Athlete
Mental Skills Coaching
Strong Mind, Stronger Performance
As a Mental Skills Coach, my purpose is to assist you in becoming a well-rounded athlete. We work together to increase your mental skills in order to help you perform your best while training, in competition, and in regular life. I am not a personal trainer, though I do work with your existing trainers if you'd like.
Through my experience as a competitive athlete, I’ve learned we require physical strength and stamina in order to be successful at our sport, but we also need something else: mental strength. Training can be exhausting, demanding, and unfortunately, we find ourselves unmotivated at times.
Newcomers to any sport or training regimen can feel confused and not know how high of expectations to set for themselves or what they should be aiming towards. They may experience nervousness during training (or competition), body image issues, problems focusing, or maintaining motivation. Experienced athletes can begin to feel burnout and a lack of purpose, as well as all of the other problems listed for newcomers.
These are all very normal aspects of the training world, and most athletes deal with these issues at some point .
Individuals
I work with individual athletes (who may or may not be part of a team sport) to determine their strengths and weaknesses. From there, we will break down weaknesses to their most basic levels in order to find the proper tools to reverse the issue at hand. An individualized approach is used with each client. The initial meeting may be similar, but we will work together to determine what is best for each client.
- Set proper goals in order to increase motivation and consistency in training/competition
- Decrease anxiety and increase focus through imagery (mental rehearsal), creating routines, and analyzing the cause of the anxiety
- Determine your optimal levels of arousal (how pumped or calm you need to be). Everyone is different. Some people like loud music, some prefer silence
- Identify body image distortions, which lead to many issues with training and performance
Teams
Teams require a different approach than working with an individual athlete. I can either operate as an additional coach to the team who is around for most practices and competitions or as an as-needed consultant called upon only when needed. Our initial goal is to determine how the team operates as a whole as well as individually. How does everyone fit together and what roles do they play (both formally and informally)? From there, we can work on many different items, depending on the interest of the coaches.
Generally, I’ll attend two team practices and observe the team, get to know the athletes, as well as the other coaches. This also allows them to get used to seeing me around before I start working with them. I also work with the athletes individually as necessary. Parent permission forms for underage athletes are required prior to the start of services.
- Leadership training
- Communication skills
- Team bonding & cohesion
- Educational programs
Trainers / Coaches
There are times where you only need a little extra advice on how to deal with a client or athlete, and that’s great! Like with teams, I can work as a consult on an as needed basis when you have questions, want to learn more about a skill set in mental training, or when you have an athlete you feel is stuck. Instead of working with the athlete, I teach you how to help the athlete and you gain information to use with your future clients.