ZEPP FM | Sport psychology for athletes, coaches & future sport psychologists

Christian Zepp
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Dr. Christian Zepp is an expert for sport psychology, a researcher and lecturer whose motivation it is to help his athletes, coaches, teams, and students take the next step in their athletic, mental and personal development. Based on his experiences as an athlete, national team coach and his applied work with many elite athletes, coaches and teams from different countries in the world, he shares with you tips, tricks and strategies to develop an optimistic attitude, have powerful habits, and show ambitious behaviors day in and day out. In his show, Chris reviews brilliant books that will help you getting a new perspective, being mindful, and eventually improving your performance. In addition, Chris interviews incredible athletes, coaches and sport psychologists, sharing with you their stories and experience about what helped them achieve success and become the person they are today. Discover how you can learn from them how to improve your motivation, discipline, and leadership skills, and how to also use this knowledge to help others soar.

  1. Squash and death threats from the Taliban with Maria Toorpakai

    03/06/2019

    Squash and death threats from the Taliban with Maria Toorpakai

    Maria Toorpakai is a Pakistani squash player who had the dream to become an athlete as a young girl. Unfortunately, the culture, the society and the Taliban don't allow girls to be actively involved in sports in Pakistan – and especially not in remote tribal areas like Maria's home, South Waziristan. However, Maria never gave up fighting for what was important to her, and luckily she had a father who was a strong advocate for equal rights of men and women, and supported Maria in her dream to become an athlete. At the age of 4 years, Maria burned all her girls clothes and lived disguised as a boy, which made it possible for her to be the athlete she always wanted to be. After discovering squash and the joy she experienced on a squash court her true identity was revealed and she received death threats from different groups, including the Taliban. Although it wasn't safe for her to leave the family's house she kept training inside her bedroom. She sent thousands of emails to people around the world, asking for help. Finally, Jonathon Power, former world #1 in squash, offered her to come to Toronto/Canada. Today, Maria Toorpakai lives and trains in Toronto, still competing for the Pakistan. In this episode, Maria talks about her story and her experiences as a girl in an extreme patriarchal society, about being oppressed, about receiving death threats and about never giving up. She talks about the mindset she developed on her journey in life in squash and sport, about equality, human rights and her book A different kind of daughter. We also talked about the Maria Toorpakai foundation is dedicated to building peaceful communities and gender equity by investing in education, sports and healthcare programs for young girls and boys in remote regions of the world, particularly the Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

    1h 20m
  2. Keeping it simple in sport psychology with Lisa Rübsteck

    02/20/2019

    Keeping it simple in sport psychology with Lisa Rübsteck

    After studying psychology, Lisa focused specifically on the field of sport psychology, because she enjoys helping other athletes learn new things and improve their performances. Today she is living and working in The Hague in the Netherlands, owning ToughMinds together with two other sport psychologists, a company that delivers sport psychology services to athletes, team, coaches, companies as well as other target groups in the Netherlands. Once you meet Lisa you feel the positive vibes that surround her and I really enjoyed talking with her. She doesn't only talk about the great moments as a sport psychologist, but also shares several situations where she felt that she might have made a mistake, and that taught her some valuable lessons. In addition, Lisa and I talked about what skills future sport psychologists should learn in order to be really able to work with athletes, coaches and other clients, and not only focusing on the basic sport psychology skills everyone can learn in text- and work books. Thank you, Lisa, for all the great insights into your methods, your ideas, your way of working with people and what lessons you already learned along your way as a sport psychologist.

    1h 10m
  3. Turning off the mind with Nick Symmonds

    02/06/2019

    Turning off the mind with Nick Symmonds

    Nick Symmonds is a two-time Olympian, who competed for the United States in the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games. With 7 NCAA titles, 9 U.S. titles, a silver medal at the World Championships and a personal best of 3:59.68 for One Mile, he can be pretty satisfied with what he achieved during his active career. However, Nick doesn't enjoy the good life after a successful sporting career, he goes on and sets new goals for himself for the future. Not only did he co-found RunGum, a company producing chewing gums with energy boosting ingredients, but he strives also to climb the seven summits within the next couple of years. His goal is to be the first person on earth to run the mile under four minutes and summit Mt. Everest. In this episode, Nick talks about how he dealt with stress prior and during competitions, why discipline and dealing with obstacles is so important and what characteristics he developed while being an Olympic athlete that help him achieve his goals today in business and in mountains. Thank you, Nick, for sharing your personal insights with us!

    1h 7m
  4. Holistic athlete development in eSports with Fabian Broich

    01/23/2019

    Holistic athlete development in eSports with Fabian Broich

    In this episode, Fabian gives great insights into the lives of eSports athletes, how they train, how they live and how he tries to improve not only their level of performance through the application of several methods from sport psychology, but also their mental and physical well-being through new diets, more physical activity and fresh air. Moreover, his job is to create a cohesive team that sticks together, out of a small group of individuals who are only used to play their game in front of their own screen, only for their own benefit. With what I know about Fabian and how he talks about it, I'm pretty sure he's doing a remarkable job in Copenhagen, helping Origen and his athletes to dominate League of Legends in 2019.

    1h 41m
  5. Learn from the past and get ready for the future

    01/09/2019

    Learn from the past and get ready for the future

    Many students and people at workshops or keynotes regularly ask me about the methods and strategies I apply when working with people. With this solo episode today I am sharing one of the strategies with you, which I use for myself and which I apply with athletes and other clients when it's all about defining new goals for the future. I'm taking you through the complete process of reflecting on the past, identifying lessons learned from the last year or the last season, define new goals for the future as well as strategies for the times when life gets difficult and you might lose your goals out of sight. A couple of years ago I started not only defining goals for the upcoming year, but also developing a certain structure that not only helps me for myself and my personal goals, but that I can also apply when working with clients, athletes and students. The result is the SIX+ONE strategy I'm going to talk about in today's episode. I will definitely keep working on the strategies and its methods, but maybe you and your clients can benefit from what the strategies is like today. In order to make it even easier to follow and apply this strategy I created a short step-by-step guide. In this pdf file you get the basic guidelines, the strategies as well as one template for working on your outcome goals in step number 5. Should you have any questions regarding the strategy or any thoughts, please drop me an email and I'm happy to answer all of your questions!

    1h 3m
  6. One toe at a time with Kevin Rempel

    12/26/2018

    One toe at a time with Kevin Rempel

    Kevin Rempel is a 2014 Paralympic Bronze medalist, author of the book 'Still Standing: When You Have Every Reason to Give Up, Keep Going', and founder of the Sledge Hockey Experience. Kevin has an incredible story that has captivated audiences across Canada. He firmly believes that the greater the challenges you face, the greater your story will be, and as you discover the mindset that enables you to unlock your unknown greatness you begin to rewrite your script and be the hero of your own movie. Back in the early 2000s Kevin was a motocross rider with a dream of competing at the X-Games. On a beautiful day in July in 2006 he jumped with his bike high through the air, lost control over his moto bike, crashed and severely injured his spinal cord, which left him an incomplete paraplegic. Now, sitting in a wheelchair Kevin was desperate to take responsibility for his own life and prove his doctors wrong, who told him that he will never be able to walk again. Kevin not only regained his ability to walk – and ride a moto bike again – he also started playing wheelchair basketball and sledge hockey, and finally competing at the 2014 Paralympic Games.  In this episode, Kevin talks about his experiences after his accident, his mental health problems and suicidal thoughts, how he took responsibility and ownership of his life and his situation, bad recommendations he heard in the hospital, and what gratitude means to him today. I learned a lot from Kevin and how he approaches his life after being knocked down quite a few times.

    1h 27m
  7. My personal top 5 books of 2018

    12/12/2018

    My personal top 5 books of 2018

    Every year I'm reading many books to see what I can learn from them for me personally and for my work with students, athletes, coaches and other clients. A couple of years ago people started asking me which books I read, which books I can recommend, or which books I frequently give away as presents. After telling the same things over and over again, I founded my personal book club, where I review one book a month. The topics range from autobiographies, over leadership and motivation to Zen Buddhism. Last year was the first year when I decided to choose the top books I read that year – and I wanted to continue this in 2018 as well. Thus, in this episode I'm reviewing the what I consider the five best books I read in 2018 and which I recommend to many of the athletes, coaches, students and clients I'm working with! However, I'm not only reviewing these books today, I'm also giving them away for free to one lucky winner. The books I recommend in today's episode are The obstacle is the way by Ryan Holiday (3:27), Quiet by Susan Cain (15:44), Mindset by Carol S. Dweck (25:04), Wherever you go, there you are by Jon Kabat-Zinn (36:48), and The daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman (44:43). I've put the time stamps in brackets so you can easily navigate to the next book if you're specifically interested in a certain book. I hope that you'll benefit from these books as much as I did!

    57 min
  8. Sport psychology in eSports with Ismael Pedraza

    11/28/2018

    Sport psychology in eSports with Ismael Pedraza

    Still, one of the very few sport psychologists working in eSports is Ismael Pedraza from Colombia. After playing football himself he realized during his studies of sport sciences how important the mental side of the game is, and he started to specialize in the field of sport psychology. Although he never really played video or computer games himself, he identified a huge demand of mental preparation in eSports, what lead him and some colleagues to found The Mental Craft – a company devoted to help athletes, teams and coaches in eSports improve their performances through sport psychology. Ismael has been working in eSports for the last three years, which is an amazingly long time, because sport psychology wasn't really popular in eSports a couple of years ago. While working with Misfits, one of the professional teams in the European League of Legends Championship Series (EULCS), they became the first Western team to take any games off of the then reigning World Champion SK Telecom T1. If – like myself - you're not familiar what eSports competitions look like, you can get a great insight in the following video. I think, it's somehow really fascinating. In this episode, Ismael talks about his experiences in eSports, how he entered eSports as a sport psychologist, and how he thinks athletes, teams and coaches in eSports can benefit from sport psychology. Moreover, he gives some great advice for any sport psychologist who thinks about learning more about eSports and what is really necessary to know about eSports and the different video games in order to be able to successfully work in eSports. One important aspect he mentioned here was, that it can be even beneficial not to know anything or too much about eSports, and how this "not knowing" can set you up for a successful career as a sport psychologist in eSports.

    1h 38m
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About

Dr. Christian Zepp is an expert for sport psychology, a researcher and lecturer whose motivation it is to help his athletes, coaches, teams, and students take the next step in their athletic, mental and personal development. Based on his experiences as an athlete, national team coach and his applied work with many elite athletes, coaches and teams from different countries in the world, he shares with you tips, tricks and strategies to develop an optimistic attitude, have powerful habits, and show ambitious behaviors day in and day out. In his show, Chris reviews brilliant books that will help you getting a new perspective, being mindful, and eventually improving your performance. In addition, Chris interviews incredible athletes, coaches and sport psychologists, sharing with you their stories and experience about what helped them achieve success and become the person they are today. Discover how you can learn from them how to improve your motivation, discipline, and leadership skills, and how to also use this knowledge to help others soar.

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