Delivery of psychological skills training to youngsters

The aim of the present study was to explore sport psychologists’ experiences of working with children and adolescents to understand how they have adapted both content and delivery of psychological skills training (PST) when consulting with young athletes. Interviews with 12 experienced sport psychology consultants (SPCs) from the UK were inductively content analysed. Four main higher-order themes relating to content and delivery emerged: consultancy skills, relating to youngsters, delivery medium and maintaining engagement. The findings suggest that psychologists experience challenges unique to youth populations but have also developed content and delivery strategies to overcome these.