When COVID-19 Introduced Sport Psychology to the Internet

While many people struggled, complained, and floundered during the COVID-19 pandemic, many sport psychology practitioners thrived amid chaotic, disease-riddled circumstances.

Would you expect anything less from professionals who train the psychological flexibility (like resilience and mental toughness) of athletes, physicians, military, and other elite performers?

Resourcefulness under seemingly impossible circumstances enabled sport psychology professionals to create opportunity and growth.

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Such “activation” is what elite athletes and other performers do that sparks their success.

When things go wrong and anxiety or other distracting emotion or thoughts show up, people often respond in a repressed or ineffective way that can limit optimal performance. Elite performers activate under such circumstances—they respond with an energetic “what do I need to do now?” approach that enables success. That’s what sport psychology trains. Think of recently retired National Football League quarterback Tom Brady for an understanding of activation at its best.

Activation resulted in resourceful, empowering solutions to pandemic-related problems daunting sport psychology practice.

Pandemic Predicament

“When COVID happened, we realized how incredibly isolated we were, and how our athletes had to stop training [due to COVID],” explained Emily Leeming, Ph.D., a behavior psychologist and sport psychology practitioner. She also founded and serves as president of the Health, Sport, and Human Performance Special Interest Group (S.I.G.) within the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS).

What Is “Contextual Behavioral Science?”

According to the ACBS website:

“Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS) is the research paradigm underlying the development of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/Training) and RFT (Relational Frame Theory). It is a coherent, multi-leveled system of philosophical assumptions, scientific values, and methodological commitments that drive theory and technology development.”

In plain English, CBS provides a unified theoretical and philosophical base for effective, cutting-edge, and research-proven approaches to mental health and sport psychology training and treatment.

ACT—one of those methodologies—is a form of treatment/training that teaches how to relate to thoughts, feelings, and other internal experiences in a manner allowing for behavioral effectiveness in life, sport, and high-performance related activities. ACT is considered part of the “third wave" and the most current version of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT).

RFT explores the relationship between language and cognitive processes that produce thinking and its resultant impact on emotion and behavior.

ACT and RFT are revolutionizing sport psychology and are rapidly becoming the theoretical approaches of choice for sport psychology practitioners.

Back to the Pandemic Predicament

Continued Leeming, “For many of the athletes, it was the first time they felt the need to train the psychological domain of sport, because they didn’t feel like they needed it before (the pandemic), and they kind of just functioned and pushed through adverse events.

“We saw a huge increase in the quest for services, but we were incredibly limited in our ability to access those populations and those new requests. When we started to adjust to the pandemic, it really focused us as professionals to think creatively about how to address those needs in new ways.”

Technology to the Rescue

Virtual platforms—the bane of school-age and college students everywhere—became the solution to the problem. That technology allowed sport psychology professionals to address the needs of athletes and others involved with challenging performance endeavors.

Pandemic shutdown, and geographically isolated, athletes were enabled to connect with professionals via virtual platforms such as Zoom. Convenient internet-enabled access resulted in an increase of athletes and other performers seeking professional psychological training that exceeded pre-pandemic numbers. Technology helped spread the word of sport psychology

As the pandemic raged, practitioners learned new and creative ways to address and engage athletes with teaching and training activities designed for virtual presentation.

Perhaps the most valuable—and surprising— contribution of virtual platforms is its role in opening a previously hidden door for addressing an increasing need for learning, development, and support for professional practitioners.

Psychology Essential Reads

Is a Texas Bitcoin Miner Making People Sick?

What Is a Scientific Model?

Technology’s Role in Practitioner Support

“I really didn’t come to full awareness of this (the value of virtual platforms for professional development) until the World ACBS Virtual Conference in 2020, where we were meeting—virtually—as a very small special interest group,” explained Leeming. “From that meeting, we connected with people from at least six different countries and a variety of professionals who were trying to meet the needs of their athletes, so we decided to carry this on into the next month in the virtual world SIG-based platform.

The SIG, founded in 2014, was basically dormant—or as Leeming described it “on life support”—prior to the 2020 virtual conference. Since then, the group has awakened and thrived with learning and support opportunities for participants. Monthly SIG meetings have continued ever since and what started with 18-20 participants has ballooned to over 300 extended members from around the world.

“We really realized the last two years that the world is very big and also very small,” observed Leeming. “If you play it right, you can really get some professional development. Our SIG is incredibly diverse. We have medical physicians, athletes, coaches, and college freshmen. We have people that work with teams, individual sports, arts, research, universities, and the military. It’s all over the place, all coming together.”

“We [the cognitive-behavioral sciences] have principles, processes, theories, and a unified philosophy—that can explain the function of behavior,” continued Leeming. “It gives us the best tool to determine if what we’re doing works. I don’t think they [SIG participants] get that level of scientific coherence from other sources, and they’re getting it, monthly, from our SIG.”

Virtual platforms have allowed students and other researchers to obtain data in a COVID environment that had previously limited access to human subjects, thus stifling scientific study. The SIG has also enabled professionals to assist each other to understand confusing data and statistics.

“They’ve really started to connect to the sciences,” Leeming reported. “They’re starting to evaluate and discern between what is good science and what is bad science.”

The SIG and its new BFF—virtual platforms—have provided connection for professionals seeking training, supervision, and consultation. Monthly meetings feature experts presenting research and practical training and discussion of material. The sessions have fostered virtual relationships that encourage participants to connect on an individual basis.

This writer has benefitted from SIG participation, consulting with practitioners from Great Britain, the Netherlands, Columbia, and Sweden, not to mention professionals across the United States. None of that would have happened without the benefit of virtual platforms and the SIG.

Job hunting has also been aided by SIG relationships. Students and practitioners seeking employment in a wide range of settings, including the military, Major League Baseball, and collegiate sports, have discovered new opportunities. SIG connectivity has also been a boon to college students seeking optimal graduate training programs.

COVID, technology, and the ACBS Health, Sport, and Human Performance SIG have teamed up to create a formidable, powerful triumvirate. Great things happen when people activate during challenging circumstances.