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The sport psychology literature provides many examples of the use of mental skills training with athletes. Little attention, however, has been given to those brief interventions that occur frequently when working with athletes in the field. Such interventions are time limited, action oriented, and present focused. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of the use of brief contact interventions with athletes in field settings. In particular, we provide a short introduction to such interventions, describe a framework for their use, and present several case examples. We believe that brief contact interventions can be made more effective by following the principles described in this article.

Sport psychology offers many services to athletes to help them deal with the demands of competition. Although coaches are faced with many of the same types of stressors as athletes are, little has been offered to help them with their own needs. The purpose of this article is to examine some of the issues that are experienced by coaches and to stimulate interest in providing sport psychology services directly to them. These services include strategies to increase coaches’ self-awareness and to help them remove or cope more effectively with any psychological barriers (thoughts, feelings, wants, or behaviors) that interfere with their performance.

The quality of the counseling relationship has proven to be the most significant factor in facilitating treatment adherence and positive counseling outcomes. The authors of the present article contend that the dynamics of the sport psychologist-athlete relationship are quite similar to those of counselor-client relationship. They offer suggestions for the training of sport and exercise psychology graduate students that borrow extensively from the research and training strategies used in counselor education. In particular, a possible interface between sport psychology and counseling psychology training and practice is suggested, a brief overview of research on the qualities of the counseling relationship is presented, and several training strategies are provided.