Monitor on Psychology - July/August 2012

facilitating communication — helping teammates overcome disagreements or misunderstandings and work toward the same goal.

Visual learning

For Jim Bauman, PhD, the consulting sport psychologist for USA Swimming, the key to working with athletes is to make his suggestions as concrete as possible.

“Athletes tend to be a lot more visual and kinesthetic
learners,” says Bauman, who spends most of his year as a sport
psychologist at the University of Virginia. “They’re hands-on
versus auditory learners.”
Using props helps ensure that athletes remember
Bauman’s recommendations even under maximum stress,
he says. To demonstrate the importance of being pliable,
durable and resilient rather than mentally tough, for example,
he shows how it’s possible to break a piece of wood over
your knee but impossible to do the same with a phone book.
“Some athletes get into a routine that becomes ritualistic,”
says Bauman. “If they can’t do that routine — if there’s a
surprise, distraction or delay — it’s easy for them to be taken
off track.”
Bauman also scours junkyards for car tachometers to help
teach athletes how to manage anxiety. Tachometers, which
measure an engine’s revolutions per minute (RPMs), offer
a useful analogy for athletes’ anxiety levels, he says. At one
extreme, he shows athletes, the tachometer indicates the engine
is idling. As a driver shifts gears and heads down the highway,
the tachometer settles around the middle as the car cruises
comfortably. On the far right side of the dial, the tachometer
is typically colored red or orange — a warning not to put the
engine under so much stress.

“What I’ll see is that a couple of days before a race or the night before, athletes’ tachometers — their emotional revolutions — are just redlining,” he says. The tachometers provide a visual lesson in inefficiency and wasted energy and the need to cruise rather than redline.

To underscore that message with the swimmers he’s working with, Bauman suggests that they put together their own music playlists, with slower music that represents idling or resting, medium- to faster-paced music that offers a beat-per-minute pace similar to their competition stroke-per-minute rate and very fast music to represent “redlining” or excessive anxiety.

“Using these playlists makes it easier for them to remain aware of their psychological and physiological energy levels, or RPMs, as they relate to various stages of getting ready to compete,” he says.

Cues can also help during competition, says Bauman. “It’s good for us to sit and talk in the office, on the sidelines or on the pool deck during practice, but it’s so easy for them to go back to their old ways as soon as they’re back in a competitive environment,” he says. “You can’t depend on memory, because the emotions are so high.”

JULY/AUGUST 2012 • MONITOR ON PSYCHOLOGY

APA’s sport psychology proficiency

“You can’t call yourself a sport psychologist just because you’re a licensed psychologist who reads Sports Illustrated,” says Jennifer E. Carter, PhD, past-president of APA’s Div. 47 (Exercise and Sport) and a counseling and sport psychologist at the Center for Balanced Living in Worthington, Ohio.

Sport psychology requires specialized knowledge, skills and procedures — which is why APA’s Council of Representatives approved it as a proficiency in 2003 and renewed that approval in 2011.

The recognition serves two main purposes, says Carter, who was part of the Div. 47 team that compiled the updated proficiency document last year. One is to protect the public by letting consumers know that there are certain standards that indicate competence in the field. The other is to guide psychologists who want to develop that competence. “We want to provide a path to becoming competent as a sport psychologist,” says Carter.

While APA recognizes sport psychology as distinctive from other areas of psychology, it doesn’t certify individual psychologists as proficient.

As the still relatively young area of sport psychology continues evolving, says Carter, Div. 47 may explore developing practice guidelines or a certification exam, perhaps in collaboration with such organizations as the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. Eventually, the division may seek APA’s approval of sport psychology as an official specialty rather than just a proficiency.

But so far, sport psychology is not ready for that step, says Carter. “While there are increasing numbers of graduate programs in clinical and counseling psychology that have begun to recognize the discipline of sport psychology, the number of these programs is still limited,” she says, explaining that there are currently only 10 graduate programs offering clinical or counseling psychology and sport psychology.