Meet the scientists!

One of the benefits of working in sport psychology is the variation in the work I do each day, especially as I am self employed. My work and activities fall into four main categories.

1. Continuing to develop and improve my skills

This might include reading papers and books, meeting other psychologists, and attending training courses and conferences

2. Research

Because psychology is a science, I also have do scientific research or write scientific papers. In the past I have researched what athletes think about performance enhancing drugs and also what kinds of things might help people do more exercise. My latest piece of writing is looking at something athletes have, called “mental toughness”, and whether it is always a good thing to be mentally tough.

3. Practical psychology (applied psychology)

This is the real nuts and bolts of my work and where I get most pleasure and satisfaction. I work with individuals and teams to help them improve their sport performance (like cope with nerves about a competition or work together better as a team). I also work with people who want to improve their health by increasing the amount of exercise they do. These people need help to start a new exercise routine and stick with it, and often need to get more confidence about doing it, especially if they are overweight and feel self-conscious going to the gym or doing sports. I have had several great experiences so far, including working at a weight loss camp, working in South Africa, and next year I am hoping to work on the team of psychologists who support runners in one of the international Marathons.

4. Teaching and communication about psychology

I don’t work in a university or school, so the way that I do the teaching and communicating part of my job is mostly by giving talks about sport and exercise psychology at sports clubs or gyms, and writing on my blog or writing other articles for magazines. I like this bit of my job too because I think psychology is so interesting and I would love other people to think so too. That’s why I was so pleased to be selected for “I’m a Scientist”.

I delivered a series of sport psychology topics to children and teenagers in some of the poorest townships schools in South Africa.

Here is the type of room we had to work in

And here is a group who were the rugby team at a school called Isaac Booi

We looked at topics like “what is confidence”, “how to deal with anger on the pitch/court”, “working together as a team” and “developing your own positive mental attitude”. Here is an example of an “A-Z of confidence words” that we did in one of the groups

I only worked with a small group in each school, and the feedback was so positive that I would love to make some DVDs or videos and podcasts that I could share with more children in the future, both in South Africa, and elsewhere. It would be great if this could be a ‘twinning’ project, with a school in the UK twinned with one of the township schools so we could share ideas between our cultures.