Sport in its perspective ensures a mentally healthy sporting climate.

Lifelong sports lover

This is exactly what flow training is all about. “Our mission is to create a healthy mental sports climate. This starts with good training and education for the people who work with the children. If the athletes are trained in a positive way, profits and well-being improve,” says van der Kleine Dreesen. In addition to performance, a healthy mental sports climate has an even more important effect: the athletes enjoy their sport. “Certainly in talent sports, you see that they suddenly stop because they get tired of the pressure. We agreed with Rotterdam Topsport that we want Rotterdam Talents to start and end as fans of their sport.” It is therefore particularly important that the coaches are trained properly. “You can make these children fans of sports for life.”

Sport in Perspective is already used by around thirty sports clubs and organisations. There are five Sport in Perspective programmes, ranging from an introductory workshop (Sprint) to half-season or full-season mentoring (Medium and Marathon). These programmes can benefit from subsidies provided by the National Sports Agreement and are therefore easily accessible. At Flow Training, they are now mainly concerned with the next steps and defining the methodology. “The most important thing now is to get it out of Danielle, we already have a full team, but a lot of it is still around me,” she says with a laugh. “It would be great if we could give young sports psychologists the opportunity to expand this method throughout the Netherlands.”

For more information about the programmes, visit www.flowmentaletraining.nl

Read more about these and other projects at: sportinnovator.nl