What comes to mind when you think of sport psychology?

Many people associate sport psychology with specific performance enhancement techniques such as goal-setting, positive self-talk, imagery/visualization, and relaxation/motivation. Yes, AAPEX can provide these basic sport psychology services to your individual athletes, to subgroups of your team (e.g., just freshmen), or to your whole team. In addition, AAPEX services go a step further, in accordance with our "whole person" philosophy, to support coaches and captains in managing the indirect, external influences that can positively or negatively affect team performance and the well-being of individual student-athletes.

If you have personal or academic concerns about a member of your team, please don't hesitate to contact AAPEX for a confidential consultation that can help you figure out an appropriate "next step." This may include sensitively facilitating a referral to the most appropriate resource that a student-athlete may need. You can also just use AAPEX as an impartial, third-party "sounding board." AAPEX consultants are counselors, psychologists, and Harvard academic advisers who are certified in sport psychology and are intimately familiar with the rhythm of the Harvard undergraduate experience. As such, they are well suited to address your athletes' challenges, concerns, and questions from the time they matriculate at Harvard through the time they graduate. When AAPEX consultants are not working with student-athletes, they are working in many other ways with Harvard undergraduates, administrators, faculty, and both residential and non-residential staff.

In an athletic context, AAPEX consultants meet with student-athletes to help them harness their strengths and work through the questions, concerns, and challenges they face. Certain discussions are often more effective if conducted in a facilitated group setting, either with entire teams or with subgroups of athletes, so athletes can learn from the invaluable experiences of their teammates. Harvard captains and coaches have used AAPEX to facilitate interactive workshops and teambuilding activities that have included the following:

• Freshman ABCs — Academic advising, adjusting to Harvard life, blocking/rooming issues, course/concentration/secondary field selection, knowing and using both academic and non-academic resources, leading a balanced and healthy life at Harvard, etc.
• Personality Styles — Team members determine their individual personality profiles and then discuss as a team how they can most (and least) effectively use their varying approaches to problem-solving and decision-making to improve peak performance and team dynamics
• Support Styles — Team members share with each other what they think about before/during/after competition, and what their teammates can do to best support them at each of these times
• Team Value Contract — Teammates codify the general principles that will guide them through the season, as well as the specific, measurable, tangible means that will help them adhere to those commonly held principles
• Time Management — Prioritizing tasks, maximizing efficiency, minimizing distractions, overcoming obstacles, and structuring off-season time (if applicable)
• Reading and Studying More Effectively — Techniques they never taught you in high school
• Perfectionism — How perfectionism can enhance or impede peak performance
• Life After Harvard & the Team — For graduating seniors who will no longer participate in a varsity sport

Captains and coaches can contact AAPEX to request any of these workshops or a workshop on another topic.

Captains and coaches can also work with AAPEX to customize an extended teambuilding workshop (typically about 3 hours), with multiple events and activities, that are fun, experiential, and do not involve sitting around for hours at a time. Such workshops are typically designed to enhance team performance by strengthening relationships and increasing understanding among team members.

To request a one-time workshop or design a sequence of events for your student-athletes, please contact AAPEX. To allow for adequate planning, preparation, and scheduling, please provide as much lead time as possible — at least several weeks.

For more information, you might be interested in reading our web page for athletes. And if you have a request, question, concern, or suggestion for AAPEX, we'd love to hear from you.