2 What psychological interventions?
A wide range of psychological interventions has been used to reduce the risk of injury (Brewer and Redmond, 2017), including those summarised in interactive Figure 2 below.
The exact techniques that a sport and exercise psychologist would recommend would depend on the individual’s needs as Amir demonstrates in the quote below.
I would always recommend psychological interventions on an individual basis. What’s right for one person isn’t necessarily right for the next person. I like to find out about the individual and conduct a kind of needs analysis first. When prescribing stress management strategies, I often try to match the type of symptoms with the intervention. For example, if the individual is experiencing somatic or physical symptoms such as muscle tension then I might prescribe a physically based intervention like controlled breathing. Likewise, if the individual is experiencing cognitive or psychological symptoms like negative thoughts, I might prescribe a more cognitive intervention like functional self-talk. Often though it’s not as simple as that and people experience a combination of symptoms.
(Amir, sport and exercise psychologist)
You will learn more about some of the psychological interventions that could potentially be used to reduce the risk of sport injury as you progress through this session. As discussed in Session 2 it is important to remind you about professional boundaries and that some psychological interventions should only be prescribed by an HCPC-registered sport and exercise psychologist (in the UK).