Week 1 - Introduction to strategies

This phase of the PST programme involves educating the client. Psychological skills need to be learned and practiced; improvements are to be expected from the client as they develop these skills and refine them over time. 

A second meeting took place in this stage, this time with the client and their football coach. This meeting enabled me to understand the client's perceived strengths and weaknesses, as well as their coach's perceived strengths and weaknesses of the client too. The meeting lasted roughly 45 minutes and this was enough time to talk through the main weakness I will be working on with the client during the 6 week PST programme:

• Motivation

There are many psychological strategies to improve motivation but the two I will be using during the 6 week PST programme are:

• Listening to music
• Goal setting 

This is due to me gaining knowledge of the client as they like listening to music and also set goals for themselves but may need to adjust them goals to make them more specific, measurable, achievable, realistic or time framed (SMART). The client will need to be educated so they understand these strategies and what they will be doing during the 6 week PST programme, they also need to see the benefits in these strategies as this will keep them motivated to complete the full 6 weeks. During this 45 minute meeting, I will be educating the client on the following two techniques:

Listening to music:

Advancements in technology over the last couple of decades have allowed music to grow to become an effective intervention to achieve a range of desirable psychological and physical performance effects among athletes. The videos below show how listening to music can improve performance; the client will watch these videos and then be given a brief overview of what listening to music in sport entails. The type of music we listen to causes us to synchronise our movements at time (Karageorghis & Terry, 1997). If the client listens to a fast tempo song or a song with higher beats per minute, they will be more likely to increase movements which could possibly enhance performance such as sprinting during a match.  

Goal setting:

"Attaining a specific standard of proficiency on a task, usually within a specific time limit" (Williams, 2001). Motivation can have a huge effect on the performance of an athlete; athletes can lose motivation very easily if they are under or over achieving and not facing challenges that they need. In order to maintain motivation athletes must set goals to work towards. My client has provided information showing that they don't regularly set goals and if they do set goals, they often under achieve and don't reach those set goals. I will get the client to watch the videos below on goal setting and this will educate them on the method of increasing motivation. After the client has watched the videos, I will then give a brief overview of goal setting and how it will be used over the 6 week PST programme.