Coaches!
Don’t you love it when your athletes are performing at the top of their abilities. Their technique and tactics are spot on. You watch as they perform their skills effortlessly... focused and confident. As a coach, you thrive on the hours you spend with and without your athletes, prepping them for game day or race day; but, the reality is that once your athletes have to perform, they are mostly on their own.
Do your athletes possess the skill of staying focused? I mean laser focused, like they should be?
Can your athletes maintain confidence?
Do they have the skills to stay in control? Mental, Emotional, Physical, and Technical Control
Are they in the zone, or in flow, during most competitions?
Are they playing the best that they are capable of?
This is Mental Performance!
Most of you understand that the mental part of the sport is critical to how successful your athletes perform. It is the reason for their consistency, or lack thereof. It is the reason they come out loaded with confidence or stifled with fear and doubt. Positive or negative, your athlete’s behaviors and performance follow their mental and emotional state nearly every time! Although you certainly understand this, it is tough, for many reasons, to adequately train the mental side of the sport.
The push is for athletes to train the mind like they train the body, and mental skills can be taught and trained! The Positively Elite blog is all about that. Understanding, managing, and training the mental part of performance.
HERE IS WHAT MENTAL PERFORMANCE LOOKS LIKE
*Help the athletes understand how our mental process impacts performance*
*Learn and train the 4 core mental skills of breathing, meditation, self-talk, and visualization*
*Increase ability to experience and maintain confidence*
*Increase emotional intelligence- awareness and management*
*Increase awareness and control of thoughts and beliefs*
*Learn strategies for calming and boosting our energy state/ stress response*
*Increase ability to focus*
*Learn how to trigger flow states*
*Develop a growth mindset*
*Respond better to mistakes, failures, and feedback*
*Set appropriate SMART goals*
*Create pre-game and in game performance routines*
*Communicate more effectively with your teammates*
*Improve the relationships and positive team culture*
*Understand the importance of teamwork and leadership*
As a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and mental performance coach, it is my job to work with the athletes and coaches on all of the training above. Every athlete possesses the ability to be consistent and confident at their sport but just need to learn the insights and skills that allow them to manage and train this important part.
Keep reading the blog posts on this website to learn more on these topics.
If you have any direct questions, or are interested in mental performance training for your team, feel free to reach out through this website or through my email, [email protected]
Be well!
Powell Cucchiella, LMHC