The story so far ...

Hello and welcome! Thank you again for discovering my website and blog. My name is Brede (pronounced Bray-de) and I am a recent graduate in MSc Sport and Exercise Psychology. To give some context as to why I have started this page, I first wanted to talk a little bit about me and my background, and my journey into the world of sport psychology so far.

From a young age I was involved in sport, anything we did in PE, tennis, ballet, running around a field, playing on the trampoline at home, swimming etc, even though I had very little talent in any of them! Then when I was 7, I started gymnastics, and from there never looked back. I had found a sport that suited me best, I enjoyed it immensely and found a real community to be a part of. As my abilities increased, and as I got older and worked my way through different groups, I found my confidence also increased. Gymnastics was a huge passion of mine up until age 18. The person I am today and my increased confidence and self-esteem in every day life is certainly due to my time in gymnastics.

Whilst I thought gymnastics was all I wanted to do, when I started secondary school, a trampoline club was offered. I had previously thought that trampolining was just something you did for fun, or to help with your gymnastics skills, and didn't realise it was

a competitive sport. I was better at trampolining, and it suited me more, hence at age 12 I joined the competition squad, competing regionally at 13. I found trampolining to be such a stress reliever, and allowed me to completely focus on something, which I also greatly enjoyed. The thrill of learning new skills and flying through the air is just the adrenaline rush I needed! When I started I had no idea how far I would get and the skills I could and would learn, but I have certainly achieved far more than my 11-year-old self could ever imagine. Participating in county, regional, national and university competitions, alongside my training has taught me about performing under pressure, being determined and having resilience. I still train regularly and am hoping to continue competing in the upcoming season.

More recently I have begun to play tennis. This gives me a completely different perspective on sport, especially as it is so different from gymnastics and trampolining. I find I place less pressure on myself to perform well when playing, and it certainly gives me a sense of freedom and time to be outside!

Due to these early sporting experiences, I knew fairly early on that I wanted to be involved in sport in my career. Whilst this initially started as physiotherapy, and then sport science, once I began learning about psychology at age 16, both in my A-level psychology and PE, I knew sport psychology was what I wanted to pursue. This desire was further heightened when one day whilst training, I completely forgot how to perform one of my skills which I could usually perform easily, i.e., I had lost move syndrome. This left me feeling both very confused, and intrigued as to what was going on in my brain for this to happen, hence continued my interest in sport psychology.

Based on this interest, I decide to pursue my undergraduate degree in Psychology with Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Exeter. Whilst this gave me a basic idea of what sport psychology involved, I knew I wanted to learn more and progress my career further. I therefore completed my Master's degree in Sport and Exercise Psychology at the University of the West of England (UWE). I thoroughly enjoyed this degree, through experiencing and learning more about sport psychology, along with the different assessment methods and opportunities that we were given.

Through this website and blog, I hope to discuss my experiences within sport psychology, from my undergraduate degree, to my Master's and (hopefully) to my further training as well. I am currently in the process of deciding which supervised experience route to take, and hope to also detail my decision process in this blog as well. My goal is to share my experiences, so that others who are in a similar position may find some comfort in reading about the good and the bad experiences of a trainee. This is certainly something I wish I had found at the start of my journey!

Thank you for reading :)