Athletes

Who might benefit from talking to you?

I work with elite athletes, amateur athletes who want to get the most out of their sport, and young athletes.

Ideally, sport is a source of health, joy and friendship for athletes. But those positives often come wrapped with negatives as well. These include social anxiety, results pressure and injury.

I worked with a swimming coach many years ago who said she could divide her swimmers into racers and pacers. The racers were the ones who performed well under pressure but struggled to train to the correct intensity. The pacers were the ones who trained well but struggled with the intensity or the pressure of competition.

Both groups would benefit from discovering a better way to manage their particular challenge.

What happens in the first conversation?

The first conversation starts with the question, “What made you decide to come and see me?” It is an open exploration.

What do they do when they’re under pressure? How do they motivate themselves? How do they get on with their teammates? I want to gain that understanding and then ask, “What do you want to improve?”

What would you want an athlete to gain?

The most important thing for me is that the individual athlete feels a stronger foundation of mental health or mental well-being: a sense of validation, of being cared for, of purpose, of meaning, of being loved, and of social and family security.

Then I would want the athlete to feel confident that when they are under pressure, they know what to do and have a method for handling themselves in a pressure situation, or a situation which requires motivation.

One of the athletes I worked with had the phrase, “When we’re under pressure, we know what to do because we did it before and it worked.” That’s something I’d want to equip an athlete with as well.