Every single day we are all performers even though many of us don’t think of ourselves as such.
The majority of athletes spend thousands and thousands of hours working on the technical, tactical and physical aspects of their games with very little consideration given to focusing on strengthening their mental capabilities. When higher level athletes are asked though what percentages of their wins and losses in games come down to the physical and technical aspects of their games vs. how they think and interpret what is going on in the moment, the most common answer is 20% physical/technical and 80% mental. If the performance is 80% mental, then why aren’t we training that way? Even for athletes just starting their competitive careers and still developing skills, the ability to adapt, quickly develop new skills and effectively respond to setbacks are all mental skills that can be honed and developed early on so what are you waiting for?
Ways I help clients do this:
- To gain better self-awareness of how their bodies respond to stressful situations and how to most effectively self-intervene before and during competition
- To better understand that their thoughts are just thoughts and that just because they think it, doesn’t
make it true - To understand how to let go of the things they cannot control in competition but their brain keeps
focusing on - To learn how to effectively talk to themselves when they aren’t competing well and why thinking positive thoughts doesn’t always work
- To introduce neurocognitive training that can help mimic the stress of the competitive environment and improve reaction time and enhance visual tracking
- To help people understand how to best motivate themselves and teammates
- To effectively give positive and negative feedback to themselves and others to improve faster
- To utilize visualization to anticipate better and program new skill sets faster into play
- To discover how important sleep is for optimal performance and learn strategies to ensure they get the sleep well at home and while traveling for competition
- To gain awareness of how improving the quality of the breaths we take can improve cardiovascular health, shorten our recovery time, energize our brains and bodies when feeling fatigued and collect ourselves in moments of stress and uncertainty
I use research-based skills and concepts to help people develop better self-awareness and self-regulation tools they can immediately put into action. The people I work with learn how to troubleshoot difficult situations that arise in competition and understand how to set themselves up for success more consistently. My goal is to provide skills that translate to improving people as athletes and also as human beings.
Additional ways I help your specific needs and desired areas of growth:
- Learn tools to help deal with anxiousness and nervousness during competition, academic tests and before difficult conversations with teammates, parents and coaches
- Help people learn how to improve focus without the use of medication.
- Teach people how to manage their thoughts and emotions when their brains are only focusing on worst-case scenarios
- Teach people how to become less focused on wins and losses and more focused on skill development
- Understand where confidence actually comes from and how to leverage that knowledge when needed most
- Strategies to manage emotions more effectively so people feel in better control of what they think and feel instead of being at the mercy of their own emotions