Phil Hansen was going to school to become an artist when he discovered something that he thought would end his career before it even began. He had developed a shake in his hand from using pointillism—a painting technique in which small dots are applied in patterns to form a single image. Because he could no longer create art through his preferred method, he decided to drop art school and art altogether. However, years later he decided to return to art and saw a doctor about his condition. The doctor changed his life with a single question: “Why don’t you just embrace the shake?” Hansen’s TED talk describes his inspiring journey to find his new calling through art: “And I realized, if I ever wanted my creativity back, I had to quit trying so hard to think outside of the box and get back into it.” Athletes can mirror this idea by spending time going back to the beginning and thinking about what aspects of their sport made them fall in love with it in the first place. Mor...

For athletes, heart health is one of the many benefits of maintaining the active lifestyle that they do; however, having a heart with structural changes to cope with athletic demands can sometimes come with complications. Symptoms such as chest pain, dizziness, shortness of breath, passing out, and irregular heart beats are all signs to go see a doctor. Another issue with the hearts of athletes is genetic or irregular heart conditions. Heart conditions are often undiagnosed and can lead to serious life threatening consequences like cardiac arrest while playing a sport. One of the most common heart conditions involved with causes of sudden death in athletes is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM)—the enlargement of the heart muscle to a dangerous size—which is commonly undiagnosed. The key to keeping your athlete safe is detection. To help determine if your athlete has a heart that could potentially be at risk, be aware of familial health history and learn what symptoms to look f...

We have an updated page devoted to answering your questions about the field here. With sport psychology a rapidly expanding field, with scores of professional teams hiring specialists to work with their athletes on their mental game, many are wondering how one makes a career in sport psychology and what it takes. Below are some commonly asked questions and answers to help get you started. What are sport psychologists and how do they differ from mental game coaches? Most generally, sport psychologists are licensed psychologists who are trained in psychological skills training, athletes’ mental health, team dynamics in sports settings, psychological factors that influence performance, assessment of psychological and performance variables, and more. Mental game coaches also work with athletes on the performance side of sport, but they do not have ...