Many people have the wrong idea about what his work and research entail: “Sports psychology is right at the intersection of psychology as a basic science and sports as an application context,” says Chris Englert, who has held the eponymous chair at Goethe University Frankfurt for the last three years. “Contrary to popular conception, we are by no means solely concerned with competitive sport, let alone top-level sport. We apply theories, models and approaches from psychology to a wide variety of questions from sports science,” Englert explains, adding that, “this covers anything from wanting to overcome a fear of jumping in eventing riding to being so distracted by everyday thoughts so as to lose concentration during archery.”
He continues: “Generally speaking, we always look at both directions of action: On the one hand, we want to know what impact the emotional state and its various components such as anxiety, motivation, aggression and frustration have on athletic performance, and on the other, we also examine how taking part in sports can affect participants’ emotional state and development.”
Englert and his team are especially interested in the interaction between coach and athlete. What he wants to discover, he explains, is the ideal manner in which coaches should communicate with those entrusted to them. “Once that exists, an atmosphere of mutual respect and appreciation develops between the two, which enables the athletes to fully utilize their abilities and come together as teams that grow into real communities.”
Overcoming your inner resistance
When he talks about performance, Englert does not automatically refer to athletes competing in local, regional and national competitions comparing their best results. In addition to high-performance sports and depending on the research question, he and his working group also focus on sports for the general public, for health or rehabilitation. One case in point is Englert’s research into how to support people in developing a physically active lifestyle for the long term. “What this actually means is that I research how people can overcome their inner resistance more often and more easily,” he explains.
“Here, I am obviously less concerned with competitive sport,” he adds, explaining that such high-performers usually do not have a problem motivating themselves to attend training sessions. Instead, Englert conducts his research on physical activity in cooperation with various rehabilitation centers and public sports clubs. This allows him to benefit from the fact that such types of sports institutions are themselves also inherently interested in learning how they can promote the drive for physical activity among, and increase the individual capabilities of their members, customers and patients.
“People who battle against their inner resistance want to regulate their own behavior,” Englert says. This and other aspects of the phenomenon of “self-regulation” constitute part of his research interest, he explains, adding that he investigates, for instance, how the bodies of test subjects who are mentally fatigued react to physical stress, and whether these test subjects can manage a strenuous task on the bicycle ergometer just as well when fatigued as when mentally rested. At other times, Englert observes Bundesliga soccer players, who have to adjust their reactions extremely quickly and precisely during training with a “footbonaut” – when they receive balls from various directions, which they then have to pass on into the direction indicated at that precise moment by a light (which could be the same direction the pass came from, or the opposite one).
Experience in top-level sport
Englert is familiar with top-level sports both as a field of research and from personal experience. In his hometown of Darmstadt, he learned baseball – considered an exotic sport in Germany – from U.S. soldiers stationed there. As a youngster, he practiced it so enthusiastically and successfully that for four years he was on national youth teams. Englert later worked as a coach to help finance both his psychology degree and his doctorate.
In 2021, he became head of the Department of Sports Sciences in the Faculty of Psychology and Sports Sciences at Goethe University, where he is his subject’s representative for research and teaching. The latter is particularly important to him because he wishes to communicate to the students not only facts from sports psychology, but also the norms and values of good scientific practice: “How to avoid academic mistakes is something students should address as soon as they start university and they should keep it in mind during their entire studies – not just when they are about to finish their doctorate,” he emphasizes.
Englert still works as a baseball coach, training the youth members of the “Frankfurt Eagles” and thereby passing on his own enthusiasm for baseball to the next generation. That includes his own children: At age six, his elder son has already been playing baseball regularly for two years; his younger son, who is only three, has also already completed his first baseball training course.
Stefanie Hense
