AASP Newsletter - May 2020
Editor’s Note: A Mutated Practice of Sport Psychology
 |
|
|
Andrew Friesen, PhD, Pennsylvania State University, Berks, USA
“Mutation: It is the key to our evolution... This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.”
- Professor Charles Xavier
While the field of sport psychology has not been around for “thousands of years,” it certainly feels like the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the field to “leap forward” in its respective evolution. Typically, we have been a community of practitioners that rely on in-person conversations with athletes, collaborative meetings with coaches and sport science staff at training facilities, and observations of our athletes performing and utilizing the skills we teach. Now during a time of social distancing, canceled athletic events, and a reliance on technology, the field finds itself practicing a mutated form of sport psychology.
Research Studies Involving Technology and Sport Psychology
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the use of technology to connect with our coaches and athletes into the spotlight. However, it is not as if the sport psychology has been caught off-guard by this rapid evolution to technology-based service delivery. A recent study by McCormick and colleagues suggests that upwards of 48% of athletes intentionally seek out psychological guidance from websites while over 50% of their athletes surveyed indicated that they also unintentionally get psychological guidance from social media postings. Similar studies have also featured coaches’ use of online resources for psychological guidance. With athletes and coaches seeking out guidance online, it is not surprising that sport psychology research has turned its attention to the use of social media in delivering sport psychology. For example, some studies have examined the efficacy of various mental skills interventions pertaining to psychological skills, team-building, and eating disorders. Additionally, practitioners have opened the conversation on how to integrate social media and new technologies into your practice as a sport psychology consultant. Using technology to deliver sport psychology services also stimulates conversations on ethics. In response, I’d guide our readers to Bird and Harris’ study that involved surveying AASP CMPCs about their perceived ethicality of using technology to provide sport and performance psychology services.
eSports
Even the performance contexts have evolved. The one type of “sport” that could conceivably thrive during this pandemic are eSport—multiplayer competitive online gaming featuring professional gamers. With competition occurring in the virtual webspace, eSport seems well-adapted to a world of social distancing. And while debate might persist as to the legitimacy of considering eSport competition as actual sport, the sport psychology community has already begun investigating our potential contributions to this performance context. I will refer our readers to Cory Cottrell and colleagues’ Sport psychology in a virtual world: Considerations for practitioners working in eSports and Ismael Pedraza-Ramirez and colleagues’ Setting the scientific stage for eSports psychology: A systematic review for more information.
COVID-19 Resources and Free Web Education
AASP has responded to the pandemic by connecting members from across the globe to discuss how mental performance professionals can adapt and work in the current environment. These forums in the format of “virtual coffee breaks” occurred throughout April and covered topics such as, maintaining/managing your professional practice, resilience and motivation techniques during a pandemic, supervision, and online teaching. If you missed these forums, AASP has indicated that additional sessions will be scheduled if demand dictates. If you have any questions, please contact AASP at info@appliedsportpsych.org or (317) 205-9225.
AASP has also coordinated several informational webinars for our members. Recently, Abby Keenan and Lauren Tashman delivered, Going Digital: Online Consulting for Mental Performance; and Peter Fadde, Melissa Hunfalvay, Inna Khazan, and Lindsay Shaw delivered, Virtual conference - Why, What, When, and How: Using technology in applied sport psychology practice. Both webinars are available on the AASP website for members to view.
The AASP website is home to a number of other resources. Specifically, the AASP blog has posted a feature entitled, The COVID-19 pandemic: Tips for athletes, coaches, parents, and the sport community. The blog features many other additional resources such as articles and podcasts from AASP members to help thrive and survive during the COVID-19 pandemic. The AASP website also features COVID-19 Updates for Sport Psychology Professionals as well as a statement from AASP’s Certification Council to current and prospective CMPCs.
For the AASP Newsletter, we are continuing to reach out to AASP members and to the 29 Special Interest Groups (SIGs) for contributions. These member-driven groups help advance the organization and the field of sport and exercise psychology and reflect the broad range of expertise within the association. I want to take the opportunity to thank all contributors as well as the members of the Newsletter Committee for their great work and effort. If you want to contribute to the newsletter: please email me at apfriesen@psu.edu.
