The Nature of Sport and Exercise Psychology.

This chapter begins by discussing the clients and key roles of a sport and exercise psychologist. Importantly, we propose that a sport psychologist and an exercise psychologist have markedly different clients. We also explore why someone might either become a sport or exercise psychologist, encouraging people to reflect on their own beliefs and values. We follow this by looking at some of the key issues involved in service delivery. We discuss the issue of performance enhancement versus the well-being of the client, a concern that is particularly relevant for sport psychology. Following this, we look at guiding philosophical issues as these influence how practitioners work with clients, including how to conduct a needs analysis. We finish by considering measurement issues related to applied psychology, and in doing so, we conclude an important point related to the performance versus well-being debate.