Dr. Jennifer Cumming joins us to talk about Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestselling book, Carrie Soto is Back. Jennifer is a researcher and professor in Sport and Exercise Psychology at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. She is an expert in mental skills training for athletes, exercisers, dancers, as well as young people experiencing homelessness or at risk. She has been published in numerous scholarly journals. Carrie Soto is Back is the fictional story of the world’s greatest tennis player, Carrie Soto, who decides to come out of retirement to defend her grand slam record, being challenged by upstart, Nicki Chan. Because this book gives us a look at the mental and physical state of professional athletes, we wanted to hear from an expert in this area, and Jennifer certainly is. Jennifer grew up in Canada and was a competitive ice skater from childhood through her teen years. That experience inspired her to become a sports psychologist. Jenn tells us that mental skills are like physical skills and are important to helping athletes reach their potential. Mental skills training is also used in other fields such as medicine and the armed forces. Mental skills provide confidence, resilience, stress management, and performance enhancement, among other benefits. Some of the foundational mental skills are imagery, self-talk, relaxation, and routines. These serve different purposes and help us self-regulate to optimally focus, and find a flow state, for example. Sports psychology has its roots in cognitive behavioral therapy, but is no longer rooted to any specific therapeutic approach. It also is strengths based in its focus. Nancy asks for the types of techniques that recreational athletes could apply. Jennifer tells us the same mental skills training professionals find useful will also benefit recreational athletes. The trick is to find what works and develop those. If you are able to develop imagery, that can be very powerful. Mental skills training may also help reduce anxiety. For example, imagery can help the athlete image the situation and the accompanying anxiety and experience it, but then image how to be successful and cope and reframe the competition as a challenge and master it. Jennifer calls this coping imagery. This approach comes from the area of psychology that helps people overcome fears through desensitization, as developed by Peter Lang. It’s good to imagine everything going well, as well as how to cope when things aren’t going well. Linda asks Jennifer about Carrie’s deficits and how sports psychology might have helped her. Jenn tells us Taylor Jenkins Reid does a great job showing the intensity and focus professional athletes need. Carrie’s love interest introduces her to sport psychology concepts, which Jenn liked. Carrie’s challenge is that she has a foreclosed identity, having only defined herself as an athlete. She hasn’t really figured out who she is, as the book opens. Jennifer observes that Carrie has strong perfectionistic dispositions. She doesn’t play tennis for fun, but a drive for excellence where mistakes are devastating. Mental techniques that may be helpful is to first explore why the athlete started the sport. Even the best athletes still say having fun is one of the top three reasons they engage in their sport. Without the fun, the athlete can be very controlling because their self-worth may be tied into winning in an unhealthy way. Linny asks Jennifer about Carrie’s dad, Javier, and how he helps and hurts Carrie’s mental game. Jenn thought Javier was a fascinating character who loved the beauty of good technique. His understanding of the importance of good technique is helpful. Where he goes wrong, however, is that he didn’t give Carrie a basis of fun and play and introduced her to competitiveness and seriousness. Her best can always be improved. He create an environment for Carrie’s perfectionistic tendencies to grow. Carries eventually fires Javier when he questions her motivations and skills. Because he’s been grooming her to become a tennis legend, she doesn’t know how to handle what she perceives as his doubt in her. Nancy asks Jennifer about the two other professional tennis players in this book we get to know best: Nicki Chan and Bowe Huntley. Jenn says they both have healthier relationships with tennis, but probably not healthy. She really likes both of these characters and how they both have an arc. Bowe doesn’t have a great support system and becoming Carrie’s hitting partner and Javier’s student, gives him a support he’s been missing. Nicki is able to connect, eventually, with Carrie, bringing Carrie out of her isolation. Nicki has bad technique and need to learn how to improve it. Jenn observes that today, most professional tennis players have an entourage of coaches, sports psychologists, travel coordinators, sports trainers, and so on. Professional tennis players lead a very nomadic experience. It is a challenge to remain grounded. Having sources of social support is very important, to combat loneliness. The professional tennis association, in fact, is trying to figure out whether it is possible to reconfigure the season to create an emotionally more healthy schedule. Jenn notes that there are huge financial inequalities on the tour where players further down in the rankings often struggle to hire the people they need and have a healthy travel experience. Linny asks Jenn about her research in applying mental skills expertise to young people who are homeless or at risk. The program is called the My Strengths Training for Life™ programme. Jenn tells us the program is about 10 years old and started with a call to her from St. Basil’s in the West Midlands of England. She and her team have created toolkits that others are using around the United Kingdom and, in fact, globe. The program is very adaptable and may be delivered in group settings or individually. One approach they used offered mental skills training to prepare young people for an outdoor skills course in the Lake District. An evaluation found the young people who participated in this program benefited psychologically which led to increases in education, work, and training engagement. One study predicted the results of one program with 1,000 participants would save 26 million pounds in welfare. Jenn continues to apply mental skills training to other populations and bringing back learnings to sports and then back out to those not involved in sport. It’s a lovely cycle. Jenn’s program at the University of Birmingham is called SPRINT: Sport psychology research in new territories (www.sprintproject.org). Jenn recommends people interested in further reading could benefit from their online toolkit that allows self-assessment and goal setting. One of her favorite authors is Terry Orlick, her advisor at the University of Ottawa, who was a world-renowned leader in the applied field of sport psychology. His books are classics in the field.