From high performance centres to local leisure centres

It is important throughout your SEPAR training to develop your practice philosophy, and start to carve a path for professional work for yourself. At the beginning of my training, a year and a half ago, this seemed simple enough for me - start work within team sports and build myself up to working at the elite level.

Unfortunately, as it so often does, life got in the way. As most graduates find themselves after leaving university, I needed money, and whilst there are plenty of opportunities to work within team sports, without prior experience, you often find yourself offering your services for free. Now this was something that I would be happy to do and it would be a great experience for my career, but it doesn't pay the bills, so at the beginning of 2023, I went out in search of a somewhat psychologically-related job to pay the rent. That's how I came to work within special educational needs.

Over the next year and a half, I worked in a number of settings with individuals with special educational needs (SEN). Throughout this time, I learnt numerous invaluable lessons about supporting people with SEN one of which being the importance of finding accessible ways for individuals to engage in physical activity. I saw the joy that exercise can bring to people, the ways that physical activity could improve quality of life, develop fine motor skills like holding a fork, or tracing their name, and generally bring a sense of community to a group.

These experiences made me re-evaluate what it important to me, in working within sport and exercise psychology. I returned to my core values and reflected on what felt most authentic and important to me. Initially, my values were relatively vague professional notions that seemed to fit with working as a sport psychologist, now my values reflect what is meaningful to me, and how I wish my practice to come across to any current or future clients - inclusive, approachable, adaptable, just, and empowering.

For me personally, the experiences that I had working within SEN settings not only shaped my values as a practitioner, but shifted my focus away from elite sport, to working to support individual people find physical activity enjoyable and meaningful. This means, saying goodbye the idea of working within a professional sports team, and saying hello to working in a sports hall. My focus, over the next year is to gain as much experience in exercise psychology as I possibly can - working with individuals recovering from injuries, helping people build and maintain healthy habits, supporting people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities, autism, and whatever else may come my way. I feel that I may now be a step closer to finding my place in psychology.

Follow along as I really delve into the history of exercise psychology and how it can be useful for anyone wanting to change their behaviours and stay healthy.