Athlete mental training involves you training your mind as an athlete in a similar way to how you train your physical skills — where you see your mind as a combination of mental skills that work together to help you perform your best during games.
What I’m going to do is break down athlete mental training as a whole. And I’m going to do so in a similar way to the way I approach my one-on-one coaching when I’m working with athletes.
Here’s what we’re going to cover:
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The main mental game challenges athletes face
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The core mental skills you want to develop
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And the mental training tools you can use to build those skills
Mental Game Challenges Athletes Face
These are the mental blocks that you might be experiencing — the things getting in your way from performing your best on the field or court.
Fear of Failure
Fear of failure is one of the toughest mental blocks to deal with. It involves being afraid of making mistakes.
You might fear making mistakes because you’re worried about losing your starting position, having your stats drop, or even the pressure of having college coaches watch your game.
The fear of failure often causes you to play timidly. Paradoxically, when you’re trying to avoid mistakes, you end up making more of them because you’re playing cautiously.
To overcome this fear, it’s important to shift your mindset and focus on playing freely, not on avoiding mistakes.
Summary
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Fear of failure involves being afraid of making mistakes, often due to pressure or losing your position.
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It causes timid play, and trying to avoid mistakes often leads to more mistakes.
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To overcome it, shift your focus to playing freely instead of fearing mistakes.
Sports Performance Anxiety
Sports performance anxiety is intense worry about what might or might not happen during the game.
This anxiety is often a result of fearing mistakes, and it causes tightness in your body and a robotic, tense style of play.
When you experience anxiety, your thoughts drift to the future—worrying about what could go wrong or what others will think of your performance.
This takes you out of the present moment, and the less present you are, the worse you perform. Learning to stay in the moment is key to overcoming this anxiety.
Summary:
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Sports performance anxiety is intense worry about what might happen during the game, often due to fear of mistakes.
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It causes tension in your body and a robotic, tense play style, pulling you away from the present moment.
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Staying focused in the moment is key to overcoming anxiety and performing better.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism involves feeling like you have to play perfectly, which can initially seem like a good mindset to have.
Perfectionism can fuel motivation during training, but when it comes to competition, expecting perfection can lead to anxiety.
When you try to be perfect, you worry about making mistakes, which leads to more tension. If you make even one mistake, it becomes difficult to move on, causing your focus to shift away from the game and resulting in a loss of composure.
This can snowball into more mistakes and, ultimately, poor performance.
Summary:
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Perfectionism makes you feel like you have to play perfectly, which can be motivating in training but leads to anxiety in competition.
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Worrying about mistakes creates tension, and making even one mistake makes it hard to move on, shifting your focus away from the game.
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This can snowball into more mistakes and poor performance.
Loss of Composure
Losing composure means having a hard time managing your anger, frustration, and emotions, especially after making mistakes.
Losing composure doesn’t always mean outwardly throwing things or yelling—sometimes, it can be internal, where you beat yourself up and think negatively about yourself.
This mental breakdown makes it harder to stay focused and bounce back from mistakes. Negative self-talk, frustration, and self-blame only lower your confidence and make you more likely to make additional mistakes.
Summary:
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Losing composure means struggling to manage anger, frustration, and emotions, especially after mistakes.
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It can be internal, where you beat yourself up with negative thoughts, not just outward actions.
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This makes it harder to focus, bounce back, and lowers your confidence, leading to more mistakes.
Negative Self-Talk
Negative self-talk impacts your confidence and focus.
When you beat yourself up after mistakes or think you’re not good enough before the game, you start to doubt yourself.
This leads to even lower confidence in the moment, affecting your performance during the game. Negative self-talk doesn’t just lower your confidence short-term—it can also affect your self-belief in the long term.
Summary:
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Negative self-talk harms your confidence and focus.
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Beating yourself up after mistakes or doubting your abilities lowers your confidence in the moment.
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This can affect your performance during the game and impact your self-belief in the long term.
Social Approval
Seeking social approval involves looking to others for validation of your worth as an athlete.
Whether it’s approval from your coach, teammates, or the crowd, this mindset leads to fear, anxiety, and negative self-talk. If you are constantly worried about what others think, you’re less likely to stay focused on your own game.
This pulls your attention away from what you’re doing and leads to underperforming.
Summary:
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Seeking social approval means looking to others for validation of your worth as an athlete.
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This mindset leads to fear, anxiety, and negative self-talk, pulling your focus away from your own game.
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Worrying about others’ opinions can cause you to underperform.
Poor Focus
Having a difficult time focusing is a major issue for athletes. Whether it’s during practice or a game, you may find yourself distracted by the environment, the crowd, or previous mistakes.
Worrying about the future or thinking about the past makes it hard to stay present. Without focus, your performance will suffer. Learning how to stay in the moment and focus on the task at hand is crucial for improving performance.
Summary:
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Difficulty focusing is a major issue for athletes, caused by distractions like the environment, crowd, or past mistakes.
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Worrying about the future or dwelling on the past makes it hard to stay present.
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Without focus, your performance suffers. Staying in the moment is key to improving performance.
Core Mental Skills Athletes Need
Once you understand the challenges you face, the next step is to develop the mental skills necessary to overcome them.
Here are the key mental skills you need to develop to perform at your best:
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is at the core of a strong mental game. It means recognizing:
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What you’re thinking
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How you’re feeling
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How your thoughts impact your emotions
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How your emotions and thoughts impact your actions
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And how your performance then impacts how you think and feel
This is based on the thought–feeling–action cycle.
For example: If you think, “I suck,” you feel worse, which causes more negative thoughts and timid play.
But once you recognize this in the moment, you can change it — and that’s where performance begins to shift.
Self-Confidence
Confidence is key to peak performance.
I like to break confidence for athletes down into:
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Confidence in understanding (you believe you have the skills)
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Confidence in execution (you trust yourself to perform)
Confidence allows you to perform freely and without the pressure of forcing a good performance. When you trust your skills and your ability to execute, you can let go of fear and anxiety and just play naturally.
Managing Mistakes
Mistakes are inevitable. The goal isn’t to be perfect — it’s to know how to manage mistakes. That starts with controlling your reaction and your thoughts.
To work on managing mistakes, you can use breathing tools in the moment, along with setting the right kinds of goals before games.
When you set process, controllable goals, it’s easier to move past a mistake and not dwell on it or feel like you’ve failed.
Focus
Focus is both a short-term and long-term skill.
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In practice: Focus with intent
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In games: Stay locked in and don’t drift into past or future thinking
Focus is crucial for success, both in practice and competition.
You need to learn how to stay focused in the present moment, whether it’s during a drill, a game, or in the middle of a crucial play.
Focus improves with practice, and when you can maintain it consistently, your performance will improve. Focus also helps you block out distractions, such as the crowd or the pressure of the moment.
Calming Nerves
Calming your nerves is essential for handling sports performance anxiety.
Anxiety often impacts athletes both before and during games. By understanding why you’re anxious and learning to focus on the present moment, you can calm your nerves and perform at your best.
Tools like mindfulness and breathing exercises can help you manage anxiety and stay relaxed in high-pressure moments.
Goal Setting
Goal setting is an important mental skill that helps you stay motivated and focused.
Improper goals can lead to fear, anxiety, and perfectionism. Instead of setting goals like “I don’t want to make mistakes,” set goals like “I will give my best effort.”
This reduces the fear of failure and increases the chances of playing confidently. Set both short-term process goals and long-term outcome goals to guide your performance and maintain motivation.
Set:
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Short-term goals (e.g., for today’s practice or game)
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Long-term outcome goals (for motivation and growth)
Mental Training Tools for Athletes
So how do you actually build these skills? That’s where athlete mental training tools come in. Here are some of the top ones I use in my coaching:
Mindfulness Meditation
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Purpose: Mindfulness meditation is one of the best tools for improving self-awareness.
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Benefits: It helps you become more aware of your thoughts and emotions, manage mistakes, and stay focused in the moment.
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How it Helps: Regular mindfulness practice strengthens your ability to stay present, which is crucial for performing at your best.
Visualization
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Purpose: Visualization is a powerful tool for building confidence.
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How it Works: Visualize yourself performing well, mentally rehearse your skills, and prepare for success.
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Negative Visualization: You can also use negative visualization, where you imagine setbacks and challenges to build resilience and prepare for adversity.
Self-Talk Routine
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Purpose: A self-talk routine involves repeating positive statements to train your internal dialogue.
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Benefits: This helps you replace negative thoughts with constructive, supportive thoughts that boost your confidence and focus.
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How to Use: Create a list of positive statements and repeat them regularly to strengthen your mental game.
Reframing Thoughts
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Purpose: Reframing is an in-the-moment tool that helps you change unhelpful thoughts.
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When to Use: When you catch yourself thinking negatively, reframe the thought to something more positive and productive.
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How it Helps: Shifting your perspective improves your mindset and helps you focus on what’s important.
Thought-Stopping Phrase
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Purpose: A thought-stopping phrase is a simple statement you can use to break negative thought patterns.
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How it Works: Phrases like “let it go, reset, refocus” help you move on from mistakes and stay focused on the task at hand.
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When to Use: Use these phrases in the heat of the moment to stop negative thinking and regain control.
Performance Objectives
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Purpose: Performance objectives are specific, controllable targets you set for yourself before practice or a game.
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How it Helps: These objectives help you stay focused on the process and improve your performance over time.
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Example: For practice, set a target for what you want to work on that day. For a game, focus on a part of your game that will help you perform your best.
Count Breathing
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Purpose: Count breathing is a technique that helps you calm your nerves and refocus.
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How it Works: By breathing in and out for a specific count, you center your attention and regain control of your emotions.
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When to Use: Use count breathing to calm yourself when you’re feeling anxious or to regain composure after making a mistake.
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Example: Start by breathing in for four, exhaling for four. You can also try breathing in for five and exhaling for ten, focusing on your breath to center your attention.
Identifying and Reviewing Your Strengths
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Purpose: Identifying your strengths and reviewing them helps build confidence.
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How to Use: List your strengths, review them before games, and remind yourself of them daily.
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When to Use: Reflecting on your strengths reinforces your self-belief, especially when you’re facing challenges.
Remembering Past Successes
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Purpose: Remembering your past successes is a great way to build confidence before a game.
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How it Helps: Reflecting on recent achievements helps you stay positive and trust your ability to perform well.
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When to Use: Use this tool right before the game to boost confidence and mentally prepare yourself for success.
Pregame Routine
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Purpose: A pregame routine involves using mental training tools to prepare yourself for the game.
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How it Helps: This routine helps you get mentally focused, relaxed, confident, and in the right mindset for competition.
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How to Use: Compile the mental tools that work best for you, and use them as part of your routine before stepping onto the field or court.
Want to Go Deeper?
That was a quick overview of the major mental game challenges athletes face, the main mental skills athletes can build, and tools you can use to do so.
If you want a deeper dive into athlete mental training, check out my new book titled Athlete Mental Training. You can purchase a copy of the book on Amazon.
It walks you through:
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Each mental game challenge in detail
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The mental skills that help
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The tools to train them
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And exercises to implement immediately
You can also work with me through my 1-on-1 mental coaching program, or my two online courses:
Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
