Mental Skills Training with Track and Field Athletes

Often youth athletes have limited funding for sport science support, such as a sport psychologist (Schinke et al, 2012). Therefore, it may be important to equip coaches with some basic psychological skills so that they can work on these with their athletes. As a psychology practitioner working with many track and field youth athletes, a common concern of stress and how this impacts performance before competition is often raised (Raglin & Turner, 1993). It is shown within the literature that pre-performance routines can help aid performance (Jackson, 2003; Cotterill, 2011). Therefore, to help athletes deal with stress before competition, psychology practitioners could help develop pre-performance routines with athletes and coaches so this can be applied within coaching sessions. The following presentation will discuss the literature surrounding the use of mental skills training, e.g. pre-performance routines (Cohn, 1990), imagery (Holmes & Collins, 2001) and self-talk (Hardy et al, 2004), examining how these can be implemented within track and field coaching sessions with athletes.