Is anger helpful or harmful to your game? Anger in itself is not the worst of the negative emotions. It is counter-productive for more athletes I work with, but there are worse emotions such as grief, depression and fear. In most cases, anger is negative, but in rare cases a select group of athletes
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Tips for Athletes
Trust in Your Practice
If you do not trust your ability when performing, you are more likely to over-analyze your technique, which could lead to performing tentatively. It is important that you trust what you learned in practice. The trusting mindset is the ability to rely on practice, play freely, and let it flow in
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Zoning-out In Competition
Do you feel like you go to sleep or zone-out during competition? Athletes who have experienced this don’t vividly remember all the choices they made during the game because their mind is traveling elsewhere. Going to sleep happens when you don't feel challenged or don't have a clear game plan for
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Relaxation and Mental Calmness
My philosophy about training for relaxation and mental calmness is that you must learn strategies that go beyond physical relaxation techniques. You can learn all of the popular relaxation exercises you want, but these are just a band aid approach to the symptoms of anxiety and worry about
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Social Approval and Making Comparisons
Athletes who seek social approval (or worry about what others think) tend to compare themselves to other players or let what others say and do affect their confidence. It is important for you to focus on your game and not worry about others.
Focus on what you are doing well and not what others
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Prepare Your Mind for Adversity
To be physically relaxed and mentally prepared, you want to be ready to cope with any adversity you encounter in sports. Your mental toughness will be challenged by things that are beyond your control such as weather and officiating, for example. In sports psychology, we use the phrase “anticipate
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Four Top Fears for Athletes
It’s not enough to know that you have fear of failure. What’s more important is to know what type of fear holds you back. Here are the top four fears for athletes and as you can see, fear of failure often is related to what you assume others think about you.
1. Fear of losing a match, game, or
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Confidence Brings Success
To compete at the top of your game you need to have confidence in your ability to succeed. Having confidence offers you an advantage over your competitors because confident athletes play more relaxed, focused, and aggressive.
Accepting when you do not play well, instead of being hard on yourself,
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