By Dr. Trent Claypool, PsyD · Clinical Sport Psychologist, Colorado Springs
I help athletes compete from freedom instead of fear. I help them learn their own psychology — how their nervous system functions under pressure, what to tune into, and how to compete well no matter what they’re thinking or feeling. I help them let go of the things from their past that have gotten in their way, learn to trust themselves, and compete from their heart, not their head.
That’s what a sport psychologist does. But I get why the question comes up, because most athletes and parents have no real picture of what happens in my office. They usually assume one of two things: either it’s therapy where you talk about your problems and someone nods and affirms you, or it’s some kind of mental hack — a breathing technique or a visualization that flips a switch and makes you confident.
The reality is neither. What actually happens is individualized mental skill training . Real, repeatable mental skills built through the same principles of neural plasticity that make your body adapt to physical training. You practice them. They get stronger. And they start showing up when the pressure hits — not because you’ve found the right feeling, but because your nervous system has learned a different response.
What Sport Psychology Is Not
Two misconceptions athletes bring into my office more than any others:
It’s not talk therapy. Athletes don’t come to me to vent about their week and leave feeling heard. They come because something is happening between their ability and their performance, and they want to change it. Every session ends with a tangible tool and a plan for how to work it into their training week. This is training aimed directly at how you play and how you compete.
There are no “tricks.” I don’t have a secret breathing exercise that cures performance anxiety in ten minutes. I have evidence-based skills that are trained over time, the same way you’d train a physical movement pattern until it becomes automatic. We’re training your nervous system’s response to pressure.
Most athletes see benefit in the first or second session. The reaction I see most often is relief. They realize they’re not stuck, they’re not broken, and there’s a concrete path forward that doesn’t require “just trying harder” or “being more confident.”
What a Session Actually Looks Like
We meet, get to know each other a bit, and then figure out which bucket you’re in. There are three:
Bucket 1: Mental health is in the way. Something clinical — depression, anxiety, trauma, disordered eating, burnout — is actively holding you back from performing. This needs direct clinical support before mental skills training can land. A licensed clinical sport psychologist can work on both the clinical and performance sides simultaneously — that’s the unique value of the role.
Bucket 2: You’re struggling with performance-specific issues. Competition anxiety, fear of judgment, perfectionism that’s turned your sport into a pass/fail test, the gap between practice and competition. These aren’t clinical disorders, but they require targeted mental skills work.
Bucket 3: You’re performing well and want to optimize. You’re already competing at a high level. The goal is to reach your peak more frequently, keep pushing that peak higher, and maintain consistency across different conditions and pressure levels. This is where biofeedback, advanced ACT-based skills, and competition-specific preparation come in.
From there, we develop goals, identify where you need the most support, and start building. The biggest shift athletes notice over time is the move from learning skills to implementing them. Sessions 1 through 3 are about building your toolkit — understanding how your nervous system responds to pressure, learning specific regulation and attention skills, beginning to practice them. By sessions 6 through 10, those skills are deeper, more refined, and more automatic. You’re not thinking about the tool anymore. You’re just competing differently.
The balance between talking and doing shifts based on what the athlete needs and who they are. Some sessions are conversation-heavy. Others involve HeartMath biofeedback, EMDR, experiential exercises, or real-time nervous system work. But every session ends with something tangible and a plan for how to use it that week.
Sport Psychologist vs. Therapist vs. Mental Performance Coach
I get this question constantly, so I’ll lay it out plainly:
| Clinical Sport Psychologist | General Therapist | Mental Performance Consultant | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licensed to treat mental health disorders? | Yes | Yes | No |
| Trained in the psychology of sport and performance? | Yes | No | Yes |
| Can address clinical issues (anxiety disorders, depression, trauma, eating disorders)? | Yes | Yes | No |
| Trained in mental skills for competition (focus, regulation, visualization, self-talk)? | Yes | Typically no (and being an ex-athlete, even at a high level, isn’t the same) | Yes |
| Uses sport-specific tools? | Yes | Rarely | Yes |
| Best for athletes who… | Have performance and/or clinical needs, or want one provider who can address both | Need clinical mental health support without a sport-specific lens | Are ready to build structured mental skills — focus, regulation, confidence, competition preparation — with a trained specialist |
A clinical sport psychologist sits at the intersection of mental health and performance — they can treat clinical conditions and train performance skills, all through the lens of what it means to be an athlete under pressure. A general therapist can help you feel better on Monday but may not have a single tool for what happens on the field Saturday.
A mental performance consultant deserves its own explanation, because this role is widely misunderstood. A qualified mental performance consultant holds graduate-level education in sport science or psychology, has completed applied training with athletes, and works within ethical standards and ongoing professional development. This isn’t a weekend certification — it’s specialized training in the psychology of performance, and the evidence behind what they do is strong. Meta-analytic research has found that the core interventions mental performance consultants use — imagery, self-talk training, attentional focus strategies, goal setting — produce measurable performance gains in athletes across levels and sports. A six-session mental skills training program with collegiate athletes showed significant improvements in mental toughness and coping skills, with coping gains still holding at four-month follow-up. Major League Baseball expanded dugout and bullpen access in 2023 to include mental performance consultants — a sign that the professional sports world treats this as a legitimate, essential role inside the ropes.
Where MPCs differ from clinical sport psychologists is scope, not quality. They don’t diagnose or treat clinical conditions like anxiety disorders, depression, or trauma. But for athletes who are mentally healthy and want to train the psychological side of their performance with the same rigor they bring to their physical training, a skilled mental performance consultant is exactly the right fit. Think of it as strength and conditioning for the mind — structured, evidence-based, and directly tied to how you compete.
The question to ask yourself: is the barrier primarily clinical (mood, trauma, disordered patterns, anxiety that extends well beyond sport), or is it performance-based (focus, confidence, consistency, the gap between practice and competition)? If it’s clinical, start with a clinical sport psychologist. If it’s performance, a mental performance consultant is built for that work. And if you’re not sure — or if the lines blur — a clinical sport psychologist can hold both.
Who Is Sport Psychology For?
I work with athletes as young as ten and as experienced as decades-deep adults. There’s no “too young” for this work, though the goals shift. A younger athlete should be focused on development, love of the game, expressing their natural desire to play, and building foundational skills like body awareness and emotional vocabulary. A college or professional athlete might be doing advanced nervous system regulation, competition-specific visualization protocols, or working through the identity and perfectionism patterns that have accumulated over years of high-level sport.
You also don’t need to have a “problem” to benefit. Some of my most rewarding work is with athletes who are performing well and want to go further. That work looks different — less about removing what’s in the way, more about building the internal infrastructure that lets you access your best more consistently, in more conditions, under more pressure.
I’m bringing on a mental performance consultant this year focused specifically on ultra running. That’s a deliberate decision — and it reflects where this field is heading. Athletes increasingly recognize that mental skills training isn’t a luxury or a sign that something’s wrong. It’s a performance service, the same way strength coaching and nutrition are performance services. The mental performance consultant I’m hiring will work directly with athletes on the skills that drive performance — focus, self-regulation, race-day preparation, building the kind of psychological flexibility that keeps you competing when things get hard at mile 60. That work has a deep evidence base behind it, and it fills a need that I can’t fill alone as the practice grows.
If you’re a parent navigating this decision — seeking sport psychology or mental performance support for your kid isn’t admitting something is wrong. It’s investing in a skill set that most adult athletes wish they’d developed earlier.
Signs You Might Need a Sport Psychologist
These aren’t the clinical red flags. These are the everyday patterns that are easy to dismiss:
You’re stuck in your head. You overthink before, during, and after competition. The internal commentary won’t stop, and telling yourself to “just focus” makes it louder. You’ve probably been told to stop overthinking as if that’s a strategy anyone can actually execute on command.
You’re a different athlete in practice than in competition. You dominate in training. You disappear when it counts. The talent is there — the access under pressure isn’t. This is one of the most common patterns I see, and one of the most responsive to mental skills work.
You’ve lost the joy. The sport you used to love now feels like something you survive. The dread before competition outweighs the excitement. You’re going through the motions but something fundamental has shifted, and pushing harder isn’t bringing it back.
You want your mental training to match your physical training. You’ve put thousands of hours into your body and close to zero into your mind. Not because you don’t think it matters, but because nobody taught you how.
Something deeper is in the way. Maybe it’s a past experience — an injury, a toxic coaching relationship, a failure that never fully resolved. Maybe it’s anxiety that extends beyond competition. Maybe the emotional suppression you’ve relied on for years is starting to crack. These are the situations where having a provider who can hold both the clinical and performance sides matters most.
What I’d Change About How People Think About This
Athletes and parents need to stop treating sport psychology as something you turn to when things are broken.
You don’t wait until your hamstring tears to start training your legs. You don’t skip nutrition until you bonk at mile 80. The mental side of performance works the same way. The athletes who build these skills early — as part of their development, not in crisis — sustain performance, sustain joy, and sustain careers longer than the ones who white-knuckle it.
I know this from the inside, too. I was a nationally competitive swimmer who burned out chasing performance over freedom. I’ve stood at starting lines with everything I just described running through my own head. That shapes how I work — not with the assumption that what you’re feeling is a weakness to eliminate, but with the understanding that your nervous system is doing exactly what it learned to do under pressure. And it can learn something different.
Ready to find out what’s getting in your way? Take the free Mental Performance Profile — a 5-minute assessment that maps your specific performance patterns — or book a free discovery call to talk about what working together could look like.