Andy Gillham owns and operates Ludus Consulting LLC (www.ludusconsulting.biz) focusing on performance enhancement for his clients. More specifically, Dr. Gillham works primarily with coaches and athletic administrators on improving systematic coach evaluation and providing targeted coach and program professional development opportunities. His Ph.D. is in Education with a major of sport and exercise psychology from the University of Idaho and has a B.S. in Fitness and a M.S. in Human Performance from University Wisconsin-LaCrosse.  He has been a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning Association since 2003 and is a certified consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. Dr. Gillham has helped athletes, coaches, administrators and business executives in Canada and the United States improve their performance.  Dr. Gillham works across competitive levels ranging from youth through professional levels for both coaches and athletes. In addition to his applied work, Dr. Gillham has published 12 peer-reviewed academic journal articles and has been an invited author for 12 more papers. He is also an Editorial Board member for two international coaching journals: International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching and International Sport Coaching Journal where he also serves as Section Editor for Resource Reviews.

Bridging the Gap Podcast

Adding Value and Staying Well-Rounded

Earlynn Lauer, MS, is a doctoral student and graduate teaching associate in the Sport Psychology/Motor Behavior program in the Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, & Sport Studies at The University of Tennessee. She is a certified tennis instructor through the Professional Tennis Registry, and her research interests focus on working with youth sport psychology professionals and coaches to integrate mental skills training in youth sports. In Fall 2017, she will be starting a position of Assistant Professor in Sport Psychology and Wellness at Western Illinois University. http://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/abs/10.1123/iscj.2016-0078

Integrating Mental Skills and Strategies Into Youth Sport Training: A Tool for Coaches

Dr Jennifer Cumming is a Reader in Sport and Exercise Psychology from the University of Birmingham (UK) and is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society.  She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) after completing a Post Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education in 2010 was awarded the 2012 Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Birmingham.  Prior to this, she was received her PhD in Kinesiology from the University of Western Ontario in 2001 and her MA from the University of Ottawa in 1999.    Dr Cumming’s current research focuses on community-based approaches to developing practical and culturally-tailored interventions for athletes and, more recently, individuals who are traditionally considered ‘harder to reach’.  She is interested in how individuals learn to effectively regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours with mental skills training, and determine the impact of self-regulation (or dysregulation) on performance, health, and well-being.  Whereas sport psychology customarily focuses on mental skills as a regulatory capacity that athletes use in competitive and non-competitive situations, she more broadly uses this knowledge to support health-related quality of life in communities that are more challenging to engage, such as homeless adolescents.    Dr Cumming is the Primary Investigator of large funded study (2014-2020) to co-develop, co-implement, and co-evaluate the Mental Skills Training for Life™ programme as part of community-based participatory action research with a large supported housing service.  She was nominated for the University of Birmingham’s Founders’ Award for Excellence in Policy Advancement in 2015 and Enterprising Birmingham’s Most Innovative Collaboration award in 2017.  Her work has also been recognised as good practice by Public Health England and is being used to inform interventions for preventing and reducing homelessness in the UK.  She has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers and is the current co-editor of Imagination, Cognition and Personality. 

Developing imagery ability effectively: A guide to layered stimulus response training

“Drive on”: The relationship between psychological variables and effective squad leadership. By Gilson, Todd A.; Dix, Melissa A.; Lochbaum, Marc Military Psychology, Vol 29(1), Jan 2017, 58-67. Abstract The U.S. Reserve Officer Training Program (ROTC) conducts systematic assessments of cadets’ leadership abilities during field training exercises (FTX) to assess their leadership abilities. While cadets in ROTC programs learn specific tactical operation procedures to augment FTX performances, much less is known about the relationship between psychological variables and squad leadership performance. To this end, 220 cadets completed self-efficacy, psychological flexibility, and grit questionnaires, which were then compared to FTX performance scores. Results underscored that only self-efficacy was significantly related to cadets’ squad leadership ability. Furthermore, prior service in the U.S. Army had no effect on the performance score one attained, highlighting an interesting paradox. Therefore, while self-efficacy can be cultivated through prior experiences, it seems more prudent to educate ROTC cadets on how to apply psychological skills to bolster self-efficacy in preparation for upcoming challenging leadership experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved) http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2016-46137-001 Todd Gilson serves as the Director for University Honors at Northern Illinois University. In this role, Todd oversees an Honors Program with over 1,000 students from all six undergraduate colleges at NIU. Todd's line of research focuses on applying the core sport psychology principles of self-efficacy and leadership development to NCAA collegiate athletes and US Army ROTC cadets, which has resulted in over 30 peer-reviewed publications in such outlets as: Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, Military Psychology, and Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Professionally, Todd also serves as the Secretary-Treasurer for the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP). http://cedu.niu.edu/knpe/about/faculty-and-instructors/gilson-todd.shtml Twitter: @ToddAGilson https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Todd_Gilson2  

“Drive on”: The relationship between psychological variables and effective squad leadership.

Nick Holt is a Professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation at the University of Alberta, where he leads the Child & Adolescent Sport & Activity lab. He is interested in psychosocial aspects of youth sport and physical activity participation, and studies issues including parenting, peer interactions, coaching, and free play. He adopted a Positive Youth Development (PYD) perspective. He is currently leading a Canada-wide knowledge translation project. Links: PYDSportNET Twitter: @PYDsportNET Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/PYDSportNET/ Website: http://www.positivesport.ca/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVzZY6YC66M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsuckZK78rM  

Child & Adolescent Sport & Activity Lab

Dr. Alyson Crozier researches in the area of health, exercise and sport psychology, with a specific interest in group dynamics and social influence. Specifically, she examines how the people that surround us, and ones perceptions of those people, influence ones thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in both sport and exercise settings. One area she is particularly interested in is how social norms (i.e., what behaviour most people engage in & what behaviours others approve of) relate to athlete effort and individual physical activity patterns. Alyson completed her Ph.D. at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada in 2014, and is now a Lecturer at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia.  If you have any further questions about her research, you can contact her at alyson.crozier@unisa.edu.au

Examining the Effects of Normative Messages on Perceived Effort in Sport

Eric M. Martin joined the faculty at Boise State University in 2016. He earned a Ph.D. in Kinesiology with a concentration in Psychosocial Aspects of Sport and Physical Activity from the Department of Kinesiology at Michigan State University. Through his work at Michigan State, Dr. Martin was involved in a variety of projects that have investigated positive youth development programs, parent attitudes toward sport, and youth perceptions of the sport environment and how these environments impact youth development. Dr. Martin’s primary research interests include the development and consequences of sport passion and how to best structure the youth sport environment to benefit all involved. His research has been published in a variety of journals including The Sport Psychologist, The Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, and The International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. In his spare time he enjoys playing and watching sports as well as spending time outdoors with his wife, Kristen, and son, Jamison. https://hs.boisestate.edu/kinesiology/eric-martin/

Sport experiences of Division I collegiate athletes and their perceptions of the importance of specialization

About Matt Cuccaro, Ed.M. Passionate about personal growth and the development of high performance team cultures, Matt has more than a decade of experience working with athletes, coaches, parents, businesses and educators on the mental aspects of elite performance. As a Performance Consultant with Telos Sport Psychology Coaching, Matt assists the development of individuals and teams from the junior level to the highest professional ranks through workshops, individual meetings, speaking engagements and publications. He currently leads programming at Sea Pines Resort, Smith Stearns Tennis Academy and the Junior Players Golf Academy. For nine years, he served as Director of Mental Training for Junior Sports Corporation (International Junior Golf Academy and Ivan Lendl International Junior Tennis Academy) in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina where numerous All-American student-athletes continue to emerge from the culture created under his guidance. Matt received his Master of Education from Boston University in Counseling/Sport Psychology and continues to be an active member of the Association of Applied Sport Psychology. Follow him on Twitter & Instagram: @MentalCoachMatt Reach him via e-mail: matt@telos-spc.com

Accepting Challenges and Learning from Failure

Guest: Betsy Shoenfelt Dr. Betsy Shoenfelt, University Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at Western Kentucky University (WKU), is the director of the WKU Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychology Graduate Program. She received her Ph.D. in 1983 from LSU in I-O Psychology with minors in Sport Psychology and Statistics. She is a licensed I-O Psychologist, a Certified Consultant and Fellow with the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, and a member of the USOC Sport Psychology and Mental Skills Registry. Shoenfelt has 30+ years of consulting experience in business, industry, government, education, and sports. In sports, she works with teams and individually with coaches and athletes training mental skills, team building, and enabling performance excellence in volleyball, basketball, baseball, softball, soccer, swimming, and golf at the intercollegiate, Olympic, and professional levels.   Links:   Website: http://people.wku.edu/betsy.shoenfelt/   Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Betsy_Shoenfelt   Additional link:   http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21520704.2016.1138264?journalCode=uspa20

Focus, Intensity, and Tenacity (FIT) Training: A relapse prevention-based intervention to stop the downward spiral

Guest: Claudia Robazza Claudio Robazza is an Associate Professor of Methods and didactics of motor activities at the Faculty of Movement Sciences, University of Chieti, Italy. He earned a master degree in Physical Education, a master degree in Psychology, and a PhD in Sciences and Techniques of Physical Activities and Sports from the University Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France. As a sport psychologist, he has been working with top level athletes of different sports, including golf, archery, modern pentathlon, rugby, and he is currently involved with the Italian shooting team. He has conducted field-based studies in physical education, motor learning, and sport performance domains, and his primary research interest is in the area of performance-related emotions, performance optimization, and motor learning. He has published numerous refereed journal articles, and is the author of several book chapters and books. He is also an associate editor of Psychology of Sport and Exercise, consulting editor of Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, advisory board member of Sport Sciences for Health, and co-director of Giornale Italiano di Psicologia dello Sport (Italian Journal of Sport Psychology).   In the 2015, he received the Ema Geron Award from the FEPSAC (European Federation of Sport Psychology) in recognition of his exceptional national contribution to the development of sport and exercise psychology. In the same year, he also received the Diploma of Honour – Bronze Medal from the ISSF (International Shooting Sport Federation) in appreciation of his exceptional service to the shooting sports.   Links:   Email:  c.robazza@unich.it   Website: http://www.queensu.ca/skhs/faculty-and-staff/faculty/luc-martin   Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Claudio_Robazza/publications   Additional link:   http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029212000532   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27253427   http://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/abs/10.1123/tsp.2015-0035

Multi-Action Plan Model and Psychobiosocial States

Andreas Stenling, PhD Current Position: Researcher, Department of Psychology, Umeå University   Research interests: Leadership and motivational processes in various contexts (e.g., sport, work) Transfer of training Sport injury rehabilitation, prediction, and prevention Physical activity, cognitive function, and mental health across the life span Applications of statistical methods in sport and exercise psychology research   Contact and information: Email: Andreas.stenling@umu.se Personal website: http://www.psy.umu.se/om-institutionen/personal/andreas-stenling Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andreas_Stenling Twitter: @AStenling Article: http://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/abs/10.1123/jsep.2016-0084  

Transfer of Training After an Organizational Intervention in Swedish Sports Clubs: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective

Guest: Edson Filho Dr. Filho is a Lecturer is Sport and Exercise Psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Central Lancashire. He received a doctoral degree in Sport Psychology from Florida State University (USA) and completed a post-doctoral term in Neuroscience and Psychophysiology at the Behavioral Imaging and Neural Dynamics Center at the University of Chieti (Italy). His research agenda revolves around peak performance experiences, team processes and social neuroscience in sports. Dr. Filho has published numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters on topics related to performance, sport and exercise psychology. Dr. Filho also has applied experience, having served as a performance enhancement specialist for athletes and performing artists. He is a Certified Consultant by the Association for Applied Sport Psychology and a member of the Sport Psychology registry of the United States Olympic Committee. Dr. Filho’s research and applied work has been recognized through several awards, including the Diversity Award by the Association for Applied Sport Psychology and the Dissertation Award in Sport and Exercise Psychology by the American Psychological Association.   Links:   Website: http://edsonfilho.weebly.com/   Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Edson_Filho   Additional link:   http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21520704.2016.1138266?journalCode=uspa20

The making of expert performers at Cirque du Soleil and the National Circus School: A performance enhancement outlook

  Guest: Luc Martin   My research interests lie in the general area of sport psychology with a particular focus on group dynamics principles. More specifically, I am interested in the psychosocial influences present in sport and physical activity settings, and how individuals’ can be influenced by, but can also influence the groups to which they belong. My current projects involve the investigation of group processes such as cohesion, cliques, social identity, and leadership on both individual and team level outcomes in child/youth and elite sport populations. Generally, the main focus is to develop a better understanding of certain psychosocial factors that can be used to inform interdisciplinary and policy relevant research aimed at enriching the sporting environment. Links:   Email:   luc.martin@queensu.ca   Telephone:   613-533-6000 x79140   Website: http://www.queensu.ca/skhs/faculty-and-staff/faculty/luc-martin   Additional link:   Martin, L. J., Eys, M. A., & Spink, K. S. (2016). The social environment in sport organizations. In C. Wagstaff (Ed.), The Organizational Psychology of Sport: Key Issues and Practical Applications. Abingdon, UK: Routlege.    http://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/abs/10.1123/tsp.2014-0003?journalCode=tsp

Group Dynamics: Subgroups and Cliques

Study: Hardiness differentiates military trainees on behavioural persistence and physical performance   Abstract:  Hardiness is a personality trait that drafts courage and motivation during adversity. Research showed that hardiness differentiates elite athletes from their lower rank competitors. In the domain of sport psychology, hardiness also strongly predicts physical performance. Because the military occupation requires resilience and excellence in physical performance, researchers investigated hardiness and behavioural persistence during training. However, in those studies, hardiness’ impact was weak. Besides, military researchers seldom addressed hardiness’ effect on physical performance. We investigated the influence of hardiness on behavioural persistence and physical performance during the military basic training. Participants were 233 trainees involved in a 22-week long basic training. They completed hardiness measures at the beginning of the training and then, two months later, we registered who stayed involved and who had dropped out. The remaining trainees participated in a self-defence exercise and their trainers evaluated their performance. Our analysis indicated that hardiness significantly predicted behavioural persistence: the trainees still involved in the training after two months scored significantly higher on the hardiness scale than those who dropped out (EXP(B) = 1.08; p 

Hardiness differentiates military trainees on behavioural persistence and physical performance

Study: An empirical examination comparing the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment approach and Psychological Skills Training for the mental health and sport performance of female student athletes Abstract: The present study was a randomised controlled trial investigating the effectiveness of the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) approach compared to traditional Psychological Skills Training (PST) for the mental health and sport performance of female collegiate athletes. Two hypotheses were proposed: (a) participants in the MAC group would demonstrate reduced behavioural issues, emotional distress, and psychological symptoms, and increased athletic performance when compared to those in the PST group; (b) MAC participants would exhibit reduced emotion dysregulation and increased psychological flexibility and dispositional mindfulness, compared to PST participants. Participants included 18 National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III female student athletes who were randomly assigned into either the MAC or PST group based upon pre-intervention levels of distress; and were assessed pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at 1-month follow-up. A mixed-model ANOVA analysis revealed that the MAC effectively reduced Substance Use, Hostility, and Emotion Dysregulation over time when compared to the PST group. Several within-group differences also emerged, as MAC participants demonstrated reduced Generalised Anxiety, Eating Concerns, and Psychological Distress, as well as increased psychological flexibility from post-intervention to one-month follow-up. As per coach ratings, MAC participants also evidenced improved sport performance from pre-intervention to post-intervention. Results suggest that the MAC is an effective intervention for the mental health and sport performance needs of female collegiate athletes.   Author: Mike Gross Dr. Mike Gross is a Certified Consultant for the Association of Applied Sport Psychology (CC-AASP) who runs a private practice in Somerset, NJ offering both mental health and performance enhancement services to athletes. Using techniques from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and other mindfulness-based approaches, Dr. Gross seeks to help athletes optimize performance both inside and outside of sport. In addition to his private practice work, Dr. Gross is the Coordinator of Sport Psychology and adjunct professor at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). Dr. Gross is also the Senior Associate Editor of the Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology (JCSP).  He can be reached at drmikegross@drmikegross.com   Links:   Article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1612197X.2016.1250802   Author: http://www.drmikegross.com/

An empirical examination comparing the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment approach and Psychological Skills Training for the mental health and sport performance of female student athletes

Bridging the Gap Podcast brings the latest research from sport psychology, exercise psychology, performance psychology and other fields straight to you from the authors behind the studies. Any research or information related to improving mental strength, team dynamics leadership and other topics involving the brain and performance, we cover it. We Bridge the Gap between the latest research and your knowledge.

hubhopper

Bridging the Gap Podcast

hubhopper