Building Mental Toughness in Sports Mental toughness in sports is not just one thing. I have mentioned this a number of times that being mentally tough is not a singular characteristic, it is combination of things. One of the ways to look at mental toughness is the ability to get through the discomfort, pain and uncertainty that will exist on your path as an athlete. There is no doubt these things will occur. A lot of the time we are looking forward to this person and athlete we want to become, when really you already have the potential within you, at least on the mental side, so rather it is ..read more

Mental Training for Athletes and the 5 Pillars Mental training for athletes goes beyond the mental skills, such as visualization, self talk, or goal setting. Those things are very important, and need to be developed, however, it is important to understand they don’t represent the whole picture of sport psychology and what an athlete needs to do in order to develop their mental game to the degree it needs to be in order to be a high performer. In order to unlock their full potential. So if you are someone looking to develop your mental game, here are the 5 pillars that need to be looked at and ..read more

Mental Toughness Training in Sports and Failure Mental toughness training in sports is something most coaches, parents and athletes are interested in understanding and knowing how to develop. There are many components to mental toughness. It is not just one thing that makes someone mentally tough or not. Think of it like a puzzle, there are many pieces and each piece might be a different size for each person, but ultimately in order to have mental toughness all the pieces of the puzzle need to be there and come together. One of these things is how one deals with failure. Failure is an interest ..read more

Mental Training for Athletes and Motivation I think you all understand the importance of motivation and its role within the mental training of athletes. However, often the problem is not in understanding the importance but how to sustain it. How to keep the motivation going. This can definitely be tough, and not always straight forward. In one sense no one can instill motivation in someone else, so it ultimately does have to come from them. However, you can help guide someone to create the framework to help them pull it out of themselves and understand what they need for their own motivation ..read more

Mental Training for Peak Performance Mental training for peak performance can look at a number of different areas within the world of sport psychology. In this article I wanted to look at 3 things that need to be integrated together in order to help someone take the information and fully put it into motion. These three things are motivation, mindset, and methods. We need all three things in order to really be able to develop our mental game. If we have two out of the three then we aren’t able to take the information we have and apply it or we can’t sustain it. For example, if we have the minds ..read more

Mental Toughness Training For Athletes: Importance of Joy Mental toughness training for athletes doesn’t always look the way you might think. Many people look at mental toughness as getting through unbearable physical pain or being able to push your limits and get through uncomfortable moments. This is definitely apart of mental toughness. However, in order to be mentally tough and to get through the uncertainty and discomfort that will exist it is important to also make sure you are having fun and keeping the joy alive. We know that joy is a key ingredient to high performance. It helps us to ..read more

A sport psychology perspective on disciplining your mind Sport psychology is the discipline of understanding the mind and its impact on athletic performance. In this post I want to look at your thoughts and how is in control. To start lets ask a question. Where does your mind rest? This is an important question for each of us to look at, because it gives us an idea of if we are in control on our thoughts or they are in control. Either you will control your thoughts or they will control you. Right now with so much uncertainty in the world, it is creating more self talk, as the mind tries to fin ..read more

Mental Skills and Being able to Control your Emotions The ability to control your emotions is a vital mental skill within sports. Our emotions can aid us, and help use achieve great things, but they can also harm us, distract us and impact our focus, confidence and commitment. Either your emotions control you or you control them. Learning to control them is not easy and takes a great deal of self awareness and hard work, but if we look at the great athletes most of them have learned this skill and use it to their advantage. One of the emotions that gets us the most is fear, which can lead to a ..read more

Learning to be successful is not easy. Many people think that becoming successful will make them happy and give them the life that they want. However, many people don’t understand what it truly takes to get there and once there the toll it will take on them. Success comes with a price, and a cost that many people don’t look at or care to look at. Those that truly become successful have paid the price, and for each person it will be slightly different what that price is. On the mental side some of the costs associated with success are making sacrifices such as sleeping or training when you woul ..read more

Best Methods to Overcome Obstacles in your Sport Obstacles will occur this is a guarantee, so it is important to face them head on and find ways to overcome obstacles in your sport. There are two techniques that I am going to describe here to help with dealing with obstacles and finding ways to be able to not let them get your off track from what you are trying to achieve. Mental Contrasting Mental contrasting is about looking at your expectations to be able to over come an obstacle. The process is relatively simple but can have profound results in increasing the energy you need to overcome an ..read more