does not work with all kinds of music though. If you were to listen to slow songs (Less than or at 50 beats per minute) you’d lose your will to continue working out. Listening to music that brightens your mood (with a faster tempo) your performance will be much higher. Why not try it out next time? I assure you that you will have a better workout session with music than without it.

Motivation & Exercise and Sport Psychology
Motivation plays an integral role in the study of Exercise and Sport Psychology.
Motivation is defined by both the direction and the intensity of the effort applied by the athlete to the sport or exercise.

Exercise and Sport Psychology Twilight Zone

in the (above) video for example:
Timmy-> is very internally motivated.
- takes his goals very seriously
- plays for his own reasons
- participates because his personality enjoys it
Johnny-> is very externally motivated.
- listens to his coaches, parents & peers and takes their advice to heart.
- the statistics and records push him to excel.