Most athletes feel pressure when they adopt expectations from others, such as coaches, parents, or teammates, or have their own strict expectations about how they should perform. Expectations are what you demand of yourself when you perform or what you think others demand of you. You naturally want
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Tips for Athletes
Don’t Worry About Things You Cannot Control
I tell my students to not spend any energy worrying about things you cannot control on the athletic field, court, or course. By worrying, you waste energy on irrelevant factors beyond your control. As a result you become upset or frustrated, lose your composure, and it affects you for several
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3 Mental Keys for Success
What are three must have keys to success in sports? (1) Learning, (2) Repetition, and (3) Trust in your skills. What most athletes don't get - and even coaches - is that motor learning does not happen overnight. A batting lesson, golf instruction, or coaching on technique must be coupled with
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Routine for Success
Some athletes follow a specific routine to help them prepare for a match or game. They eat the same pregame meal, arrive at the event 1 hour prior to competition, and engage in a precise warm up they have developed through trial and error. Other athletes prefer to jump out of the team bus or car and
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Do You Intimidate Yourself?
Intimidation is a massive mental barrier for many athletes. It often happens when you compare yourself to your opponent’s skills before competition. Most intimidation in sports comes from psyching yourself out, which I call self-intimidation. Your first task to overcoming intimidation is to be very
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Focus on the “Controllables”
Do you become distracted after arguing with an official about a bad call he made even when you knew the official was not going to change his call? You might have became upset or frustrated, lost your composure, and it affected you for several minutes to follow or even the rest of the
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Are You Getting in Your Own Way?
Athletes contact me everyday saying that they can't get out of their own way. Why would you want to sabotage your own success? Some people would answer "fear of success," but that's not likely. Fear of success, although it does cause athletes to self-destruct, is very rare in my work compared to the
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Overcome Your Comfort Zone
Many athletes hold themselves back with a comfort zone. What is a comfort zone in sports? A comfort zone is a mental barrier that limits what you think you are capable of and is hard to shake. A comfort zone is a problem whenever an athlete is playing better than expected or is in uncharted
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