▲ Photographed by Choi Ji Won

On August 2, 2012, during the London Olympics, a shooter Jin Jong-Oh (33, Gangwon) slowly set his foot on the standing point to prepare for his last move which was to decide the game. Holding people’s high expectations heavily on his shoulders, he looked more nervous than ever. However, there was one person sitting by the bleachers who looked even more nervous as Jin aimed his rifle towards the target.

Kim Byung Hyun (59, Seoul), a Senior Researcher of the Korea Sports Science Institute (KSSI) and one of the most prominent and experienced Sports Mental Coaches has dealt with the mind of our national athletes for 10 years already. For this year’s Olympics, he was in charge of the shooting team, which made a wonderful record, especially Jin, who won two gold medals to hang around his neck. It is no exaggeration to say that our national players were able to receive good records through the help and support of the mental coaches.

According to Kim’s own definition, a Sports Mental Coach is one who helps athletes adjust their thought process to align it with proper championship thinking. Kim said, “During big competitions such as the Olympics, athletes suffer from an obsession that they have to do well. Because of this, they start calculating their movements which eventually makes them become stiff, unable to show off their true abilities.” He stated that, after all, sports is all about how well one controls one’s mentality. “If you feel confident and have faith in what you are doing, it will just be a matter of time to pay off your four years of hard training.”

Fully aware of the importance of mentality for athletes, Kim always tried his best to give them the most practical advice. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, all he thought about were his charges who would be facing an extreme state of nervousness and tension. Although he was sick during that time, when he received a thank-you call from Jang Mi-ran (’05, Physical Education) with the news that she won a gold medal for weight-lifting, for a moment, Kim felt relieved from all pain and suffering.

However, though the importance of mental training has been recently recognized in Korea as players obtained positive results from it, the state of awareness is yet far from reaching the state of the U.S. “In the U.S., almost every baseball team and pro-golfer, such as Tiger Woods, has their personal mental coach. On the other hand, Korea does not have enough well-experienced mental coaches who are capable of healing the mind of our athletes,” said Kim. In the case of the U.S., after one meets a certain qualifying condition and is granted the certificate as a mental coach, they have to go through two more years of field training to train themselves in practical situations. Like this, a mental coach is well established as a job in America, while in Korea, the reality is that people are over-issued with certificates to become mental coaches. So people without any clinical experience become mental coaches, unable to give practical help to the players.

The career mental coach and the field of sports psychology have a bright future as we move to another stepping stone to appreciate its importance. However, Kim sees that there are still many barriers for Korea to overcome. “Only when our society fully realizes the importance of mentality within sports will we be able to reach a new dimension within sports.”