For athletes and coaches alike, the motivation to excel in one's sport starts with a dream. The best athletes in the world have a commitment to greatness, which is often fueled by their mission. Motivation is the drive to strive for a goal, to improve daily, to practice hard day after day, and the
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Coaching the Mental Game
Improving Athletes’ Self-Confidence
Self-confidence is one of the most critical mental skills for success in sports and life. It is how strongly athletes believe in their ability to execute a physical skill or perform a task. Athletes gain confidence from many sources, including their past performances, training, and preparation. For
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Advantages of Pregame Routines
Athletes benefit from routines to prepare mentally for practice and competition. The goal of mental preparation is to be mentally prepared to perform their best. With a routine, for example, your players will prepare and think consistently before each game.
Encourage your athletes to establish
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Balancing Life and Sports
Coaches spend a major portion of their lives training, preparing, and coaching. This leaves little time for other areas of life, including quality time with family or recreation. Success in sports for some coaches is a priority, which can lead to an unbalanced life. You must learn to adapt to the
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Improving Practice Efficiency
Playing competitive sports at the highest level requires athletes and teams to engage in focused, quality practice, which improves both learning and performance. How can practice be more effective without spending more time? Coaches need to integrate proven methods of motor learning and sports
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Helping Athletes Deal with Setbacks
As a coach, one objective is to help athletes play on with confidence and composure immediately following a setback or mistake. Before you can help an athlete regain control you must maintain your own composure, and avoid showing your frustration. This will help your athletes learn through
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Goal-oriented Practice
As coach it is your responsibility to keep your athletes from being bored during practice. When your players are bored with practice they lack concentration and focus. Make practice goal-oriented by establishing a goal for each specific task you are going to work on in practice. Goal-oriented
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Mentally Prepare for Competition
Hall of Fame player Hank Aaron attributed much of his success in baseball to his mental preparation -both before and during the game. He believed you should think about the mechanics of baseball when hitting. Instead, he believed that mental preparation and doing his homework was the key to becoming
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