Private Practice Development - What To Know About AASP (Association For Applied Sport Psychology) Mentors And The CMPC Certification
About the Author
Ben Foodman is a licensed psychotherapist & performance specialist. He owns his private practice located in Charlotte North Carolina where he specializes in working with athletes to help them overcome mental blocks (the yips), PTSD, ADD / ADHD and achieve flow states through the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback. If you are interested in services, use the link here! Enjoy the article below!
Introduction: Why Ben Is Different From Other AASP CMPC Mentors
When young professionals are entering the field of sport psychology, one of the first things they can do to distinguish themselves in this field is to pursue the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC) certification. The overwhelming majority of jobs at all levels of sports (professional and collegiate) require that sport psychology professionals possess the CMPC, even if they are licensed.
So in order to get the CMPC, professionals will need to work with an AASP CMPC mentor in order to achieve the hours they need to sit for the exam. For this issue of Private Practice Development I want to discuss how I have created a mentoring service that differentiates itself from other professionals within the field and how prospective CMPCs can benefit from this style of training. Let’s first begin by discussing how I use a freestyle coaching approach.
Part I. AASP CMPC Mentorship & Freestyle Coaching
When people come to work with me for mentorship, they are usually working a full-time job or they are in graduate school. This means that their schedule can be chaotic with frequent changes. Furthermore, their workload can change rapidly and this will require them to adjust how much time they spend collecting the necessary CMPC hours for certification. This is why I employ what I call freestyle coaching.
Because there is no timetable for securing the CMPC, and candidates need to be able to be flexible in scheduling, I let mentees set the pace for how frequently they want to meet. Furthermore, instead of coming up with a strict curriculum, I provide resources that can help CMPC candidates enhance their sport psychology skills, but do not have ‘required’ reading or homework. We move as fast or as slow as mentees would like.
Part II. Learn Cutting-edge Techniques They Won’t Teach You In Graduate Schools
Because I have attended both a clinical counseling graduate school, and a graduate sport psychology program, I know very well what candidates can expect from an educational curriculum standpoint. Furthermore, I have extensive dialogue with active graduate students about what is being taught, and I can tell you that hardly anything has changed. This next comment may be shocking, but the vast majority of what you learn in graduate school will not help you become successful in the field.
Because of this I introduce advanced, cutting-edge concepts and techniques to mentees that they would otherwise not be exposed to in graduate school. Content that you most certainly will not cover in ANY graduate program but that you will learn with me includes the following: basic neuroscience principles, Brainspotting/EMDR techniques, neurofeedback/biofeedback applications and other cutting-edge approaches that I use with actual athletes.
Part III. Learn How To Build A Sport Psychology Practice Using High Quality SEO Strategies
As far as I am aware, most of my peers who provide mentoring focus exclusively on skill development but never the actual business side of starting a private practice. Anyone that has worked with me will tell you that even if your dream is to work for a professional or collegiate team, I still preach the necessity of starting your own side-hustle. When you work with me I will go over the fundamentals for starting a business, especially focused on teaching how to enhance your skills with SEO (search engine optimization). This will be critical to your success regardless if you go to work with a team or for yourself. If you are interested in learning more about working with me on CMPC mentorship, you can either visit my website here or use this contact form link to reach out!
Note To Reader:
If you are an athlete reading this segment of the TRAINING REPORT, hopefully this content was helpful! I put the Training Report together because I felt like many of the discussions on issues such as the Yips/mental blocks, strength training & other subject matter on athlete performance concepts were really missing the mark on these ideas (e.g. how trauma is the direct cause of the Yips). If you are interested in learning more, make sure to subscribe below for when I put out new content on issues related to sport psychology & athlete performance! Also, if you are looking to work with a mental performance specialist, you are in the right place! USE THIS LINK to reach out to me to see if my services are the right fit for your goals!
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