A longtime associate of the University of Pennsylvania's John R. Rockwell Head Coach of Men's Basketball, Steve Donahue, Joe Dowling M.S., LPC assists Donahue's staff, as well as several other Penn programs, as the Quakers' peak performance/mental strength training coach.
Dowling has worked extensively with athletes on the high school, collegiate, and professional levels for 20 years. He is a specialist in sport and performance psychology who guides clients via specialized zone exercises to create and maintain peak performance. Dowling emphasizes the unique strengths of each individual while magnifying their personal history of success and their future memories of success.
Dowling facilitates sport psychology and team building workshops for teams in the Philadelphia area as well as throughout the country. He has designed and implemented programs for student-athletes at Cornell University and Boston College -- both of them during Donahue's stint as head coach -- as well as LaSalle College High School and The Agnes Irwin School, to name a few of his clients.
Dowling's book -- Zonefulness: The Ultimate Guide for Student-Athletes -- was published in September 2017. Dowling also has co-authored a professional article on sport psychology and authored a publication on habit control.
Since 2001, he has been an invited presenter to national and international conferences for psychology and counseling professionals. He has taught at each of the Brief Therapy Conferences and The International Congresses for Ericksonian Approaches to Psychotherapy since 2004.Â
Workshops have included: How to Become Smart Enough to Know When to Stop Thinking; Zone In: Ericksonian Sport Psychology; and The Handbook of Habit Control. Dowling was the Director of Training at The Milton H. Erickson Institute of Philadelphia for ten years, and he recently began The Zonefulness Training Center for clinicians interested in learning and facilitating sport and peak performance psychology. Dowling presented his workshop, ZONEfulness: The Ultimate Guide for Student-Athletes, at the 2016 National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) annual convention at the NCAA Final Four in Houston, Texas.Â
A Philadelphia-area native, Dowling is a graduate of LaSalle College High School. He went on to play basketball at Albright College, where in 1987 he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. Dowling then continued his education at Villanova University, and in 1992 he received his Master of Science degree in Counseling Psychology.
Dowling conducts his private practice out of his home in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia, where he lives with his wife Lisa.
