The agency of basketball player Irina Ryukhina has filled a vacant niche - we still have few sports psychologists

St. Petersburg resident Irina Ryukhina became interested in basketball at the age of 10. She became an international master of sports, a two-time European champion among youth, and a player of the Russian national team. In 2010, the 24-year-old basketball player had to end her career: back injuries (spinal herniation) prevented her from playing at the same level.

Having said goodbye to sports, Irina thought about a new job. At first I took up marketing. Through an acquaintance, she got a job at the Center for Sponsorship Programs agency, where she was offered to develop a sports direction. Having expanded her social circle, Irina met sports psychologists. At that time, several specialists worked in St. Petersburg, but there was no united association. Ryukhina decided to occupy this niche.

“I had absolutely no fears about starting a business,” recalls the athlete, “I was 100% confident of success!” So in 2010, literally in a month, Irina registered the company ASP LLC (sports psychology agency).

Her long-standing acquaintance with the legendary sports psychologist Gennady Dmitrievich Gorbunov helped her a lot. Irina went to see him (including in order to solve her psychological problems in connection with the abrupt end of her basketball career) and shared her idea. Gorbunov was skeptical at first (“he warned that the idea was a failure”), but still decided to support it. It was he who helped Irina recruit the first specialists to her staff.

“In Russia, psychologists are treated with caution; it is believed that athletes do not really need them,” says Ryukhina. “But in America and China they are no longer exotic and are usually included in the coaching staff.” Irina decided to use Western experience and flew to the USA to see how the famous agency Association for Applied Sport Psychology works. In Russia, sports psychology is based on theory, but from the Americans it has borrowed a focus on practice: psychologists do not lecture athletes, but perform exercises with them directly during training.

At the initial stage, Ryukhina invested 500,000 rubles of her own savings into the business (renting premises, salaries for psychologists). I visited sports schools and offered free master classes. Through the sports committee of St. Petersburg, I agreed on electronic mailings - notifications about master classes to all sports organizations in the city.

The tennis players' parents were the first to respond. Gorbunov conducted the training for the students. Next came the swimmers and karatekas. Now the list has expanded to include sailing, football, hockey, basketball, athletics, ballroom dancing and even chess.

Most of the clients are young athletes who, for example, have conflicts with their coach and teammates, experience anxiety and fear in competitions, and have a hard time with defeats. It happens that experienced athletes who were not taught at one time how to get in the mood for a game or not burn out before a competition also ask for help.

“Initially, I focused on national teams, but I was faced with a misunderstanding: “What can you give?” Coaches and athletes perceive psychologists as something they need, but with an unclear effect. The main difficulty at the start was getting the information across.” To do this professionally, Irina studied to be a sports psychologist at St. Petersburg State University.

On average, 150 athletes a year contact the agency. Meetings take place at the Yubileiny sports complex, where the ASP office is located. One athlete requires about five consultations. The first consultation costs 2000 rubles, subsequent ones - 1500. For those who have been involved in sports for the first year, the price tag is lower - 1000 rubles per consultation. Individual consultations bring Ryukhina about 100,000 rubles a month.

ASP has seven psychologists on its staff. Everyone has their own direction: some work better with motivation, others with anxiety, concentration or strong-willed qualities. Specialists receive 25% of the consultation cost. For the first two years, the agency did not earn anything, and Irina had to constantly invest money (only 1 million rubles). From the third year, investments began to pay off.

Ryukhina’s strong point is team sports, her main task is working with aspiring football players from the Zenit Academy and hockey players from the Silver Lions club. At Zenit, Irina was given carte blanche: she herself forms the topics of classes and comes up with exercises. Irina spent a whole year just studying the tactics of the game and attended almost all the matches. Now she meets every day with one or two groups (from 7 to 17 years old), most often right during training, on the field. Irina divides the players by role: one week she works with forwards, the next - with defenders, midfielders, and goalkeepers.

“There are common themes in general psychology: cohesion, managing emotions, concentration. All the exercises are prescribed, my task is to adapt them to the sport. Here, for example, is a task for unity: for every good pass, the players must praise each other. Whoever gets praised can take a penalty so many times at the end of training.”

When Irina just started working with football players, it seemed to her that the more she talked about her own sports experience, the faster she would find a common language with them. Everything turned out differently: the teenagers were focused on their results, and the basketball player’s achievements were perceived as self-PR. Irina revised her tactics, and there were more people interested. And the rest are following them - those who initially did not trust, resisted.

“Sports language” turned out to be more effective than stories about past achievements. Irina uses the terminology familiar to the guys: “exacerbate”, “hidden sharp transmission”. The language of sports is not taught at St. Petersburg State University. This is Irina’s own experience - she brought the baggage accumulated in sports to her new profession.

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