Talk:Sport psychology

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Re: Link removal
Hi - I got a message from user Burzmali about removing an external link I had added to a scholarly journal about decisionmaking and judgment in sport and exercise. Sorry; I can't figure out how to reply to him directly. Linking to a journal is not allowed; can someone clarify? Also, the history page indicates that my edit was identified as vandalism. Egads! Can someone help me understand that? I thought vandalism was more malicious than that. I wouldn't want the scourge of vandalism associated with my username. User:Mookie25 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mookie25 (talk • contribs) 00:36, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Linking to a journal is allowed - however the external links guidelines forbid linking to sites that require payment to view the content. They seem to be high-quality journal articles so the best way to use them in this article would be to add text to this article citing them as sources - the easiest way to do this would be through the footnote system. Your edit was definitely not vandalism as it was a good faith attempt to improve the article. The person who reverted your edit used a computer program that often labels edits as vandalism - I've seen that program make mistakes before. The program probably thought your edit was vandalism - more specifically spam - because you placed your link at the top of the list; all new external links should be placed at the bottom of a list unless there is a good reason not to do so. You can contact the editor who reverted you directly at user talk:user Burzmali and you can contact me directly at user talk:graham87. The easiest way to add a comment is to use the "+" link next to the "edit this page" link and you can sign comments on talk pages like this one using four tildes like this: "~". Graham 87 13:00, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Graham and Burzmali, Thanks very much for clarifying. The "vandalism" thing bothers me, but I understand about the policy. I was in fact making a good-faith effort to highlight relevant external content and not trying to increase rankings for that page (don't know the first thing about that!). Oh well. Graham, thank you as well for the advice about improving the content of the article and citing sources. Best, Mookie25 15:08, 12 September 2007 (UTC)Mookie25

Re: Page Move
I've moved the content from 'Sports psychology' to here, since this is the technically correct title.

I'll be adding more content to this page shortly - I'm in the midst of writing several Sport Psych. assignments for university, so I should have some good content for this page in a week or so.

-- Sasuke Sarutobi 22:56, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I've now repointed all the links from the other page.


 * -- Sasuke Sarutobi 23:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Removal of section
I've removed the section "History of sports psychology" because it reads more like an essay than an encyclopedia article. There probably is useful data in there but it doesn't need to be presented in this way. The diff of my removal showing the text I removed can be found here. Graham 87 11:29, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I've put the section back for now because there are several tags on the article that refer to it. I'll do more with the article when I have more time, and on reflection I've decided a wholesale removal of the section would not be the wisest thing to do. Graham 87 11:32, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Posting the info I deleted from the page incase it can be used in another section (doubt it):

If you want to see a sports psychologist, i would see Natalie Hahn-Pruett. Natalie is a graduate of Notre Dame University. She also Knows alot about spots because she is married to Athelete, Josh Pruett. I Would read her book, "Being a sports psychologist while being married to a pruett."


 * Indeed I think it's just someone at school adding names of friends/enemies/themselves. Just take a look at the contributions of the user who added that text. Graham 87 11:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Single source, etc.
The entire article is written like an essay of some sort, most likely more-or-less directly copied from the single source. For instance, the section titles in The History of Sport Psychology ("The Early Years", "The Griffith Era", etc) sound like they were arbitrarily named by the author of the source, and are unencyclopedic. Additionally, titles like "What do Sport Psychologists Do?" are unencyclopedic. All these little things could be reworded, but if the article used numerous other sources, these problems would get watered down by the Invisible Hand of Wikipedia, and we'd have a good article. -M.Nelson (talk) 04:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The article was largely a very slightly rewritten copy of "Foundations of sport and exercise psychology". I have removed (deleted) all revisions since the introduction of this copyvio, since it filled the larger part of the article. Fram (talk) 10:38, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Sports Violence and Sports Psychology
Positives aspects of recreational sports, the positive aspects of team sports are already mentioned here, as well as the effects of violence in sports on both players and spectators, can also be a part of sports psychology that might be mentioned. Any thoughts?? Natural (talk) 17:15, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Natural

Sport-Specific Sub-sections
I have found that there are neither individual pages outlining sport-specific concepts as it is related to sport psychology nor sub-sections of the main page which do so. I would assume a good start on this would be simply adding these sub-sections and expanding from there as is needed, but I wanted to get thoughts on this as it will be my first contribution to the page. --Justin.Smedley (talk) 15:13, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Revisions Coming
A group of four people plus myself are in the midst of writing a better entry. We are all graduate students in sport psychology and decided this was necessary because the page is not a good representation of the field. The history is incomplete and some of the terminology is incorrect (e.g., internal monologue, criticism). This weekend, I'll be adding a lengthier and more complete history, plus an overview of applied sport psychology. In the next week or so, sections will be added on areas of research, exercise psychology, and common skills or techniques used.

Because the revisions are so extensive, I will essentially be replacing the current text with the new text. I will save the old text and can post it here once the changes are made, although that text really won't be useful anymore.

This will be my first time editing a page, so I hope I get all the formatting correct, especially with the references. More knowledgeable people, please correct any bad formatting I do.

4lenza (talk) 17:14, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Re: Revisions Coming
The history section was completely revised. I realize it's quite lengthy, so I will work to cut that down in the next week. However, it does draw from multiple authors across multiple sources and provides a complete history of the field from the late 1800s to the present day. I will post the old history section at the end of this update.

I also added the Applied Sport Psychology section, which provides an overview of what sport psychologists actually do in the field. It also gives information about training and certification and touches on the tension between the two models of training. The final sub-section on finding a sport psychologist was created to make it easier for people viewing the page to find competent professionals. We felt that, as an applied science, people who Google or bing "sport psychology" will see this page first, so it is important to point people in the right direction from here.

I removed a few links from the "See Also" section because they did not exist (most popular sport by country), were redundant (mental practice of action with motor imagery), vague (performance), or had nothing to do with anything (trance). I also removed the seemingly random citation (McGaughey, William (2001). Rhythm and Self-Consciousness: New Ideals for an Electronic Civilization. Minneapolis: Thistlerose Publications) and the link to Plega because that was simply advertising. Also added the Psychology template at the bottom of the page.

Here is the text of the old history:

The history of sport psychology
 * The first sport psychologist is said to have been Norman Triplett (1861-1931). Triplett's first finding as a sport psychologist was that cyclists cycle faster in pairs or a group, rather than riding solo.
 * Carl Diem, a German, founded the world's first sport psychology laboratory in 1920. Five years later, A.Z. Puni opened a lab at the Institute of Physical Culture in Leningrad. Also in 1925, Coleman Griffith opened the first sport psychology lab in North America at the University of Illinois. He began his research in factors that affect sport performance in 1918, and in 1923, offered the first ever sport psychology course.
 * The International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) was formed by Dr. Ferruccio Antonelli of Italy in 1965. In 1966, a group of sport psychologists met in Chicago to form the North American Society of Sport Psychology and Physical Activity  (NASSPPA).
 * In the 1970s, sport psychology became a part of the curriculum on university campuses. These courses, which were generally found in the kinesiology programs, taught students how to develop positive attitudes in athletes using cognitive and behavioral modification techniques. In the 1980s, sport psychology became more research-focused. Sport psychologists looked into performance enhancement, the psychological impact of exercise and over training as well as stress management.
 * Today, sport and exercise psychologists have begun to research and provide information in the ways that psychological well-being and vigorous physical activity are related. This idea of psychophysiology, monitoring brain activity during exercise, has aided in this research. Also, sport psychologists are beginning to consider exercise to be a therapeutic addition to healthy mental adjustment.
 * Just recently have sport psychologists begun to be recognized for the valuable contributions they make in assisting athletes and their coaches in improving performance during competitive situations, as well as understanding how physical exercise may contribute to the psychological well-being of non-athletes. Many can benefit from sport psychologists: athletes who are trying to improve their performance, injured athletes who are looking for motivation, individuals looking to overcome the pressure of competition, and young children involved in youth sports as well as their parents. Special focus is geared towards psychological assessment of athletes, and assessment can be focused on selection of athletes and the team set up of rosters, as well as on professional guidance and counseling of individual athletes.

More revisions, plus Common Areas and Exercise Psych, and dois
Made a couple edits to ensure quotations were compliant with Wikipedia's standards. Edited a few parts of the History and Applied sections (no major changes, just reworded a couple things). Added the "Common Areas of Study" and "Exercise Psychology" sections. Exercise psychology is important to include because it and sport psych go hand-in-hand together. Common areas of study was written to primarily educate people on what sport psychologists actually research and secondarily to provide brief definitions explaining the terms so people understand what they mean. I will begin to add digital object identifiers tonight and continue until as many sources are linked up. 4lenza (talk) 22:24, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Sport Injury as it relates to Sport Psychology
Coping with sports injuries can have a physical and psychological effect on an athlete. Its important that we include sports pyschology skills and techniques that would help in recovering faster and to learn to use physical set-backs to become a more confident athlete. Athletes should be made aware of various injuries that can happen during a particular sports, not knowing its operational best practices. — Preceding WheelsDudley (talk) 01:37, 6 July 2011 (UTC)] comment added by WheelsDudley (talk • contribs) 01:06, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Sports Injury Topic After Revisions
My intention to improve this article will consist of researching and adding information related to an athletes mental state of mind when faced with a sports injury. This will include coping with stress, accepting responsibility of an injury and maintain a positive attitude. I will also discuss a couple techniques used to cope with a sports injury, such as imagery and discuss common sports psychology mistakes athletes make. Finally I will touch on the physical and mental stress of competition that can effect an athlete's performance. (WheelsDudley (talk) 05:50, 6 July 2011 (UTC))

References for Sports Injury relative to Sports Psychology
I will add more sources as my research continues (WheelsDudley (talk) 05:11, 6 July 2011 (UTC))

Fixing recent edits, adding Commonly Used Techniques, removed Cleanup and Reference warnings
Recent edits accidentally removed headers (Coaching, Exercise Psychology), so they were restored. Removed unscientific links (to brainmac). Please be careful when making edits so the page is not changed in ways it shouldn't. Also, use peer-reviewed sources, not links to popular websites.

Removed the Cleanup and Reference warnings. The page is a lot better than it was a month ago, in that it is a fairly complete overview of sport psychology, uses a variety of references, contains specific page numbers in those references, and the references are all peer-reviewed and of good quality.

Removed the "sport psychology terminology" section and replaced it with "Commonly Used Techniques." What was contained in the "terminology" section was either rewritten and improved (imagery, "internal monologue"), explained elsewhere (cohesion, motivation), or had no citations, or was incorrect (criticism). The old section is copied/pasted below:

A few terms used in sport psychology: 4lenza (talk) 15:12, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Cohesion – Group cohesion refers to the extent to which a team or group shares a sense of shared task or social bond
 * Imagery – Refers to "imagined" sensations, for example visual imagery is known as "visualization"
 * Attention focus – Being able to block everything out, e.g., a crowd.
 * Motivation – Recent research implies that sports-related achievement motivation is composed of several traits that together form a general orientation of a person towards achievement in sports. This research refers to The Achievement Motivation Inventory (AMI) (Schuler, Thornton, Frintrup & Mueller-Hanson, 2003) which is a broad-spectrum assessment of achievement-motivation in business, and has been used to develop the Sports Performance Indicator.
 * Internal monologue – Maintaining positive thoughts during competition by keeping a running conversation going in one's mind
 * Criticism – A tenet of motivational theory that is necessary to improve performance. The proper delivery of that criticism is imperative, as criticism can either better performance or drastically worsen it. There are three types of criticism: destructive, self, and constructive. The best method of delivering constructive criticism is the "sandwich" approach; here, one first offers a compliment, then offers critical feedback and useful directions to improve in that particular area, and then end with another compliment.
 * In-the-zone - "a higher level of concentration and being totally engrossed in an endeavor to the point where time almost stands still and outside distractions almost disappear."(WheelsDudley (talk) 04:16, 6 July 2011 (UTC))

Techniques For Re-Directing Negative Self-Talk
As athletes or students, we can all appreciate the feeling of stepping into the 1st tee or preparing for a test and having thoughts of failure enter the mind even though properly prepared. Instead of succumbing to what might seem like inevitable doom, there are a few ways to overcome these debilitating thoughts before they sink your so-called ship. One way is to use a technique called Thought Stopping developed by Dr. Robert Weinberg and Dr. Daniel Gould described in the textbook Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology. According to the Weinberg and Gould text, this technique involves stopping potential negative self-talk before it has a chance to germinate any further than an initial thought. By using simple words as "Stop" or "No", this re-direct could halt the negative thought(s) from getting a foot hold in the mind.

Another technique is to acknowledge a negative thought by writing it down on a piece of paper and then putting it away. According to University of Chicago cognitive psychology professor Dr. Sian Beilock in her book Choke, writing down negative thoughts signals the subconscious mind that you are aware of the thought but will deal with it at a later date making it less likely to occur. Beilock states focusing on what you want instead of trying to avoid failure is a way to keep the mind focused on success.

Lastly, keeping your expectations in check and realistic is a major key in overcoming negative self-talk. Quoting the book How To Win The US Open, overcoming perfectionism and ego, will give the athlete or student a little psychological breathing room. (Richard Trammel 00:11, 5 October 2011 (UTC)) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rtrammel (talk • contribs) (Richard Trammel 05:36, 8 October 2011 (UTC)) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rtrammel (talk • contribs)

Sports psychology (psychologist), Mental Coach - One and the same?
Just wondering. Plenty of references for a person with this 'job/title' in sports clubs. Also if there is an (direct/indirect) association, would some information in this wikipedia entry be beneficial to elaborate on this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.76.64.134 (talk) 23:57, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Missing Section? ('Clinical Sport Psychologists')
The article states "Generally, there are two different types of sport psychologists: educational and clinical." and goes on to describe clinical sport psychologists (under the heading 'Educational Sport Psychologists')... but omits a similar mention of clinical sport psychologists! idfubar (talk) 00:38, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I found a textbook to source that speaks of educational and clinical sports psychologists and added context to the original phrasing of the sentence you quoted and added a citation. I am working on revising the follow-up information to include the mention of clinical sport psychologists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anjdarji (talk • contribs) 14:46, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Performance Psychology versus Performance psychology (note the case differences)
"Performance Psychology" redirects to "Sports Psychology" while "Performance psychology" redirects to "Performance Science". Seems like an incomplete effort that is misleading.

Performance psychology is the parent of psychology that applies to sport, music, military and more. Like in the "see also" section of "Performance Science".

I'm not sure how to make these changes so I leave this for discussion and closure by others. M) (talk) 02:13, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

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Wikipedia Assignment Changes to Sports Psychology (mental health)
We will add a topic section focusing on mental health in athletes and try to target student-athletes in this study.

Add citations to the article about our topic of Mental Health.

Propose ideas of how Mental health has negatively impacted athletes, what studies are being done to test how mental health effects the athlete's performance, and what can be done to relax the stressors causing negative mental health implications.

Article body- for our Wikipedia article we were given Sports Psychology. We noticed that in our article, they hit every detail about what sports are and the psychology behind them. However, we noticed that there was no information given on how mental health affects athletes and decided it would be beneficial if we added a segment on how mental health affects athletes. We will not be making changes to the article itself, just adding our own summary on mental health in athletes. --192.103.41.208 (talk) 19:38, 20 November 2023 (UTC)(Rice et al.) http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40279-016-0492-2

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Adding to the 'Mental Health in Sport Psychology'
Hello, I am a student from a clinical psychology course hoping to add on to the mental health in sports psychology section. I noticed most of the sources of research were cited from 2016 or before, I am hoping to add information from more recent research. Specifically, I want to add on to the existing point that athletes use the sport as a way of escape. I found a systematic review from 2023 that explains how sports participation is generally associated with better mental health and psychological well-being. I will mention the flaws of the study to make sure there is no false information/bias. BT28 (talk) 04:02, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

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