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Qualities and qualifications required for a sports psychologist - Coggle…
Qualities and qualifications required for a sports psychologist
Qualifications
Required
For sports psychology you need a degree in psychology accredited by (BPS) British Psychology Society, a BPS masters degree in sports and exercise psychology and 2 years of structured supervised practice on stage 2 of the BPS Qualification of Sport and Exercise Psychology. You'd also need 3 a levels or equivalent such as a Btec.
Improvements
I got a distinction in Psychology and got a Distinction* overall in my first year of college so I am hopefully heading to the equivalent of 3 a levels by the end of the second year. However I would most likely need to take further training because of not being able to do my Psychology exam due to COVID-19, my distinction was based from a few things such as gcses grades, classwork and my alice score.
Quality
Required
To be able to do sports psychology you need to have good communication skills while being confident so that you can talk to athletes about their feelings and be in charge of telling different options of how they could change their mindset for bettering performance. You need to have good communication skills because the athlete would have to you for help and not being talkative may make them feel uncomfortable.
What I have
I have good communication skills due to having experience of needing to speak to lots of people with confidence at a time for school presentations and dealing in customers in part time jobs.
Improvements
Although I can communicate well I don't think I'd be as good at talking about the athletes feelings and being confident with giving them the best advice possible and reassuring about performance etc. To get experience I could practice with friends or family
Quality
Required
In this type of work environment you need to be able to work under pressure and deal with stressful situations such as athletes breaking down in front of you or working under pressure to come up with a quick and effective solution. Throughout the career you will be in circumstances that you may be unsure of how to make them better and will be put under pressure.
What I have
Due to playing intense sports I have experience with working under pressure but i don't have experience within this field of work with working under pressure. Within the first year of sport science in psychology we had a short amount of time to work on a case study of an athlete who needed solutions.
Improvements
To improve in these areas i could do some work experiences through a placement or volunteering etc, this will help me to get some idea of the conditions that I will have to work in. I could also practice more case studies in psychology to be put under pressure to come up with solutions.
Quality
Required
Within sport psychology you are required to have analytical skills because after you observe a client you need to be able to analyse them to figure out what to do next and drawing logical conclusions at the end of the session. They should be familiar with research studies and established data when they make recommendations.
What I have
Through my time in education there has been a varied amount of situations where you have to analyse circumstances to come up with a solution in case studies within sport. Within my my first year of sport science in psychology we had different case studies where we would have to analyse a problem with an athlete and come up with solutions and figure out why they feel that way.
Improvement
To be able to improve in this area I could develop my knowledge on how to deal with certain situations so i will be able to observe better and analyse what solution is better depending on the circumstances.