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9 Sport Psychology Apps That Will Make You a Better Athlete

Dave Kearney
4 min readApr 27, 2022

Mindfulness and wellbeing apps have become incredibly popular over the last few years with leading apps such as Headspace and Calm now boasting over 100 million downloads each. And while these apps offer scientifically proven benefits in terms of wellbeing, they often fail to meet the exacting needs of competitive athletes due to the one size fits all nature of their content.

A new wave of performance focused mental training apps are now coming online. Many work in a similar way to Headspace and Calm, while also looking to satisfy the more demanding needs of competitive and amateur athletes head on.

Here are the top 4 leading sport psychology apps with a little more about the features each one has:

1. Champion’s Mind

Champion’s Mind is the most downloaded and highly rated mental skills training app that focuses on athletes mental performance and has store ratings similar to apps like Headspace and Calm. The app contains 12 skill “modules” (which provide guidance on key sport psychology topics) as well as “challenges”, which are 28 day long exercises focused on specific topics like Confidence or Mindfulness. The app also includes dozens of high quality visualizations, affirmations, breathing, mindfulness and muscle relaxation exercises which can be accessed on demand.

Best use: Champion’s Mind works much like an audio book and is recommended for athletes who want to work on their mental game while travelling to and from training or competition.

2. Mindset

Mindset tutorial video for Goal Setting, Imagery and Journalling

Mindset helps athletes who already work with sport psychologists to manage their daily mental skills training in a more effective and accountable way.

Mindset works as a single home for athletes to complete their mental training work. The app allows athletes to track goals, complete bespoke imagery sessions and record their performance journal for example. Journal entries can also be analysed by AI to identify recurring themes and the sentiment (positive or negative) attached to them.

The connected dashboard also lets sport psychologists track progress, making mental training more accountable, and allows for customisable journal templates and sharable surveys for each athlete.

Best use: Mindset is best used by sport psychologists who want an accountable way to turn techniques like goal setting, imagery and journalling into new habits.

3. Restoic

While Champion’s Mind offers a self-guided mental skills training program and Mindset focuses on helping athletes train more successfully with their own sport psychologist, Restoic offers a different approach that merges both pre-recorded content and the opportunity for each athlete to connect with a pre-vetted CMPC qualified sport psychologist for 1:1 assistance through the app.

Personalised training is delivered remotely by zoom and incorporates the content of the app. Meanwhile a dashboard also allows a coach to communicate with athletes and review their progress through the 4, 8 or 12 week training programs available.

Best use: When your team needs additional mental training resources and wants to make a sport psychologists available to your athletes, but doesn’t have the budget to bring in someone full time.

4. WellU

Created by sport psychologist Brian Alexander (who works with the US Olympic team), WellU offers a broad array of audio and video content covering motivation, self-awareness, confidence, focus, resilience and more.

WellU also includes mental skills self assessments that can be completed and shared with a qualified sport psychologist who can be contacted via the in-app chat system.

Best use: Similar to Restoic. When your team needs additional mental training resources and wants to make a sport psychologists available to your athletes, but doesn’t have the budget to bring in someone full time.

Bonus

Since writing this article, a few newer (and older) apps have been pointed out to me:

  • Equilii is a new entrant in the sport psychology app space with an experienced team and is still in active development. Good things should be expected here.
  • Athlete cards is a series of short exercises that athletes/coaches can work on to improve concentration and includes a journalling option for reflection. Very little is available outside the paywall, so it’s hard to tell how effective it is.
  • Headsharp and Sports Mental Coach are older apps and appear incomplete, I’m unsure if they are still being developed/supported.
  • Tackle your feelings is a free web and mobile app covering mental health concepts for athletes (rugby in particular). The quality and range of content is good, especially for younger athletes.

Summary

  • If you are an athlete who wants to improve their mental game in a cost effective way, Champion’s Mind is the place to look.
  • If you coach a team and wants app based access to additional sport psychology resources and the option of 1:1 support for your athletes, Restoic or WellU are good choices.
  • If you are a sport psychologist or mental skills coach looking to implement a more efficient and accountable mental training process of your own design, Mindset helps to solve this problem most effectively.
Sport Psychology
Mental Skills Training
Apps
Champion Mindset

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Dave Kearney

Written by Dave Kearney

69 Followers

Making mental skills training based on sport psychology best practice a normal thing for all athletes

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