I found a sport psychology gem in an article posted on DivingTube.com. As the name implies, the site is set up to be the YouTube of online diving videos. If more people used the site, it would undoubtedly serve as an incredible resource. I know a lot of diving coaches who are eager to get their hands on diving videos of specific dives from a variety of angles.

In any case, I found the article Psychological Issues & Competition Pressure to be right on the mark and very well written. Its works cited section resembles my graduate school bookshelf, and gives specific examples in the training of a fictional diver named Flint while at the same time providing extremely thorough support for the advice given on the topic.

Here’s an excerpt from the section on Practice Specificity:

“It is also important to complement the practice variability training with practice specificity. Flint’s training should incorporate scenarios that are similar or identical to his competition experience. When competition scenarios are incorporated into training the diver learns about the competition context when the dive is practised automatically without being explicitly instructed to do so.”

Read the full article to learn more about utilizing optimal practice schedules and different types of feedback.