I provide counseling for athletes of all ages and levels. The following are two examples of the types of athlete therapy I provide, using the psychology of sports performance as a base to improve things both on and off the field of play. If you’d like information or to discuss how these methods may benefit you or a loved one, please schedule a consultation or contact me anytime.
Psychology of Sports Performance
Performance in sports is influenced not just by physical ability but also by mental factors such as confidence, focus, motivation, and resilience. Athletes who train their minds and bodies often gain a competitive edge.
Key Factors in the Psychology of Sports Performance
- Psychology of Sports and Confidence
- Athletes with high confidence perform better under pressure.
- Self-doubt can lead to hesitation and mistakes.
- Confidence can be built through preparation, positive self-talk, and past successes.
- Psychology of Sports and Focus
- The ability to stay present and block out distractions is critical.
- Athletes use techniques like mindfulness and visualization to improve focus.
- Losing focus can lead to errors and missed opportunities.
- Psychology of Sports and Motivation
- Two types of motivation:
- Intrinsic Motivation: Driven by love for the sport, personal growth, and enjoyment.
- Extrinsic Motivation: Driven by rewards, recognition, or external pressures.
- Highly motivated athletes are more likely to push through challenges.
- Two types of motivation:
- Psychology of Sports and Anxiety
- A moderate level of stress can enhance performance (known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law).
- Too much anxiety can lead to muscle tension, poor decision-making, and reduced performance.
- Strategies like breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, and reframing negative thoughts help manage anxiety.
- Psychology of Sports and Resilience
- The ability to bounce back from failure, setbacks, or injury.
- Mentally tough athletes stay focused and perform under pressure.
- Techniques like goal setting, mindfulness, and cognitive restructuring help build resilience.
- Psychology of Sports and Visualization
- Athletes mentally rehearse successful performances before competing.
- Helps with muscle memory, confidence, and stress reduction.
- Used by elite athletes in all sports to prepare for high-pressure situations.
- Psychology of Sports and Mindfulness
- Athletic Flow State: A mental state where athletes feel fully immersed in their performance, leading to peak performance.
- Achieved by balancing challenge and skill level, eliminating distractions, and staying in the moment.
Strategies in Counseling for Athletes
- Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Helps athletes reframe negative thoughts and develop confidence.
- Goal Setting: Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals improves motivation and focus.
- Routine Development: Pre-game routines help athletes get into the right mindset before competition.
- Breathing & Relaxation Techniques: Helps manage anxiety and keep the body relaxed under pressure.
- Positive Self-Talk: Replacing negative thoughts (“I’m going to fail”) with constructive ones (“I’ve trained for this, I am ready”).
The mental side of sports is just as important as the physical. Athletes who develop strong psychological skills tend to perform better, recover faster from setbacks, and enjoy their sport more. By training the mind and body, athletes can reach their full potential.
Counseling for Athletes Example: D1 College Student-Athlete
Taylor is a Division I college athlete at a high-level school looking for sports psychotherapy before her second year. She plays varsity softball and is getting excellent grades. As a sophomore, she hopes to improve her performance even further and increase the joy she feels in her sports.
Taylor is doing well on the diamond but is finding that two challenges have arisen: First, she is not experiencing the same periods of being “in the zone” at the plate that she once had, leading to a lower batting average than she is used to; and second, she is not enjoying the sport as much as she once did. In both cases, she found that the problems started shortly into her first year, but she is unsure why. She has chosen my sports psychology intensive therapy.
The following outlines the path we might take, the expected outcomes, and then a description of how my services can help you.
Counseling for Athletes First Step: Collect a History
Counseling for athletes has a specific therapeutic process. We start with a detailed athletic history from the beginning of her competitive softball career. We talk about the times when she experienced “feelings of flow,” times when she struggled, and everything in between. With this information, we work to paint a picture of when she garnered the most enjoyment from her sport and what factors contributed. Taylor talked to her parents and her former coaches in this exploration, seeing what input they had from their years of knowing her as an athlete.
Barriers and Challenges
We were able to generate a detailed history that included many factors that may have affected her along the way – everything from how challenging other aspects of her life were at those times, what role she had on each team, the type of seasons her teams were having and her overall schedule. Taylor began to realize that she did better historically when her role on a team was clear, she had time to work on her craft, and her teammates were supportive but not critical. She didn’t mind tough coaching but did better when she developed a relationship with the coach that allowed her to read her moods and not take feedback too personally.
Opportunities with Counseling for Athletes
Our first goal is to help Taylor improve her mindset and find additional success on the playing field. We also want to increase her confidence, stress management, and coping strategies. The hope is that these improvements from counseling for athletes carry over into other aspects of her life, including school performance, her achievements at her upcoming internship, and her social life. Sports psychology is rarely done in a vacuum, so we want to work together to help her improve her outlook and performance in a wide number of areas.
Counseling for Athletes: Next Steps
We temporarily leave history behind to explore what is going on now. Taylor watches video sessions that she edited involving some recent at-bats. We watched the video and reviewed her thoughts and feelings at each point. We look for patterns and other clues to what might get in the way of “flow.” We also discuss her general anxieties and the automatic, often exaggerated, and even irrational thoughts that bring her down. Finally, we discuss the imagery her mind is conjuring that is negative and unhelpful and work to replace it with positive images.
Now, we compare this with her history to see what was different during periods of flow and being in the zone. We are not just looking for the automatic thoughts but also for the ways they differ from her more positive thought patterns.
Counseling for Athletes Toolkit
Throughout our work together, Taylor builds a toolkit of strategies to reduce irrational and exaggerated thoughts and build confidence. These powerful and proven cognitive-behavioral techniques can be paired with quick relaxation and stress management techniques. We also work on visualization methods, choosing among many options to see which techniques work best for her. Finally, we work on self-talk and how she can mirror the positive feedback she continually receives from coaches and her teammates, as well as her growing confidence, to develop positive trains of self-talk.
Homework Assignments
Homework assignments often include incorporating something we discussed in session, such as a phrase she will use, an image she will bring to mind, or a specific technique she will incorporate into practices or games. During treatment, we also discuss what she loves about her sport and what sometimes gets her down. We also talk about many other aspects of her life and how they all fit together for her as a college student-athlete. Part of the homework is to track all aspects of her life, how much joy she derives, and how sports fit in.
Day of game homework
We also discussed things that Taylor could do on the day of her games as part of her counseling for athletes’ homework. Much of this involves remembering to use the techniques she learned in sessions- the toolbox. She’s also instructed to remember certain things, like how she felt at each at-bat or when she fielded a ball. She might also think about the feedback she received directly or perceived from her teammates and coaches. Finally, she might be asked to write in a journal-style fashion what she ate before the game, how she slept, and generally what her stress level was.
Counseling for Athletes Outcomes
Through counseling for athletes, Taylor has learned much about herself and her game. She makes the following changes in her routine:
- Talking more with her college coach and assistant coaches to better understand their styles and how they like giving feedback.
- She changed her college routine overall so she has some time to work independently on her sport without giving up too much of the overall college experience.
- She developed closer relationships with her Captains, asking them for feedback and advice.
- These insights led to learning exactly what type and timing of visualization works best for her and improved and refined her self-talk.
- She used effective relaxation and mindfulness techniques that helped her focus.
- She was also to recognize even fleeting irrational and exaggerated negative thoughts and shut them down.
Taylor found that she could change her mental approach and see the keys to getting in a groove more often. She also finds ways to magnify what she loves about her sport while finding the balance she seeks. She felt renewed motivation and drive, looking forward to using these new sports psychology techniques.
High School Athlete Therapy Example
Jake is a 17-year-old pitcher with performance anxiety and fear of failure after a recent slump. He enters athlete therapy to regain confidence and improve mental resilience on the mound.
Jake has been a starting pitcher for his high school baseball team for the past two years. Recently, he has struggled with performance anxiety after giving up several runs in a key game. Since then, he has felt increasingly nervous before games, overthinks his pitches, and has trouble sleeping the night before a start. His coach and parents have noticed a drop in his confidence, and Jake reports that he feels like he’s “letting the team down.”
Phase 1: Counseling for Athletes Assessment & Goal Setting
- Athlete Therapy Sessions: Initial intake and psychological assessment
- Findings:
- High levels of pre-game anxiety (reported 8/10 anxiety on game days)
- Negative self-talk (“I’m going to mess up again”)
- Difficulty focusing under pressure
- Avoidance behaviors (hesitating to throw inside fastballs, relying on off-speed pitches too much)
- Athlete Therapy Goals Set:
- Reduce pre-game anxiety to a manageable level (4/10 or lower)
- Improve focus and confidence in high-pressure situations
- Develop a mental routine to handle setbacks
Phase 2: Athlete Therapy Mental Skills Training
- Cognitive Restructuring:
- Identified and replaced negative self-talk (“I can’t do this”) with affirmations (“I have prepared for this moment”)
- Practiced thought-stopping techniques when overthinking during games
- Breathing & Relaxation Techniques:
- 4-7-8 breathing exercises before games
- Progressive muscle relaxation on the night before a start to improve sleep
- Athlete Therapy Visualization Training:
- Spend 10 minutes before each practice visualizing himself executing perfect pitches under pressure
- Watch past highlights of his best performances to reinforce confidence
Phase 3: Resilience & Emotional Regulation
- Pre-Game Routine Development:
- Created a step-by-step mental warm-up (breathing exercises, listening to music, reviewing a confidence-boosting statement)
- Practiced focusing on one pitch at a time instead of worrying about the whole game
- Managing Setbacks:
- Reframed mistakes as learning opportunities rather than failures
- Used a quick reset routine (deep breath + positive self-talk) after a bad pitch
- Team & Coach Communication:
- Discuss concerns with his coach, who provided reassurance and encouragement
- Practice asking teammates for support rather than isolating himself after a rough game
Phase 4: Performance Optimization & Long-Term Strategies
- Athlete Therapy Outcome:
- Jake reports feeling much calmer before games (anxiety reduced to 3-4/10)
- Performance improved as he regained confidence in his pitching
- Continues using visualization and breathing techniques to stay focused
- No longer avoids aggressive pitching strategies due to fear of failure
- Athlete Therapy Ongoing Plan:
- Periodic mental health check-ins
- Maintain a strong pre-game routine to reinforce confidence
- Continue using mindfulness techniques to manage stress
Athlete Therapy Conclusions
Jake successfully overcame his performance anxiety by developing mental resilience, improving his self-talk, and using relaxation techniques. He can sustain these mental skills throughout his baseball career with continued practice.
Summary and My Work
These treatment examples are not based on a specific person but is a braiding of many courses of treatment based on the psychology of sports performance. They are examples of what sports therapy entails and its process. Every client I see for sports psychotherapy charts their unique path, determined by their background, experiences, goals, and the specific sport they play. We also ensure we set goals to carry over into other aspects of the athlete’s life. The goals of athlete therapy are clear from the start and as measurable as possible, and we continually follow up to ensure we’re progressing.
Please contact me to review your situation and discuss the sports psychology therapy techniques and approaches that may work for you. You can also check out our sports psychology self-help and sports performance innovations pages as well.