Is There a Need to Focus on the Athletes?

I’m delighted to speak with Dr David Eccles in this episode. David is Professor of Sport Psychology at Florida State University. His primary area of research interest is skilled and expert human performance and its development, particularly from a cognitive perspective.

David has written a paper along with Emma Leone and Prof Mark Williams entitled Deliberate Practice: What Is It and How Can I Use It? This fascinating paper introduces the reader to 7 principles for applying deliberate practice – established training techniques, existing skills as building blocks, pushing the envelope, enhancing mental representations, responding to feedback, total application of focus, and specific goals. We discuss these principles and then link deliberate practice to a second paper David has written entitled How To Help Athletes Get The Mental Rest Needed To Perform And Stay Healthy.