The purpose of this review was to systematically identify and evaluate the psychosocial interventions used to manage a component of the stress process in competitive sport performers. Inclusion criteria were devised to select research relevant to the topic area.Studies were assessed for inclusion by examining their title, abstract, and then full text.Based on the outcome of this process, 64 studies were included in the review. These studies encompassed a variety of cognitive (n = 11), multimodal (n = 44), and alternative interventions (n = 9). The results indicate that, in general, a variety of stress management interventions are associated with athletes' optimized stress experience and enhanced performance. The findings suggest that the effectiveness of stress management is moderated by a number of diverse design features (e.g., treatment adopted, stress component outcome measured). These design features are important to consider when designing interventions for athletes of varying sports, ages, and competitive standards. The competitive sport arena is a highly demanding and potentially stressful environment. Based on a transactional conceptualization, stress is defined as "an ongoing process that involves individuals transacting with their environments, making appraisals of the situations they find themselves in, and endeavouring to cope with any issues that may arise" (Fletcher, Hanton, & Mellalieu, 2006, p. 329; adapted from Lazarus, 1999). In line with this perspective of stress, it is widely acknowledged that sport performers must manage a wide range of environmental demands and psychological responses if they are to enhance their athletic performance and sport experience. Although some performers are able to manage the various causes and consequences of the stress process, many others struggle, resulting in severe impairments to their performance and health (e.g., burnout, depression, illness). It is for this reason that stress management interventions are important for facilitating athlete's experiences and performances in a range of sport-related settings.Within the sport psychology literature, it is acknowledged that intervention research should be of paramount importance to better understand the most appropriate approach to manage sport performers' stress (Anshel, 2005; Jones & Hardy, 1990;Thomas, Mellalieu, & Hanton, 2008). Aligned with this view, researchers have implemented a number of stress management interventions to optimize different aspects of the transactional stress process in typically one of the following ways: a) a reduction in stressors, b) a modification of cognitive appraisals, c) a reduction in negative affect and an increase in positive affect, or d) to facilitate effective coping behaviors. Hence, for the purposes of this paper, optimization of the stress process involves the interrelation and balance between the components of the stress process to benefit an individual's well-being and performance. However, there is still debate as to the effectiveness of different stress ...

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This study extends stress research by exploring sport psychologists’ experiences of organizational stressors. Twelve accredited sport psychologists (6 academics and 6 practitioners) were interviewed regarding their experiences of organizational stress within their jobs. Content analysis involved categorizing the demands associated primarily and directly with their occupation under one of the following general dimensions: factors intrinsic to sport psychology, roles in the organization, sport relationships and interpersonal demands, career and performance development issues, and organizational structure and climate of the profession. A frequency analysis revealed that academics £AOS = 201) experienced more organizational stressors than practitioners £APOS = 168). These findings indicate that sport psychologists experience a wide variety of organizational stressors across different roles, some of which parallel those found previously in other professions. The practical implications for the management of stress for sport psychologists are discussed.

Research has shown how social and cultural factors continually shape an athlete's development journey. For example, the types of practice designed, in which individuals are identified as talented and the characteristics that distinguish a good coach, are continually shaped by sociocultural constraints. This potential for a myriad of possible complex and ill-defined challenges (a wicked problem), highlights a need for a framework to guide both research and practice within specific sports organizations. In this paper, we present the Learning in Development Research Framework (LDRF), a deeply contextualized, transdisciplinary approach to action research that is founded in ecological dynamics that utilizes the Skilled Intentionality Framework (SIF) to capture the role of sociocultural forces in shaping athlete development. Further, we present a practical example from a professional football club highlighting the main aim of the LDRF: that player development frameworks should evolve in, interaction with the specific sociocultural context in which practitioners and individuals are embedded. The implication is that there are no 'copy and paste' templates. Practitioners and applied scientists should seek to comprehend the distinct contextual complexities of cultures, communities and situations as they encounter them, co-creating practices that, respectively, amplify and dampen helpful and unhelpful aspects of sport forms of life.