The P.A.C.E. Performance Program: Integrating Sport Psychology into Training Programs
Alex Cohen, Ph.D., CC-AASP, Senior Sport Psychologist, United States Olympic Committee
Following Team USA’s successful performances at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, coaches and athletes are already preparing for their upcoming season of competitions. What are the next steps to take in readying your athletes for performance excellence? After competing in the Olympic Games, athletes have consistently reported that, for their next Games experience, they would: a) focus more on sport psychology and mental preparation; b) avoid overtraining/under-recovery and get more rest; c) work with their coaches to optimize their physical training/preparation; and d) find ways to be better prepared to deal with distractions … The P.A.C.E. performance program addresses these concerns by enabling coaches to enhance their athletes’ psychological skills at the same time they are improving their athletes’ physical, technical, and tactical sports skills. Incorporating the P.A.C.E. performance program into the periodized training schedule can help your athletes peak for performance by training them to focus on the right things, at the right time, every time.
Each of the elite coaches I’ve been fortunate to work with incorporate aspects of sport psychology into their training programs, though they may refer to this type of training by many different names. The P.A.C.E. performance program was designed with these coaches in mind, as a simple acronym to organize and teach psychological skills during training. P.A.C.E. refers to “Perception, Activation, Concentration, Execution”. While each of the P.A.C.E. components can be worked on individually, I present the program to coaches as an ordered sequence, to provide a simple and comprehensive overview of psychological skills training for performance excellence.
(Read all the article: 2012 Fall Olympic Coach at http://www.teamusa.org/About-the-USOC/Sport-Performance/Coaching-Education/Coach-E-Magazine.aspx)
