Coaching amateur athletes: From frozen to fearless

This chapter presents a case study in which the coach, who works with amateur athletes, addresses the fear of an amateur horseback rider who broke her arm horseback riding but wanted to continue the sport. The author describes how she set the goals of addressing and diffusing the upsetting mindset; installing a cognitive-behavioral link to support new skill integration and application; and looking at the client's riding through the lens of an amateur but competitive athlete to see how she could best make certain training decisions. She discusses her tools and techniques, including eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), neurolinguistic programming, shamanic healing, and Buddhist meditation, and presents an extract from her first EMDR session with her silent thinking about the process as it unfolded.

Book Section

English

Wendy Allen

Allen, W. (2002). Coaching amateur athletes: From frozen to fearless. In L. Grodzki (Ed.), The new private practice: Therapist-coaches share stories, strategies, and advice (pp. 178-191). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co