BOSTON - Dhruv Raman will take over as the new sport psychology service coordinator for the Boston University Department of Athletics for the 2023-2024 academic year. Raman is no stranger to BU, having worked with Terrier student-athletes as a mental performance consultant this past season. Below is a Q&A with Raman as he begins his new role.
What is your background in sport psychology and what led you to BU?
My journey into sport psychology is rooted in my experience as a student-athlete in India. I played cricket from the age of seven through college and found that to be both fulfilling and challenging. I was fascinated by the psychological underpinnings of peak performance. When I transitioned out of sport, I decided to combine my love for sport with my fascination for the human psyche. As I explored programs around the world, Boston University's master's program, which provides dual training in counseling and sport psychology, seemed the best fit for me. A vibrant sport culture and a chance to collaborate with exceptional performers were key factors that drew me to BU. I came to BU in 2019 from India, attended the master's program, worked for a year and am now back as a PhD student.
For the last five years, I have worked as a mental performance consultant with student-athletes and coaches in India and the United States. In the US, I've collaborated extensively with a variety of teams including basketball, soccer, lacrosse, and field hockey. On an individual level, I've engaged with athletes spanning a diverse spectrum of competition, from Division 1 and Junior Olympics competitors to passionate recreational athletes. I have also worked with performers outside of sports, such as musicians. Along this journey, in 2022, I earned a the credential of a Certified Mental Performance Consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology.
What are some of your goals for the sport psychology department in your new role?
As the team coordinator, my primary goal is to ensure timely and effective support for student-athletes. At the same time, I also want to create an optimal experience for sport psychology consultants in training, granting them autonomy in choosing their clients and providing them with meaningful challenges. I've drawn inspiration from the work Mason Blake has done before me in this role by supporting us as consultants, and want to continue in his stead. I will continue to build strong relationships between our team of consultants, BU Athletics and the larger BU community. My aim is to bring us to the sweet spot where everyone's goals can converge. As the sport psychology department becomes an integral part of BU Athletics, I also want to create systems of support that can outlast individuals. This would involve maintaining and creating spaces where student-athletes can seamlessly access sport psychology services. For all of this, I have amazing support in the form of Dr. Carly Block, who is our faculty director, and several individuals in the Athletic Department who have been passionate proponents of our work.
What are some of the ways you'll be helping/have already helped our athletes during your time at BU?
Over the last year, I worked closely with individual athletes and performers at Boston University as a mental performance consultant. I also conducted workshops with groups of student-athletes. This year, I will continue to work with athletes in an individual capacity. With the additional responsibility of a coordinator, I will also be in a position where I connect student-athletes to the best support they can get on our team. When they reach out to our team, I will connect them timely with a consultant who is best suited to them. Further, I will be in a unique position where I have access to the pool of challenges which student-athletes are facing. I plan to leverage this access to identify common themes in the challenges that student-athletes are experiencing and advocate to address their concerns at a group or structural level.
How important is sport psychology for student-athletes?
Sport psychology can help student-athletes achieve their peak potential consistently. Every student-athlete at the Division 1 level possesses high sporting ability - which is why they're here. Sport psychology can equip them with mental skills that both remove barriers to performance and help them reach peak performance states. There are systematic ways to work on the many intangibles in sports, such as confidence, commitment, communication, concentration, leadership and resilience. We provide student-athletes a supportive space to better understand their challenges and explore tools such as mindfulness, visualization and goal setting in a personalized manner. At the base of all of these, I think the power of sportpsychology lies in the space it provides athletes - in the presence of a trained consultant - to work on their mental skills; much like taking out time for physical training in the presence of an expert.
In addition to being a resource for athletes, how does your work impact coaches?
Our work impacts coaches most directly by providing additional support to athletes. Several coaches share that they have always valued the topics we work on (such as performance anxiety, confidence, focus, mindfulness) and are glad to find individuals who are trained to work with their athletes on such topics. Beyond that, we are also a confidential source for coaches themselves who can benefit from working on their own performance to optimize their role as a coach and a leader. Our consultants also collaborate with coaches to address topics at the team level in the form of workshops. Such collaboration between consultants and coaches will be maximized for the many teams at BU who will exclusively have a mental performance consultant assigned to their team. The coaches and student-athletes will see these consultants leading workshops and providing support at practices and games.
One of your interests is examining neurofeedback interventions to enhance sport performance. Can you elaborate on that and how that can be beneficial to our athletes?
I think it's amazing that we can voluntarily change our brain activity when we receive real-time feedback! This ability can also be used to enhance athletic performance. Imagine that we've identified a specific brain state that corresponds to superior athletic performance—let's call it "X." I want to develop protocols to train athletes to access brain state "X" more consistently during competition. Athletes can benefit by training their brains to achieve optimal states of brain activity and in turn, improve their performance. Neurofeedback technology, which is increasingly portable and accessible, can help achieve this goal.
