Have you been following along with the ABC’s of Mental Training posted on USASwimming.org? You haven’t? Tisk tisk… articles A through G have alrady been posted by Aimee C. Kimball, PhD, Director of Mental Training for the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine.

Dr. Kimball is an AASP Certified Consultant, and has written FREE sport psychology pointers on topics from A is for Anxiety to G is for Goal Setting.

Mental training techniques can be used throughout your day, or on your days off from practice–but just like any physical technique or skill, mental skills need to be practiced. You’re not going to magically learn to manage your stress overnight, but you can begin to make improvements immediately, and the more you work at it the better you’ll become.

Similar to physical training, you can get a lot of background about mental training from online articles, and even learn some great new skills. Just like physical skills, however, you can only go so far on your own. Think about the difference between reading articles on weight training and actually having a weight training coach. That’s the reason a lot of elite athletes these days meet with a sport psychology consultant for additional mental training practice.

> Look up an AASP Certified Consultant in your area
> Related: You Don’t Need To Be Sick To Get Better

I was going through some sport psychology articles I have stored on my computer, and I re-stumbled upon one called The Dark Side of Youth Sports by Shane Murphy, Ph.D. I also found a full copy of it online (for free) at MomsTeam.com, which I am bookmarking because it turned out to be a really useful resource.

In the article, Shane writes about what he considers the 6 major problem areas in youth sports. I’ve chosen to reprint the Youth Sports Dropouts section below because I think it could be helpful to grassroots coaches, or anyone looking to keep their attendance numbers up:

Youth Sports Dropouts
35% of the young athletes in a recent survey of 1,183 athletes aged eleven to eighteen planned to stop playing the next year. Nearly half of the parents of 418 athletes aged six to ten surveyed reported that their child was not interested in sport anymore. In a survey of 5,800 children who had recently stopped playing a sport, the top five reasons for stopping were:

• I lost interest
• I was not having fun
• It took too much time
• Coach was a poor teacher
• Too much pressure

Asked what changes might get them involved in sports again, frequent responses included:

What is team cohesion? Think of it as the level of unity or

The end of the road is approaching for most senior NCAA swimmers and divers. Your final season, your final conference meet, or even your final national championships. There are very few opportunities to swim professionally, so live it up and have a great rest-of-your-life… right?

Well the transition from college sports to the “real world” will be hard for this year’s graduating class, not only because of the state of the job market, but because of a crucial shift in personal identity. Graduation will not only signify the conclusion of a chapter in this class’ academic life, but possibly the culmination of their entire career as an athlete.

I’m writing this article to hopefully help student athletes who are facing the retirement of their athletic identity. Six months after my final college diving meet, I felt stuck, unmotivated, unsatisfied, and secluded. I sought counseling at the Student Health Services Center for possible depression, while at the same time I was reading through my sport psychology textbooks for answers.

I realized that I was in the middle of an identity shift, in the process of re-establishing who I was outside of sports. Looking back, I don’t think I was very well prepared to go through such a transition. I would have liked some more advanced warning of what to expect, and how to make the transition as smooth as possible. This guide will hopefully do just that, provide information about the upcoming transition as well as tips for adjusting as easily as possible.

I. Personal Description Activity

Activity: Describe yourself in a list of 25 things. You only have a few minutes so write the first things that come to mind.

**AFTER COMPLETION OF ACTIVITY**:
After you have completed the activity, look at the first 5 items. Although you were not instructed to list the items in order of importance, the items you listed first are most likely the ones that you consider the most important or descriptive…
—
I’m not sure why this article got cut off, but I posted it again here: Student Athletes in Transition: Avoiding Post-Retirement Identity Difficulties, it makes a great handout or outline for a presentation.

The field of sport psychology has been steadily developing over the past few decades. Basically, sport psychology is the application of psychological principles to a sport setting–with particular emphasis on performance enhancement.

Because sport psychology (aka mental training, competitive cognitive affluence, sport behavior) is associated with traditional psychology, there is sometimes a stigma related to the application of mental training techniques. The term psychology conjures images of Sigmund Freud psycho-analyzing someone on a red leather couch, talking about their traumatic childhood and the inevitable Oedipus complex.

Modern psychology is much friendlier and not nearly as bizarre. Psychologists today do treat severe mental disorders, however sport psychology deals primarily with mental enhancement rather than mental rehabilitation. Thus, the best mantra to associate with sport psychology is the notion that “you don’t need to be sick to get better.”

A perfectly normal athlete can gain quite a bit from mental training techniques. Such techniques have become increasingly common among elite level athletes, and guides for teaching these techniques have become more readily available. Ask yourself, could you or your athletes use a boost in focus, stress relief, team cohesion, communication skills, or motivation (to name a few)?

When looking for advice from a consultant, be aware that the term “psychologist” is reserved for individuals with a doctorate in clinical psychology. Some sport psychologists do have clinical degrees, while others advertise as “mental coaches” or “performance consultants.” This difference in the naming system does not mean mental coaches are less qualified to give advice. College professors of sport psychology, even if they have been working as a consultant for over 30 years, cannot legally call themselves “psychologists.”

If you’re looking for resources, check out The ABC’s of Mental Training, with bi-weekly articles written for USA Swimming by Dr. Aimee C. Kimball–Director of Mental Training at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Building Intrinsic Motivation through Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness
by Eric Teske, M.S.
Miami University (Oxford, OH)

Why can