Preparing for the European Championships: A Six-step Mental Skills Training Program in Disability Sports

Abstract

This article presents a case example and six-step mental-skills training program for high-performance athletes in disability sports. Starting out with a basic description about applied sport psychology in disability sports, the author proceeds to describe the mental skills training program with the woman's national goalball team in Denmark (high-performance athletes with visual impairment). The author provides a detailed description of six steps from initiation of the program, group sessions, and action plans, to on-court training and evaluation of the program across six months, and finishes with reviewing coach and player reflections on the application of the mental-skills training program.