The Inner Game and mental-skills training

Domain VI · Brief, integrative, trauma, hypnosis & coaching · W. Timothy Gallwey · 1974

What it is

The Inner Game is a coaching approach, not a psychotherapy and not a staged treatment. Gallwey, a former Harvard tennis captain, set out the approach in 1974. It separates the "outer game", played against an opponent, from the "inner game" played in the performer's mind, whose main obstacles are…

Format

• Inner Game (no fixed session count; coaching format). Gallwey publishes no phase manual or session count. The structure below comes from summaries of The Inner Game of Work.
• Skill-learning format (tennis lesson model).

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Practice and integration. Rehearse the skill in training, then in simulated pressure, then in competition, and adjust it as the athlete's skill grows. PETTLEP's "Learning" element covers this updating.
• Version followed: W. Timothy Gallwey's Inner Game as presented in The Inner Game of Tennis (1974; 50th-anniversary edition 2024) and The Inner Game of Work (2000), read through the official Inner Game site and published summaries; the books themselves are not drawn on. Mental-skills training follows conventional applied-sport-psychology psychological skills training (PST). Imagery follows PETTLEP (Holmes & Collins,…
• Mental-skills training (MST/PST) is the applied-sport-psychology family of teachable skills: goal setting, imagery, self-talk, arousal and anxiety regulation, attention and concentration, and pre-performance routines. Vealey (1988, as cited by Camiré & Trudel 2013) defines it as strategies that help people assess, monitor and adjust their thoughts and feelings. It is a training programme made of separate skills, not…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• Does it involve fasting, a special diet or 'detox'? Have you discussed this with your doctor?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• use where the rules allow it, and rehearsal in practice beforehand.
• pervasive worthlessness. That suggests depression and calls for screening (C1).
• guilt, or a family or coach conflict surfacing. That may be therapy-level material (see section 5).
• Scott et al. note the evidence for combined approaches comes from small studies, so treat it as promising.
• coach slippage into advice. It is working when the client generates options and commits in their own words.

Problems the guide addresses

• Concrete signs that a coachee or athlete needs referral to clinical care
• Common difficulties and responses

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.