Almost every player I’ve worked with has said some version of the same sentence, usually in our first conversation: “I think I’m mentally strong, there’s nothing really going on in my head”. I’ve heard it enough times now that I don’t take it personally and I don’t argue with it either. It’s not resistance actually, it’s just where most athletes start.

Sport psychology still carries real stigma, especially among teenagers. Needing a coach for your jump shot is normal, nobody assumes your shot is broken just because you’re working on it. Needing help with what’s going on in your head still gets read differently even though it shouldn’t. Most players I meet aren’t rejecting the idea of sport psychology, they just haven’t been given a reason yet to think it applies to them.

Reading what each player actually needs

Part of the job, maybe the biggest part is figuring out which kind of conversation a given player actually needs because it’s rarely the same conversation twice. Some players are genuinely open from day one, curious about why a technique works, happy to talk it through directly. Others need the opposite: less explaining, more doing and with those players I’ve learned to just say “let’s try something” and let the result speak for itself rather than trying to convince them first that the tool is legitimate.

There are players who use the “I’m mentally strong” line as a real belief and players who use it as a polite way of saying they are not ready to talk yet. Telling those two apart matters because pushing too hard on the second group just confirms their instinct that this isn’t for them.

Why I don’t always explain the why

Early on, I assumed my job was to convince every player that sport psychology mattered before they’d try anything. I don’t think that anymore and for a lot of athletes especially the younger ones, understanding why a visualisation exercise or a breathing technique works isn’t what gets them to actually do it. What gets them to do it is trying it once, having it help in some small noticeable way and drawing their own conclusion from that.

So with some players, I skip the explanation entirely and we just try something in a low-stakes moment and if it works, that’s the argument and no pitch is needed.

What changes once trust is there

Once a player has one experience that actually helps them, the stigma mostly dissolves on its own. I’ve watched players go from “I don’t really need this” to bringing me something they want to work on, completely unprompted weeks later, not because something was wrong, but because they’d found one more way to get better. That shift isn’t something I talk them into, it happens because something worked once and they noticed.

If you’re a coach, parent or athlete who’s run into this same hesitation in yourself or someone you’re supporting, my honest advice is to stop trying to win the argument about whether sport psychology is legitimate. Find one small, low pressure moment to just try something and the trust tends to follow the result, not the other way around.

This is week 6 of the series and it connects back to week 3’s work on skill gaps, the same patience required there applies here too. Next up: how parental involvement changes in an individual academy setting and what that means for a young athlete’s confidence.