ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses psychological skills that are needed to reach top performance and shows how these skills can be developed in young talents. Longitudinal studies investigating the personality development of talented athletes are necessary to investigate to what degree the selection and/or the socialization hypothesis applies to the sport context and whether or not personality characteristics can be developed and enhanced. A very particular environment that has received increased interest in the past years is the school system for elite athletes, and in particular, the sport boarding school. Especially when starting at such a school, those students living on campus need to invest more effort on building up new friendships in the boarding school, alongside their efforts in school and in training. In addition to the training of specific personality characteristics, an important role of the sport psychologist is the regular monitoring and regulation of stress and recovery.
