Pure Sport

Sport Psychology in Action

John Kremer, Aidan Moran, Ciaran J. Kearney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351053167
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Pure Sport is a practical guide that provides insights on asserting positive mindsets, realising potential, remaining resilient against setbacks and using these experiences to move on to greater success. The book follows the journey of the athlete through six clear steps, creating a logical framework for applied sport psychology or a path you can follow in your own practice.

The third edition is fully updated and now more accessible than ever, including new advice on maintaining a resilient attitude and taking care of athletes' mental well-being. Drawing on decades of both practical and theoretical knowledge, the authors deliver practical advice with a thorough grounding in sport psychology, supplemented by case studies, reflection questions, common problems and effective solutions, and useful summaries of key points.

Pure Sport is essential reading for all those actively involved and interested in sport, from sports psychologists and academics, to athletes and coaches.

Step 1
Planning ahead

Welcome to this, your unique journey through the amazing world of sport. Make no mistake, this is likely to be a trip with many twists, turns and unexpected surprises along the way but which at heart has a very simple goal – to help you to fully explore your sporting potential.

As you start to plan this exciting journey please be aware that you will be moving through a world that is a million miles removed from that familiar to past generations. It is one where science and technology now allow sportspeople to take their bodies to the physical limits and beyond. Nowhere was this more apparent than in preparation for the 2018 FIFA World Cup where, as one example, huge efforts were spent analysing data and profiling so as to reduce the element of chance in the once dreaded penalty shootout.¹ Clearly, penalty taking is not a lottery but is actually a test of nerve, skill and preparation – and is one classic occasion where the mental side of sport occupies central-stage.

As athletes and coaches increasingly turn to science to find the winning edge, where does this leave sport psychology? In reality its importance has grown as the difference between winning and losing can no longer be found in a novel physical or tactical advantage. Instead, the edge can often boil down to no more than who has the mental capacity to cross the line first.

Although science has increased the predictability of sport, betting in sport has never been more popular. This is for many reasons, not least because upsets still often happen despite what the form book may say, and this is where psychology is critical. On one day you can be unbeatable, the next day your form deserts you. Your body hasn’t changed dramatically in 24 hours, your fitness hasn’t deserted you overnight, and all those skills that you spent hours practising haven’t been for nothing – so what has changed? The answer has to be . . . your head.

Take one classic example, home advantage.² This is the idea that there is a performance merit attaching to playing at home. Despite the fortunes spent on preparation for professional sports, home advantage is still simply taken as a given but if you think about it for a moment, any venue effect is no more than a psychological phenomenon based on how you react to performing the same skills according to the same rules – but in different places. In other words, pure psychology at work.

Pure Sport is about going back to basics, identifying how to use psychology to your best advantage and then allowing your head to give your body the opportunity to realise its true potential. In the process we are keen to eliminate psychobabble and remove some of the mystery around the topic, thereby making sport psychology more understandable and accessible to those who really matter – people who are directly involved in sport.

By its nature sport can be fickle but there is no need to make it even more so. For example, are you only as good as your last game? Emphatically the answer is no. Simple common sense should tell you that you are actually as good as your best game because that was the occasion when you caught a glimpse of what you may have the potential to achieve, when the pieces of the jigsaw all came together and your true potential really shone through.

Sadly, through a conspiracy of nature and biology, the head doesn’t always work to our advantage in competitive situations. In fact in some respects our heads are hard-wired to conspire against us, as we will explain later in the book (see Step two ).

As one example, our natural tendency can be to label those special occasions when it did all click into place as a one-off or golden time that comes along once in a lifetime but which can’t be predicted, controlled or repeated. Nothing could be further from the truth, as again we will come on to later. Indeed, unless handled with care those extraordinary occasions can sometimes become a burden we carry with us rather than a source of inspiration showing just how good we can be when, in the words of the comedian Eric Morecombe, we not only played the right notes but played them in the right order!

Using sport psychology well

On your journey, sport psychology should not be treated as a supplement but as central to your endeavour, underpinning a philosophy based on total preparation where absolutely nothing is left to chance or fate. Sadly in the past many people’s experience of sport psychology may have been less than positive.

Once upon a time the tennis player Andy Murray was more than sceptical about the power of the mind. According to his 2006 Wimbledon blog:

A sports psychologist handed me a book he had written. Some people think I am a bit nuts but I don’t think I’m ready for a shrink just yet! I had the last laugh – I chucked the book in the bin!!³

Many years later a significant upturn in his fortunes was accompanied by teaming up with Ivan Lendl, a coach who had come to appreciate the value of sport psychology and especially in nurturing a sense of enjoyment. So Ivan quietly set about changing Andy’s mental approach, an approach that had previously emphasised sacrifice, hard work and endeavour – but sometimes at the expense of enjoyment. ‘It is fun,’ Lendl insisted, ‘a lot of fun . . . You feel nervous, obviously. If you didn’t feel nervous you’d think there was something wrong. But you have to enjoy being nervous because it’s a privilege.’⁴

As another example, the five-time world champion snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan once commented, ‘I tried a sport psychologist once and I never really got anything out of it . . . if you’re on, you’re on; if you’re off, you’re off, and there’s not a lot you can do about it.’⁵ Sometimes referred to as The Two Ronnies because of his inconsistent performance profile, probably the most successful period of his career was linked to his involvement with the sport psychiatrist Professor Steve Peters, culminating in two world championship titles in 2012 and 2013.

More recently, England’s success in reaching the semi-finals of the 2018 FIFA World Cup has been credited to many factors, not least the change in culture within the squad associated with the engagement of applied sport psychologist Dr Pippa Grange.

While there are numerous examples where sport psychology has been of positive value, it can also stand accused of sometimes doing more harm than good. During the 1958 football world cup finals in Sweden, the Brazilian team used the services of a sport psychologist and hypnotherapist who set about analysing pictures sketched by squad members. According to Dr Carvalhaes, one young player’s efforts revealed him to be someone who was immature, lacking in fighting spirit and therefore unworthy of a starting place on the team. Fortunately Brazil’s manager, Vicente Feola, chose to ignore this advice and selected the 17-year-old Pelé. The rest is history.

By this stage in our careers as sport psychologists we have been fortunate enough to work with a great many athletes across a rich variety of team and individual sports, and at every level, from grassroots to élite. Each intervention, large and small, has been invaluable in helping us to learn and accumulate a stock of knowledge that we hope can be applied across all sports and abilities.

One important lesson we have learned along the way is that there is no point in blinding people with science. Our academic credentials may be there, but they don’t have to be out on public display. Instead our goal is to distil the theory of sport psychology and then transform it into manageable chunks of practical and accessible knowledge for those who are most interested in simple questions such as what to do and how to do it well.

Why Pure Sport?

More of the ‘what and the how’ later but to begin, why did we choose the title Pure Sport? Quite simply because that is all the book is about, purely about sport and your performance uncluttered by so much of the paraphernalia and egotistical ‘stuff’ (e.g. image, branding) that now surrounds sport.

Sporting times have certainly changed since the first edition of the book appeared a decade ago. In recent years we have witnessed some of the worst excesses in sport, along with casualties of an at all costs approach that has blighted so many sporting endeavours, and lives. Almost daily, high profile sporting celebrities reveal the less savoury side of sport, including cheating, mental illness, depression, addiction and burnout. As the casualty list grows ever longer so perhaps there is a dawning realisation that what can become lost in the modern business of sport is the love of the game, or what we mean by ‘pure sport’. With this in mind we are confident that the title is as relevant today as it ever was, if not more so.

Starting your journey

In Pure Sport, we argue that the most productive way for you to think about your involvement with sport is as a journey – but a journey without end, and that is why the book has been structured in the way that it has. It is noticeable how frequently the journey analogy is now used in sport. Not long after winning the BMW PGA Championship and before his remarkable victory in the 2018 Open Championship at Carnoustie in Scotland, Francesco Molinari, alongside his performance manager Dr Dave Alred, was interviewed about his approach to golf. In his own words, ‘It’s about always working and always improving, it’s never ending. It’s not just one day we’ll finish because we’ve done it. It’s never going to be done, there’s always a way to get it sharper and to improve.’⁶

Before setting out on your own travels it is important to take stock, to see just where you are, what you are carrying and who you want to travel with you. As later chapters will demonstrate, travelling light is often the key to success, and so it’s crucial to learn how and when to leave behind excess baggage that may slow you down.

At all times it is important to remember that the person who is central is the player or athlete on the journey and not those who hitch a ride or are there to offer support along the way. For example, the sport psychologist should never be more than one element of a support team that provides you with advice – but on the understanding that, over time, the role should diminish rather than grow as you gain in experience and self-reliance.

Perhaps too often in the past sport psychologists have relished the spotlight or have cast themselves as guru or ‘doctor’. Such approaches are problematic, primarily because the sport psychologist works best in the background, and also because most sportspeople are not psychologically sick but are just trying to become even better at what they already do quite well. The medical model doesn’t work and sets entirely the wrong tone. We feel that a more appropriate approach casts the sport psychologist as a sport consultant or performance manager, offering informed advice and support to his or her client to help realise a sporting potential.

Of course there may be occasions when problems arise that are deep-seated. At this stage it may be time to break your journey, take stock, and bring in those who are professionally competent to deal with whatever is bothering you. By way of example, excessive exercise, even addiction, can suggest a range of psychological problems linked to low self-esteem and body dissatisfaction.⁷ Those psychologists with a clinical training are well qualified to identify and treat such issues, particularly when they extend to obsessive-compulsive disorders. Equally, when sport or exercise is being used inappropriately, for example to control weight or body shape, clinical psychological consequences may not be too far away.

Across the globe, it is unlikely that the demand for sport psychology has ever been higher. However, these powerful market forces can be dangerous and especially when quality control fails. In these circumstances caution must be exercised, with appropriate professional regulation required of those describing themselves as sport psychologists.

These cautions aside, without doubt sport psychology can play a part in helping you realise your physical potential – but it can never make you something that you are not. The limiting factor will always be your own physical and technical potential but fortunately the number of sportspeople who can say that they have truly explored their absolute limits remains small. As a consequence the future for sport psychology is assured. When used as part of a long-term development programme, sport psychology can help you to achieve consistent and repeatable good performances, not as a quick fix when the wheels are loose or have come off but as a measured approach to systematic performance enhancement across a sporting career or journey.

Who can benefit?

One common misconception is that sport psychology is only for the élite. Nothing could be further from the truth. Making sure that the mental and the physical work together in harmony is important ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Step 1 Planning ahead
• Step 2 Your mental kitbag
• Step 3 Travelling light
• Step 4 Looking back
• Step 5 Your teams
• Step 6 Your guides
• Index