Applied Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology

Current Approaches to Helping Clients

David Tod, Martin Eubank, David Tod, Martin Eubank

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429994692
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Sports Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Applied sport, exercise, and performance psychology practice has diversified considerably over the years, as consultants have explored various theoretical models to guide them in helping their clients. Applied Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology: Current Approaches to Helping Clients provides in-depth and critical coverage, from a global perspective, of the common approaches practitioners now use with clients.

Chapters are supplemented with case studies showing the approaches in action. The text explores topics such as:

• Cognitive behavioural approaches
• Psychodynamics approaches
• Family systems therapy approaches
• Mindfulness approaches
• Practitioner training and development
• Cultural considerations in practice
• Evidence-based practice

This text is a vital resource for students in applied sport psychology courses, sport and exercise science courses, and psychology and counselling courses. It is also an invaluable read for practicing applied sport, exercise, and performance psychologists, as well as coaches

and parents with some background in psychology.

1 Theoretical orientations in service delivery

David Tod, Martin Eubank, and Britton W. Brewer

An athlete asks a sport psychologist for help; how does the practitioner respond? Trainee practitioners react frequently with anxiety, excitement, hopes, and fears as they realise they are about to enter the unknown. Their minds fill with many questions, such as where do I start? What do I do? How do I help this person? What do I need to know about the individual? How do I find out what I need to know? Helping clients appears simple, linear, and straightforward when trainees read textbooks or listen to mentors, but they realise quickly the reality can be different when they assume the mantle of sport, exercise, or performance psychologist.

To help answer these questions, neophyte practitioners often seek guidance from supervisors. Mentors sometimes compare the helping relationship to a dance to illustrate that consultants and clients collaborate to produce outcomes. There are, however, many different dance styles, such as the foxtrot, quickstep, tango, and Viennese waltz, and these are just ballroom examples. A progressive sidestep into Latin reveals jive, rhumba, paso doble, and the cha-cha. There are an endless number of dance styles. Similarly, there are many theoretical orientations sport, exercise, and performance psychologists can select from to guide how they assist clients. The range can bewilder and confuse practitioners, particularly inexperienced individuals who have only a superficial understanding of the most common orientations. These individuals experience a double whammy. First, they are unsure what they are doing when helping clients. Second, they are unsure which theoretical orientation they ought to choose to learn about, so they can help people. In this book, we address the second whammy by allowing chapter authors to present a range of common theoretical orientations and approaches. People aware of the various orientations will be able to make informed choices. Before the chapter authors present the various theoretical schools, however, in the current chapter we take the sting out of the first whammy and discuss the helping process in sport, exercise, and performance psychology.

Understanding the helping process will allow you to build a coherent view about how to assist clients. Then, you can use this view when reading the chapters that follow to compare the different theoretical orientations and approaches to ascertain similarities and differences (which range from stark discrepancies to matters of emphasis). Greater insights into the various models of practice can inform your decisions about which ones to study, develop expertise in, and use with clients. Our specific aims in the current chapter are to define helping sport, exercise, and performance psychology; describe the helping process; and outline what constitutes a theoretical orientation.

Helping in sport, exercise, and performance psychology

Clara Hill (2014, p. 4) described helping as

one person assisting another in exploring feelings, gaining insight, and making changes in his or her life. Helpers and clients work together to achieve these outcomes, with helpers guiding the process and clients deciding what, when, and how they want to change.

Paralleling Hill’s description, sport, exercise, and performance psychologists collaborate with their clients, with each person contributing differently. Psychologists, for example, facilitate the process, and clients decide what changes they wish to make. Broadly, clients seek help when they have situations they are unable to manage (e.g., high levels of anxieties) or when they wish to make use of unused opportunities (e.g., develop psychological attributes). More specifically, goals include enhancing clients’ lives, assisting them in helping themselves, and equipping them so they can avoid or prevent future difficulties (Egan & Reese, 2018).

Just as several ingredients usually contribute to a tasty meal, a number of factors ensure effective helping occurs. For example, for helping to be effective, or even to occur, there needs to be a working alliance between clients, who seek assistance, and individuals, who offer aid. Further, the working alliance involves a relationship based on open communication, dialogue, and two-way feedback. Within the relationship, both parties engage in problem-solving activities, guided by a model of behaviour change that directs decision-making. The helping relationship benefits from practitioners and clients having some level of self- and context awareness (Egan & Reese, 2018; Hill, 2014; Katz & Hemmings, 2010; Tod & Andersen, 2012). The tidy description just presented belies the complexities and variations associated with helping in sport, exercise, and performance psychology. For example, clients present various issues, some they state explicitly, and some they keep hidden. Similar client issues can play out in different ways, because people and their circumstances vary hugely. Some performers, for example, become anxious because they have perfectionistic tendencies and others because they have abusive parents or coaches.

As a second example of the complexities, practitioners have different beliefs about how to engage in the helping process, about the causes and consequences of behaviour, and about the roles they and clients play. No practitioner has carved the ideal universal helping model or theoretical orientation onto stone tablets. One goal of education, training, and supervision is to help practitioners engrave their own tablets. These tablets are best made of play dough, rather than stone, however, because individuals will wish to modify their ideas as they and their circumstances change.

Consultants typically spend much time and effort in formulating models of practice they are happy with and reflect their beliefs, needs, and proclivities. Sport, exercise, and performance psychologists, however, do not have to start with blank tablets. Instead, they can borrow tablets on which broad templates come pre-stamped, ideally with a press weighted by scientific evidence. These templates reflect the theoretical orientations that are the focus of the current book.

The helping process in sport, exercise, and performance psychology

The theoretical orientations in this book have unique components allowing people to differentiate them from each other. In the psychodynamic orientation, for example, clients work through subconscious conflicts. During cognitive behavioural therapy, clients attempt to change irrational or counterproductive thoughts. Although the orientations have differences, they share similarities. For example, many orientations share a similar pathway that involves helping clients identify their current challenges, decide on desired changes, and adopt new ways of thinking, feeling, or acting. Familiarity with this pathway allows practitioners, especially trainees, to appreciate the helping process. Numerous authors have presented this path in a wide range of ways (Egan & Reese, 2018; Hill, 2014; Katz & Hemmings, 2010), and their various descriptions might be compared to the range of silky fortified wines. They each have their unique flavours and emphases, but they are the same type of alcoholic beverage. Egan and Reese (2018), for example, described the pathway as a series of four questions:

1. What is the individual’s current state of affairs? The first question involves describing a client’s current state or situation. The key question asks, “What is going on in the client’s life?” Performers describe the problem situations they wish to navigate or their unrealised opportunities. For example, a football player may have had her contract terminated and is unemployed, or a musician may be having difficulty rehabilitating from an injury.
2. What is the person’s preferred state of affairs? The second question asks clients to describe their preferred outcomes. The central questions include, “What does the client want?” “How do they want things to be different?” The football player may wish to find another contract, and the musician probably desires playing his instrument again and continuing his career.
3. What can the client do to create the preferred state of affairs? The third question deals with clients’ plans for accomplishing their goals. The principal question is “What does the client need to do?” The footballer may identify strategies for contacting possible clubs and getting trial games so she can display her talent. The musician may consult with a physiotherapist to map out a rehabilitation programme.
4. How does the performer implement the strategy and take action? The fourth question involves executing the plan. The chief question is “How does the client turn the plan into action?” Effective helping relationships result in client change and encompass adjustments in behaviour, thoughts, feelings, circumstances, or any combination of these four elements. Changes need to satisfy the client’s expectations.

Although Egan and Reese (2018) presented the four key questions in a stepwise manner, they recognise that the helping relationship is fluid, involving clients appraising and reappraising their circumstances. Clients may benefit from starting with different questions and moving among them in various ways and speeds. Further, the ways clients engage with each question are likely to change over time. The dynamic and open-ended nature of helping implies that useful practitioners are flexible when working with clients. Flexibility, however, does not let practitioners adopt a laissez-faire attitude. Instead, Egan and Reese’s model helps practitioners prevent the helping process from stumbling into chaos.

The four key questions reinforce that clients are the primary decision makers in the helping relationship, echoing research that their contribution and engagement are among the most consistent predictors of psychotherapeutic outcomes (Crits-Christoph, Gibbons, & Mukberjee, 2013). The relevance of Egan and Reese’s (2018) four questions is illustrated in the words of Gilbert Enoka, the sport psychologist serving the New Zealand national rugby union team, the All Blacks, who are one of the most successful teams across any sport. According to Enoka, applied sport psychology involves “a balance between knowing where a player is at, knowing what he or she needs and then determining an ‘execution plan’ ” (Bills, 2018, p. 285). At its heart, Egan and Reese’s model encapsulates a problem solving process.

Acquaintance with Egan and Reese’s (2018) model helps practitioners appraise the various theoretical orientations discussed in this book. First, the model directs readers to the knowledge and skills effective practitioners need regardless of their orientation. For example, Egan and Reese discussed strategies for ensuring strong working alliances between practitioner and client. If a good relationship does not exist, it is unlikely that any theoretical orientation will lead to positive client outcomes. Second, Egan and Reese’s model assists consultants in structuring their knowledge of an orientation in ways that show how they can implement the model of practice. Third, practitioners can use the model to allow them to evaluate which orientations are likely to suit clients and their situations. Fourth, practitioners frequently describe themselves as operating from eclectic or integrative stances (Norcross, 2015, 2016). Sport, exercise, and performance psychologists can use Egan and Reese’s model to piece together the knowledge and skills they adopt from different orientations into coherent ways of working. There are many orientations and approaches, and the current book surveys only a few. Egan and Reese’s model can help practitioners boil them down to render the essential and common features visible.

Similar to other helping disciplines, sport, exercise, and performance psychology is a diverse, multi-layered, and dynamic community subject to fads, cycles, and trends. Interventions popular today may fall out of favour tomorrow, or more likely, undergo repackaging to suit the changing client base. When consultants change the way they operate, ideally they contemplate advances in scientific knowledge, although evidence indicates otherwise; many professionals rarely, if at all, consider research when making practice-based decisions (Castonguay et al., 2010). Egan and Reese’s (2018) model can assist practitioners when they evaluate the usefulness of trendy interventions. Equally, the model can remind consultants of knowledge and skills they have forgotten or that receive less airtime in the community but are still relevant to clients. Having set the stage and lowered the backdrop by describing the helping process, we now shine the chapter’s spotlight on the role of theoretical orientations.

Theoretical orientations

Defining theoretical orientations

Theoretical orientations explain the causes and consequences of human behaviour, both adaptive and maladaptive, along with the mechanisms of therapeutic change (Norcross, 1985). Poznanski and Mclennan (1995) stated that a theoretical orientation

refers to an organized set of assumptions, which provides a counselor with a theory-based framework for (a) generating hypotheses about a client’s experience and behavior, (b) formulating a rationale for specific treatment interventions, and (c) evaluating the ongoing therapeutic process.

(p. 412)

Theoretical orientations guide practitioners when they help clients. Orientations address topics including the (a) origins and consequences of behaviour and personality; (b) types of overarching therapeutic goals; (c) methods of assessing, describing, and influencing clients; and (d) components and roles of the practitioner-client relationship. Theoretical orientations help practitioners decide how direct to be with clients, their levels of activity and spontaneity, their openness and personal distance from clients, the emphasis they give to clients’ observable behaviours or verbal reports, and their acceptance of conscious or unconscious processes (Poznanski & McLennan, 1995).

Debate occurs over the boundaries of a theoretical orientation. Professionals commonly focus on the role of practitioners’ personalities and their methods of helping clients (Kramer 2018). In this chapter, we suggest that consultants’ personalities are separate from their orientations but influence the models they adopt as a basis of helping. Research reveals there can be close coherence between practitioners’ theoretical orientations and their broader worldviews (McEwan, Tod, & Eubank, 2019), but that is different to suggesting that theoretical orientations are part of a person’s personality. Consultants may draw on different orientations depending on the clients they are helping and the circumstances in which they are operating. Along a similar line, theoretical orientations are not equivalent to the interventions and methods practitioners use with clients. Although theoretical orientations influence consultants’ selection of methods, the clients they help and the circumstances they work within also shape practitioners’ decisions. For example, an individual who typically, or prefers, to adopt a non-directive person-centred model may use cognitive behavioural interventions in a directive manner if doing so suits the client and context.

Useful theoretical orientations have a number of characteristics. First, they give practitioners a clear and useful language by which to describe clients’ behaviour. Second, they provide plausible and coherent explanations for the causes and consequences of human action, thoughts, feelings, and situations. Third, they account for variation in the human condition. Why do some people flourish and others stagnate? Fourth, they provide insights about how to help people address their physical, psycholo...