♪ Music ♪
In this lecture, we’re
going to take a look
at what actually is a
sport’s psychologist.
Now that’s a good question:
what is a sport psychologist?
It’s straightforward.
Unfortunately, the answer is
not quite so straightforward.
It is not easy to define,
believe it or not,
exactly what a sport’s
psychologist is.
Consider a few examples:
how about something like Jess.
Maybe they're a consultant with
the Oklahoma City Thunder
and Energy FC; they work with
several PGA tour pros and helps
them enhance their performance
by teaching mental skills.
Jess is a sport psychologist.
Or Amy, who’s a councilor at
university counseling center,
but has 50 percent of her
time devoted to working
in the athletic department
with student athletes.
She may be a sport psychologist.
Or Shania, who’s a professor at
a university and does research
on the psychological aspects
of development in new sports.
She’s a sport psychologist.
What about Tim who’s a
professional psychologist
who specializes in eating
disorders and works
almost exclusively
with elite athletes.
Sport psychologist.
Maybe Alan, a professor at a
liberal arts school who teaches
courses in sport psychology,
but also writes a blog about
exceptional sport performance.
Alan’s a sport psychologist.
Or maybe Sofia, who is a
consultant working with
a national sport organization
training future coaches
to develop elite
athletes in their sport.
She’s a sport psychologist.
You get the point: there’s a
lot of different kinds of folks
working in a lot of different
kinds of settings who think of
themselves, and appropriately
so, as sport psychologists.
So let’s dig a little
bit further into
what this might be about.
There’s a number of challenges
to a narrow or easy definition
of sport psychology.
First of all, as you recall
from a previous lecture,
sport psychology is
interdisciplinary by nature,
therefore there’s no
single training path.
Sport psychology combines
kinestheology and exercise
science with psychology, and
so there’s not a single place
or way to do training.
Sport psychologists can do a lot
of different things in a lot of
different places, so there’s no
single set of competencies,
and no single job description
for what a sport psychologist
needs to know how to
do or will do at their job
on a daily basis.
it’s also important to know that
the word psychologist itself
is a legally protected term,
reserved by law in every state
to be used only by a
couple of groups of folks.
One are licensed professional
psychologists, people who are
counseling, clinical, or school
psychologists, and a few exempt
professionals like for example
people who work at universities
in an area of psychology
can refer to themselves
as psychologists without being
licensed professional providers.
That makes it confusing, because
what you'll often see is people
who think of themselves
kind of in short-hand
as sport psychologist often
can't call themselves that in
the official capacity in the
real world, so they can't
put that on a business card or a
website or introduce themselves
that way at talks.
So you’ll see lots of other
kind of creative titles in sport
psychology; things like
I'm a performance coach
or a mental skills trainer,
or simply just a consultant.
One of the reasons why people
use these terms instead of just
saying I'm a sport psychologist
is because of that
legal protection of the
term psychologist.
Now there are people who call
themselves sport psychologists,
and those who do are either
licensed psychologists
or protected by exemptions
within state laws because
perhaps they we in universities.
Now there’s a bunch of different
professional activities that
anybody who considers themself
a sport psychologist may engage
in, and most everybody you
encounter in the world
who considers themself a
sport psychologist are doing
one or more in some
combination of these
four general activities.
First, a sport psychologist
my be involved in research
where they are doing scientific
studies and publishing
the results of those studies
for the scientific community.
They may be involved in teaching
in either the undergraduate
or graduate level teaching
about sport psychology
and related topics.
They may be involved in
consulting or in kind of
educational activity with
athletes directly to improve
their own performance.
That’s an activity
that we call consulting.
Or they may be involved in some
kind of counseling that involves
more about life issues, perhaps
mental health, those sorts of
issues; the kinds of things a
counselor psychologist might do,
but a sport psychologist may
do primarily or exclusively
with athletes.
Anybody you find doing sport
psychology is going to combine
these in some different way.
For example, a faculty member in
sport psychology will certainly
be doing research and teaching.
They may also do
some consulting.
A applied sport psychologist
spends all of their time working
directly with athletes, may do
consulting, and depending on
their training and background,
may also do some counseling
from time to time, and
may sometimes do some
teaching as well, although
that may not be the primary
part of their job; they may
teach a course here or two
for a university or the public.
So you can see, there’s lots of
different ways to combine these,
and really the key to
figuring out what kind of sport
psychologist does any individual
want to be is thinking about
in what ways do I want to
combine these activities,
and then finding the right kind
of training that prepares me
for the setting, the context,
the jobs that will allow me
to do those different things.
In general, this is really
rough, we can think of two broad
paths to take in sport
psychology: an academic path
and a professional path.
These are really broad, again
there’s probably some overlap
between these two paths,
and even within these paths,
individuals aren’t all doing the
very same thing, or go there
the very same way.
The academic path is perhaps the
most clear: this is for folks
who want to be
faculty at universities.
Their primary employment will be
as a faculty member
at a college or university.
Their primary work duties are
going to involve research
and teaching, not consulting
or counseling necessarily,
although it could possibly
include that, but they're going
to mostly spend their days
doing research and teaching,
and this path generally requires
a PhD degree either in
kinestheology or in psychology,
thought it’s important to note
that most of these jobs are in
departments of kinestheology
or exercise science, and so that
degree probably opens up
a few more possibilities than
a degree in psychology.
Then there’s the professional
path, or those people we might
think of as applied sport
psychologists; those people
who want to spend most if not
all of their time working
directly with coaches
or athletes.
This path has a much more varied
employment context all the way
from self-employed entrepreneurs
to being full-time employed
with a single entity like a
professional sports team
or an organization.
These people might find
themselves working in university
counseling centers or
athletic departments,
so they're working primarily
with student athletes.
They may work for sport
organizations or training
academies that are training
elite level athletes,
perhaps the next Olympians
or next national champions,
or there may be
professional sports teams
that hire these folks.
From what I've seen,
professional sports teams
often don't hire a full-time
person, and the people
who I know who do this kind of
work typically are combining;
they work for a number of
different teams, each of them
kind of a part-time position
because of the seasonal aspects
of the sport in particular, so
you may see people combining,
working for say, the New York
Nix and the New York Mets
as a sport psychologist.
The primary duties of folks in
the professional path again
are some combination of
consulting or counseling;
they're working directly
with coaches and athletes,
and this path also has
more variety to the paths
that are appropriate
for training.
A PhD is not necessarily
required; many people work
in this path with a
master’s degree.
Some graduate training will be
necessary no matter what path
you chose, but not necessarily
a PhD on the professional path.
So one of the things I would
emphasize is that no matter
what kind of, what I might call
flavor of sport psychologists
one wants to become,
interdisciplinary training
is really important to be a
competent and effective
sport psychologist.
Individuals working in sport
psychology should have education
in several broad areas,
including of course sport
psychology, including individual
psychology, group psychology,
developmental aspects of
sport, general psychology,
understand something
about people, personality,
abnormal psychology,
social and developmental
would be very useful courses.
It’s useful to know something
about consoling theories,
skills, and ethics, about
working one-on-one with people
and how to do that most
effectively and ethically.
It’s important to know something
about measurement and research,
even though you're not going
to be a researcher ideally
as a sport psychologist, you
will be informed by research
so it could be important to
have some of that as well.
And lastly, it may be useful to
know something about exercise
and health psychology:
understanding something about
addictions, about eating
disorders or disordered eating,
understanding about other
sorts of mental health issues
among athletic populations
would be very helpful
and appropriate as well.
Now the relative balance of
where you focus your time
and graduate training on these
various areas probably depends
more on your primary
degree and career path.
If you're in a clinical
psychology PhD program,
you're going to spend a lot of
time on psychology, and you may
have to work to find the sport
aspects to add to your training.
Likewise, if you're in
kinestheology program, you may
have to really work to seek
out those counseling experiences
that may not be necessarily a
default part of your training.
Now those wanting to have
practice in what you might call
applied sport psychology,
working directly with coaches
and athletes should definitely
also have some supervised
or mentored experience; you
shouldn’t just start doing this
on your own, you should have
some experience being supervised
by people who know a
bit about how to do this,
or ideally your credentialed
folks themselves.
So there are some credentialing
options or certifications
out there for sport psychology.
If we look at the side of
applied sport psychology,
there are some
certifications available.
Now certifications are important
because they help protect both
the public and the profession by
setting the standard by which,
how people should be trained
and what competencies they have.
They protect the public by
making sure the public can
identify appropriately trained
and qualified folks, and they
protect the profession by making
sure people aren’t out there
claiming to be professionals who
really don't have the correct
background, and perhaps
performing inappropriately
in those, underneath
the guise of that title.
So Aspen Organization,
you’ve heard it before,
did develop a certification
process way back in 1992,
it continues to day, it
has evolved over time.
What they certify is what
they call a certified
mental performance consultant.
I think that’s a pretty
carefully selected name.
Remember the problems I
mentioned earlier with the term
psychologist, so the term
they’ve landed on is certified
mental performance consultant.
It requires a minimum
of a master’s degree,
but people with PhDs
can apply as well.
Applicants have to have a broad
interdisciplinary course work
background similar to what I
described a few slides ago,
and they have to pass a
field proficiency test or exam
on the various topics that are
relevant to sport psychology.
So it’s a rigorous
certification process.
Canada and other countries
like England have similar
certification processes and
titles; some of them predate
even what’s been done
in the United States.
Now if you were want to add
to you work doing some sort of
counseling or therapy or other
kinds of mental health focused
things, you probably need
some professional practice
in psychology or
counseling certifications.
These can include things like
being a licensed psychologist,
or what’s called
health service provider.
This certification is actually
codified in state laws
in every state, every stat
has a slightly different law,
and they're administered
by state boards;
they're typically appointed
by the state.
It requires a PhD in
professional psychology,
either clinical counseling or
school psychology, it requires
lots of rigorous course work,
passing a number of exams,
having sufficient post-doctoral
experiences after the degree,
and then even having an
interview with licensing board
in most states to
become licensed.
There’s another option for folks
with a master’s degree,
and that is licensed
professional counselor,
and this is a similar
certification process as for
licensed psychologists, one
challenge to the LCP
certification is you're not able
to practice independently
in every state; some states
require individuals to work
under the supervision
of a psychologist
or other kind of
licensed provider.
So in conclusion, the questions,
straightforward questions
like what is a sport
psychologist and how do I become
one don't have
straightforward answers.
The best training path for you,
if you're interested in this
field, probably depends on your
goals for your work setting
and the competencies that are
desired; what do you want to be
able to do and be qualified
to do for the kind of settings
that you want to work in.
And one last thing I will add
is for those folks who want
full time careers in applied
sport psychology,
working with coaches and
athletes: I think it requires
some degree of entrepreneurship,
you have to have a little bit of
a personality that’s willing
to take risks, to gamble on
yourself, to maybe not always
have a steady paycheck,
but to have some inconsistency
in your income, and you have to
be ready to pay your dues,
because a lot of the folks
that have been successful in
this have, they're successful
today because they built
relationships over time;
they did a lot of work for free,
they did a lot of just building
relationships, paying their dues
in the sport world until they
built a reputation, they knew
enough people that they could be
successful at it professionally.
One of the things I tell
students who always ask me about
who do you become a sport
psychologist, I tell them
it’s not like becoming
a physical therapist,
as an example.
To become a physical therapist,
most everybody knows
what a physical therapist is,
what they do, the kind of
settings in which they work, and
you can find training programs
in physical therapy that will
prepare you for the right
credential in every
state in the country.
It’s not that case
with sport psychology.
You kind of have to
identify your own path,
prepare yourself for that
path, and then work on
your own to make
that path successful.
