Posts tagged AASP

Hi everyone!

Here is a guest post from your sister program!

We have just spent two and a half weeks at the Intensive Course in Amsterdam. The Intensive course for the European Master sure is intensive! 22 lectures in 17 days is a lot to take in… but since the lectures were hosted by inspiring teachers like legendary Glyn Roberts (Oslo) and interesting new subjects were presented, like Christophe Gernigons (Montpellier) research about momentum in sport, it wasn’t hard to keep the energy up! Each student has his or her own favorite area, but I think that the passion each researcher showed for their area made each subject interesting. In addition to explaining some of the 32 theories about motivation Glyn took some time to tell us about his path during his career, as educator, researcher, applied sport psychologist and president of AASP, NASPSPA, IAAP and FEPSAC. That was very interesting for us rookies! 

The mix of new findings from the researchers’ world and practical workshops was really good, since most of us didn’t have that much applied experience so far. Erwin Apitzsch (Lund), Reinhard Stelter (Copenhagen), Vana Hutter (Amsterdam) and Rico Schuijers (Amsterdam) shared some of their exercises with us. I especially liked the lecture Vana added this year to the IC about peer-counseling. We got the chance to try two different strategies how to do a peer-counseling session. The strategies were called “Incident method” and “Gossip method”. I found them very useful and will sure use them with my colleges back home.

In addition to the great new academically knowledge that we have added to our tool box, we also had the opportunity to get to know each other - colleagues from all over the world. I believe that we all made friendships that will last for a very long time! We are 21 students from twelve different countries, so we all had many interesting discussions about sports, psychology, the working situation in our own countries and well… almost everything  

During our spare time we went to visit Ajax’s facilities, the Olympic Stadium from 1928, had applied workshops, movie nights and of course enjoyed the life of Amsterdam!

I think I speak for everyone when I say that we all had a really good time and got an experience for life! It sure was intensive and a lot of hard work, but I would really recommend this course! I’m happy I got the chance!

Emelie Lindström is currently studying for her European Master in Sport and Exercise Psychology at Halmstad University (Sweden) and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain). Emelie is working half time for the Swedish Sailing Federation and has her own company called Sportsmind Sweden, doing applied sport psychology. Her main interests are team development and mental skills training for young athletes.

I hope you all enjoyed your summer experiences with the European Masters in Sport and Exercise Psychology Program. I know I did and only had one regret. Just when I was finally getting to know all of you it was time to leave.  

I also hope that you are enjoying your many internship and research experiences that you told me about in Leipzig this summer. While they usually involve a great deal of work (welcome to the world of sport psychology), I still can’t believe how much I enjoy learning about our field both from working with athletes, conducting coaching clinics, designing and carrying out research projects and reading the latest research and best practice reports.

While I saw many of you at the FEPSAC conference, which I thought was a great event, I also went to the AASP Conference in Hawaii last month and got to see Sammy and Montse (from the EMSEP Program) there.

Whenever I go to a conference, in addition to learning more about specific topics and techniques in which I am interested, one thing that I have found to be useful is to try to identify what big trends or lessons are evident that seem to cut across sessions and content areas. From this year’s AASP conference, for me, it was remembering and further recognizing how important developing good relationships are to being effective whether one is consulting, coaching, doing research or forming a network of peers to lean on when you need some help. That topic just came up in session after session.

For example, I participated in a diversity session and everyone who participated on the panel talked about the importance of appreciating cultural and other differences between those with whom we work, whether it is orphans playing games in rural Mexico or elite athletes who participate in sport cultures that differ from our own. In the Coleman Griffith keynote Gloria Balague talked about relationships being key to elite consulting effectiveness, whether it be establishing relationships with athletes or sport administrators. She also said that often in clinical psychology, the relationship between the provider and client is often found to be more important than the specific intervention technique used.  Another keynote speaker who works in educational psychology gave a great presentation on bullying and how often kids will watch someone being bullied and don’t agree with what is happening, but do not intervene because of concerns of how it will affect their peer group relationships. In other research, sessions creating caring and inviting motivational climates was correlated to life skills development.

For me, there were several take-homes from my overall observation that relationship building is key. First, relative to diversity, it is important to acknowledge differences and not be afraid to ask others what it is like to play a different sport or to be of a different race while at the same time appreciating cultural differences as something to embrace. With all the culture and sport background differences represented in your EMSEP program you certainly have a great opportunity to ask how those in your cohort differ and are similar to you and those athletes with whom you have worked and the best ways to form strong relationships with athletes and exercisers from different cultural backgrounds and sport contexts.

Second, I need to learn more about emotional intelligence so I can better understand myself and the messages I might unknowingly send, as well as improving my skills at understanding and reading emotions in others. Contextual intelligence also seems to be related to this knowledge and something about which I would suggest we learn more.

Finally, Darrin Treasure’s performance keynote really got me thinking about how to use self-determination to empower those we work with so we can provide autonomous supportive motivational climates. Moreover, if you look at some of Bob Vallerand and his colleagues’ work on this topic they offer some very practical strategies for doing so.

So what do you think?

·        Is the ability to form relationships a key to our effectiveness and more important than the specific intervention strategies we use?

·        How can we get better at doing so?

·        How do we have productive relationships with people at different points in the developmental span and who are very different from us?

·        How do we handle it if we disagree with some aspect of a client’s culture (e.g., girls are deemed inferior to boys)? Can a strong relationship be developed if we disagree on some important ethical value?

Dan Gould is currently the director for the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports and professor in the department of kinesiology at Michigan State University.  He is a former president of the Association for Applied Sports Psychology (AASP) and a certified AASP consultant.  He received his B.S. from SUNY Brockport in 1973, his M.S from the University of Washington in 1974, and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1978.