Ian Cookson - Sport Psychology

13/02/2026

A couple of great testimonials recently.

Parent of junior female footballer
"Really liked the personalisation of the sessions guided by the service user preferences/goals for the session outcomes."

Female kayaker
" I was able to reflect positively on a sport I now no longer participate in. Ian helped me to reframe my thoughts and to be grateful for all the positive experiences associated with it. Very empathetic. Excellent listener. Great interpersonal skills."

06/02/2026

06/02/2026

Friday thought before your games this weekend. I've seen an increase in "influencers", and "thought gurus" or similar on social media telling their audiences that "this one single thing" seperates the top peformers in any sporting discipline from the rest of their field.

It's nonsense. For one it undermines the years of dedication and craft that you all put into your sports all the time, but it also overly simplifies the complexity and nuance in sport. The messiness that I've come to understand is the true nature of high performance.

Work hard, be consistent, don't expect short cuts. Or we'd all be doing it.

05/02/2026

In our Women's Football Hub blog this week we review our recent podcast on belonging and identity with Dr Ian Cookson
You can read the entire blog here: https://zurl.co/usSTE
Full podcast episode here: https://zurl.co/MpHBh

30/01/2026

The new episode of Women's Football Hub is now live.
I’m joined by Dr Ian Cookson for a deep, honest conversation about identity and belonging in football.
We explore:
• How players form their identity within a team
• How injuries and long layoffs can completely disrupt that identity
• Identity foreclosure and why athletes struggle when football is their only sense of self
• The emotional impact of academy release and the tiny percentage who make the pro pathway
• Retirement, transitions and the need for better aftercare
• Culture, psychological safety and what leadership really requires
• How the women’s game can grow without inheriting the problems of the men’s game
Listen now: https://zurl.co/AImMT

24/01/2026

Sometimes your self care is just being in nature.

18/01/2026

17/01/2026

14/01/2026

Inspired by a conversation I had this morning, I thought I'd talk about the session I ran this weekend with The England Amputee Football Association. We're developing our culture having been through significant staff and player changes including a change in playing style. So this weekend we started with a daft game (as always), a form of "who am I" with everyone trying to work out what they were and then find their matching pair (think Fish and Chips)! We then got them to talk about each others strengths, before moving into small groups looking at our performance DNA and signature moves (no, not the macarena)!

Lots of enjoyment, discussion and energy in the room, building our understanding of who we are as a TRIBE in line with Jeremy Holt's book "For the love of the game".

If you're interested in running sessions like this with your team or organisation, then get in touch!

22/12/2025

Happy Christmas to all our customers and followers. It's been a great 2025 working with you all. Looking forward to more projects in 2026. Enjoy the festive break!

08/12/2025

Fascinating weekend of sport... but these two articles from the BBC caught my eye. Firstly we have Lando Norris, the new F1 world champion who talks about "I feel like I have just managed to win it the way I wanted to win it, which was not by being someone I'm not." something that was being questioned from his early days in F1. Zak Brown has also stated quite clearly that they are a values led organisation.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/articles/c3v136dv03po

Then we have the England cricket team and the suspicion that there is a demand to conform, to do things a certain way, and not creating the conditions where players can speak out. This is something we call psychological safety, and its core feature is having the freedom to speak out and challenge without any negative consequences such as deselection.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/articles/czj0mr1xdd9o

Now I must be careful here and say that we don't know exactly what is going on within these organisations, and certainly the latter article is written by a journalist and not quoting someone on the inside. But we can still consider from these examples how the conditions we create within our organisations facilitate or hinder performance.

If Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum are questioning the mentality of the England players, they need to look at themselves, says Jonathan Agnew.

21/11/2025