The Critical Moment (CMT) testing paradigm introduces psychological stressors to practice settings by attaching physical, psychological, and material value to what would otherwise be routine moments during training. CMT brings accountability to practice sessions by documenting performance throughout a training period or on demand during specific testing epochs. The CMT creates psychological stress in a performance situation that otherwise might be perceived as routine and innocuous by an athlete. CMT paradigms are sport specific and can be customized so as to simulate important actions or tasks that are common and important to a particular sport. Anecdotally, one will frequently observe that athletes of all levels also are motivated intrinsically to compete and want to perform well and win, even in intra-squad competitive events or tasks that are ancillary or irrelevant to real game statistical performance.

This chapter presents a validated multifaceted assessment and intervention protocol that has been used on hundreds of athletes over the last 15 years. It provides data and findings on athletes who have experienced the Carlstedt Protocol (CP), and recommends for the integration of procedures and methodologies that are vital to evidence-based applied sport psychology, and the credibility of the field of sport psychology/biofeedback and its practitioners. In addition to guiding biofeedback, the established athlete’s profile is a strong predictor of intervention amenability and compliance tendencies, pain thresholds, attentional control during competitive stress, coachability, and the placebo-nocebo effects. During critical moments, athletes possessing the most negative or disruptive constellation of primary higher-order (PHO) factors exhibit heart rate acceleration (HRA) prior to action, while those having the most facilitative or protective constellation continue to demonstrate heart rate deceleration (HRD).

Video-based mental programming (VBP) is a more direct intervention modality that accesses and uses visual processing to facilitate, especially motor and technical, performance; although it can also be used in attempts to increase motivation, emotional engagement, and attain individual zone of optimum functioning (IZOF) established levels of physiological reactivity. VBP can be viewed as a very direct mental training approach, one that circumvents esoteric and extraneous intervention procedures that are more difficult to assess in terms of efficiency and efficacy. It can also be used as a stress test, whereby an athlete’s underlying psychophysiology is monitored while watching his or her self-performance over the course of a complete game or match. Baseline heart rate variability (HRV) profiles should be compared with intervention-induced HRV to establish intervention efficiency. The chapter also presents a real case study to illustrate the VBP intervention process and an outcome associated with it.