Press

Young Athletes Try New Coach:
The Psychologist

By Bill Pennington
New York Times
Sunday, August 5, 2007

A competitive gymnast for most of her life, Heather Benjamin has traveled the country and won her share of awards. But last year she developed a fear of jumping from one bar to the other in the uneven bars event. So she did something familiar to professional sports stars — she talked to a sports psychologist.

“It made such a difference,” she said in a telephone interview from her home in Lynn Haven, Fla. “We worked through the fear, and that has let me relax. I would tell anyone that it’s worth it.”

Heather was 9 at the time.

For $225 a session, Alan Goldberg counseled her during 12 hourlong telephone conversations across five months. At recent national and Junior Olympic competitions, Heather surpassed her previous scores by three ability levels.

“It was a phobia,” said her mother, Donna Benjamin, who had decided Heather would benefit from the counseling. “A mental block that hindered her ability to compete.”

The idea that mental coaching can help the youngest athletes has pervaded the upper reaches of the country’s zealous youth sports culture. In the pursuit of college scholarships and top spots on premier travel clubs, the families of young athletes routinely pay for personal strength coaches, conditioning coaches, specialized skill coaches like pitching or hitting instructors, nutritionists and recruiting consultants. Now, the personal sports psychologist has joined the entourage.

 “Parents tell me that they’ve put so much money into their child’s athletic development that they’re not going to leave any stone unturned if it might help them achieve,” said Marty Ewing, a former president of the Association of Applied Sport Psychology. “And obviously, we do have ways to help enrich performance.”

 But many sports psychologists, including those who see young athletes, say they wonder if the treatment is not overkill in a youth sports landscape bursting with excess.

 “On the one hand, it’s foolish not to teach kids mental skills they may need,” said Daniel Gould, a sports psychologist who is also the director of Michigan State’s Institute for the Study of Youth Sports. “On the flip side, is it just contributing to the professionalism of childhood? Because these kids aren’t playing for the New York Yankees. And worse, I worry that some parents are doing it just because their neighbor did it for his kid.”

Several sports psychologists said their primary work with young athletes was counseling the parents or coaches.

 “The root of the problem is often the triangle of parent, coach and athlete and the conflicts created,” said Jay Granat, a New Jersey sports psychologist who said 40 percent of his practice dealt with athletes ranging in age from 11 to 18. “The parents have the right intentions. They want their kid to be the next Tiger Woods. But those fantasies are getting in the way.”

 The trend toward specializing in one sport at an early age has also led more young athletes to seek counseling.

 “If an 11-year-old is told that focusing on one sport is all that matters, it obviously puts a lot of pressure on every outcome in that sport,” Dr. Ewing said. “We are asking that 11-year-old to play a game at a level that is disproportionate to his or her cognitive development. That’s development you can’t rush, but people try.”

 Dr. Gould said the parents of a 14-year-old tennis player were concerned their son was not focused all the time. His response was, “ ‘Yeah, he’s 14 — that’s pretty normal.’ ”

 He added: “Just because we can dress up a 14-year-old like Andy Roddick, he’s still not as old as Andy Roddick. He’s 14, and he’s going to do some dumb things.”

 Sports psychology is a thriving business, and not only for children. Elite professional athletes have consulted with psychologists since the 1980s, and now top college players and recreational weekend warriors also want to fine-tune their mental muscles and pay $125 to $250 an hour to do so. The Internet is awash with Web sites that promote sports psychologists who promise to cure choking under pressure and other competition failures.

Much of the hype, however, is focused on the youngest athletes, with psychologists offering catchy slogans for their therapy. Many sites also promote books and educational CDs costing up to $100.

 Professionals who offer sports psychology services are generally classified in two groups: educational and clinical. Many in the educational group are college professors of sports psychology. Those in the clinical group are often licensed psychologists who treat patients besides athletes and may work in areas like depression, eating disorders or alcoholism.

 What sports psychologists say they deal with most is performance problems, usually linked to pregame nerves or postgame frustrations.

 Sarah Mott, a 15-year-old swimmer, said she was filled with negative thoughts before races, so much so that she contemplated quitting what had been her favorite sport since she was 4. Mott, who lives in Frederick, Md., contacted Dr. Goldberg at his office in Massachusetts on the recommendation of a teammate.

 “He changed the way I thought about my races,” Mott said. “He gave me techniques to relax and focus that I worked on for weeks in practices. Some of it was like homework, things I would write down to focus my goals or ways to better understand why I wanted to swim. My results got a lot better, but the best thing is I love swimming again.”

 The lessons, sports psychologists say, are useful beyond sports.

 “Learning to concentrate, to relax and have confidence, to deal with frustration, to set goals and stay focused on the task at hand, these are life skills,” Joel Fish, the director of the Center for Sport Psychology in Philadelphia, said. “They will help you take an English test, not just get a hit in a baseball game.”

 But Dr. Fish, like many of his colleagues, said some parents seemed to be having their athletic children see the sports psychologist too soon.

 “They’re coming in at 7, 8 and 9 years old, and usually I say: ‘Just give it some time. This will work itself out,’ ” he said. “Sometimes I tell them it’s O.K. to take a season off.”

 To Donna Benjamin, the timing was right. She recently watched Heather in a competition and marveled at the transformation.

 “It’s a drastic change and something that years of coaching and parenting did not accomplish,” Mrs. Benjamin said. “You watch the joy she has again, and I’m just so happy for her.”

 

---

Athletes Feel the Vibrations

By Chris Carlson, Berkshire Eagle Staff
Sunday, June 4, 2006

Aaron Castonguay's music selections often relate more to his sport than to his psyche.

Castonguay, one of Berkshire County's top running backs and sprinters, warms up for every Mount Greylock Regional High School football game and track meet by listening to music on his MP3 player.

For football games, Castonguay preps by listening to hard rock and rap, psyching himself to unleash every ounce of adrenaline. Before track meets, he listens to soft rock and lighter hip-hop to relieve his body of any tension he might feel in the starting blocks.

Pat Larkin, a three-sport athlete at St. Joseph's High School, listens to rap when he plays basketball and to techno before soccer games, and mixes his tennis selections, depending on his opponent.

"Basically, you want to listen to whatever you can see yourself performing to," Larkin said. "If it makes you see the game, visualize yourself out there, that's what you listen to. If I think I'm going to win, I'll try to relax. If I think I'm going to have a tough match, I'll listen to something a little harder."
Larkin and Castonguay are among a growing number of athletes using music to focus before sporting events.

The trend began more than a decade ago with athletes using a Sony Walkman to listen to the radio or a cassette on bus rides and increased with the invention of the discman. But the recent popularity of the iPod — the lightweight, compact, customizable music-delivery device — has made it easier for athletes to bring music to their athletic venues.

"I listen to it when I'm warming up, and I listen to it when I have a long time in between events," Castonguay said. "At the bigger meets, I'll wander off and listen to it so I can concentrate in my downtime."

Companies are producing a number of music devices aimed at athletes. Apple and Nike are designing an iPod that will allow runners to transfer running data from their shoes to their iPod, and the iTunes store is offering a special collection of "Nike Sport Music." Sony Ericsson, meanwhile, is looking to combat those efforts with a Walkman/phone that includes a jogging application and a step counter.
Music and sports have long co-existed. Baseball games have been marked by organ music, figure skaters perform to various selections, and nearly every sporting event begins with the national anthem.

"It's become bigger the last 15 or 20 years with the Walkman," said Lee High girls' basketball coach Tom Cinella. "I've heard all sorts of opinions on it. I think whether it works depends on the individuals you have and the team."
Recently, however, music and sports have become inseparable.

During the 2006 Winter Olympics, many snowboarders competed while listening to iPods rather than performing to the music piped in via loudspeakers. So many used iPods that Burton, the leading manufacturer in the snowboarding industry, included pockets specially designed for iPods in its newest line of jackets.

Speedskater Shani Davis and figure skater Sasha Cohen, meanwhile, isolated themselves by listening to iPods during each of their warm-ups.

"I would say that the majority of the athletes that I work with do use music," said sports psychology consultant Tiffany Wilding-White, the director of Mind Over Motion in Lee. "The value is in the familiarity and the routine of doing the same thing. It takes your mind off your nerves, off the fact that you're in a state championship or whatever the case may be."

Not all coaches are sold on the value of music as a preparation tool, however. Hoosac Valley High School baseball coach Bob Rivard, Mount Everett Regional School baseball coach Jesse Carpenter and St. Joseph's softball coach Paul Cote said that they see few athletes listening to music before games; the ones who do usually listen to music on road trips, passing time on the bus by quietly slipping on headphones.

All three coaches said they would prefer to see their teams building camaraderie or thinking about the upcoming game.
"I'm a little bit old school, so I wonder a little bit whether they should be thinking about the game, not listening to music," Rivard said.

Still, even those who aren't thrilled about music's role in sports recognize that the two often become entwined, and they aren't going to fight the trend if it works.

Carpenter acknowledged that he has allowed music to be played over the speakers on the team bus during longer trips, and Rivard said he doesn't try to change the minds of any players who like listening to music.

And although music's influence may be muted in baseball and softball, it makes an obvious impact in track and field.
Mount Greylock coach Larry Bell, a former runner at Nebraska-Wesleyan, once timed his stride with a metronome and found a song from the rock group Boston that matched it.

Despite the ability to use music as a physical aid, Bell agrees that music's primary enhancement is mental. In fact, he said, coaching tactics and music often produce similar results.

Bell said he picks one or two meets a year to get in one of his athlete's faces, to challenge them and try to raise their adrenaline level. With younger athletes, he tries to soothe them before big races. Athletes can create similar reactions in themselves based on music choice.

"The big thing you can do with music is you can manipulate your emotions," Bell said. "You can use music to bring yourself up or down, depending on where you think you need to go. For experienced competitors, I think anxiety is a good thing. You can turn it into adrenaline and power. For novice runners, you want them concentrating on their form, not all excited."

Wilding-White, the sports psychology consultant, cautions that music isn't a cure-all for all athletes. But she said that based on the growing number of believers, music can strike the perfect note.

"It's a very individual thing," Wilding-White said. "You can't say to everyone that rap is going to get you pumped up, or classical music is going to relax you. The key thing is to have something to do before you compete, that you can do and that you can control. For a lot of people, that's listening to music."