Single-Session Therapy in Sport Psychology: A Problem-Solving Framework for Elite Athletes

Open book page discussing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, highlighting methods for addressing maladaptive thoughts and behaviors.

I introduce practitioners and trainees to single-session therapy (SST) as a problem-solving framework within sport and exercise psychology, with particular attention to its application in elite athletic contexts. I shall use the problem-cleaning framework as a case example throughout.

Applied sport psychology practitioners draw upon psychological knowledge, skills, research, and practice to help athletes, coaches, and teams reach their goals. These goals might include enhancing performance, managing a sudden performance block, navigating team dynamics, or addressing the kind of acute psychological distress that does not announce itself conveniently between competition cycles. Yet the conditions under which elite athletes seek and receive support rarely mirror the tidy, multi-session structures assumed by traditional service delivery models. Competition schedules, training camps, and the relentless demands of high-performance environments mean that an athlete may have one session — sometimes only one — before the window closes.

Single-session therapy^[1] offers a framework that meets practitioners and elite athletes where they are, rather than where a traditional model might prefer them to be. Research conducted across more than 40 Olympic and Paralympic sports suggests that meaningful psychological change can occur within a single consultation when practitioners bring both the right orientation and the right structure to that encounter. This is not a lesser form of support; it is a distinct approach with its own philosophy, methods, and evidence base.

Considering these realities of elite sport service delivery, this article introduces the single-session mindset, explores the problem-cleaning framework as a method for structuring interventions, and examines how practitioners might apply these ideas to performance blocks, team dynamics, and other pressing challenges athletes bring. We shall also reflect on what the evidence tells us and where the field still has growing to do.

Understanding Single-Session Therapy in Sport Psychology

Origins and Evolution of Single-Session Therapy

The origins of single-session therapy rest in an unexpected discovery. Moshe Talmon, working in the early 1990s, found that more than 200 patients reported satisfaction with therapy received in just one session — a finding that ran contrary to his initial expectations^[2]. This observation prompted a shift in how some practitioners began to think about the nature and duration of therapeutic change; not as a process that necessarily requires weeks or months, but as something that might, under the right conditions, unfold meaningfully within a single encounter.

This breakthrough did not emerge from nowhere. Demands for accessible and efficient mental health services had been growing since the 1960s and 1970s^[3], and researchers were already probing the edges of what a single meeting could achieve. At the Tavistock Clinic in London, Malan and colleagues examined the therapeutic effects of single assessment interviews; they found that 51% of 45 patients with neurosis demonstrated symptomatic improvement, reported feeling helped, and showed improved coping abilities when dealing with stress at follow-up conducted five to six years later^[4]. These were not trivial findings; they suggested that something therapeutically meaningful could occur even when no further contact followed.

The first planned SST research study in the United States took place at Kaiser Permanente, where Talmon, Hoyt, and Rosenbaum provided intentional single-session psychotherapy to 60 adults. Results showed that 58% of patients chose to complete their therapy in one session, with 88% reporting substantial improvement in presenting symptoms and additional positive changes in related areas^[4]. Together, these early studies established SST as a viable service delivery model — one that accommodates various theoretical approaches, cultures, and contexts rather than belonging exclusively to any single school of thought.

Why Single-Session Approaches Suit Elite Sport Contexts

Sport psychology practitioners have broadened their understanding of therapeutic approaches considerably over time^[5]; solution-focused techniques emerged as among the most frequently adopted methods within SST applications^[6]. Yet single-session methods remain underreported in sport psychology literature, even as exploration of these approaches in adjacent therapeutic domains has gathered momentum across the past twenty years^[6].

So why does SST suit elite sport so well? The honest answer is that elite sport rarely accommodates the practitioner's preferred timeline. Athletes require support during competition periods, at training camps, or at the moment a performance block surfaces — not three weeks hence when diary schedules align. Reviews examining SST's potential relevance to our field concluded that methods associated with single-session therapy could provide sport and exercise psychology practitioners with a well-suited, effective means to solve problems^[6]; and it is difficult to argue with that conclusion when the alternative is no support at all because circumstances do not permit it.

Key Differences from Traditional Sport Psychology Support

SST operates from multiple theoretical perspectives — whether cognitive behavioural therapy, solution-focused therapy, narrative therapy, or others — and does not belong to any one approach^[5]. Characteristically, it functions as a planned, intentional attempt to address presenting concerns within a single visit^[2]; common features include pre-session questionnaires, consultancy teams, goal-directed consultations, and interventions that draw explicitly upon client strengths and existing resources^[6].

What distinguishes SST most sharply from traditional sport psychology support is not the brevity of contact but the orientation that accompanies it. Practitioners approach each session understanding it might be the sole encounter with the athlete; assessment, intervention, and evaluation condense into one meeting rather than distributing across several. The consultancy team model — rarely seen in conventional sport psychology support — enables multiple perspectives during problem-solving, creating a richer collaborative environment than a single practitioner working alone might produce.

When Single-Session Problem-Solving is Most Effective

SST proves most effective when athletes present with well-defined problems or goals^[3]. For instance, an athlete seeking to manage pre-competition anxiety, or a team grappling with a specific relational tension before a major competition, can benefit considerably from one focused, well-structured session. The approach is less well suited to complex, entrenched issues where careful assessment over time would better serve the athlete; it is worth being honest about this distinction rather than overclaiming what SST can achieve.

What the approach does require is an athlete ready to engage actively in the process; a practitioner capable of establishing a working relationship quickly; and clear, attainable session goals co-created between practitioner and athlete from the outset. When these conditions exist, SST allows for meaningful change while leaving the door open for further support should the athlete choose to return. It is, in that sense, less a closed ending than a sufficient one.

The Single-Session Mindset for Sport Psychologists

What we believe about athletes and their capacity for change shapes every encounter we have with them; and within single-session work, where time is compressed and the margin for drift is narrow, those beliefs matter enormously. So where should we begin? Perhaps with ourselves.

Core Beliefs About Athletes and Change

Core beliefs are strongly ingrained assumptions related to ourselves, others, and the world^[7]; they are foundational to how we process reality and respond to the situations unfolding before us. Within athletic environments, where confidence fluctuates and behaviour gets scrutinised both in and out of competition, maladaptive core beliefs can be detrimental to performance and longevity at the top^[7]. This applies as much to us, as practitioners, as it does to the athletes we serve.

Our own belief systems determine whether an athlete's existing resources get employed or ignored entirely. A practitioner viewing performance through a cognitive-behavioural lens might, for instance, dismiss spiritual practices as irrelevant to the psychological work at hand; whereas another practitioner might incorporate prayer and religious observances as useful adjuncts to conventional mental skills training^[8]. Neither stance is inherently correct, but the practitioner's conviction about these relationships shapes how we approach intervention design and, critically, what we are willing to see in the athlete before us.

Practitioner confidence in our approach affects intervention delivery in ways athletes can detect with remarkable precision^[8]. When working with athletes facing demandingness beliefs like "I must win" or depreciation beliefs like "I am a complete failure"^[8], our own certainty about the intervention's value affects how powerfully we deliver it. Athletes sense hesitation; they question the process and withdraw their full participation when they perceive it. It is precisely because the single-session encounter leaves little room for recovery that we must arrive with settled, considered beliefs about change.

Adopting a Collaborative Stance with Elite Athletes

The therapeutic alliance operates as a dyadic process, encompassing both the practitioner's perspective and the athlete's perspective^[9]. Exploring agreement between these viewpoints yields more useful information about the alliance than either perspective alone^[9]. High alliance strength, where both parties share a genuine understanding of goals and tasks, positions the single session to do meaningful work.

Trust forms the foundation before attempting any performance intervention. Athletes must feel they can speak openly about difficult experiences, including potential career-ending issues that might otherwise remain unaddressed^[9]; the therapeutic relationship quality is the most substantial factor in facilitating treatment adherence and positive counselling outcomes^[9]. Building this trust rapidly, without sacrificing authenticity, is one of the central challenges of single-session work.

Congruence, referring to the alignment between our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, creates an authentic therapeutic space^[9]. Athletes are perceptive to insincere or role-bound behaviour, and practitioners who model a false self or defensive style are unlikely to help them^[9]. Our congruence can, in turn, support athletes to become congruent themselves, particularly when they feel genuinely connected to both the practitioner and the process. We like to think of this as the practitioner modelling the very thing they are asking the athlete to do.

Expecting Rapid Change in High-Performance Environments

Working in elite sport is highly complex. Top athletes arrive with their own habits, beliefs, and ways of making sense of performance, which need to be respected to secure adherence and trust, even when those convictions sit at odds with physiological or programming considerations^[10]. Training plans shift daily to accommodate physiological principles, unplanned events, and factors that have nothing to do with sport itself.

Understanding context and applying pragmatism are, therefore, compulsory within these environments^[10]. Qualifications matter, but understanding the surroundings, the context in which we work (people, environment, behaviours), coupled with pragmatism, are far more valuable attributes in the high-performance setting^[10]. Successful single-session interventions set realistic and appropriate goals for how we can best support the athlete within the time available^[11]; rather than attempting to compress multiple sessions into one meeting, we should be selective, focusing our support precisely where it is needed.

This last point seems critical. Single-session work is not abbreviated therapy; it is a different kind of help altogether, one that demands we arrive with clarity about what we are doing and why.

Creating Context for Change in One Session

Context determines the effectiveness of every intervention. Our goal as practitioners is to help athletes reach the right mental position as quickly as possible; and the most effective approaches achieve this by anchoring psychological work in the athlete's own lived experience of their sport. Referencing movements and sensations athletes have encountered repeatedly, and relating exercises to familiar patterns within their sport, helps interventions take hold [28, 29].

Practically, this means that if we can help an athlete understand how psychological work connects to performance in ways they already recognise, we gain their trust and their genuine effort^[12]. Getting in touch with an athlete's feelings, rather than simply informing their thinking, is how meaningful change embeds itself^[12]; it is how mastery develops and how athletes eventually move towards the coveted state of unconscious competency^[12]. One session, approached with this orientation, can do more than many sessions that merely add information without touching experience.

The Problem-Cleaning Framework: Reframing Athletes' Challenges

The primary focus of single-session problem-solving centres on 'cleaning' the athlete's initial problem^[6]. What does cleaning mean here? Essentially, it means using questioning and reframing techniques to challenge the athlete's current perceptions and descriptions of the problem^[6]; these techniques function as mechanisms through which practitioner and athlete renegotiate the problem description until both agree it is possible to design an applicable intervention^[6]. The framework does not arrive at solutions quickly by bypassing the problem — rather, it arrives at solutions precisely because it attends carefully to the problem first.

Initial Checks: Establishing Ownership and Motivation

Each session begins with initial checks designed to get the athlete to "empty their pockets, so everything's on the table"^[6]. These checks serve a specific purpose: they establish agency, clarify motivation, and surface what the athlete actually needs before any intervention takes shape.

The first check asks the athlete, "how specifically is this a problem for you?"^[6]. This question fosters ownership by ensuring athletes feel genuine responsibility over problem resolution, rather than positioning themselves as passive recipients of practitioner expertise. The second check follows: "if you didn't do anything, and purposefully decided to stop trying to resolve this problem, what would happen?"^[6]. This explores motivation and clarifies whether the athlete actively seeks change or has arrived at the session under external pressure.

Two further questions anchor the session's purpose. The "fire alarm question" — "if a fire alarm went off now, the session finished and we had to leave straight away, what is the one thing you would try to solve this problem?" — uncovers whether athletes sense they already know what they need to do but feel something prevents them from doing so^[6]. The "door handle question" establishes clear session goals: "when you turn the door handle and leave at the end of today, what do you need to leave with for this to have been a completely worthwhile process?"^[6]. Together, these four checks frame the session before the work truly begins.

Exploring Previous Failed Solutions

Athletes identify and exhaust every previous solution they have tried, which get recorded on sticky notes^[6]. Subsequently, athletes group these attempted interventions according to whether they made the problem worse, made it somewhat better, or had no impact at all^[6]. This sorting process is not merely reflective — identifying connections between failed solutions unveils assumptions athletes have made about their problem^[6]. Solutions may have all involved educating or motivating a particular individual, been delivered by the same person, or occurred in the same environment^[6]; such patterns reveal the invisible logic governing why nothing has shifted.

Describing the Preferred Future State

Influenced by the miracle question from solution-focused therapy, practitioners help athletes describe a preferred future in which their problem no longer exists^[6]. Athletes imagine leaving for a six-month holiday with no contact with sport; upon return, the problem has completely gone^[6]. Practitioners then ask: "How will you know it no longer exists? What would be the first small signs that this problem has gone?"^[6]. This question prevents athletes from slipping into causal explanations and instead identifies concrete resolution goals^[6].

Practitioners also challenge athletes to discriminate between "nice to haves" and "need to haves"^[6]; need to haves are essential elements of the preferred future description, whereas nice to haves perhaps include generalisations or carry more personal meaning without contributing to resolution^[6]. This distinction keeps the session focused and prevents preferred futures from becoming wish lists.

Searching for Exceptions When Problems Don't Exist

Searching for exceptions explores times or contexts where an athlete's problem was absent or less prevalent than expected^[6]. Practitioners might ask, "has there ever been a time when you haven't had this problem?" or "can you think of a time when this hasn't been as bad as you'd have expected it to be?"^[6]. When exceptions surface, practitioners follow with, "what's different about the times when this is less of a problem?"^[6]. Revealing exceptions assists in renegotiating the current problem label and, perhaps more importantly, reveals resources available for designing interventions^[6].

Revealing Constraints That Prevent Change

Practitioners place considerable value on avoiding causal explanations when describing problems^[6]; instead, the framework uses the concept of "constraints" to conceptualise behaviour and behaviour change^[6]. Rather than asking what would cause change to happen, athletes consider what factors currently prevent change from occurring^[6]. Describing the problem by identifying what prevents it from being any other way opens options for change^[6]. Viewing the current problem as maintained by constraints — rather than caused by deficits — means that exception situations offer insight into either constraints that have temporarily lifted or constraints absent when the problem did not occur^[6]. This reframing shifts the conversation from blame and diagnosis toward possibility and design.

Video Descriptions: Facts vs Meanings

"Video descriptions" are concrete, behavioural descriptions of a situation, deliberately detached from meaning, abstraction, and generalisation^[6]. When an athlete describes "one person not trusting another member of their team," the practitioner asks: "how specifically do you know that he doesn't trust them? What tells you this?"^[6]. The description then shifts from the abstract to the observable: "this person does not allow another person to access the lab without other members of staff being present"^[6]. This specificity matters enormously; abstract concepts like "trust" provide no clear intervention pathway, whereas observable behaviour does^[6]. Theoretical orientations are frameworks — frameworks do nothing on their own — and the same holds here; video descriptions are tools that only become useful when both practitioner and athlete commit to the precision they demand.

Implementing Single-Session Problem-Solving with Elite Athletes

Knowing the framework is one thing; putting it into practice with an elite athlete under time pressure is quite another. Moving from the problem-cleaning process into an actual session requires careful preparation, intentional structure, and a clear sense of how responsibility for change is distributed between practitioner and athlete.

Setting Up the Consultancy Team Model

The consultancy team model repositions the session as a consultation rather than a treatment^[13]. Practitioners offer ideas; athletes decide whether to accept, set aside, or reject them entirely. This distinction matters more than it might first appear. When athletes hold decision-making authority over which suggestions they take forward, responsibility for change rests with them rather than with us^[13]. Athletes become, in this sense, the most informed evaluators of what will and will not work in their own lives and performance contexts. The consultancy model acknowledges that explicitly.

Pre-Session Preparation and Client Screening

Preparation begins before the athlete arrives. Pre-session questionnaires gather initial information about presenting concerns, so practitioners enter the room already oriented to the issue at hand^[14]. This warm-up process is not merely administrative; it preserves the session's limited time for the work that matters most — understanding, reframing, and co-creating solutions — rather than spending the first twenty minutes gathering basic information that could have been collected beforehand.

Structuring the Session: Beginning, Middle, and End

Sessions follow a clear three-phase structure, and holding that structure deliberately is what separates purposeful single-session work from an unplanned conversation^[15]. Practically, it means:

• Beginning: establishing agreement on purpose, session contract, goal, focus, and initial problem assessment

• Middle: exploring past solution attempts, identifying strengths and existing resources, and rehearsing potential solutions

• End: summarising key insights, identifying takeaways, agreeing action steps, and offering options for further support if needed^[15]

Each phase has its own function and its own demands on the practitioner. The beginning sets direction; the middle does the work; the end consolidates what has been learned and positions the athlete to carry it forward.

Gathering and Using Athlete-Specific Resources

Athletes arrive with resources — cognitive, emotional, and relational — that often go unexamined in time-pressured environments^[2]. These resources reside either within the individual or within the systems surrounding them (e.g., teammates, coaches, support staff). A substantial portion of the session ought to be dedicated to active conversation that surfaces and harnesses these strengths^[2]; not because we wish to be optimistic, but because existing resources are the most efficient and sustainable foundation for intervention design. What athletes already know how to do, and have already done well, is always our most reliable starting point.

Designing Co-Created Interventions

Co-creation means that action plans emerge from the athlete's own understanding and preferences, integrated with the practitioner's professional perspective^[16]. Athletes collaboratively develop what they will do next; practitioners guide the process rather than prescribe the outcome. Understanding and genuine agreement with co-created plans tends to receive high ratings from athletes (M = 9.57)^[16]; and when athletes set their own goals within a collaborative process, their sense of ownership over those goals increases accordingly^[16]. This is not incidental — ownership is precisely what sustains effort and follow-through when the session ends and the practitioner is no longer present.

Effectiveness and Practical Applications in Elite Sport

The problem-cleaning framework and the single-session mindset described thus far do not exist in a vacuum. They rest on an emerging, if still modest, evidence base drawn from elite athletic populations. What the research tells us is encouraging; what it also tells us is that sport and exercise psychology, as a field, has much ground to cover before single-session approaches become a well-understood feature of service delivery.

Case Examples from Olympic and Paralympic Athletes

Fourteen Olympic athletes from the United Kingdom participated in focus groups exploring post-Olympic experiences^[17]. Their accounts were revealing. Athletes described the post-Olympic period as complex and distressing, with many articulating experiences commonly termed "post-Olympic blues" — a state of psychological disorientation that follows the sudden removal of purpose, structure, and identity that elite competition provides^[17]. These athletes expressed a desire for support delivered primarily after the Olympic Games; several also highlighted the value of awareness-raising sessions beforehand^[17], suggesting that single-session contact at strategic points in the performance cycle — before, during, and after major events — may address needs that traditional ongoing support does not.

Notably, athletes in these focus groups proposed shifting away from expert-led sport psychology delivery toward pragmatic programmes delivered by former Olympians^[17]. This is a significant finding. It challenges us, as practitioners, to consider how our role might evolve alongside what athletes themselves tell us they need and want. With an increasingly diverse practice landscape, the voices of athletes in shaping service design deserve serious weight.

Performance Blocks and Lost Move Syndrome

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), combined with graded exposure, effectively treated two individuals affected by performance blocks^[18]. Treatment focused on reprocessing memories of significant life events, reframing negative cognitions, and reducing anxiety levels^[18]; social validation data confirmed that these benefits transferred to training, competition, and improved social functioning^[18]. Sixteen national, international, Olympic, and world-class athletes described lost move syndrome (LMS) and the yips as a sudden, temporary loss of fine and gross motor control, manifesting as locked, stuck, or frozen movements^[19]. These presentations — often acute, distressing, and poorly understood — are precisely the kind of well-defined problems where single-session problem-solving, with its attention to constraints, exceptions, and video descriptions, offers a coherent pathway forward.

Practitioners working with performance blocks benefit from understanding what the athlete brings to the session cognitively and emotionally, not merely what technique to apply. The problem-cleaning process, described in the previous section, provides the structure to do this within a single encounter, without assuming further sessions will follow.

Team Dynamics and Cultural Issues

Single-session approaches extend beyond individual athletes to team contexts. Team dynamics programmes establish internal conditions and behaviours necessary for sustainable high performance^[20], and the Team Dynamics Model organises factors influencing team performance by specifically examining the relationships between team conditions, team behaviours, and subsequent team outcomes^[20]. Within a single consultation, a consultancy team model — where multiple perspectives are gathered, discussed, and refined — can surface assumptions, constraints, and exceptions that would otherwise remain unexamined across many weeks of individual contact.

Cultural issues, too, present themselves in team environments; and here, the video description technique proves particularly valuable. Abstract team concepts — trust, cohesion, leadership — dissolve into observable behaviours that practitioners and athletes can work with concretely, rather than debating what a word means across sessions that may never arrive.

Measuring Outcomes and Follow-Up Protocols

Individuals suffering from performance blocks revealed high levels of perfectionism, rumination, and reinvestment^[18]. Assessment of these attributes allows practitioners to implement preventative measures^[18], and within single-session work, brief pre-session questionnaires offer a practical means of gathering this information before the encounter begins. This front-loading of assessment maximises the time available for intervention and ensures the session itself can move efficiently toward the athlete's stated goals.

In summary, the evidence base for single-session problem-solving in elite sport is real and growing, though it remains, as a body of work, in its earlier stages. Sport and exercise psychology as a service delivery context has much to explore about how these methods perform across different athlete populations, cultural backgrounds, and performance domains. Appreciating what the research already offers — and remaining honest about its limits — means we can serve athletes well now while continuing to build the knowledge our field needs.

Summary

The single-session mindset, the problem-cleaning framework, and the structures we have explored throughout this article are not shortcuts; they are a distinct and coherent approach to service delivery, grounded in evidence and shaped by the realities of elite sport. Meaningful psychological change within a single consultation is possible when practitioners arrive with the right orientation, establish genuine working alliances quickly, and attend carefully to how problems are described before attempting to solve them.

What seems worth holding onto, as practitioners reflect on these ideas, is that the framework places the athlete at the centre of the change process. The practitioner offers questions, reframes, and structures; the athlete brings knowledge of their own experience, their own exceptions, and their own preferred futures. When both parties work well together, something worthwhile tends to emerge — even within a single encounter.

Sport and exercise psychology as a service delivery field remains in its early stages of exploring single-session approaches, and there is much still to examine about how, when, and for whom these methods work best. Practitioners working in elite contexts would do well to hold SST as one option among many; a well-suited option when time is short, the problem is reasonably well-defined, and the athlete is ready to engage. The evidence gathered across more than 40 Olympic and Paralympic sports offers an encouraging foundation, but it is a foundation still being built.

We are privileged as sport psychology practitioners to join with athletes for even a brief moment on their performance journey. Doing that well — with care, curiosity, and a clear framework — is, in itself, a worthwhile endeavour.

Key Takeaways

Single-session therapy (SST) provides elite athletes with immediate, effective psychological interventions when time constraints prevent traditional multi-session support, with research across 40+ Olympic and Paralympic sports validating its effectiveness.

Core principles for successful single-session work:

• Adopt the right mindset: Believe in athletes' capacity for rapid change and approach each session as potentially the only encounter, condensing assessment, intervention, and evaluation into one focused meeting.

• Use the problem-cleaning framework: Guide athletes through initial checks, explore failed solutions, describe preferred futures, search for exceptions, and identify constraints preventing change rather than seeking causal explanations.

• Implement collaborative structures: Set up consultancy team models where athletes own the change process, co-create interventions using their existing resources, and decide which practitioner suggestions to accept or reject.

• Focus on concrete behaviors: Replace abstract concepts with "video descriptions"—observable, behavioral descriptions detached from meaning—to create clear intervention pathways that athletes can immediately apply.

The approach proves most effective for well-defined problems like pre-competition anxiety or performance blocks, requiring athletes ready to engage actively while establishing rapid working relationships and clear, attainable session goals.

References

[1] - https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.566721/full[2] - https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/25628/3/An Expert Understanding of the Single Session Mindset.pdf[3] - https://www.mentalhealthacademy.com.au/blog/what-is-single-session-therapy[4] - https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.20230054[5] - https://pure.cardiffmet.ac.uk/en/publications/brief-and-single-session-therapy/[6] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7715025/[7] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772696724000024[8] - https://www.drpaulmccarthy.com/post/why-sport-psychologist-beliefs-matter-more-than-you-think-for-athletic-success[9] - https://www.drpaulmccarthy.com/post/personal-stance-in-therapy-a-practical-guide-for-sport-psychology-professionals[10] - https://hiitscience.com/context-high-performance-training-making-decisions/[11] - https://tidsskrift.dk/sjsep/article/download/150889/199023[12] - https://ericcressey.com/3-ways-to-create-context-for-more-effective-coaching/[13] - https://www.singlesessiontherapies.com/blog-post/single-session-therapy-6-principles-to-keep-in-mind/[14] - https://chairwork.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Pugh-2021-single-session-chairwork.pdf[15] - https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/single-session-therapy-exploring-global-perspectives[16] - https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sports-and-active-living/articles/10.3389/fspor.2026.1770549/full[17] - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2159676X.2021.1993974[18] - https://shura.shu.ac.uk/13824/1/Bennett- performance blocks in sport.pdf[19] - https://www.ijsp-online.com/abstract/view/46/61[20] - https://www.ausport.gov.au/ais/people-development/leadership-and-culture/team-dynamics