To the Student
The study of human behavior is at once complex and important, and thus it has intrigued people for many years. This book focuses on human behavior in certain types of situations’namely sport and exercise settings. In essence, it examines what motivates people, what angers them, and what scares them; how they regulate their thoughts, feelings, and emotions; and how their behaviors can become more effective.
Perhaps you want to be a physical educator, a coach, a fitness instructor, an athletic trainer, or even a sport psychologist. Or maybe you are simply curious about how people behave in sport and exercise settings and why they behave in these ways. In any case, Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology has been designed to meet your need for information. It will, we hope, provide you with an overview of sport and exercise psychology, bridge the gap between research and practice, convey fundamental principles of professional practice, and capture some of the excitement of the world of sport and exercise.
YOUR ROAD MAP TO UNDERSTANDING SPORT AND EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY
Most of you do not get into a car to begin a long trip without a destination in mind and a plan to get there. You pick a specific place and use a road map or GPS device to find the best, most enjoyable route.
Ironically, though, some students read textbooks with no plan and no educational destination (other than getting the next day’s assignment completed on time). Failing to set a goal and plan of study with your textbooks is much like driving without a destination and road map or GPS: You spend a lot of time driving aimlessly.
Your understanding of sport and exercise psychology will come easier if you set a plan and keep a goal in mind while reading this text. It is our goal to provide you with the most up-to-date and relevant knowledge and information within the field of sport and exercise psychology. However, we want to bring you this knowledge in a manner that you find user-friendly and can thus easily implement it into your daily personal and professional lives. We do not feel that your journey will be complete until you are able to take this information and use it in everyday life. You can use this introduction as a road map to achieve two goals: (a) a better understanding of sport and exercise psychology and (b) an understanding of how to use or apply sport and exercise psychology knowledge.
This book has seven parts:
1. Beginning Your Journey
2. Learning About Participants
3. Understanding Sport and Exercise Environments
4. Focusing on Group Processes
5. Improving Performance
6. Enhancing Health and Well-Being
7. Facilitating Psychological Growth and Development
Although these parts and their chapters work well when read in order, your instructor may elect to change the order to fit your particular class. That’s okay, because we have designed each chapter to stand alone, without depending on knowledge from the previous chapters. The lone exception to this guideline is chapter 1, which we recommend should always be read first, especially if this is your introduction to the field. If it helps, think of the chapters as individual paving stones that complete a stone path. Each individual paving stone (chapter) is necessary to create a path that leads you to a destination, but you can jump over stones, skip lightly on each one, or start the path from the opposite end. All of the paving stones are necessary to complete the stone path, but you don’t have to “step” on each stone to reach the end of the path.
The practical set up of each chapter will help you move through the text in whatever order your professor assigns. The model (pages x-xi) will help you tie together the specifics into a coherent whole. In it you’ll see eight stops’points of interest’on your journey to understanding sport and exercise psychology. Part I, Beginning Your Journey, is where you prepare for the journey. In chapter 1 you are introduced to the field of sport and exercise psychology, its history, and its contemporary directions and likely paths for the future. You will also learn how closely research and practice are linked and how you can make that connection even stronger.
The next stop on your journey is part II, Learning About Participants. Effective teaching, coaching, and training rest on understanding the psychological makeup of the people you work with’what makes them tick! Hence, the three chapters in this part focus on individuals, whether they are exercisers, athletes, rehabilitation clients, or physical education students. This material will help you understand people in terms of their personalities, motivational orientations, achievement motivation, competitiveness, and anxiety levels.
You must also consider the situations or environments in which people function. For this reason part III, Understanding Sport and Exercise Environments, examines major environmental influences affecting sport and exercise participants. You will learn about competition and cooperation and how feedback and reinforcement influence people.
The fourth stop on your journey is part IV, Focusing on Group Processes, which focuses on the workings of groups. Most teachers, coaches, and exercise leaders work with groups, so it is critical to understand team dynamics, group cohesion, leadership, and communication. Topics such as group cohesion, social loafing, group structure, and leadership styles are included in this section.
Enhancing individual performance is a mainstay of sport and exercise psychology. For this reason part V, Improving Performance, is one of the longest stops on our journey, consisting of six chapters. Here you will learn how to develop a psychological skills training program to regulate arousal, use imagery to improve performance, enhance self-confidence, set effective goals, and strengthen concentration.
Part VI, Enhancing Health and Well-Being, introduces you to the joint roles of psychology and physical development in motivating people to exercise, enjoying the benefits of exercise, treating athletic injuries, and aiding rehabilitation. You will find critical information here about combating substance abuse, eating disorders, exercise addiction, and overtraining.
One of the most important functions that sport and exercise professionals have is helping people with their psychological growth and character development. Part VII, Facilitating Psychological Growth and Development, concludes the text with discussions of three special issues: children in sport, aggression, and character development.
The book ends with a short section we have aptly called Continuing Your Journey. Here, we reinforce the research-to-practice orientation of the text. After studying the seven parts of the book you will have not only an excellent idea of what sport and exercise psychology involves but also specific knowledge of how to use the information effectively.
A map does little good if it’s not used. This is also true of the model we have created. So, before you read a chapter, see where it fits into the overall journey. And as you read each chapter, ask yourself these questions:
1. What can I do as a professional to use this information effectively?
2. What personal and situational considerations will influence how I will use and modify this information?
3. Will my primary goal in using this information be to help participants enhance performance, develop and grow personally, or a combination of these objectives?
4. How can I integrate this information and derive efficient, effective strategies for practice?
ASSISTANCE FOR YOUR JOURNEY
We have tried to make this book user-friendly in several ways, both through features in the textbook as well as through an online resource.
Textbook Features
There are many items in the textbook that will help you identify and retain key information. Key points in each chapter summarize information that is crucial to remember. Here’s an example of a key point:
Sidebars highlight new research, case studies, and research-to-practice examples. Case studies are identified by this icon:
At the end of each chapter, you’ll find Learning Aids’a chapter summary, a list of key terms, review questions, and critical thinking questions’that will let you know if you have a thorough grasp of the chapter’s content and that will give you an opportunity for in-depth analysis of important topics.
Online Study Guide
The online study guide (OSG) is also a valuable resource to use as you go through the book. The OSG was specifically developed to help students understand the material and concepts in this edition. The OSG includes such things as quizzes (programmed learning with answers provided, so you can better learn and understand the material in the text) and other activities to help make the material in the text come alive and give you a chance to reflect on the concepts in depth. We have interviewed some of the top sport psychologists in the world so that you can hear them talk about their work, research, and how they relate to the material in the text. You’ll also be able to view video clips and complete interactive self-assessments. Throughout the book you’ll see callouts to these different types of OSG activities:
Listen: Each part opener begins with an invitation to listen to an audio interview. You’ll then have a chance to record your comments on what you’ve heard in a downloadable document and submit it to your instructor, if requested.
Journey: Each part opener also contains an activity that asks an open-ended, thought-provoking question to help you to further explore the phase of your journey through the field of sport psychology that you are learning about.
Discover: Throughout each chapter, you’re directed to activities that ask you to complete self-assessments or apply concepts you learned about in the text to real-world situations. Many of these activities provide you with a downloadable document that provides a framework for you to record your responses. If your instructor assigns an activity as homework, you can save the document and then submit it electronically or print the document and turn it in by hand.
Quiz: Each chapter has a practice quiz that you can take to check your understanding of key concepts covered in that chapter. You’ll get feedback on which answers are correct and will be able to retake the quiz as many times as you like.
You can access the activities by going to www.HumanKinetics.com/FoundationsOfSportAndExercisePsychology. In some cases, your instructor might offer these activities in some other format. If your instructor has you access the activities through a learning management system (LMS), follow the instructor-provided instructions. We hope you find this OSG informative, interesting, and enjoyable’just another way to enhance the learning and appreciation of the material presented in this textbook. Begin your OSG experience by completing these first two activities:
