Raising Young Athletes: The Effect of Sport on Identity Formation

Written by Chrissie Slot

Identifying as an athlete can be fantastic: it serves as a solid foundation for healthy identity development and empowerment. But what happens when a youngster begins to see themselves as only an athlete – e.g. ‘I am a football player’ – to the exclusion of all else? This is where they fall victim of identity foreclosure, occurring when individuals prematurely and exclusively see themselves as athletes without fully developing other aspects of themselves. During this time, all other life development is suspended in light of the one single identity role. Before we examine the potential risks of holding a strong athletic identity, it...

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Competitive Edge – where do you get yours?

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Never Stop Trying to Get Better

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Athletes Post-Sport: Unqualified or competitive advantage?

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Eyes on the Prize: How your Focus can Relieve Pressure in Stationary Shooting Tasks

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Making Adjustments

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Social Support in Youth Sport…

When athletes talk about the progress that they make, their achievements, their celebrations or how they have overcome challenges and setbacks they often talk about the importance of the support that they had around them through the journey. Briton Goldie Sayers will belatedly receive her 2008 Olympic javelin bronze medal...

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Control the controllables in Sports

Sports can be such a relentless, ever-changing, fast-paced, unpredictable environment which can have a huge impact on our performance in a successful or unsuccessful way. How much of this can we control or influence? What factors can't we control? How much control should we strive for? Should we let things...

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Acceptance and Commitment (ACT) in Sport

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Youth Sport: More than Physical, Technical and Tactical development

There are a lot of current discussions in elite sport around helping athletes to ‘thrive’ as people (not just athletes). Sport is a great vehicle to develop skills that can help individuals progress in other areas of their lives (e.g. education, work, day to day life). this is just as...