Sports Psychologist Lucie Leonard visited the School to talk about the practical application of Sports Psychology.
Lucie delivered workshops to Years 10, 11 and Sixth Form students during a PE lesson to highlight strategies that could work during sport.
Lent term is a particularly busy period for major school fixtures, with multiple regional, national and individual competitions taking place. Students had their robustness and resilience put to the test, yet continued to excel across the wider school landscape. With psychological preparation in mind, Lucie’s session was aimed at building their mental resilience routines and stress coping systems to not only benefit sport performance, but to prepare them for stressors of all types – including exams. Students share their reflections of Lucie’s sessions:
“The sport psychology talk was really good and helped me understand how confidence and focus can directly affect performance. I liked how the speaker used clear examples and explained theories easily so everyone could understand. She mentioned how to stay calm under pressure and I learned some useful techniques that I can apply to my own sport – she also had awesome trainers!”
Annie, Lower Sixth
“It was really interesting to learn about different ways to manage arousal and nerves when preparing for our sports, alongside identifying when we are feeling nervous and other emotions and how to manage them in order to get the most out of our performances. For me personally, it was also really interesting to be able to link some parts of the talk to sections of our academic studies. This enabled us to get a deeper understanding of the content and to be able to use it withing our individual sports. Overall, I really enjoyed the talk and it has definitely already been beneficial towards the psychology section when I play sport.”
Niamh (Year 11)
“I found the talk really interesting, not only to help our understanding of the GCSE PE course but also on a personal sporting level. I particularly enjoyed learning about the levels of arousal required for different sporting examples and then different techniques that can be used to help optimise this e.g. deep breathing techniques or even specific playlists!”
Emily (Year 11)
