Mind over Matter

This coming Thursday (November 22nd) is the first assessment deadline of my final year. It is for my ‘Applied Sports Psychology’ module and for it I have had to produce a report and a twenty minute presentation. The theme of these two pieces of work has been to look at an ‘Elite Performer’ and the psychological factors that affect their performance.

The work has been in order to find out the main psychological difficulties that the Performer has in their field and to suggest no more than two interventions to counter these.

The collection of data took place in two forms. The first was to do a Performance Profile, where the Performer had to draw up a list of all the psychological factors that they felt affect their performance and give themselves a score out of ten for each. (Where 10 was ‘couldn’t be any better’ and 1 was ‘couldn’t be any worse’) Then they had to choose someone at a higher level of expertise within their field, who was performing at a standard they wished to obtain (For instance a Championship footballer comparing themselves to a Premiership player) and score them in the same fashion.

The second stage was to carry out a semi-structured interview that was specific to the Elite Performers specialist area. I liked this idea, because throughout my psychological studies, I have become a big fan of the combined 'Typology' (Eysenck) approach; where quantitative and qualitative research methods are combined.

I have to say, I have found it thoroughly enjoyable and am looking forward to delivering the presentation on Thursday. These have been a strength of mine throughout my degree and so hopefully there are some ‘easy marks’ for me to gain.

The next step will be to present the Performer with the interventions and specific instructions on how to use them. Then after a given period of time, the interventions will be evaluated and any necessary modifications will be made to them.

The final part of my assessment will be to write a larger report, looking at how the interventions have worked, any modifications that have been made and an evaluation by the Performer of the service I have provided.

I am certainly looking forward to presenting my Elite Performer with my program. I also have no fears about the interventions and whether they will work or not. They may not be the most ideal due to my lack of experience, but they certainly won’t negatively affect their performance. I have picked them not only for their suitability, but also on the grounds that they have been thoroughly tried and tested. Also, I know I have put the work in and done the research. Furthermore, I have had regular meetings with module supervisor, who is an accredited Sports Psychologist and her feedback has given me plenty of confidence.

I’ll feedback later on how the presentation went.