Torp working with mind coach - how can they help?
BBC CWR talk to sports psychologist Phil Clarke after Coventry City midfielder Victor Torp revealed he was working with a mind coach during the club's promotion run-in.
The pressure in professional sport is huge. For the Championship promotion contenders it is that time of the season when the gauge is in the red. Coventry City, nine points clear at the top, are dealing with not only the weight of finishing the job off but also the burden of ending the club's 25-year wait to return to the top flight.
How they deal with that pressure will be crucial and one player who has been working on that is key midfielder Victor Torp who has revealed he has been using a mind coach to help. So what does a mind coach do? What aspects do they work on?
And how might it help improve performance? "The main thing we're trying going to do is keep them consistent in what their approaches are and help them go into a performance environment as confident as possible," Phil Clarke, a sports sports psychologist at the University of Derby, told BBC CWR. "When we're under a lot of pressure, whether it's a big outcome at stake, we often try to change things to maximise our chances of success.
"But actually what ends up doing is we overthink it. We start doing things that we don't normally do. "Hesitation starts to creep in.