What my Athletes say about the Program

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What Does a Mental Performance Coach Do?

 

A mental performance coach helps athletes develop the mental skills necessary to perform, compete, and respond effectively to the challenges that come with sports.

Just as athletes train their bodies and technical skills, they can also train their minds.

For youth athletes, mental performance coaching may involve learning how to:

• Build and maintain confidence

• Handle pressure and performance anxiety

• Recover quickly after mistakes

• Improve concentration and focus

• Control emotions during competition

• Develop motivation and discipline

• Set realistic and effective goals

• Become mentally tougher during difficult situations

• Communicate better with coaches, parents, and teammates

• Develop leadership skills

• Handle changes involving teams, coaches, positions, or playing time

• Deal with being benched or receiving less playing time

• Respond to criticism and negative feedback

• Prepare mentally before practices and competitions

 

Mental performance coaching is not about telling an athlete to "just be confident" or "stop thinking so much."

 

The purpose is to teach the athlete how to do those things. For example, instead of simply telling an athlete to calm down before a game, we can teach breathing techniques, routines, visualization, attentional control, and different ways of interpreting nervousness. Instead of saying, "Forget about the mistake," we can teach the athlete a specific reset routine they can use immediately after making one.

Instead of constantly telling an athlete to believe in themselves, we can help them understand where confidence comes from and teach them how to build confidence based on preparation, effort, progress, and controllable factors.

These are skills, and skills can be practiced.

How Is a Mental Performance Coach Different From a Sports Coach?

 

This is an important distinction. A soccer coach teaches soccer. A basketball coach teaches basketball. A baseball coach teaches baseball.

Their primary responsibility is developing the athlete within their sport: technique, tactics, positioning, decision-making, team strategy, and physical preparation.

Of course, great sports coaches also influence confidence, motivation, leadership, discipline, and resilience. Coaches can have an enormous psychological impact on their athletes. However, most sports coaches have an entire team to manage and a limited amount of practice time. Their priority has to be preparing that team to compete. A mental performance coach has a different focus.

 

We can spend time specifically asking:

Why does this athlete perform differently in games than in practice?

What happens mentally after they make a mistake?

Why does their confidence disappear against stronger opponents?

What are they telling themselves before competition?

Why are they losing motivation?

How are they responding to criticism from their coach?

What happens when they're placed under pressure?

 

Then we can develop strategies specifically for those situations. This is why mental coaching should not replace good sports coaching. Ideally, the two complement each other. The sports coach develops the athlete's game. The mental performance coach helps the athlete develop the mindset necessary to access those abilities when they need them.

Mental Performance Is Bigger Than Sports

For me, one of the greatest benefits of mental performance coaching with young athletes is that these skills don't stay on the field or court.

Consider what we're actually teaching them.

 

We're teaching young people how to respond when something doesn't go their way.

We're teaching them how to receive criticism without allowing someone else's opinion to define them.

We're teaching them how to stay disciplined when motivation isn't there.

We're teaching them how to communicate.

We're teaching them how to lead.

We're teaching them how to manage pressure.

We're teaching them how to fail, learn, adjust, and try again.

Those are sports skills, but they're also life skills.

 

Eventually, youth sports end for everyone. Very few young athletes will become professional athletes. But every one of them will experience pressure, disappointment, difficult people, competition, mistakes, uncertainty, and moments when they question themselves. If sports can teach them how to navigate those situations, then we've accomplished something much greater than developing a better athlete. We've helped develop a stronger person.

When Should Parents Consider Mental Performance Coaching?

Parents don't necessarily need to wait until something is seriously wrong.

Mental performance coaching can be helpful when an athlete is struggling, but it can also be used proactively to prepare athletes for increasingly competitive environments.

It may be especially valuable when parents notice that their athlete:

• Performs significantly better in practice than games

• Frequently loses confidence

• Is extremely afraid of making mistakes

• Experiences excessive pressure before competition

• Has difficulty recovering after bad performances

• Becomes easily frustrated during games

• Struggles with motivation or discipline

• Overthinks during competition

• Has difficulty communicating with coaches

• Struggles after changing teams, levels, coaches, or positions

• Has the physical and technical ability to perform at a higher level but seems mentally blocked

The goal isn't to create an athlete who never gets nervous, frustrated, disappointed, or afraid. That's unrealistic. The goal is to develop an athlete who knows what to do when those emotions appear.

That's a very different thing.

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