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Dr. John F Murray’s other website: https://www.SportsPsychology.com

Well-known sports psychologist, licensed psychologist, author, and speaker Dr John F. Murray provides sports psychology services for athletes in all sports, speaking and business psychology services for the corporate world, and clinical psychology services to all his clients. Dr. Murray is a rare expert in performance psychology and has been called “the most quoted sports psychologist” in sport media over the past 20 years.

He authored the sports psychology book Smart Tennis: How to Play and Win the Mental Game (Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons) in 1999 and it is still selling well. He also wrote the book “The Mental Performance Index” for American football in 2011 and revised it in 2013.  The Mental Performance Index is also a successful performance rating system, adding precision and standardization to team performance analysis and a mental component rarely examined in sports. Known as the “MPI” this system was recently converted into a highly successful prediction algorithm, adding empirical evidence to the vast importance of mental training and sports psychology. See more about the MPI toward the end of this page.

A tennis professional in his youth, Tennis Week Magainze called Dr. Murray “The Roger Federer of Sports Psychologists” and The Washington Post dubbed him “The Freud of Football” for his sports psychology work in NFL football and in using the MPI.  Dr. John F Murray’s passion is always to help his clients achieve greater success and well-being. This may involve more traditional psychotherapy from a number of theoretical perspectives, more specific mental coaching for sports performance, or a mixture of the two. Read through this website to learn how Dr Murray can help you with performance psychology or psychological counseling in business, sports, or life.

Professional Psychology Services

Improved Performance and Success for Athletes, Coaches & Teams:

• Sports Psychology Evaluations and Feedback: Dr. Murray believes that the initial evaluation is essential to understanding the unique nature of the individual and his or her specific needs and concerns. There is simply no shortcut to conducting a very thorough evaluation before beginning sessions with a sports psychologist. There is an article that is receiving a lot of attention about the 10 biggest issues seen in a sports psychology private practice that you will enjoy.
• Psychological Counseling: Using an eclectic approach to psychotherapy but leaning more toward a cognitive-behavioral orientation, it is very important to understand and resolve mental problems and concerns when they exist. Every good practicing sports psychologist should also be licensed in their state. There is no substitute for proper education and credentials. 

• Mental Training: Just being a licensed psychologist alone is never enough and does not define this work.  Years of education and experience go into the knowledge and expertise needed to help athletes with specific mental training programs and techniques. 
• Workshops:  A good sports psychology seminar or workshop is a great way to get everyone on board with the latest in knowledge and how it can help. While knowledge gained in these sessions is vital, the best approach for a team combines these group meetings with individual psychotherapy and mental coaching. 

Improved Mental Health for Individuals, Couples & Families:

• Psychological Evaluations: The evaluation is always the first step in receiving quality mental health care. People are just too complex and unique, and the potential problems are numerous and the differences between one problem and another is often subtle and requires that the pschologist have both extensive knowledge and experience.
• Individual Psychotherapy: This is just a fancy word for one-on-one psychological counseling. Sitting down with a psychologist and discussing your issues in a confidential and supportive forum can be very helpful, and many therapeutic approaches are validated by years of empirical research. 
• Family & Couples Counseling: While family therapy and couples counseling are really two different types of treatment, they are listed together for convenience. Couples often come in before they get married or in any attempt to save their marriage. Family systems need to be understood well for success to occur. Addressing problems from a systems theoretical perspective is often very helpful.

Greater Profits for Corporations & Organizations:

• Individual Executive Coaching Evaluations: Just as a solid evaluation is critical for an athlete or a general client, business people need to be fully understood before launching into one-on-one work.  
• Executive coaching: Managing individuals and teams better, leading more effectively, refining people skills, and communicating better are all very important areas that are addressed in one-on-one executive coaching services.

I hope you have enjoyed learning more about my background as a sports psychologist, clinical psychologist, author, executive coach, and seminar leader. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Just call me at 561-596-9898.

I have included a section below to describe some of the exciting sports psychology research that I have been involved in and to share some of the comments about the book that was a result of it. It does not relate specifically to the services I offer in the above section, but you still might enjoy it. Thanks for stopping by the website of a sports psychologist and clinical psychologist. 

Having attended a top 10 scientist/practitioner graduate program at the University of Florida, Dr. Murray believes very strongly that research and scientific findings must inform clinical practice. Combining his love of American football with his passion for science and research, Dr. Murray began collecting data on each and every Super Bowl game, looking at every play in Super Bowl history for what he called “mental performance.”  This ultimately led to the creation of the MPI statistic and a fascinating discovery written about in his second major book “The Mental Performance Index: Ranking the Best Teams in Super Bowl History.”

When the MPI statistic was available after reliability and validity testing, it was utilized to study how important mental performance really is to success in American football. Every play by every team in Super Bowl history from 1967 to 2013 was scrutinized, an MPI score was assigned each team, and this data was used to predict how important the MPI measure was compared with almost 50 other more traditional statistics presented in the football box score and in other places. The end result was shocking. Not only did the MPI correlate more with Super Bowl winning than any other statistic, it wasn’t even close! While the MPI/winning correlation was .84, the next highest correlation was turnover differential, around .50.  “This was a phenomenal discovery, in my humble opinion,” stated Murray, “as it demonstrated empirically just how crucial mental performance, smart play, good decisions, and reduction of turnovers, penalties and mental mistakes are to winning!” 

The take home message, according to Dr. Murray, is that “the mental factor, and sports psychology, which had never been seriously quantified until the MPI, turned out to be genius in success.” In other words, that which we had often put on the back burner in training as exotic, rare, or obscure was actually the secret to success on the biggest stage of the sports world.” The sports psychology red-headed step child had been ignored for too long, but turned out to be the most important factor by far to winning the Super Bowl game. 

The lesson from this study and the book that followed it, is that mental skills training and counseling (the way that we improve mental performance) needs to be a part of each and every football team on the planet. “The same must follow too for every sport,” according to Murray. Sports psychology could no longer be neglected unless you wanted to lose!

The “Mental Performance Index” book received praise from some of the best names in pro football. Below is a detailed description and comments from readers:

BOOK DESCRIPTION

In “The Mental Performance Index: Ranking the Best Teams in Super Bowl History,” Dr. John F. Murray described his amazing story and the many fortuitous situations all over the world that culminated in him loving football and later becoming a very well known professional in his field. With a strong athletic and coaching background, Murray explains the process of discovering that to help teams and performers in all sports he needed to find a way to quantify how they had played in a manner that included those previously difficult to define mental factors.  Throughout history, and in many battles and struggles, mental skills were of course paramount to winning, but the amazing thing is that nobody had taken the time to measure or quantify it!

It was this realization that astounded Murray. Very little is new under the sun, so they say, but in this case history had neglected to analyze the mental aspects of performance! He quotes Hegel in Chapter one of his book, as Hegel once said “Because it’s familiar, a thing remains unknown.”  This was the perspective that led Murray to develop an entirely new statistic to compensate for this monumental error.  He called the stat “The Mental Performance Index.” 

Now we have a way of quantifying mental performance that improves our understanding of how well a team performed and it includes those mental aspects in a major way.  The author goes on to study every single play in Super Bowl history.  The results indicate that the MPI is the best overall predictor of winning the Super Bowl!  In sum, what had been ignored in sports can no longer be. It shows that the mental game is no longer incomprehensible or obscure. When it is measured along with overall performance it is the true key to success.

Comments by Foreword Writer Tom Flores and Steve Sabol of NFL Films

“Dr. Murray has perfected a system of self evaluation and taken it to a new and modern level. Dr. Murray has developed a system that is part of the evolution of football: The ability to identify, quantify and utilize a grading system that will aid coaches and players. It is a method of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of every aspect of a team and or individual. It is a system that can point out the direction needed for improvement. Teams, coaches and players are always looking for an edge and a way to stay ahead of the field. Dr. Murray’s Mental Performance Index can be and will be the next part of sports evolution in the 21stCentury.”
-Tom Flores, 4-Time NFL Super Bowl Champion, 2 as Head Coach of the Oakland/LA Raiders

“This is a fascinating work of remarkable scope and scholarship. Dr. Murray has devised a valid new way to measure and predict greatness in the game of football.” 
– Steve Sabol – President of NFL FILMS