After much reluctance and resistance the American Board of Sport Psychology has decided to institute a membership plan. The decision to start a membership plan was based on requests from practitioners, students, coaches, educators and athletes who are interested in benefiting from ABSP perspectives, training and research and participating in our quest for a more evidence-based approach to athlete assessment and intervention. In contrast to most memberships in professional societies in which members essentially finance the organization through their member dues the ABSP membership plan was designed to provide great value to members in the form of education and training opportunities, significant discounts on certification tuition and importantly, the opportunity to implement our validated athlete assessment and intervention (mental training protocol) with teams and athletes they have contact with; activities with a value that greatly exceed membership fees (SEE MEMBERSHIP DETAILS BELOW-SCROLL to bottom of page).

Rationale

The American Board of Sport Psychology was founded in 2000 to address critical training gaps and oversights in current certification and educational offerings and the lack of accountability pertaining to many of its practices and athlete services. In a major paper and presentation at the International Tennis Federation 3rd Congress on Science and Technology in London (Sept. 2008) the following perspectives were further advanced in a world forum, as they have been since 1998 and elucidated in numerous peer reviewed publications (see ABSP related bibliography at Chair's Page on website). 

"The field of Applied Sport Psychology remains mired in a paradigm that is based in part on weak data, questionable assessment methods and interventions that have not been validated. Moreover, it continues to overemphasize findings that were derived from group studies as justification for the continued use of many of its procedures and interventions despite the fact that such findings do not necessarily generalize to the individual athlete. This is ironic, especially since the most prominent theory of peak performance (Individual Zone of Optimum Functioning [IZOF]) stresses the need to establish individual profiles of athlete arousal. If the field is to make serious and lasting inroads and provide athletes, coaches and organizations with best practices and methods a paradigm shift needs to occur. It must be based on rigorous scientific applications and methods, similar to those seen in the clinical realm where major advances have been made pertaining to patient diagnosis and treatment  New approaches to the evaluation of athletes must produce meaningful and useful information regarding an athlete’s psychological performance that has a high degree of ecological validity and reliability. Just as a professional scout or coach knows an athlete’s vertical jumping ability, foot speed, performance averages, technical propensities, body-fat index and oxygen uptake, the time has come to develop individualized normative databases on psychological and neuropsychophysiological functioning in athletes for assessment/diagnostic, comparative and intervention purposes. Practitioners should know an athlete’s “attention threshold,” “brain processing speed and reaction time,” “frontal-lobe error rate,” “emotional reactivity,” “critical moment psychological proficiency,” heart rate variability and deceleration response parameters,” and “movement related brain-macro potentials” among other important psychological performance responses if they are to effectively advise athletes, coaches and teams. The era of just telling athletes “to relax” or “just imagine” or “shut out negative thoughts” needs to evolve into a new era in which just relax means “generate more high frequency heart rate variability” prior to critical moments, or engage in focus threshold training to improve concentration or manipulate cerebral laterality to suppress intrusive thoughts. The current cliché laden “just do it” approach needs to be replaced with methods that define numerous nebulous constructs that pervade Applied Sport Psychology today (e.g., “zone,” “mental toughness,” “focus”). It is time to delineate the IZOF theory and postulates using instruments and methodologies that allow us to operationalize states of intensity or physiological reactivity it refers to. It is no longer tenable for practitioners to speak in vague subjective terms such as “he doesn’t concentrate” or “she’s a choker,” or “he’s not mentally tough” or recommend interventions just because they are the thing to do. “You’ve got to visualize” or “get your intensity up,” or “watch your body language” as slogans to somehow involve a person in mental training are insufficient. Athletes and coaches need to be provided with standardized assessment and intervention methods along with measures and parameters of performance relevant psychological and neuropsychophysiological functioning. The time has come for sport psychologists to use new language that is based on empirically derived data and operationalizations of psychological processes and their effects on performance......"

The goal of the American Board of Sport Psychology Membership Plan is to establish a worldwide network of practitioners that recognize the need to engage in standardized and validated methods of player evaluation and mental training. The model presented in this paper is unprecedented in terms of its scope, methodological sophistication, procedures, scientific integrity and the data that it has generated. It affords practitioners, coaches, organizations and athletes with evidence-based methods that form the basis of informed player development and management of the mental game. It is hoped that rather than attempt to “reinvent the wheel,” that this protocol will be adopted as the gold standard for the assessment of athletes, the enhancement of psychological performance and documentation of the mental game over the course of a player’s development and career. Practitioners, coaches and organizations are encouraged to be trained and participate in the CP project.

MEMBERSHIP PLAN

Membership in the ABSP affords the following Benefits:

1. Up to 3 years of paid dues will count toward tuition should a member enroll in ABSP certification, intern or fellowship programs after having been a member for a number of years. New members will receive a 25% discount on tuition should they enroll in any program in their first year as a member. 

2. Members will be able to pay certification tuition fees in up to three installment (this payment option can only be used in the context of full tuition: no member discounts available).

3. Members will be able to participate in three telephone conference call lectures on the ABSP protocol and other topics annually free of charge (dates and time will be announced); lectures can be credited toward certification if member goes on to enroll in a certification program.

4. Members can act as ABSP representatives in disseminating the ABSP message and protocol to coaches, athletes and organizations with earning opportunities (free training available for interested members).

5. Members can become trained as an ABSP-Technician at a 25% discount.

ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP FEE: $100.00

Register on Homepage Module (top right hand corner) or email ABSPsychology@aol.com