Services
Sports and Performance Psychology in Nashville
Sports Performance Coaching for Peak Performance
Are you an athlete seeking a mental edge to boost your performance? Do you want your student-athlete to be at their best in the pressure of competition, overcoming setbacks and staying focused under high-stakes conditions? Whether you’re the parent of a promising young athlete, an Olympic hopeful, or competing at the professional level, sports psychology and sports performance therapy help athletes maximize their potential.
At Music City Psych in Nashville, we specialize in sports psychology to help athletes sharpen their mental game and overcome barriers to success. Using evidence-based techniques, we provide athletes with the tools they need to stay focused, build confidence, and succeed both on and off the field.
Our team has helped athletes realize peak performance at every level, including:
- High school
- NCAA Division I
- Olympic competition
- Professional sports
Athletes of all kinds can benefit from mental performance consulting, and the team at Music City Psych is ready to help today.
Music City Psych is an independent mental health practice as part of the MLBPA mental health directory.
Meet in-person or online. We offer the option to meet with your therapist online. Video sessions are held through a HIPPA-protected platform.
Featured Sports Performance Coaches
David Pearl, LCSW
David has helped athletes at every level, from the NCAA to Olympians and professionals, to perform at their best. He provides expert sports performance coaching so athletes can manage pressure, overcome challenges, and succeed in high-stakes environments.
Campbell Bowden, LPC (temp)
As a former D1 athlete, Campbell understands the pressures young athletes face on and off the field. Whether it's building mental resilience, managing performance anxiety, or balancing sports and academics, she provides tailored support to help your young athlete thrive.
What is sports psychology?
Sports psychology focuses on the mental and emotional aspects of athletic performance. It helps athletes develop the psychological skills needed to excel under pressure, overcome mental blocks, and handle the demands of competition. A sports therapist works with athletes to address challenges like performance anxiety, motivation, and self-doubt, tailoring strategies to each individual’s needs and goals.
How Sports Performance Therapy Helps Athletes
Working with a sports therapist can offer athletes many benefits, including:
- Enhancing Focus: Learn techniques to stay present and fully engaged during practice and competition.
- Managing Performance Anxiety: Develop strategies to stay calm and confident under pressure.
- Building Mental Resilience: Cultivate the mindset to bounce back from setbacks and handle failure constructively.
- Overcoming Mental Blocks: Identify and address negative thought patterns that hinder performance.
- Improving Team Dynamics: Strengthen communication and relationships with teammates and coaches.
- Balancing Stress and Recovery: Manage the physical and emotional toll of intense training and competition.
A passion for sports performance
Before founding Music City Psych in Nashville, David Pearl, LCSW, was a psychotherapist and performance coach at Union Square Practice in New York City. USP was co-founded by Dr. Jonathan Fader, former Director of Mental Conditioning for the New York Giants and previous team psychologist for the New York Mets. David brought these techniques and experiences to Music City Psych, where he and his team have spent over a decade working with athletes, performing artists, professionals, and more to enhance their routines, helping implement mindfulness practices to get clients in the zone and boost their performance.
From amateur athletics through the professional level, athletes face a number of mental challenges that can get in the way of performance. Lack of motivation, imposter syndrome, fear of failure, and choking under pressure can happen to even the most elite athletes. An injury or physical setback can also affect confidence or emotional challenges of facing recovery.
Even without emotional or physical setbacks, athletes can improve performance by putting themselves in a mental state where their potential is easier to achieve. By addressing their underlying mental well-being, the team at Music City Psych helps athletes and performance artists enhance their personal wellness and professional success.
We work with clients to help them clarify their values and performance goals. Then, we incorporate targeted psychological practices to build healthy habits and minimize barriers to achieving those goals. As a sports performance client, you’ll adopt regular mental exercises designed to cultivate mindfulness, rearrange unproductive thought patterns, and reorient yourself to approach your game and your opponents from a place of calm awareness. As you build on this foundation, you’ll develop increased resilience and mental efficiency. These qualities ultimately lead to more consistent performance results and enhanced personal and professional fulfillment.
Better performance by exercising your mind
How many hours a week do you set aside to train your body, study your opponent, and go over the game plan so that when the time comes, you’re ready to execute? By contrast, how much time do you invest in addressing the psychological issues that affect your performance, including how you train? For most people, the psychological requirements of athletics receive only the tiniest fraction of the attention given to physical training, practice, and preparation.
It’s easy to forget the important role psychology plays in performance when we watch professional athletes. Yet every sports fan has that experience of watching a game where the winner and loser were a foregone conclusion, until suddenly they weren’t. We were mesmerized in real time as an entire team of professional athletes sacrificed what should have been an easy win. We wonder how an entire sports team messed up so profoundly, all at once. Did overconfidence cause a lack of focus going into the game? Did tensions among the athletes compromise the team dynamic? Why couldn’t they pull themselves out of the downward performance spiral before it was too late?
Instead of asking why these larger-than-life figures sometimes crash and burn, we might reframe and ask, “How do they succeed so consistently most of the time?” The answer is that high-level athletes master both the craft itself and the psychological techniques required to execute under pressure. Acquiring a state of mindfulness and presence going into a competition is as essential to its success as gaining the specific skills the sport requires.
Whether your performance is suffering or you’re just looking to break through to the next level, sports performance coaching helps you address head-on the issues that affect – and possibly determine – your success.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does sports psychology help athletes perform better?
Mental performance coaching for sports focuses on helping each athlete develop the poise, confidence, and flawless execution under pressure that they need to be successful. As with other therapeutic practices, sports performance psychology looks underneath the surface to ask what’s throwing up barriers to our success. These underlying issues include:
- Lack of confidence: ongoing self-doubt, imposter syndrome
- Perfectionism: unrealistic expectations, self-criticism, fear of failure
- Organizational issues: poor time management, inconsistent follow-through
- Burnout: overwhelm, demotivation, fogginess, falling behind, inability to focus
- Communication barriers: strained relationships with teammates or coaches
Your sports therapy sessions are tailored to address your individual challenges. You might already sense or even be able to pinpoint some of these issues in your personal experience.
You may feel your performance is suffering but don’t understand why. Or perhaps you are simply looking for that one extra boost to reach your full potential. Whichever scenario describes you, sports performance coaching provides a practical, incremental approach: identify the manifesting challenges, pinpoint the underlying issues, and develop targeted strategies to combat these issues.
Does sports and performance coaching involve athletic training?
No, this is mental performance coaching, and it operates as a complement to athletic training. An athletic coach runs you through practice and drills, giving you feedback and guidance on techniques as they watch you perform. A sports performance coach is there to address the psychology underlying your performance: how your attitudes, beliefs, and thought patterns affect your ability to execute and optimize your performance.
What happens in a sports psychology session?
Like other counseling and coaching practices at Music City Psych, sports psychology sessions are tailored to the individual. We offer clients a safe and non-judgmental space to bring any and all of their concerns about their performance. By getting to know you and asking questions about your challenges, we can understand which aspects of sports psychology to apply to your situation.
After learning about your specific values and priorities, we will work with you to develop targeted strategies to address the psychological barriers that are holding you back. You’ll receive practical exercises to implement in your daily life and during training, practice, and competition. At each coaching session, you’ll discuss recent progress and any setbacks, then adjust the strategy together to continue building towards success.
The structure of the coaching relationship creates a positive feedback loop for your ongoing growth. Regularly revisiting your goals, values, and priorities keeps you accountable and grounded. It also establishes a timeline documenting your progress to remind you of how far you’ve come and encourages you to celebrate your incremental successes. It’s harder to succumb to negative voices and discouraging thought patterns when you check in with a coach who keeps track of your performance growth.
How long do people work with a sports performance consultant?
The answer to this depends on the individual situation. Some clients might only attend a few sessions, but more typically, people see a performance coach for at least six months and often longer. If you’re interested in pursuing sports performance coaching, contact us for a consultation to discuss your situation and what a timeline might look like for you.
Is sports and performance coaching like therapy?
Yes and no. Many of the issues that affect our personal lives also affect our professional lives, so overlapping themes and patterns may appear in individual therapy and performance coaching sessions. The techniques of sports psychology build off other psychological disciplines to address the individual barriers that impede optimal performance. For this reason, some people refer to the practice as “sports performance therapy.”
A primary difference is that individual psychotherapy at Music City Psych takes a broad-based approach, guiding you to explore issues that range from work and family relationships to grief and loss, depression, trauma, anxiety, and others. Addressing these issues typically involves a deep look into all aspects of an individual’s life.
Sports psychology, on the other hand, is designed to target specifically the factors that are affecting the performance aspects of your career. It focuses on the present and near future, and the steps you can take right now to start enacting positive change.
What training do you have in sports psychology and performance coaching?
David Pearl, LCSW, offers his expertise in sports psychology and performance coaching, backed by both academic training and professional experience. He earned his bachelor’s in Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his master’s degree in social work from The Silver School of Social Work at New York University. David refined his skills in sports and performance psychology while working under Dr. Jonathan Fader, who provided sports performance coaching to professional athletes on the New York Giants and New York Mets. David applied advanced mental conditioning techniques to help athletes and performers reach their potential.
David’s prior roles include counseling individuals and families at Mount Sinai Hospital, as well as providing psychodynamic therapy at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies. He has formal training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and holds certifications in Imago Relationship Therapy and Prepare/Enrich Premarital and Marital Counseling. With over a decade of experience, David now focuses on helping athletes, performers, and business leaders develop the resilience, focus, and mental tools needed to thrive in high-stakes environments.
Campbell Bowden, LPC-MHSP (temp), brings unique personal experience to sports psychology as a former NCAA Division I volleyball player. She earned her master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling from Belmont University and has dedicated her career to helping individuals and athletes strengthen their mental well-being. Campbell specializes in working with young athletes, understanding firsthand the pressures of balancing academics, sports, and personal life.
Campbell offers sports performance therapy that empowers student-athletes to navigate challenges such as performance anxiety, recovering from injuries, and maintaining mental resilience in competitive settings. Her personal experience as a high-level athlete gives her an edge in connecting with young athletes and helping them perform at their best.
David and Campbell each provide a comprehensive and effective approach to sports psychology and sports performance therapy, combining proven psychological strategies with a deep understanding of the unique challenges athletes face at every stage of their careers.
What are some specific benefits of participating in sports psychology sessions?
Sports performance coaching addresses the mental challenges of individuals in athletic pursuits. With a sports performance coach, you’ll begin to face key issues holding you back and learn defusion techniques to address the negative self-talk that can put you in cycles of underperformance. Sports psychology guides you to clarify your values, connect to your sense of self, and become more present and grounded in the moment.
As you master the essentials of mindfulness and self-awareness, it becomes easier to commit to practical action towards your performance goals. Building this solid psychological foundation increases your mental efficiency, fosters resilience, boosts self-confidence, and ultimately opens the path for you to achieve the personal performance milestones you set for yourself.
Do you offer sports performance coaching online?
Yes, we offer coaching sessions both in-person at the Music City Psych office in Nashville, Tennessee, and online to clients anywhere. For those in the Nashville area who prefer in-person sessions, our office is located near Belle Meade and Green Hills, with convenient access to The Gulch, Music Row, Hillsboro Village, Brentwood, and downtown Nashville.
