Flipping sport psychology theory into practice : A context- and behavior centered approach

[Extract] In this chapter, we briefly present a historical background to the current state of sport psychology research and practice, arguing for the need of our flipped approach. We then present the theoretical underpinnings of such an approach. Conceptually, the flipped approach rests on foundations of ecological psychology (e.g., Gibson 1979; Bronfenbrenner 1979), which describes how cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment interactions and dynamics, rather than in terms of disembodied computation and representation (Chemero 2009). From this viewpoint, the environment is held as intrinsically meaningful, with sufficient information and meaning just waiting to be discovered in the athlete-environment interaction. As for practical implications, we use soccer as a case, to show a concrete way to structure and communicate psychology with an emphasis on performance development behaviors in this specific sport. Finally, we discuss the implications of such an approach for both research and practice in the field of sport psychology.