David Smith on LinkedIn: #fitwithpride #charitablecheerleading #cheerleading #sportpsychology… (2024)

Sport Psychology Colleagues on LinkedIn! Are you a fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race? If so, wanna be on my podcast? I’m looking for Sport Psychology professionals who are interested in doing a guest appearance on my podcast! Every episode of the podcast covers one season of Drag Race, so if you are interested in guesting, let me know! I’m currently working on Season 2!

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If you’re anything like me, Valentine’s Day offers a lovely existential crisis! Here’s a bit of existential psychology for you courtesy of us at VirtualSportPsych to help you share the love with your athletes!❤️ #FitwithPRIDE #SportPsychology

Nothing says a productive strength and conditioning session with the football ⚽️ team like leaving your mark on the pitch! Also, when it comes to placing cones… I never said I was straight. 😅🏋️♀️

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Often in televised sports, you’ll see players celebrating and making funny gestures that are randomly caught on camera, but are inside jokes that the audience doesn’t get to know. Such as this video of Carly Lloyd’s little golf clap and hand shake after scoring Team USA’s first goal against Chile at the 2019 World Cup.It is interesting learning the backstory to this moment, as the match followed Team USA’s first match of the 2019 World Cup against Thailand where they won 13-0. That match was notable for both the spread but also Team USA’s continued pressing to score and celebrating each goal, even when it became clear that the Thailand team was no match. Team USA themselves recieved a lot of criticism for those actions who felt that it was akin to arrogance and bad sports(wo)manship. This comes after Team USA had been in a slump the two years leading up to the tournament.However, Team USA defended their actions stating that it would have been disrespectful to their opponents to bring anything less than 100% effort into their performance. With members of the Thailand team also stating that they had nothing but gratitude and appreciation for Team USA, specifically citing several positive interactions with Team USA players during thr match.Lloyd’s golf clap here was directed at the Team USA bench where her teammates responded similarly (not shown sadly) as a way of poking fun at the critics. For all my colleagues, particularly in sport psychology, what are your thoughts on this moment?I certainly subscribe to the notion that it is respectful to bring 100% effort into every match and competition. Even if “effort” doesn’t necessarily carry over to “performance” (because sometimes s**t happens).When matches become lopsided, it’s easy to criticize the winning team for not showing mercy. But when you’re at a peak performance tournament such as the World Cup, you can’t show up with anything less than your best. Even if one team is no competitive match for another, the nature of such tournaments determines success based on the effort each team puts forth on their own front. That is, even if Thailand or Chile was no match for Team USA, having the opportunity to compete against them on the World Cup stage is a success on it’s own. Those teams put forward their best and were beaten by the best, that’s what makes winners into champions, regardless of the final score. The pursuit of external rewards in high level competition runs contrary to the Olympic spirit itself. While we’d all like to win the medal and receive the accolades that come with it, given the standard of performance it takes to even be at that level, extrinsic motivation is simply not enough given the effort required. While it is disappointing to lose, it’s the challenge in itself that fosters growth. Best effort is an expression of intrinsic motivation to show the best of who you are, achieving that level because you know you can. #FitwithPRIDE #SportPsychology

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It's amazing that it's already been three years of #CheerBus adventures with the Pride Cheerleading Association! I've really loved seeing it grow from the 20 cheerleaders we had in 2022 now to 150+ cheerleaders we had in 2024. Not only that, but my time with PCA has helped me grow immensely as well and has taught me quite a bit about #SportPsychology, #SportsDiversity and #CharitableCheerleading! What an amazing three years it has been!

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While creating this infograph series, I found the insights into Theme Centered Interaction quite insightful! Definitely has elements of complex systems in it in regard to the "It", "I", "We", and "Globe" as well as a lot of takeways that can help improve my work as a coach and sport professional.

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Lateral cone shuffles with a back step sprint start w/ 1. FC Düren to train speed, coordination and just a little bit of agility via deceleration/pivot/receleration maneuver. To add onto this, we turned it also into a fun team building exercise and bring out everybody’s competitive self by making it into a relay race. No prizes or incentives, just the thrill off it all by pushing themselves and encouraging each other. With these athletes it’s always good to incorporate fun games and drills into the training sessions.🏋️♀️ Makes the training fun (they often request it) and enhances enjoyment of the sport. 🏋️♀️ Builds team cohesion, encourages positive support amongst teammates. 🏋️♀️ Athletes push themselves harder in this context compared to doing the same drill individually. 🏋️♀️ Allows athletes to get “in the game” mentally, helping them build mental conditioning skills in anticipation, reaction timing, visualization, etc.🏋️♀️ Practices performance under pressure in a safe environment for each athlete to better prepare for game time. 🏋️♀️ Training speed, anaerobic capacity, deceleration, change of direction over a repeated series. Helping train for more efficient energy recovery in between bouts and reducing fatigue. What I love about my work in both strength & conditioning and sport psychology is being able to blend the two together to build training sessions like this. This way, I can condition my athletes both mentally and physically while working to foster a more cohesive team culture that will enhance the performance of each athlete individually and the overall team. I only train the team 1x/ week so maximizing each session like this helps have a high quality, positive impact training with my athletes. In turn, the athletes themselves have come to enjoy the training so much that they’ve requested more time within the session as well! A win/win for all! #FitwithPRIDE #SportPsychology #strengthandconditioning #sportscience #sportsdiversity #soccer #fussball #fußball #training #sport

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I am super excited to share that the book for which I co-authored a textbook on Motivational Climate as a Complex System is finally coming out! This is my very first textbook chapter and on a topic I find particularly fascinating and hope I will be able to expand upon in future research as well. This wasn’t an easy endeavour either, and we wrote it during a time when I really needed the motivation myself to move forward. But this work helped me realize I had something valuable worth contributing to the field, even though I was delivering groceries at the time to pay my bills.It is very exciting and validating to see my writing getting published in a book that will be helping shape the field of psychology in sport and exercise! I am very grateful for the invitation and opportunity to contribute to the field as well! I hope it will be the first of many book chapters and even full books! 😍🤩📖📚🦋🌪#FitwithPRIDE #SportPsychology #SportScience #Motivation #MotivationalClimate #science #sport #psychology #SportsDiversity

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Important message to send about the quality of coaching and how to ensure you are creating a team culture where you can bring out the best in everybody.

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