In addition to a physical warm up, you need to warm up your mind by honing your focus and confidence. I encourage athletes to mentally prepare during their physical warm up. It’s a great idea to use a pre-game or pre-competition warm-up routine to help you feel confident and get focused.
Athletes
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Beliefs that Sabotage Confidence
Many athletes expect too much of themselves and easily lose confidence when they don’t perform up to their expectations. Often, sports kids harbor unrealistic or even irrational beliefs that hurt their confidence. For example, some athletes expect to make no mistakes or go 4-for-4 at-bat in a
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Kids Should Appreciate Their Own Talents
Sports kids today spend too much time making comparisons to their competitors or teammates. They focus on how others are performing, rather than concentrating on their own game. They do this in a number of ways and none of them are good news for the young athletes. When kids focus on others’
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Maintaining Confidence after Mistakes
Athletes often use negative self-talk after making mistakes. You want to avoid using negative self-talk because it bursts your confidence. You might tell yourself, “I stink today. I can’t hit a simple shot.” It’s important for you to tune into your self-talk and make sure you are thinking
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Pregame Routines and Mental Preparation
It is important for teams to prepare their mental game skills for competition. That means warming up their minds by working on their focus and confidence. Athletes can do this by using a pregame or pre-competition warm-up routine to boost their confidence and focus.
Athletes at every level use
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Release Athletes to the Game
Often, parents get so wrapped up in the excitement of youth sports that the experience becomes more about the parents than the kids. Sports parents need to release their young athletes to the game. When sports kids approach middle school, and sports become more competitive, it’s time for parents to
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Confidence Resume
To feel confident, you don’t want to rely solely on feeling good about immediate results, such as getting the first hit of the day or making the first basket of the game. Some kids, without thinking about it, wait until the first few minutes of a game before they decide how confident they feel. We
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Self-talk in Sports
As coaches you have a unique perspective on how your athletes talk to themselves. You also know your athletes well enough to help them develop confident self-talk. You should suggest a few ideas, such as, “You work hard. You’re really fit. You’ve got a lot of talent. You’re a great communicator on
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