Sport injury
&
performance
Psychological skills training to help you recover with confidence. Turn your downtime into a competitive advantage
This is one-to-one online work integrating CBT-informed therapy, mindfulness, clinical hypnosis, and ACT-informed strategies — practical, structured, and tailored to you.
Is this you?
This is likely a good fit if:
- Injury has knocked your confidence, identity, or motivation — even when you’re doing ‘everything right’
- You worry you’ll lose your skills in the downtime
- You keep overthinking your isolation and lack of communication with your network
- Physio has cleared you to move forward, but you don’t feel safe
- You notice bracing before contact, hesitation before cutting/pivoting, or tension when loading the joint
- Certain movements or sensations trigger threat-scanning, ‘what if’ thinking, or avoidance
How I can help
I help athletes calm the body’s alarm response, reduce fear-driven bracing and avoidance, and rebuild confidence in movement step by step, so return-to-play feels steadier.
This is the psychological side of rehab, designed to fit alongside your physio or medical plan.
It is especially useful when catastrophising, fear of pain, hesitation, or loss of trust is starting to shape how you respond and move.
Performance (uninjured)
Is this you?
This is likely a good fit if performance is being affected by pressure, tension, or overthinking:
- You train well, but competition feels different, tight, rushed, not yourself
- You overthink technique, lose automaticity, or get stuck in self-monitoring
- Pressure triggers threat-scanning, fear of mistakes, judgement, or selection
- You feel too amped or too flat and struggle to hit your ideal performance state
- Confidence wobbles after errors, setbacks, or injury, even when you are fit
- You want a reliable routine for focus, composure, and consistency
- You wish you could ‘get out of your own way’ and get into flow state
How I can help
I help athletes train a steadier performance state, calmer body, clearer attention, and more consistent access to skill under pressure.
Why this helps in 3 simple ideas
Confidence is built through evidence. Your nervous system learns safety and control through repeated, successful experiences. And this is how:
The brain is a prediction machine (it’s always making a best guess)
After injury or setbacks, the brain becomes more cautious. It starts anticipating danger in certain movements or sensations — even when healing is going well.
Pain and fear are part of protection
When the brain senses threat, it turns protection up: tension, bracing, hesitation, threat-scanning, avoidance — and sometimes more pain. In sport, that can disrupt timing, technique, and trust.
The brain is plastic (it can update)
With the right cues and repeated ‘safe enough’ experiences, the system learns. Protection mode is dialled down, movement becomes freer, and confidence returns.
So the goal is simple: help your brain to start expecting ‘manageable’ again — and then prove it, step by step, in your rehab or training.
How we work
Depending on what you bring, we may work on:
- Settling the threat response
Breathwork, attention skills, PMR, and tension-release work so you can shift out of high alert more reliably. - Rebuilding trust in movement (step by step)
Graded exposure using mental rehearsal, and then incremental in-vivo exposure — to build the evidence. Small steps, repeated, until your brain learns: this is safe. - Acceptance (active, not passive)
Reducing the second layer of suffering (the fight with sensations / the battle with the timeline / the overthinking / the frustration) while still moving toward what matters. - Communication + context
Selection pressure, team culture, and support shape recovery. We work on assertiveness and clear communication with coaches/physios — sometimes rehearsing those conversations so you’re ready.
Clinical Hypnosis
Hypnosis is a focused, absorbed state, like being fully immersed in a film, a daydream or a memory. In my approach, the socio-cognitive model, you stay aware, you remain in control, and it is always collaborative.
In sport, it is especially useful for:
- Strengthening routines, confidence cues, and performance identity
- Embodied mental rehearsal for movements, skills, and key scenarios
- Regulation under pressure and faster recovery after errors
- Updating threat responses around pain, contact, or specific movements
What to expect
Most sessions follow a simple structure:
- Check-in and context, so I get to know your unique situation
- Mapping the pattern, the current coping behaviour and defining the goal
- Skills training, and safe place for emotional support
- Mental rehearsal or hypnosis when useful to advance
- A clear between-session plan with small, manageable practices
Ready to feel steadier under pressure — and trust your body again?
Be heard. Be supported. And make the most of your injury downtime.