Gender Inequality in Sports
When it comes to gender inequity in sports, one blog post cannot do the conversation justice. There are many conversations and threads that must be discussed. Moreover, conversations need to be turned into action. However, we must begin somewhere. This blog post hopes to serve as primer to introduce the topic in hopes of inspiring more conversations and action to bring about lasting change.
What Do Rugby and Artistic Swimming Have in Common? Part 2
Welcome to part 2 in this series about artistic swimming and rugby. Hopefully, last week encouraged everyone to learn more about both of these sports and any associated biases. Now it is time to look at these two sports through the lens of stigma. While these two sports may seem vastly different, how they are impacted by stigma brings them closer together as they are often misunderstood by the general public. These misconceptions include the nature of their athleticism, the intense physical impacts, and the gender-based stereotypes. Let’s begin our exploration on the impacts of stigma on these two sports.
What Do Rugby and Artistic Swimming Have in Common? Part 1
How often do we even think about comparing rugby and artistic swimming? Probably not too often, however, there is an important reason to explore these two sports and next week we will dive more deeply into this topic.
Building Creativity for Athletes
How often do people hear creativity, sports, and athletes in the same sentence? Chances are rare, if at all Yet, creativity can be one of the most essential topics in sports (Fardilha & Allen, 2020; Rasmussen et al., 2019). When we think about athletic creativity from a sport psychology perspective, many minds go to encouraging exploration, varied training, and open-ended problem solving, thus encouraging athletes to expand their flexibility and ability to identify novel solutions. The result is increased confidence and performance from the exposure to the above ideas, in addition to other topics such as the introduction of novel ideas, the use of visualization, and adapting creative mental exercises, like role-playing and including creative non-sport activities. Mouth full! Yep! So let’s break this down a little bit and make it fun.
Sport Psychology and Training Indoors
Chances are that many people dread the thought of training indoors because the experience is not the same. There are not the same cues that people experience when they are outdoors training such as the wind, sights, and a chance to practice cornering. That can make the experience not as enjoyable. We all lack the opportunity to practice certain skills, like cornering, but at the same time gain the opportunity to practice others, like cadence.
The Beauty of Winter
Winter mental health themes often focus around Seasonal Affective Disorder, winter blues, Depressive symptoms, isolation, anxiety, etc. All of these themes are important to discuss, as they are very real. And there is also room to spend some time inviting the beauty of nature and the winter season into the discussion remembering that winter is one of the seasons of the Earth and has its lessons for us.
Mind-Body Connection
The mind-body connection is the intricate, bi-directional relationship that exists between our thoughts, emotions, and physical health and the body. What is important to note here is that we are talking about a connection. The mind and the body are not two separate entities, rather they are interconnected and influence each other. There is growing research that is now demonstrating how both the mind and the body have the potential to impact cardiovascular health negatively and positively (Levine, 2019).
The Masks We Wear: Through the Lens of Persona, Masking, and Code-Switching
This is the time of year when people who celebrate Halloween begin to think about their costumes or maybe they already have their costume picked out by this point. Some of these costumes may include a mask to create the desired effect. Masks, however, serve other purposes besides dressing up for Halloween, and some of these purposes and variants will be discussed in this post.
Changing the Stigma Surrounding Mental Health
Mental health and stigma are words that are often used together, though there is hope for a future where that is not the case. The stigma surrounding mental health is insidious, embedded on many levels and can have harmful consequences. This post hopes to explore the topic of mental health stigma in hopes of inspiring everyone to do their part to help break this stigma, which can only be done if we all work together.
Why Mental Health?: Through the Lens of Emotional Regulation, Social Connection, and Systemic Environmental Systems
Yes, mental health. I said it, and it is a topic that must keep coming up because of how essential it is to our overall well-being and quality of life. Mental health, like physical health, exists on a continuum (Menefee et al., 2022). Think about this as shades of gray between white and black. Mental health is not all or nothing nor is it an isolated aspect of being human. Mental health is linked to our physical health, emotional well being, and social relationships.
The Power of Narrative and Reframing
We often craft narratives or stories in our head about events, experiences, people, places, etc., which, given what the brain is programmed to do, makes sense. In the process, we may adjust, add, or omit facts or aspects to make the story fit. When we craft narratives or stories our brain accesses the parts that are involved in emotional, processing, memory, and social cognition (Martinez-Conde et al., 2019). While there is plenty of neuroscience research that talks about the specifics, we will not dive into that here and now. If you would like to, the research is interesting and Google Scholar is a great tool for investigating this topic. Our focus takes us down a different path.
Welcome Autumn!
The green of summer fades into fiery reds, dazzling yellows, and soft oranges. The flowers of summer bear fruit and we begin to enjoy winter squash, apples, cranberries, and sweet potatoes. Along with the unique astronomical phenomena and the beautiful change in color palette, this time of year often elicits different themes that invite reflection.
Emotions: Mind and/or Body
Have no fear, we are not going to talk about neuroscience today regarding emotions. Instead, we are going to investigate something about emotions. Do emotions begin in the mind or the body? Before you keep reading, take a guess about the answer. Most importantly, keep track of your train of thought about how you arrived at this answer.
Inviting Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is totally different from being self-centered or self-indulgent. These terms are often conflated and a detriment to self-compassion, and to us and our mental health. While the blog on this website has brought self-compassion before, this post really makes self-compassion the focus for inclusion in everyday life.
Mindfulness and the Mind-Body Connection
The body gets lost in the mix. So, what do you think happens? The body loses trust in you that it will be heard or listened to in times of challenge and in times of peace. So the lesson becomes about building that trust back.
Porges Polyvagal Theory: The Six States of the Autonomic Nervous System
Polyvagal Theory was introduced by Stephen Porges, PhD focuses on the role of the autonomic nervous system, particularly the vagus nerve, as it relates to the physiological/psychological states related to our daily behavior. There are three defining principles (Polyvagal Institute, n.d.):
Hierarchy of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) per Polyvagal Theory (PVT)
Neuroception
Co-regulation
Psychological Factors and Sport Injuries: What a Sport and Performance Professional Can Do? Part 2
In Part 1 of this post, there was a big information dump. This post picks up with an example. Hopefully, there has been enough time between the two posts to allow for different thought processes to occur to help with integrating the material. Let’s remind ourselves where we are headed. The example that we will discuss today is of a female-identifying athlete with an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury to help demonstrate the nuance required of a sport and performance professional (SPP) to help an injured athlete.
Eating Disorders in Male Athletes
There has been a lot of focus on female-identifying athletes and eating disorders. While necessary and important, it is essential to not forget about male athletes. They are also susceptible to eating disorders.
Sexual Orientation Stigma in Sports
There are often topics in sport and sport psychology that are challenging to discuss given that, in many ways, sport is a microcosm of the larger culture. That said, many athletes remain silent about important issues and aspects of their lives, such as sexual orientation. So what can be done by sport and performance professionals (SPPs) to support athletes who continue to hide this aspect of their lives in order to continue to play?
Psychological Factors and Sport Injuries: What Can a Sport and Performance Professional Do? Part 1
When looking at the topic of injuries and injury prevention and rehabilitation, much must be attended to to provide the best care to an athlete. Sport injury risk is multifactorial, and any prevention program must account for this nature (Gledhill et al., 2018).