Calling all sports psychologists/counselors

[legMA]

So, a local university has a Sports Psychology concentration in their counseling grad program. I'm wondering if anyone here knows or have heard of the jobs that sports counselors take? The obvious is as a coach, but especially for cycling, how the heck could I utilize it? How are psychologists/counselors enrolled in pro/elite team staff?

[MattTuck]

I believe this is the Sport Psychologist for team Sky.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chimp-Paradox-Management-Programme-Confidence/dp/009193558X

Not sure that really helps, but I'm sure the top 10% of the field does pretty well. Not sure about the bottom 90%.

[Chris]

I have a PhD in Counseling Psychology and my emphasis was Sport Psychology. There are a few places in the US that employ full time sport psychologists, but I would say most are in private practice and either do that work across a variety of settings, or like me have a main practice and then a consultation practice focusing on specific athletes/teams. I work with a few professional cyclists, but primarily tennis players and the odd golfer. I don't find the work that rewarding compared to the other work that can be done with real people who have real problems (my bias) but it can be fun to contribute to an athlete's success. You will see much greater acceptance of sport psychologists for team sports in Europe with soccer etc. In the US except for the individual sports, my experience is that there is still a bit of stigma involved.