Psychological Skills: What They Are and How to Develop Them

What Are Psychological Skills?

Psychological skills are the mental abilities and strategies that athletes and performers use to optimize their functioning under pressure. Like physical skills, they are learnable, trainable, and improvable through deliberate practice.

The most commonly identified psychological skills in sport include:

• Self-confidence — belief in one’s ability to perform successfully
• Motivation — the drive to initiate, sustain, and direct effort
• Arousal regulation — the ability to reach and maintain an optimal activation level
• Concentration — directing and sustaining attention on task-relevant cues
• Imagery — mentally rehearsing performance to build skill and readiness
• Goal setting — structuring objectives to guide effort and track progress
• Self-talk — managing internal dialogue to support performance
• Stress management — coping effectively with pressure and adversity

These skills do not operate in isolation — they interact and reinforce each other. An athlete with strong self-confidence is better able to regulate arousal; an athlete with clear goals finds it easier to maintain concentration.

Foundation vs. Performance Skills

Robin Vealey’s influential model distinguishes between two levels of psychological skills:

Foundation skills are broad psychological dispositions that underlie all performance:

• Volition (commitment and effort)
• Self-awareness (understanding of one’s own mental states)
• Self-confidence
• Identity and personal values

Performance skills are specific techniques applied during preparation and competition:

• Attentional focus and refocusing
• Arousal management
• Imagery and mental rehearsal
• Self-talk management
• Pre-performance routines

The distinction matters practically: foundation skills are developed through long-term engagement with training and life; performance skills are more discrete techniques that can be directly practiced and applied.

Assessing Psychological Skills

Before developing a training plan, it is useful to assess where an athlete currently stands across key skill areas. Several validated instruments are used in applied sport psychology:

Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS)

Measures the frequency with which athletes use psychological strategies in both training and competition. Covers goal setting, imagery, activation, relaxation, self-talk, attention control, and emotional control.

Athletic Coping Skills Inventory (ACSI-28)

Assesses seven coping skills: coping with adversity, peaking under pressure, goal setting, concentration, freedom from worry, confidence and achievement motivation, and coachability.

Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS-2)

Measures the three components of competitive anxiety: somatic anxiety, worry, and concentration disruption.

Beyond formal assessment, skilled practitioners also use interviews, observation, performance diaries, and coach feedback to develop a comprehensive picture of an athlete’s psychological profile.

Psychological Skills Training (PST)

Psychological Skills Training (PST) is the systematic application of psychological techniques to enhance performance. It is typically structured in three phases:

Phase 1: Education

Athletes learn what psychological skills are, why they matter, and how they affect performance. This phase builds awareness and motivation to engage with the training process.

Phase 2: Acquisition

Athletes learn the specific techniques — how to construct an effective pre-performance routine, how to use imagery, how to apply breathing techniques for arousal regulation. This phase focuses on understanding and initial practice.

Phase 3: Practice

The critical phase. Skills are developed through repeated application in progressively challenging conditions — starting in low-pressure training, moving to simulated competition, and ultimately applied in real competition.

Research consistently shows that PST works — athletes who undergo systematic psychological skills training show significant improvements in performance outcomes compared to control groups. However, the benefits depend heavily on consistent, long-term practice, not one-off workshops or brief interventions.

Common Mistakes in Psychological Skills Development

Starting too late. Many athletes only address psychological skills in crisis — after a major performance failure or during a slump. The most effective time to develop these skills is during periods of relative stability, before they are urgently needed.

Expecting quick results. Psychological skills take time to develop and integrate, just as physical skills do. Expecting immediate performance gains from a brief mental skills workshop is unrealistic.

Practicing only in easy conditions. A relaxation technique learned in a quiet room will not automatically transfer to a high-pressure competition. Skills need to be systematically rehearsed under conditions that approximate competitive stress.

Treating skills in isolation. The most effective PST programs develop multiple skills together and show athletes how they interact — how goal setting supports motivation, how imagery supports confidence, how routines consolidate arousal regulation.

Psychological Skills Across the Career

The psychological skills most relevant to an athlete change across developmental stages:

Understanding where an athlete is in their development informs which skills deserve the most attention — and how they should be trained.