Psychological Factors in Sports Archives

Conversations With Kids: Dreaming

Conversations with Kids – Week 1 For parents and guardians where we give you prompts so that you can have more meaningful conversations with your children to help them build key characteristics such as mental toughness, resilience, confidence, creativity, focus and so on. A Question for your Kids If you found a magic key that …

Overcoming Tough Times in Professional Women’s Football and Bouncing Back Stronger

by David Charlton

Overcoming Tough Times in Professional Women's Football and Bouncing Back Stronger

Charlotte Potts is a professional footballer who has played for Hibernian Football Club, Sunderland AFC and FC Lugano. She is also an ambassador for Gateshead FC and can be heard on local radio stations on a regular basis. Charlotte has an interest in mental health and discrimination and works closely with well recognised charity Show Racism the Red Card too.

In this episode I was joined by professional footballer Charlotte Potts where we had a deep and fascinating conversation about different challenges that she has faced so far in her life and when playing Professional Women’s Football. We went on to discuss Discrimination, Mental Health and Mindfulness too as well as a whole lot more. It’s well worth a listen!

Key Learning Points:

Charlotte’s mental health has suffered from time to time therefore she has looked to develop a high degree of self-awareness to help herself.
Her family was pulled apart when she was young which was difficult for everyone concerned.
Discrimination exists in football and in life, however progress is being made.
Mental Toughness in football is about coping with pain and being able to push through barriers.
Charlotte has an interest in Mindfulness and regularly practices the approach.
Being able to take a step back has helped her with anger issues.
Mindfulness has also helped Charlotte see things from a fresh perspective.

Connect with Charlotte Potts

Instagram

Connect with David Charlton

Download THE FOCUSED ATHLETE CHECKLIST

Join David @ The Sports Psychology Hub

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

To Listen to Football or Soccer Podcast Episodes

Ep038: Taz Bricknell – Playing Professional Women’s Rugby

Ep092: Dr James Hegarty – ACT in Sport, Improving Performance through Mindfulness

Ep105: Hannah Bromley – Overcoming Psychological Challenges in Elite Professional Women’s Football

Ep111: Michael Caulfield – How to be an Effective Sports Psychologist in Elite Professional Football

Other Helpful Resources

Psychology in Football or Soccer Library

Blog: How Mentally Healthy is Your Clubs Sporting Environment

Blog: Does Your Warm Up Influence How You Perform?

Blog: 5 Ways to Create a Psychological Safe Sporting Environment

Blog: Supporting a Professional Footballer during Challenging Times

Blog: 3 Tips to Deal with Bullying in Sport

Vlog: How Mental Toughness Helps us Understand Psychological Safety with Doug Strycharczyk

Guided Mindfulness Meditation Practices with Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Best Wishes

David Charlton

Global Sports Psychologist who is located near Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK and willing to travel Internationally. David also uses online video conferencing software (Zoom, Facetime, WhatsApp) on a regular basis and has clients who he has supported in USA, Canada, South America, UAE, Australian and New Zealand.

Managing Director – Inspiring Sporting Excellence and Founder of The Sports Psychology Hub. With over 10 years experience supporting athletes, coaches, parents and teams to achieve their goals, quickly.

E: info@sport-excellence.co.uk

How to Let Go of Mistakes in Padel

David Charlton

How to Regain Momentum in Tennis

David Charlton

Conversations With Kids: When Your Child is Trialling at an Elite Sports Academy

David Charlton

Young Soccer Players in a Soccer Academy

My Son is Trialling at a Cat 1 Academy – How do I Protect His Mental Health?

David Charlton

How to Stop Being Too Hard on Yourself in Tennis

David Charlton

Conversations With Kids: Helping Children Feel More in Control

David Charlton

Helping Fighters Who Self-Sabotage Success

by David Charlton

Combat Sports Psychology Tips: Helping Fighters Who Self-Sabotage Success Helping combat fighters stay committed to their training When supporting fighters in combat sports one of the biggest challenges that I come up against is helping them help themselves remain committed to their mental and physical training. Often plateaus in performance occur when you don’t see

David Charlton Gets Grilled By Grant Henderson

by David Charlton

EP 135 Episode Cover David Charlton Grant Henderson

David Charlton Gets Grilled By Grant Henderson

After growing up in South Africa, Grant set out to pursue a professional rugby career which took him back and forth from SA to the UK with the culmination of one too many head injuries, leading to him hanging up his boots in just his mid 20’s.

On retiring from rugby and ending up in the North East of England an opportunity in the recruitment world opened up and for the next 5 years Grant worked as a recruitment consultant, regional trainer and branch manager.

In 2009, with the grip of the global financial crisis being felt, he opened his own consultancy business and stated to advise on coach business owners on how to re-focus their sales teams to navigate the changing market. In 2010, Grant partnered with his parents who are still resident in SA, to take the personality assessment they had developed for marriage guidance counselling and create an online application with some contextualisation for the British market.

The i3 profiling platform and associated tools have all followed since and today the online assessment has been carried out by over 25000 people all over the world. The i3 tool is all about identifying individuality and increasing self awareness to support each of us in reaching our full potential.

Since 2017 Grant has worked directly with an international recruitment company, The MCG Group, and in his capacity as COO gets to apply what he has learned through sport, team building and leadership development in a fast paced and high growth environment.

At home he is husband to Erin and father to 3 young children aged 5-12, always trying to stay fit and healthy in order to be as active a dad as possible.

In today’s episode, I chat with Grant Henderson a former professional rugby player, Chief Operations Officer at The MCG Group and Co-Founder of i3profiling. Grant goes on to ask me many questions about the Demystifying Mental Toughness podcast, mental toughness, personality and environment. By listening to the episode you’ll learn more about how I work as a Sports Psychologist, about the complexities that surround sport performance, reaching your potential and a whole lot more.

Key Learning Points:

Podcasting is a big commitment and has been challenging at times however I really enjoy recording the episodes and the feedback that we get highlights that it makes a positive difference to people’s lives, which is my objective.
As a Mental Toughness license holder, where I qualified through AQR International’s training. I sometimes use the MTQ Plus psychometric to measure clients Mental Toughness at the start and end of programs.
Incorporated into some programs are personality assessments too, where I find i3Profiling compliments the MTQ Plus.
An i3 profile presented in the right way can be a big confidence booster, I particularly like the environmental analysis which looks at task and social leadership styles. This can tell me a lot about how a person should train and mentally prepare themselves.
Both psychometric and profiling tools aid self-awareness and can be a quick way of finding out about a person’s complexities and save an enormous amount of time in the consultancy process.
Without self-awareness you’ll continue to make poor decisions and not be as successful and happy as you could be.
Mental toughness can be a good thing, however even the mentally tough fall into traps, again highlighting the need for self-awareness.

Connect with Grant Henderson

i3 Profiling Website

The MCG Group Website

Connect with David Charlton

Download THE FOCUSED ATHLETE CHECKLIST

Join David @ The Sports Psychology Hub

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

Other Useful Podcast Episodes

Ep034 – David Charlton Gets Grilled By Nathan Sherratt

Ep050: Doug Strycharczyk, Peter Clough MBE & Dr John Perry – Mental Strength Does Not Guarantee Success

Ep084: Jim Afremow and Phil White – Mental Toughness and The Leaders Mind

Ep121: Doug Strycharczyk and Dr John Perry – What Is New? Developments in Mental Toughness Research and Practice

Ep133: Christina Flach – Why Mental Toughness is Important: Lessons from Sport, Business and Loss

Other Useful Resources

Blog – 5 Ways to Create a Psychological Safe Sporting Environment

Blog – Mental Health Guidance for Coaches When Supporting Athletes

Blog – Mental Toughness is a Hugely Valuable Trait

Blog – Make Better Decisions to Help Your Sport Performance

Sport Psychology for Children and Parents