What is Sports Psychology

Featuring Dr. Kate Hays, PhD, C. Psych, Clinical Sports Psychologist

Duration: 2 minutes, 25 seconds

Very often, sports psychologists will work with coaches or, certainly, if an athlete has a coach, we’ll want to make sure that what they’re working on fits with what the coach is intending, too.

Sometimes, coaches have had a lot of training in sports psychology, so it really becomes kind of a three-way conversation about what the goals are and how to go about achieving them.

That conversation may occur between the coach and the sports psychologist or it may be that the athlete is the person who’s really kind of working the whole thing and speaking with each of those and then integrating it for themselves.

It’s a really interesting question of whether seeing a sports psychologist is going to get you better at what you do. The answer is, in all honesty, sometimes. What it certainly will help you do is to feel more confident and more capable.

We know that there’s a whole lot of information about the relationship between feeling confident and actually achieving. But whether that’s gonna be a straight line, we can help people with some specific techniques, and sometimes that will make a huge difference.

If people want to get a great result, if they want to maximize their potential, sports psychologists very often can be really helpful in thinking through the mental skills that they need for accomplishing their goals.

Presenter: Dr. Kate Hays, Psychologist, Toronto, ON

Local Practitioners: Psychologist