The Sport Psych Show

I am delighted to be joined by Danielle Cormier and Dr Kent Kowalski in this week’s episode. We speak about self-compassion in sport. Danielle is a Doctoral Candidate at University of Saskatchewan, specialising in Sport Psychology. Danielle is passionate about encouraging athletes to build on their character strengths rather than focusing on their weaknesses. She is particularly interested in the application of positive psychology in sport, and the construct of grit and self-compassion in athletes competing at both elite and developmental levels. Kent is a Professor in the College of Kinesiology at the University of Saskatchewan. Kent’s research, teaching, and applied work is primarily in the area of sport, exercise, and health psychology. His main research focus currently is on exploring the role of self-compassion in the lives of athletes.  Kent is also an Assistant Coach with the University of Saskatchewan Men’s Soccer Team and a mental training consultant with the Saskatchewan Sports Science and Medicine Council. Danielle and Kent have co-authored a paper, along with colleagues, entitled ‘Self-compassion in sport: a scoping review’. The paper reviews the self-compassion in sport literature and provides further evidence of the potential benefits of self-compassion to sport participants.

In this episode I’m joined by Performance Coach, Aaron Walsh. Aaron’s primary focus areas are mental performance, leadership development and culture reviews. He is the current mental skills coach with Chiefs Rugby Club and Scotland Rugby, as well as helping develop mental performance programs for Harlequins and Texas Rangers. Before this, Aaron worked in MLB, NRL and with various national teams. He is also currently coaching multiple corporate leadership teams in creating and maintaining high-performance working environments. He is also a sought-after and highly regarded presenter. Aaron and I speak about mental skills and discuss his approach to incorporating mental skills into high performance environments.

In this episode, I’m joined by Barnaby Sargent Megicks. Barney is a PhD Student in Sport Coaching at Leeds Beckett University with ICOACHKIDS. His research focuses on talent and holistic development. Barney is a Loughborough University and University of Birmingham Graduate and a qualified PE teacher. He is also a hockey coach at Leeds Hockey Club and West Yorkshire. Barney and I discuss talent development environments (TDEs) and particularly focus on a paper that Barney led entitled ”Examining European Talent Development Environments: Athlete, Parent and Coach Perceptions”. We discuss the findings of the paper and elaborate on what coaches and leaders can take from the research. You can find the paper here:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02640414.2023.2172800 

In this episode, I’m joined by Henrik Herrebroden. Henrik is a sport psychologist and PhD fellow at the University of Oslo. His area of interest is in mental effort and elite performance. We talk about a fascinating paper in which Henrik discusses the benefits of both external and internal focus of attention in motor learning and performance. In the paper Henrik analyses the idea that an external focus is superior to an internal focus, and argues that motor performers will benefit from instructional cues that guide attention toward task-relevant information, regardless of whether the cues are internal or external.  The paper is entitled “Motor Performers Need Task-relevant Information: Proposing an Alternative Mechanism for the Attentional Focus Effect” And you can find it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00222895.2022.2122920

In this episode I welcome back Prof Chris Cushion, Prof Stephen Harvey and Dr Ed Cope to the show. Chris, Stephen and Ed bring their considerable coaching and academic knowledge to this episode to discuss different approaches to coaching. We do a deep dive on instructional approaches, discuss the confusion around instructional coaching and offer clarification to listeners. Chris is Professor of Coaching and Pedagogy and the Director of Sport Integration at Loughborough University and the Head of Coaching at England Netball. Chris has a range of research and teaching interests around the coaching process including coach education, coach behaviour and learning environments.  Stephen is Professor in Sport Pedagogy at Ohio University. His research is focused on teacher/coach pedagogy and practice and its influence on student/player learning. Stephen is the Coach Educator Developer at US Soccer Federation and the Head Coach at Ohio Soccer Club. Ed has been a lecturer in Sport Coaching for over a decade and is currently based at the prestigious Loughborough University. Ed has also worked in football, holding the role of Learning Design and Development Manager at the English Football Association where he was responsible for the design and development of their education courses.

Dr. Martin Turner, a psychology expert, discusses Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) in sports, emphasizing the importance of rational thinking, managing negative emotions for growth, and utilizing cognitive restructuring for high-performance mindset. The podcast explores the significance of rational and irrational beliefs, multiple identities beyond performance, and practical tools for athletes and coaches to enhance performance.

In this episode I speak with Bernadette Kellermann. Bernadette is a Performance Psychology PhD student at the University of Edinburgh researching the Multi-Action Plan (MAP) Model and transitions between mental states in performance. We discuss a paper Bernadette has written along with Dr Alan MacPherson, Prof Dave Collins and Dr Maurizio Bertollo about this subject. The MAP Model is an action-focused, sport-specific intervention model that can be utilised to investigate and improve human performance. The Multi-Action Plan presents as an action-focused, sport-specific, mixed methods intervention model. In addition to her performance psychology studies, Bernadette is a violinist, composer and tutor having graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

I speak with Dr Dale Whelehan in this episode. Dale is a Behaviour Scientist and Chartered Physiotherapist graduate from Trinity College, Dublin. His research focuses on the relationship between sleep and performance. He has interests in performance science, sleep science, positive psychology, behaviour change, medical education, higher education, and public health. His research is in the area of Surgical Performance in Trinity College Dublin with particular focus on the interplay between sleep, performance and clinical decision making in surgeons. Dale completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Behaviour Sciences with particular focus on objectivity of performance, the influence of sleep deprivation and the opportunity for positive psychological approaches to optimise accessing states of thriving. Dale and I review his research into fatigue and explore the impact it can have on the performance of coaches and competitors alike. We also discuss how to create balance to minimise the detrimental influences of fatigue.

In this episode I speak with Dr Kieran File. Kieran is Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics at University of Warwick. Kieran’s main interest is in language use in high performance sporting contexts. Kieran is also director of Reactive Sports Media which offers research informed media training and advice for professional sports players, sporting body executives and broadcast interviewers about how they can use language to achieve a variety of goals when speaking in the media. Kieran has written a fascinating book entitled “How Language Shapes Relationships in Professional Sports Teams” which examines the role that coach and athlete language plays in shaping relationships. The book looks at how every day, authentic language patterns used by coaches, captains and players influence these relationships and how they can mediate factors such as power and threat and teamwork.

This week I’m delighted to speak to Lindsey Hamilton. Lindsey is Head of Mental Conditioning at IMG Academy where she leads, develops, and facilitates a team of 12 mental conditioning coaches that oversees the mental skills development of over 1,100 student-athletes across eight sports. She also leads the IMG Institute through developing and delivering high performance mindset training to executive level business professionals and corporate teams interested in optimising leadership and enhancing organisational excellence. Along with a number of other authors, Lindsey presented a panel at the Association for Applied Psychology (AASP) annual conference in October 2022 discussing “The Failures That Guided Us: Sharing Vulnerabilities in Ascending to the Elite Level”. The panellists demonstrated vulnerability by sharing some of the failures they experienced as they worked their way to and within the elite level. Lindsey and I discuss how athletes and coaches can navigate and accept failure as a part of the sporting experience.