Sport psychological skills training and psychological well-being in youth athletes

Abstract

In sport, psychological skills training is as important as physical training. Psychological skills training (PST) package programs aim to train a variety of psychological skills simultaneously. While extensively utilized overseas, PST programs are seldomly conducted with South African elite sportspeople and are generally not available to local youth athletes. Furthermore, the impact of PST programs on life and general health and the related components of biological, psychological, social and spiritual well-being has been typically neglected, with research in this regard minimal or non-existent. For example, before this thesis, the impact of PST on the core health component of psychological well-being had not been evaluated, nor had the conceptual and/or empirical relationship between psychological skills and psychological well-being been investigated. Although PST is often conducted individually because of its specific and personal nature, group training should not be overlooked especially in South Africa where communal living is a way of life and community interventions are an important part of health promotion. The value of broad base PST programs is that they train psychological skills as life skills thus aiding overall biopsychosocialculturalspiritual development. With these considerations in mind a triangulated design involving individual, group and community interventions, as well as elite and expert case studies was utilized to evaluate the effectiveness of a PST program and to investigate the relationship between psychological skills and psychological well-being. Results based on quantitative and qualitative outcome and process measurements indicated general improvement in psychological skills, psychological well-being and sporting performance. Psychological skills and psychological well-being were found to be interrelated concepts, with overlapping components. Recommendations for ongoing and future research at individual, group and community level are made.