Become a Certified Sports Psychology Coach. You can seamlessly integrate your new knowledge and certification into your existing career in fitness, coaching or personal development!

Sport psychology is the scientific study of people and their behaviors in sports and the practical application of that knowledge. Sport psychology coaches help people of all abilities increase sports and fitness performance while enhancing their overall enjoyment of physical activity.

Sports Psychology Coaches have endless opportunities to work with athletes ranging from beginning to professional and all points in between. Some Sports Psychology Coaches build businesses working with youth athletes. Others specialize in sports such as triathlon. Still other Sports Psychology Coaches work with teams in the college and pro ranks. There are no limits to what is possible for your career!

$157

When you become a Spencer Institute Certified Sports Psychology Coach, you will have two primary objectives, so you can help your clients achieve high-level performance and results.

These objectives are to understand how psychological factors affect an individual’s physical performance, and to understand how participation in sport and fitness affects a person’s psychological development, health and well-being. Sport psychology coaches deals with increasing performance by managing emotions and minimizing the psychological effects of injury and poor performance.

Most performance challenges that athletes and other fitness enthusiasts have are not always a result of poor conditioning, improper coaching or a lack of physical skills or technical ability. Obviously, these physical or mechanical factors can lower performance. However, when the pressure is on, the person or team that falls apart most often does so because of mental factors like nervousness, intimidation, lagging concentration, negativity, lack of confidence or an inability to release past mistakes. You, the Sports Psychology Coach, will guide your client to smoothly move through these challenges

A vital part of sports psychology is imagery; the process by which you can create, modify or strengthen pathways important to the coordination of your muscles, by training purely within your mind. Imagination is the driving force of imagery. As a Certified Sports Psychology Coach, you will help your clients create the images that take them to the top of their sport or activity of choice.

You will learn easy-to-use, high-level skills so you can become an essential part of your client’s success.

Here are some examples of areas of expertise you will master:

Achievement Motivation – our position on success and failure – are we striving to succeed or trying to avoid failing? As many coaches have stated, “Winners take responsibility and know where to place credit or blame, but Losers always look for excuses beyond their control.”

Achievement Orientation – our perception of how stable our ability level is. If we take a task approach, we believe that we can develop abilities, helping them grow and improve. If we take the ego approach, we believe that all our abilities are a part of who we are and there is nothing we can do to change them.

Affirmation – a positive statement of belief about ourselves. We write these statements to help us gain confidence in the choices we have made and to remind us that we are making progress. An affirmation is always written in first person and in present tense (i.e. “I am in control of my emotional response to criticism at all times.”). We repeat these affirmations several times each day in order to make them an integral part of our thought process. After all, what do we have to lose by thinking positively about our abilities at all times?

Analysis – a process developed by Sigmund Freud and his successors in which the analyst carries on extensive discussions with the client in order to examine their past behavior patterns and compare them with current ones so a hypothesis can be formed about why they behave as they do. With a sincere effort and some insight on the client’s part, they can eventually become self-analyzing, maintaining their own mental health continuously.

Anchoring – a technique used to make a strategy automatic. The subject associates a small physical action with a particular mental thought process. This may be something simple, like touching the thumb to the middle finger. The physical action triggers our mind to begin a specific process, perhaps a relaxation technique.

Arousal – our level of anxiety about a past, present, or future event. There are two types of arousal: (1) Trait arousal is your own personal “normal” level – it’s just how excited you usually are; (2) State arousal is the level at which you function during important and stressful events. As with most functions, there is an appropriate and helpful level of arousal, and a dysfunctional level. The arousal continuum indicates our relative level of anxiety (from none to extreme): sleepy – bored – interested – excited – anxious. Circumstances help determine the appropriate level of arousal for us, e.g. some churches appreciate excitement while others think it inappropriate. Being overly anxious is seldom useful to us in any situation, though it is sometimes unavoidable.

Attribution – how we explain the causes of our successes and failures. There are two measures of attribution: (1) Causal elements are the reasons we bring up, whether we emphasize their positive or negative impact – ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck; (2) Causal dimensions are the way we measure the types of reasons we use – internal/external, stable/unstable, controllable/uncontrollable. Therefore to say, “We lost because the other team was just better than we were.” is to use a causal element of ability and a causal dimension of external/stable/uncontrollable (even if those reasons are not objectively correct).

Autotelic – literally, “self projection”. It is our ability to fully put our entire energy and all our skills fully into whatever task is at hand. I sometimes use the phrase “active reading” or “active viewing” to refer to the same general principle – when we read a book, putting ourselves in the place of the character, visualizing what he sees, smelling even the smells, we are having an autotelic experience. It makes any activity worth doing simply for the fun of it.

Behavior Modification – a structured process by which we retrain ourselves or someone else to behave in a more productive way. By a careful application of reinforcement (and perhaps punishment), we condition the subject to behave the way we want them to behave (even if that is our self). I really like Reese’s Cups, and I would really like to improve my putting skills. If I decide that I will reward myself with a sweet whenever I make 4 of 10 putts from over 15 feet, I am engaging in my own behavior modification. This process occurs around us every day.

This Sports Psychology Coaching program complements other fitness and coaching certifications by rounding out your knowledge of human potential and mental training.

Get ready to take your career to the highest level by mastering the latest cutting edge sports psychology strategies and techniques.

What are my career options? How will I make a living with this credential?

The great thing about being a Certified Sport Psychology Coach is that you have endless career and business opportunities. Some primary careers include: coaching clients one-on-one in their home, your home, or your office. Many coaches coach in groups to help more people and earn more money per hour. In addition, you can seek out alternative (and frequently very lucrative career opportunities) as a blogger, writer, podcast host, author, online content provider, online video host or publisher of digital education products. You can also offer your services online to individuals, small groups or large groups. You can use fun online communication/collaboration platforms such Skype, Google Hangout or iChat for your coaching services. You can become an expert for authority websites such as WebMD, eHow and Livestrong.  You can become a frequent expert guest on podcasts, radio shows, TV talk shows, news programs or in industry publications. The list of opportunities is truly endless.  Nothing is hold you back. So, go make a difference today!

How will I get clients?

This is actually much easier than you may be thinking right now. Here are some examples: Facebook is an excellent resource. An account is free and building a fan page takes less than 5 minutes. You can advertise to very specific groups of people who want and need your services. Of course, you can also use Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and your other favorite social media platforms.  It’s 100% FREE. Create and post a press release about your business launch. It’s simple and free to syndicate your press releases across the web. Creating a blog for your business is very fast and essentially free. We have resources for your online marketing needs here. You can make training/coaching videos and post them to Youtube. When you offer this valuable free help, people get to know you and learn to like you. In return, they want to know more and they are directed back to your Facebook fan page or blog for details.  Of course, you can post your videos to all video sites for an even greater reach. Adding your business to Yelp is also a great idea.  It gets ranked high on Google which makes your job even easier. Make sure you also add your business profile to Google Local.  That’s another free and easy way to get clients. As for off-line client-getting strategies, you can do any of the following: attend local charity events, speak at community events, do a lunch-and-learn at a local business, volunteer for a local charity, distribute door hangers, post flyers, add a graphic/banner to your car, and the list goes on and on.  Once you get started, you’ll see how easy it is to do.  Now that you know what you need to do, you just need to implement and the clients will come in on a regular basis.

Register Now and Start Your Training Immediately!

$157