The consulting work carried out by the psychologist in sports has traditionally been oriented toward the formulation and implementation of psychological preparation programs for high-level athletes. In fact, since the early 1970s, sports psychology has become significantly popular as a field of knowledge capable of making a valuable contribution to improving the sports performance of athletes on national teams. Suffice it to say that already for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 as many as 20 Canadian psychologists worked with athletes and female athletes who participated, and that in 1988 in Seoul most of the representative teams of industrialized countries included this professional figure within the staff, but in addition to these (Canada, USA, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Germany and the Soviet Union), developing nations such as Algeria, Nigeria, Colombia and Cuba also used sports psychologists. As for Italy, it has only been since the Atlanta Olympics that a relatively large number of sports psychologists have participated, placed on the staffs of shooting, archery, water polo, volleyball, judo, rowing and sailing.
The skills of the psychologist working in high-level sports are quite diverse, and although it is not the case here to list them, it may be useful instead to describe what are the services he or she should be able to provide:
- Define the typical psychological skills of a sport, starting with the analysis of its characteristics
- Identify the strengths and areas for improvement of the athlete or team.
- Conduct team meetings for the purpose of improving communication among athletes, among staff members, and between these two g r o u p s .
- Develop a mental training path consistent with the goals to be achieved, the time available, the athletes’ current needs and skills, the number of competitions and length of training periods, and the demands of the coach.
- Teach athletes and coaches mental training strategies and techniques, including goal setting, activation/deactivation techniques. techniques for improving concentration, and others.
- Provide cognitive and training tools to improve the ability to work under high competitive stress.
- Collaborate with the coach, providing him/her with feedback related to the way he/she relates to athletes and staff and suggestions for changing any attitudes he/she may have that are not functional in achieving set goals. Collaborate with the technical, health and management staff.
- Highlight any psychopathological issues (e.g., eating disorders, depression, antisocial behavior), suggesting to the athlete how to overcome them with the support of a psychotherapist.
- Psychological management of injuries.
- Evaluation of the results obtained at the end of the sports season and reshaping the program for the following year
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