Sports psychology

You may think only pro athletes need sports psychologists, but you’d be wrong. Knowing how thoughts and emotions impact your running and realising what motivates and demotivates you is key to reaching your goals

Words Sarah Owen

Sometimes you lose your running mojo for whatever reason but that doesn’t mean it’s gone for good

BESPECIFIC

Sports psychologists totally tailor sessions to you and your needs

There are 141 stressors and hassles that might hold back your running potential and there are countless factors that might motivate you |

Many top athletes hire sports psychologists to help them learn mental strategies to improve their race times, cope with the pressures of competition, recover from injuries and stick to a training programme. But it’s not just the pros who can learn to understand their brain better. Any runner – from a 5K-er to a multimarathoner – can work with a sports psychologist to uncover self-knowledge, untangle unhelpful beliefs and break self-sabotaging habits that can cause blockers to performance and potential.

The benefits of support

A sports psychologist will help you explore how your thoughts, feelings and emotional state affect your running. “We have trained for a minimum of seven years,” says Dr Josephine Perry, a sports psychologist (performanceinmind.co.uk). “We’ve studied all the ways the mind works for and against you in sport and exercise and we get to know you so we can suggest highly personalised guidance and strategies. There are 141 stressors and hassles that might hold back your running potential and there are countless factors that might motivate you. There’s endless information about harnessing the power of the mind and training the brain in books and on websites, but it’s only useful if you know which bits of it are relevant for you and how to apply it. A sports psychologist can pinpoint what’s likely to work specifically for you.”