Elite sport psychology/welcome

About this course
This course is aimed to provide you with foundation level experience of a range of theories that explain the impact of psychological factors on exercise and sport behaviour. It will expose you to behaviour modification and performance enhancement strategies that are commonly applied to exercise and sport behaviour and give you the opportunity to develop psychological skills training that are created for elite athletes.

What will I learn?
On successful completion of this course you will be able to:
 * Explain how psychological factors influence sport performance.
 * Outline psychological strategies that are used to enhance sports performance.
 * Write a mental training program for an elite athlete.

Topics
Here are some of the topics you will cover:
 * Introducing psychological skills
 * Motivation
 * Anxiety
 * Mood and emotion
 * Self-confidence
 * Concentration
 * Imagery and self-talk
 * Music
 * Group dynamics

Writing a mental training program
The ultimate goal of the course is to give you the tools to write a mental skills training program for an elite athlete.

A mental skills program is a systematic approach that assesses psychological components and tailors an individualised program that will build the psychological skills of an athlete. It may be the missing brick in the wall that will take a talented athlete to the top of their profession.

Navigating the course
The link below provides an overview of how to navigate through the course. Included is a video about the course interface and some information about the course discussion forum. It is recommend that you watch it and then return to this page.
 * How to navigate this course

Course textbook
Secrets of Asian Sports Psychology. A free and open licensed textbook.

The course will also focus on examples used in elite sport throughout the Asia and South Pacific region. The content is drawn from the course text book  Secrets of Asian Sports Psychology, the book is free and open to use under a Creative Commons licence. You will be prompted a different points in the course to download and read individual chapters.

You will be given some example athletes and scenarios and will be asked to create a mental training program to help improve their performance in competition.

As a starting point you may be interested in reading the introduction to the book which gives an overview of some of the innovative approaches to sport psychology in Asia and the Pacific region.

Activity

Participating in the course
This course is a self-paced course which is designed for autonomous learning. There are learning activities spread throughout the course with which you may choose to engage. It is up to you as to how far you wish to go and what you decide to do, although a certificate of completion will be awarded to those who complete the whole course and upload a mental training program.

We also encourage you to share your insights and experiences along the way. At certain points you will be asked to share your knowledge.You are likely to have plenty of prior knowledge around your own sporting interests, so please share your ideas whether you are a coach, an athlete, or an amateur expert.

Go and introduce yourself on the course forum and share 1) Why you are doing the course and 2) Your sporting interests.
 * Introduce yourself