All elite performers eventually face the end of their careers. Whether individuals are athletes, performance artists, politicians, or businesspersons, their performance demands are often intense and require a high level of awareness, knowledge, and skills to effectively manage the challenges that they face. Ironically, most elite performers have not prepared or planned for their transition from the competitive arena. This chapter focuses on the transitions that performers face as they end their careers. In particular, the authors discuss conceptual and theoretical frameworks for sport career transitions; developmental factors related to effective and healthy transitions during, and out of, performance; psychological reactions to performance transitions; suggestions for assisting individuals with preparing for and coping with transitions; and ethical considerations involved when providing services to individuals ending active involvement in competition.
ore than 25 years ago, the Advisory Board on Sport Psychology, United States Olympic Committee (1983), published a docu ment that outlined three types of sport psychology activities: clinical, educational, and research. Clinical interventions were described as those assisting athletes who exhibited severe emotional problems such as depression, panic, and inter personal conflicts. Educational interventions were said to focus on teaching psychological skills, such as relaxation, imagery, and attention control to enhance athletes' sport performance. The third category, research, was seen not as a form of inter vention but as an important activity to enhance the work of both clinical and educational practitioners. Although these guidelines were developed to show the range of activities deemed necessary for the provision of comprehensive sport psychology services to Olympic athletes, they inadvertently spawned a turf war between professionals trained in psychol ogy and those trained in the sport sciences. Even today, ques tions about appropriate training, practitioner competencies, and the use of the term sport psychologist persist (Berger, 2010).
The objective this article is to describe five practice guidelines for counsellors working with people of African ancestry in a sport context. The practice guidelines pertain to counsellor training, counsellor perspectives, counsellor services, counsellor ethics and counsellor research. These practice guidelines can assist counsellors working with people of African ancestry in a sport context to focus on both personal development through sport and performance enhancement in sport. This will enable athletes not just to view sport in terms of their win-lose record, but to also strive for excellence in sport by becoming better people. In becoming better people athletes can contribute to building up Africa and her people.
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