SportsPsychologist.com Blog by Dr Victor Thompson

It’s what we regular exercisers know based on our experience: exercise boosts mood and missing exercise makes things worse mood-wise. As a Clinical Psychologist who works in the NHS in London, it is great to see that the NHS and DoH is now including exercise as an important component of treatment programmes for people struggling with anxiety or depression. Last month I was at the launch of the new NHS IAPT initiative called Brain Train , which aims to inform NHS staff about the benefits so they can give guidance to their clients. The evidence behind exercise boosting mood and psychological wellbeing is compelling. And, as we know, not everyone wants to have a sit-down therapeutic consultation with someone like me, so I really welcome this NHS initiative. So when the week at work is starting to drag you down, don’t give in to the temptation to take it easy and go home and hit the sofa. Instead, make sure you get some physical stimulation: walk, jog, run, swim, cycle, hit ...

Sport offers so much to children psychologically: an opportunity to test themselves, to learn rules, to cooperate with others, to accept defeat, to celebrate success (hopefully), to cope with setbacks and much more. The Sports Parent who takes their child to practice, watches them play and then has to deal with whatever mood their child is in afterwards has a tough job to do. You face many dilemmas including: How much should you encourage your child to do the sport? When is your encouragement too much, at risk of being perceived as coercion or pushing them into it? How do you help your child cope with mistakes and bad performances? With other children, coaches, officials who show unfairness? Or cope with other parents who take a very different approach from you regarding how sport should be played by kids? What makes your job as the Sports Parent all the more difficult is the fact that you really care about your child. You don’t want them to be upset. You don’t want sport to hu...

Experiencing stress before a race is common: bad sleep the night before, waking early, difficulties getting breakfast down, frequent urges to go to the loo, worries about what might go wrong, a thumping heart while we stand still... These experiences can be unsettling. Why do they happen? They happen because: The race represents a test and we may fear that we'll fail to perform compared to others or our own standards (i.e., finish time or position), or We fear some catastrophe (e.g., getting punched in the face during the swim, losing our goggles or drowning; crashing on the bike...) When we arrive at the race site, our body's arousal is boosted further by the race environment - hearing the pump-you-up music blaring out of a PA system, or seeing lean, mean and excited (and stressed) triathletes. This increases the chance that our arousal level spills over into stress or anxiety - where it can become a problem. What's so bad about pre-race nerves? They make ...

For most (summer season) athletes this is the time of the year that we set our sights on the competitions ahead. What we will target, what performance we expect (want) and put ourselves out there to be tested. As the excitement builds, so do the nerves. So what can we do about this? 1. Set up training so you can have opportunities to practice for your events - the distances, speeds or skills you will want to execute come competition day. Nothing helps us feel confident (and to squash nerves) like real experience. So set up practice to run competition simulations. 2. Trawl your memory banks to find the experiences that show that you have done what is required for you to perform on competition day. These could be experiences from training/practice or previous competitions. What experiences show that you are prepared, or becoming more and more prepared? 3. Plan for the period up to the competition so you can see a progression to the event, in which you become more and more prepared. These...