The First One – Discovering Sport and Exercise Psychology

Hello, my name is Hamsini and I am a MSc Sport and Exercise Psychology student at Loughborough University. That still sounds a little strange for me to say, because when I got my acceptance letter, I didn’t know very much about the place. I couldn’t even pronounce the word Loughborough (Loogaborooga?), but I just had a feeling that that was the place I wanted to be, and now here I am, studying at the Number 1 University in the world for Sport Sciences. If you were to ask anyone I knew 3 years ago what field I would want to specialise in, Sport and Exercise Psychology would probably be the last thing on anyone’s mind. Somehow, I went from being a couch potato, to someone who can’t get through the day without getting a workout in, and that’s how I slowly discovered my fascination with the importance of exercise as a part of a daily routine and everyday life.

Over the years, I’ve grown up having had the privilege of interacting with several people involved in elite sport. Despite not actually having played sport competitively, this has given me considerable insight into the life of a sportsperson and helped me appreciate and respect the sacrifices they have to make and the challenges they have to overcome. Sure, you might say “You haven’t been in a competitive sport situation, so there is no way you can actually understand what an athlete is going through.”. But consider this, go back to the time when you had to take exams. Remember that feeling you would get the night before the exam and you weren’t sure you had done enough? Remember that feeling when you enter the examination hall and there is so much at stake for the next couple of hours? Remember that feeling of all the practice and preparation you have put in for months together, all culminates into that one moment where you need to perform to the best of your abilities? Now, read that again. This time, replace the word exam with a match and replace the words examination hall with field of play. Doesn’t it still seem to make sense? That is because performance is a universal concept that can be applied to several situations, academics, art and even sport. There is a common thread that exists for performance in all domains of life. The experiences, feelings and thoughts that an individual has during any high stakes situation is likely to have quite a similar basis, regardless of the specific nature of the context.

Psychology and the working of the mind is something that has always been of interest to me, not just as a means of overcoming mental illness, but also as a tool that can be used to simply improve on existing performance and to strive to be better. I believe that psychology can be of use to anyone and can be useful in almost any circumstance that people may face, not just for those who appear to be struggling. Putting the two together, I stumbled upon an unlikely but perfect fit for me to explore these ideas further through Sport and Exercise Psychology.

Through writing this blog I want to explore and discuss several topics that interest me over the course of my journey into the field of Sport and Exercise Psychology. I will try to share these ideas with you, and I hope you eventually will be as excited and fascinated by these new perspectives as I am!