Sport and Exercise Psychology comprehensive notes

Sport Psychology: An Overview

Introduction to Sport and Exercise Psychology

• Sport and exercise psychology is the scientific study of human behavior in sport and exercise contexts.
• Objectives:
  • Understand the psychological impact on human performance.
  • Understand how sport and exercise participation impacts psychological development and health.
• Careers: Sport psychologist; emerging specialization of clinical sport psychology focuses on mental health and wellbeing of athletes and coaches.
• The field is relatively young, originating in the late nineteenth century with Norman Triplett's research on social facilitation.
• Sport and exercise psychology is the endorsed area of practice term that the Australian Health Practitioner Registration Agency (Ahpra) registers.
• Training requires an evidence-based postgraduate program.
• Multiple national and international societies and organizations support research and practice.
• Increased media attention and recognition of sport psychology as a performance-enhancing tool have led to greater demand for expertise and services.
• Sport psychology is integrated into many Australian sports, with professionals working in various teams, including the Australian Olympic team.
• Professional development opportunities in sport psychology are included in coach and support staff training.
• Sport and exercise psychologists, along with other professionals, serve as part of integrated support teams (ISTs) in the Australian sport system.
• Sport and exercise psychologists have a unique role in enhancing mental wellbeing and assisting in the functioning of the IST itself.
• The Australian training system provides sport and exercise psychologists with a base-level understanding of psychological disorders and interventions, unlike the Canadian and American systems.
• Increased visibility surrounding mental health issues in sport has raised awareness of athlete and coach mental health and wellbeing.
• Research has examined the relationship between sport and exercise participation and mental health, as well as the impact of physical activity on the prevention and treatment of mental health challenges and conditions.
• The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) has recently established a national network to address athlete wellbeing.

Significant Research Findings

• Research and applications have far-reaching impact beyond elite sport performers.
• Early sport specialization in youth may lead to a greater risk of overuse injury and burnout.
• Sport and physical activity participation in adults have positive benefits.
• Sport-related concussions may be associated with increased risk of mood disturbances and depression.
• Physical activity can help prevent and treat some forms of mental health challenges and illnesses.
• Mammen and Faulkner (2013) found an inverse relationship between physical activity and depression in longitudinal studies.
• Camacho et al. (1991) found a relationship between inactivity and the incidence of depression over almost 20 years of research.
• Hu and colleagues (2020) found that exercise significantly reduced depressive symptoms in adults, the elderly, children, and adolescents.
• Rosenbaum et al. (2014) found that physical activity reduced symptoms of depression in people with mental illness, and discovered a reduction of symptoms associated with schizophrenia and improvements in other physical health markers in people diagnosed with schizophrenia.
• White and colleagues (2017) examined the impact of domain-specific physical activity on mental health, finding that leisure-time and transport physical activity had a positive relationship with mental health and an inverse relationship with mental ill-health, while work-related physical activity had a positive relationship with mental ill health.

Common Frameworks for Research in Sport Psychology

• Weinberg and Gould (2019) state that the ultimate goal of psychological skills training is self-regulation.
• Self-regulation: the ability to work toward your goals by monitoring and managing your thoughts, feeling, and behaviours.
• Psychological skills training: the systematic and consistent practice of mental skills for the purpose of enhancing performance, and increasing pleasure and satisfaction in sport participation.

Goal Setting

• Goal setting is commonly used to improve motivation and focus, which thus, performance.
• Defined goals (i.e., outcome, performance, and process goals) for varying contexts (i.e., practice and competition goals) appropriate to the athlete’s performance expectations.
• Effective goal setting involves setting both long-term and short-term goals, and includes goal setting evaluation.
• Overall, goal setting has shown to be an effective technique for increasing the likelihood of achieving one’s goal (Kyllo & Landers, 1995).
• Goals associated with moderate to high levels of difficulty are linked to better performances.
• Goal setting also seems to be most effective on simple tasks rather than those that are very complex (Burton, 1989).

Stress/Arousal Management

• Arousal: the combination of physiological and psychological activation that ranges from deep sleep to intense excitement (Weinberg & Gould, 2019).
• Drive theory (Spence & Spence, 1966): a greater level of arousal leads to a greater level of performance.
• Inverted-U hypothesis: as arousal increases, so too does performance, but once arousal reaches a certain limit, performance is expected to decrease (Landers & Arent, 2010).
• Hanin’s (2007) model of individualised zones of optimal functioning (IZOF): each individual has their own zone of optimal functioning where anxiety levels can vary from one individual to another.
• Physiological techniques for arousal and stress management include breath control, progressive muscle relaxation, and biofeedback.
• Cognitive techniques for arousal and stress management include relaxation response and desensitisation.
• Research conclusively supports that arousal and stress management can result in better performance.
• Rumbold et al. (2012) found that 81% of the studies showed improvement in stress management, and 77% of the studies found improvements in performance.
• Multimodal approaches (using more than just one strategy) were more effective than single modalities.

Imagery

• Imagery is the creation of an image in our minds – either by recalling actual events, or by constructing our own images of events we hope for, or want to avoid, happening.
• Imagery can include vision, auditory sense, sense of smell, sense of touch, kinaesthetic sense, and sense of taste.
• Imagery can be used to rehearse performances mentally or helping to manage emotions in a high-pressure situation.
• Research indicates that the use of imagery enhances performance and other psychological variables such as confidence and the ability to cope with anxiety (Evans et al., 2004; Post et al., 2012).

Confidence

• Research has indicated that confidence is the most consistent factor for differentiating between the most and least successful athletes (Jones & Hardy, 1990).
• Self-confidence: the belief that you can successfully perform a behaviour (Weinberg & Gould, 2019).
• Vealey and Chase (2008) differentiate between state self-confidence and trait self-confidence.
• Self-efficacy: the perception of an individual’s ability to successfully perform a task (Bandura, 1997).
• Confidence can impact how an athlete interprets their level of anxiety.
• Athletes high in confidence tend to perceive that they expend less effort on a particular task (Hutchinson et al., 2008).
• Athletes higher in confidence tend to perform better than those lower in confidence (Feltz, 1984; Moritz et al., 2000).

Focus

• The ability to focus is one of the most important skills an athlete can possess.
• Terms focus, concentration, attention, and managing distractions are used interchangeably.
• Nideffer (1976) and colleagues (Nideffer & Segal, 2001) described attentional focus along two dimensions: width (i.e., broad or narrow) and direction (i.e., external or internal).
• A broad attentional focus would be beneficial when an athlete must be aware of and react to many changing cues in their environment.
• A narrow attentional focus would be helpful when an athlete must only focus on one or two cues, such as a target or finish line.
• An external focus of attention refers to attention focused on an external cue such as an object in the environment.
• An internal focus of attention refers to attention focused inwardly such as one’s own thoughts and feelings.
• Wulf’s (2013) review found that an external focus of attention was more beneficial across a number of tasks than an internal focus of attention.
• Ways to train and improve concentration skills include using simulations, predetermined cues, establishing good habits, routines, and competition plans, and overlearning skills (Weinberg & Gould, 2019).

Team Dynamics

• Cohesion: a dynamic process in which a team has a tendency to stick together and stay united in pursuit of its goal and/or for the satisfaction of its members (Eys et al., 2020).
• Widmeyer et al. (1985) developed the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) to measure cohesion in sport.
• Group cohesion is conceptualized into two major categories: group integration and individual attraction to the group.
• Increased group cohesion is associated with increased performance outcomes (Carron et al., 2002).
• Collective efficacy: a ‘group’s shared belief in its conjoint capability to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainment’ (Bandura, 1997, p.477).
• Collective efficacy reflects a team’s level of confidence.
• Collective efficacy has a positive impact on team performance and prior team performance can also have an impact on collective efficacy (Feltz & Lirgg, 1998; Myers, Feltz, et al., 2004; Myers, Payment, et al., 2004).

Contemporary Methods and Developments

Mindfulness

• Mindfulness involves being present with one’s circumstances intentionally and without judgment (Kabat-Zinn, 1994).
• Being mindful can improve sleep and focus (MacDonald et al., 2018), reduce stress (Lundqvist et al., 2018; Vidic et al., 2018), and improve performance (Zhang et al., 2016)
• Mindfulness is defined as ‘paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally’ (Kabat-Zinn, 1994, p. 4).
• Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR): an eight-week intervention that attempts to cultivate a greater ability to notice a patient’s inner and outer world (Kabat-Zinn, 1990; Santorelli, 1999).
• Evidence now exists that supports a moderate improvement in sport performance for those athletes employing mindfulness techniques, especially in sport tasks based on precision such as shooting (Bühlmayer et al., 2017).
• Two main interventions: Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment therapy (MAC) (Gardner & Moore, 2012) and Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement (MSPE) (Kaufman et al., 2009).

Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment Therapy (MAC)

• Developed by Gardner and Moore (2004) influenced by Kabat-Zinn’s (1994) definition of mindfulness, combined with acceptance and commitment therapy.
• In MAC, mindful awareness is accompanied with acceptance of the current experience as it is, and commitment to value- or goal- driven behaviour (versus emotion-driven behaviour).
• Traditional mental skills training focuses on control of internal states by managing thoughts, images, and emotions (Gardner & Moore, 2004; Moore, 2009).
• A mindful approach to sport performance is effective for maintaining or improving performance by increasing the proportion of thoughts or present-moment observations that are applicable to the task at hand.
• There are seven modules in the MAC intervention that are completed in order, and a coach or leader must ensure athlete comprehension of each module before continuing (Gardner & Moore, 2007).

Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement (MSPE)

• The MSPE approach focuses less on values and value-driven behaviour, and more on the progressive practice of non-reactive attentional control (Kaufman et al., 2018).
• MSPE uses the terms concentration, letting go, relaxation, harmony, and rhythm, and forming key associations.
• An acronym used to integrate mindfulness into life outside of sport and the training sessions is STOP: stop, take a few breaths, observe, and proceed (Kaufman et al., 2018).
• Mindfulness can be used in conjunction with traditional mental skills.

Neurofeedback and Biofeedback Training for Optimising Sport Performance

• Psychophysiology: ‘the scientific study of the interrelationships of physiological and cognitive processes’ (Schwartz & Olson, 2003, p. 5).
• Two types of psychophysiological interventions commonly utilised in sport are neurofeedback training (NFT) and biofeedback training (BFT).
• The training process involves the measurement of physiological or neurological activity that is then fed back to the athlete in real time in the form of audio or visual cues that enable the athlete to develop greater self-awareness and ability to voluntarily regulate physiological and neurological processes (Blumenstein & Hung, 2016; Schwartz & Andrasik, 2017).

Biofeedback Training

• Biofeedback training equipment measures and feeds back physiological information associated with the stress response.
• During BFT athletes observe their physiological data on a computer screen and train the ability to actively alter the various responses.

Neurofeedback Training

• Neurofeedback training – also known as electroencephalography (EEG) biofeedback – involves the measurement of cortical activity (Schwartz & Andrasik, 2017).
• During NFT, relevant components of the athlete’s EEG are extracted and fed back in the form of audio and/or visual cues that indicate when they have met the predetermined threshold (Vernon, 2005).
• Sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) – a specific frequency within the low beta range that’s correlated with an alert but calm mental state (Thompson & Thompson, 2015) – has been shown to enhance golf putting performance in golfers (Cheng et al., 2015).
• BFT/NFT helps athletes learn how to effectively self-regulate physiological arousal and focus in the competitive environment.
• Both have been shown to reduce anxiety (Gevirtz, 2007), improve attention (Gruzelier et al., 2006), develop self-efficacy (Davis & Sime, 2005), and ultimately enhance performance (e.g., Blumenstein & Hung, 2016; Mirifar et al., 2017; Morgan & Mora, 2017; Xiang et al., 2018).

Applications of Sport and Exercise Psychology

• Sport psychology is still a relatively new and rapidly expanding field.
• Two career streams within the discipline of sport psychology: research and professional practice.
• The APS College of Sport and Exercise Psychologists seeks to ensure that the highest possible standards of professional sport and exercise psychology practice and research are developed and upheld.
• To become a full member of the College of Sport and Exercise Psychologists, you need to have undertaken at least six years of university training in psychology.
• To be endorsed to practice as a sport and exercise psychologist, you first need to be registered as a generalist psychologist.
• To call yourself a sport and exercise psychologist you need to apply to the PsyBA for what’s called an area of practice endorsement (Psychology Board Australia, 2020b).
• To gain a sport and exercise psychology area of practice endorsement you will have gained and demonstrated competency in eight areas (Psychology Board of Australia, 2020a).

Sport and Exercise Psychology Careers and Training Pathways in Australia

• The training of all psychologists in Australia is governed by a central body called the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council (APAC).
• Careers in sport psychology typically involve two streams: research and/or professional practice as a sport and exercise psychologist.
• In terms of research-focused careers, the most prominent option for those who’ve completed a doctoral degree in sport psychology is an academic position in a university.
• There are three types of careers related to professional practice in sport and exercise psychology that depend on practitioners’ education and training.
• Full-time positions are limited in Australia and are usually associated with Institutes of Sport (e.g., the AIS).
• In Australia, the only person who can call themselves a ‘sport and exercise psychologist’ is someone who Aphra has endorsed as being able to practice in the area of sport and exercise psychology.

Educational Paths and Training

• Research careers related to sport psychology typically require graduate research training acquired in a doctoral (i.e., PhD) degree.
• The University of Queensland is the only remaining public university to offer a postgraduate psychologist training program in which one can specialise in sport psychology.
• Given the diversification of the field of sport psychology and its interdisciplinary nature, research within doctoral programs may focus on a variety of topics, depending on the interests of thesis supervisors.
• Students can specialise in sport psychology research at any Australian university provided there are supervisors who have research expertise in sport psychology to supervise them.
• Two Australian programs are geared toward applied careers in the field and provide students with the opportunity to combine research training with applied consulting work and supervision.
• The Institute of Social Neuroscience Psychology offers a unique Doctor of Psychology (Sport & Exercise, Clinical) which produces graduates who not only complete a thesis – and thus are engaged in research – but on graduation are eligible for the PsyBA registrar program in both sport and exercise psychology and clinical psychology areas of endorsement.