Sport Psychology with Stephen

I am a sports science graduate passionate about helping sportsmen and sportswomen improve their performance by enabling them to gain an understanding of their minds and thought processes by teaching them key mental skills.

Background
I have been studying psychology for over 30 years and have a degree and master’s degree in psychology as well as a degree in sports science. I have also published research on behaviour change in psychology and I am motivated in helping people grow and learn new skills which can make a difference to them.
As well as coaching cricket and football I have worked as a personal trainer and over recent years I have also worked as a teacher, psychological therapist and specific learning difficulties (e.g dyslexia) tutor so I have a wealth of experience in helping people adjust their thought processes to help them achieve their personal goals.

Ethos
I bring knowledge and skills from the areas of education, mental health counselling, sports science and group/team psychology to this role to help clients mentally prepare for sports performance.
The area of sports psychology has taken many models and theories from mainstream psychology and the area of therapy and counselling such as mindfulness, acceptance and commitment therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy, and I frequently refer to these models in the course of my work.
I pride myself on my ability to work with my clients to help them find solutions to their challenges and to educate them on the workings of their minds and how to use strategies based on established research to improve their mental skills.

Aims
I have several assessment tools designed to help me build a psychological profile of all my clients, this however is an ongoing process, it is not uncommon for the initial problem brought by the client to be secondary to another issue they are unaware of.
Initially, it is important to get an idea of the nature and content of each client’s, thoughts and emotional state, so thoughts and moods diaries/logs will help myself and the client identify habitual patterns that need attending to.

Methods / approach
Establishing a strong alliance in the one-to-one relationship between a sports psychologist and his/her clients is at the heart of my work, I work with my clients, and they retain the ability to control the direction of each session.
All sessions are client-led, I have developed my own programme but every client is different, each with their own needs and requirements so my sessions are tailored to the needs of each client.
I never force interventions on any client even though I may strongly recommend a strategy, the client ultimately has the final say.
I use a problem-solving approach based on the cognitive behavioural model, and use various common problem-solving approaches in my work such as root cause analysis which is commonly used in organisations such as the NHS.
A large part of my work involves educating people to become their own psychologists through the processes of reflection and meta-cognition.

Reviewing progress
Feedback can be obtained in many different ways, progress is assessed every session and there are reviews at various stages to ensure we are working in the right direction.
Feedback can be received in several ways, including personal reflection of subjective experience, performance analysis and observation of internal states.

Case study
I help my clients find new insights which can help them reformulate their whole approach and take control of their schedule and their life. Very often it involves clients coming to simple but powerful realisations that can make a profound difference.
Many of my clients have taken great strides when they begin to understand the nature and content of their thoughts (a process known as metacognition) and how these thoughts affect their emotional state, behaviour and performance.
For example, I once worked with a client (golfer) who always had a negative mindset and reported frequently having negative, intrusive thoughts (such as “I know it’s going to be one of those days” and “I am always rubbish when I play in the morning”) just before taking a shot.
He thought this was quite normal as he had always had these thoughts but after a couple of sessions, he admitted this is a terrible mindset to have just before taking a shot and acknowledged this needed to change after realising how toxic this was for him.
We worked on mindfulness strategies and implemented different mental techniques to use so he was in a calm, concentrated and focused state before he took each shot which made a difference to his anxiety levels and eventually his overall score.

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