I often receive a question based around whether Sport Psychology is applicable to their sport. My short answer is “yes”. Whenever there is competition involved or room for self-evaluation then the benefit of Sport Psychology can be extremely rewarding.

Thinking errors can get in the way of fluency in all sports however seem to be more prevalent in sports that have an element of self-pacing. Examples of these sports are golf, darts, snooker, serving in tennis. There can be more than one way to look at this. It can be viewed as easier to perform well as the performer is not physically dictated for time and, theoretically, they can take as much time as they need within reason to compose themselves. Unfortunately, there is also more time for unwanted negative thoughts to get in the way.

“I’m going to miss” “If I miss I’ve lost” “I need to get this” “I’m not good enough”

If any of the above phrases have entered your head then Sport Psychology may be of benefit. Before summarizing on how Sport Psychology may be able to help I would like to take this opportunity to dispel a rather large myth often used by coaches and people who are trying to help but don’t really know how to.

The myth

“Just think positive” This can be thought in our heads or spoken out loud in the form of positive self talk.

Now the research around thinking positively is largely mixed. There has been research that has highlighted and improvement in performance following positive self talk (Rokke & Rehm, 2001), and also no difference recorded when using positive self-talk (Van Raalte et al, 1995) . There is also a similar debate about the type of self talk. Are we attempting to practice motivational self talk such as “I can do this”, “I can make this putt” or are we going for instructional self talk such as “firm wrist” “reach up”etc. Again there is conflicting information. Originally there was a lot of evidence that instructional self-talk was better for fine motor skill sports such as darts and golf and motivational self talk was better for gross motor sports such as running, swimming etc (Hatzigeoriadis et al, 2011). This research has recently however been challenged (Hardy et al, 2014) so it is a little unclear as what to follow at present.

My thoughts are that the results are so conflicting because we are all so different. For some people one type of self-talk may work another may not. An example of this when maybe with beginners. I am generalizing to an extent in this example, but it may be plausible to believe that instructional self-talk could be useful when performing a skill that has recently been learnt in practice. Under pressure a beginner may naturally not be able to access this information as easy so instructional self-talk may help the player to access and retain this information. However, for a professional player instructional self-talk may be detrimental as it may cause them to reinvest or over-analyze something that they do very naturally. This can actually increase anxiety and potentially worsen performance.

I also believe that the idea of thinking positive is a little simplistic and it lends to the idea that we can easily control our thoughts which if this was the case, we would never think negatively in the first place.

I would like to outline a third approach based on the principles of Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT).

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is gaining in popularity amongst Sport Psychologists. The basic premise of this approach is that we allow thoughts to happen whether these are positive or negative. The idea behind this is that we attempt to accept our thoughts for what they are – nothing more than a string of words. True acceptance is not about tolerance, putting up with, avoiding or admitting defeat. Alternatively, acceptance is an attitude of openness, interest and receptiveness whereby you allow your thoughts to come and go as they please without fighting them, running away from them or giving them undue attention. It is strongly believed that acceptance is the first step toward taking effective action. It is important to remember however, that if our thoughts are helpful, great! Use them! If they are not helpful or workable, accept them, and defuse from them if you find yourself entangled amongst them (diffusion means relating to your thoughts in a new way so that they have a significantly lower impact on your performance – there are countless diffusion skills available and ready to practice and use in ACT). (Believe Perform 2019)

So, the take home point of trying this method is that allow the thoughts to enter your head. Accept they are just thoughts, they are not facts, so they do not need any undue attention. They may well come in again but its ok we accept them for what they are – “JUST THOUGHTS”