This essay is going to explain what sport psychology is, and how an understanding of the psychological processes involved in sports help athletes and teams realize their full potential. In the current climate sports are a big business. When big money is involved, comes the increased pressure to succeed. Sports psychologists are now more common in the sporting circuit, and are an integral part of a sportspersons armoury. The hope from the athletes point of view, is the sport psychologist can improve motivation levels, to keep the athlete fully focused on training at an optimum levels for annually. Motivation is the drive that makes an athlete want to win. Motivation can be divided into two types, Intrinsic and extrinsic. An athlete that is intrinsically motivated is, “those which a person engages in to feel competent and self-determining,” (Deci, 1975), intrinsic motivation is not provided by others and arises spontaneously. Extrinsic motivation comes in the form of reward from others such as praise for repeating a skill or a trophy for winning a competition. Self confidence is the belief that the athlete has the ability to achieve their desired goal. In 1982, Bandura found that those with high levels of self confidence try harder and persist longer, but those low in confidence give up in the face of difficulty. Tools that can be used to improve an athlete’s self confidence are goal setting and self talk. Goal setting requires an athlete to have long-term goals, which can be broken down into short-term goals. These help because the athlete can then see that they are achieving their short-term goals, and are developing on the long-term goal. Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time are the main guidelines on how short-term goals should be set out. Self-talk is where athletes have a conversation with themselves during a competitive match. The aim of Self-Talk is to instil confidence and improve performance, by reminding ourselves of key elements to our game, "Watch the ball," in order to concentrate more, "You can do it," to increase motivation. However, there is negative Self-Talk which can lead to the total opposite happening, increased frustration, anxiety, and poor performance. Woods describes strategies that can change Self-talk from a negative to a positive, “Thought stopping: this means stopping the negative thought as soon as it occurs. You practise by saying stop out loud then focus on an aspect of the skill,” and, “Substitution: this means changing negative into positive thoughts so that you see the circumstances in a more positive way.” Psychological stress is clearly very much part of modern sports. It has been suggested that coping with this pressure is the fundamental challenge in sports (Hardy, 1992). Kroll, identified five c