Have you ever had a game where you knew you were physically prepared, but you still didn’t play your best?
You practiced hard all week. You felt good during warmups. You knew you had the skills to perform well.
Then the game started and you got nervous.
You started overthinking.
One mistake turned into two.
Your confidence dropped.
You became frustrated.
By the end of the game, you walked away wondering what happened because you know you’re better than what you showed.
If you’ve experienced that, you’ve already seen how much your mental game impacts performance.
Most athletes spend countless hours developing their physical skills. They work on mechanics, strength, speed, conditioning, and technique. All of those things matter.
But when game day arrives, your skills are largely what they are.
The biggest question becomes whether your mindset allows those skills to show up.
Because the difference between practice and competition is often not physical. It’s mental.
The athlete who performs freely in practice becomes hesitant in games.
The athlete who dominates during training starts playing scared under pressure.
The athlete with tremendous talent struggles because they’re consumed by mistakes, outcomes, and expectations.
That’s why learning how to use your mental game to improve performance is so important.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be complicated.
I like to break it into three different parts:
- Before the game
- During the game
- After the game
When athletes learn how to manage these three areas, they give themselves the best chance of performing consistently and playing closer to their true ability.
Before the Game: Create the Right Mindset
Before a game, your goal is simple: you want to generate the mindset that gives you the best chance of performing well.
One of my favorite exercises to run athletes through in my 1-on-1 coaching program is identifying their peak performance mindset.
This is where we look back at previous successful performances and try to identify common themes.
- What were you thinking?
- How were you feeling?
- What was your focus like?
- How did you respond to mistakes?
You may discover that you perform best when you’re calm and relaxed. You may realize that you’re at your best when you’re aggressive and attacking. You may notice that confidence, trust, and freedom are common themes.
The goal is to identify the mental and emotional state that allows you to perform your best.
Once you’ve identified that mindset, the next step is creating a pregame routine designed to help you generate it consistently.
Why Pregame Routines Matter
Many athletes think consistency is about mechanics.
While mechanics matter, consistency in sports is often more about mentality.
Your physical abilities do not dramatically change from one Saturday to the next.
Your skills don’t disappear overnight.
What often changes is your mindset.
One game, you’re relaxed, confident, and focused.
The next game, you’re anxious, distracted, and worried about the outcome.
The difference in performance is often a reflection of the difference in mentality.
This is why pregame routines can be so powerful.
They help create consistency.
Instead of leaving your mindset up to chance, you intentionally work to create the mental state that gives you the best chance of success.
Build a Routine Around Your Ideal Mindset
Your pregame routine does not need to be complicated.
In fact, simpler is usually better.
The purpose is not to have ten different exercises.
The purpose is to ask yourself: “What mindset do I want to create today?” Then choose a few tools that help generate that mindset.
For example, if you perform best when you’re calm and confident, your routine might include:
- Meditation or breathing exercises to calm your mind
- Positive self-talk to reinforce confidence
- Visualization to mentally rehearse success
On the other hand, some athletes perform best with more intensity and aggression.
In that case, your routine may focus more on motivation, competitive energy, and mentally preparing to attack the challenge in front of you.
The specific routine matters less than whether it helps you create the mindset you need.
Too many athletes spend their pregame time worrying.
- They’re thinking about who they’re playing.
- They’re wondering if they’ll make mistakes.
- They’re imagining everything that could go wrong.
- Then they wonder why they feel nervous and hesitant once the game starts.
Your pregame routine should help you move toward your ideal mindset, not further away from it.
When you consistently put yourself into the right mental state before competition, you position yourself for better performance during competition.
During the Game: Focus and Reactions
Once competition begins, your mental game becomes much simpler.
At this point, you’re not trying to create a new mindset. You’re trying to maintain the one you’ve already created.
This comes down to two things:
- Focus
- Reactions
Focus on What You Can Control
One of the biggest mistakes athletes make during competition is focusing on things they cannot control.
They focus on:
- Statistics
- Results
- Winning
- Rankings
- Scouts
- Coaches
- Expectations
- Future outcomes
The problem is that these things tend to pull you out of the present moment.
And when you leave the present moment, anxiety usually follows.
Anxiety lives in the future.
- You’re worried about what might happen.
- You’re worried about making mistakes.
- You’re worried about losing.
- You’re worried about letting people down.
When your attention shifts into the future, your confidence often disappears.
That’s why controllable goals are so powerful.
Instead of focusing on outcomes, you focus on actions. Instead of focusing on winning, you focus on competing. Instead of focusing on statistics, you focus on execution.
- A baseball hitter might focus on seeing the ball deep.
- A quarterback might focus on reading the defense.
- A golfer might focus on committing fully to each shot.
- A tennis player might focus on footwork and recovery between points.
These goals keep your attention on the process rather than the outcome.
Why Controllable Goals Improve Performance
Athletes often hear that they need to stay present. The problem is that nobody explains how.
Controllable goals give you a practical way to do it.
They provide a target for your attention.
Instead of your mind drifting toward fear, doubt, and results, it stays anchored on something productive.
This is important because thoughts influence feelings, and feelings influence behavior, and behavior influences performance.
Here’s what often happens when athletes focus on outcomes:
They think, “I need to have a great game.”
That thought creates pressure.
Pressure creates tension.
Tension changes behavior.
The athlete becomes cautious.
They hesitate, they overthink, they play scared.
Then, performance drops.
Now compare that to this:
They think, “See the ball. Trust my training. Stay aggressive.”
These thoughts keep attention focused on execution.
That leads to greater confidence, better decision-making, and better performance.
The goal is not to eliminate nerves. The goal is to keep your attention on something useful.
Why Reactions Matter More Than Results
I honestly believe reactions are more important than results during competition.
Most athletes spend too much time evaluating what happened and not enough time managing how they respond to it.
- Every athlete makes mistakes.
- Every athlete has bad moments.
- Every athlete experiences adversity.
The difference is what happens next.
One athlete strikes out and carries it into their next at-bat.
Another athlete strikes out, resets, and moves on.
One basketball player misses a shot and becomes hesitant.
Another misses a shot and keeps attacking.
One golfer hits a bad drive and spends three holes thinking about it.
Another accepts it and focuses on the next shot.
The mistake isn’t usually what hurts performance.
The reaction is.
Develop a Resetting Routine
Because reactions matter so much, every athlete should have a resetting routine.
A resetting routine helps you return to the present moment after something good or bad happens.
Most athletes only think about resetting after mistakes.
But success can be distracting too.
You don’t want to spend the next play celebrating the previous one.
You need to refocus on what’s next.
A simple resetting routine might include:
- Take a deep breath.
- Use a self-talk phrase.
- Refocus on your controllable goal.
Breathing helps calm emotional intensity.
Self-talk helps guide your attention.
The controllable goal gives you something productive to focus on.
The objective is simple:
- Reset.
- Refocus.
- Move forward.
Again and again throughout the game.
After the Game: Position Yourself for the Next Performance
Most athletes think the game ends when the final whistle blows.
Mentally, that’s often where the next game begins.
The way you evaluate and respond to performances has a huge impact on future performance.
In fact, many slumps have less to do with mechanics than athletes realize.
Why Slumps Often Happen
Many of the slumps I help athletes work through begin with a bad reaction.
The athlete has a rough game.
They get frustrated.
They replay mistakes all night.
They beat themselves up.
They question themselves.
They start searching for answers.
Soon, they begin overthinking mechanics.
They become hyperaware of everything they’re doing.
Confidence drops.
Trust disappears.
Now they’re carrying all of that into the next game.
Then the next game goes poorly, too.
And suddenly, a bad performance has turned into a slump.
The original problem wasn’t necessarily the performance.
The problem was the response.
When athletes dwell on mistakes, they often create additional problems that didn’t exist in the first place.
Common Post-Game Mistakes
Many athletes:
- Obsess over mistakes
- Ignore what went well
- Make emotional evaluations
- Constantly change mechanics
- Replay failures repeatedly
- Attach their self-worth to results
None of these helps performance.
In fact, they often make future performance worse.
The purpose of evaluation is not to punish yourself.
The purpose is to learn.
A Better Evaluation Process
After games, I recommend a simple evaluation process.
First, identify what went well.
This is important because confidence is built by recognizing evidence of success.
Many athletes completely ignore positive moments.
They only focus on what went wrong.
That creates an inaccurate picture of performance.
Second, identify what needs improvement.
- Be objective.
- Be specific.
Focus on learning rather than judging.
Third, create a plan.
- What will you work on this week?
- What adjustments need to be made?
- Once you’ve identified that, move on.
You cannot change the game.
You can only influence what happens next.
The goal is to learn the lesson without carrying the emotional baggage.
Move Forward
This is one of the most important mental skills athletes can develop.
Move forward.
Not because the game didn’t matter.
Not because mistakes don’t matter.
But because dwelling doesn’t help.
You learn what you can.
You make any necessary adjustments.
Then you direct your attention toward the future.
The athletes who improve the fastest are usually the athletes who recover the fastest.
They don’t spend weeks carrying one bad performance.
- They process it.
- Learn from it.
- And move on.
Putting It All Together
Using your mental game to improve performance does not have to be complicated.
- Before competition, focus on creating your ideal mindset through a pregame routine.
- During competition, focus on staying present through controllable goals and managing your reactions with a resetting routine.
- After the competition, evaluate objectively, build confidence from what went well, learn from mistakes, and move forward.
When athletes struggle mentally, they often try to solve the wrong problem.
They search for a secret technique.
They search for a magic confidence trick.
They search for a way to guarantee success.
The reality is that strong mental performance usually comes from consistently doing simple things well.
Generate the right mindset.
Stay present.
Respond effectively.
Evaluate productively.
Repeat.
Over time, those habits create better performances, greater consistency, and more confidence in competition.
Final Thoughts
Your mental game influences performance before, during, and after competition.
The athletes who perform most consistently are not necessarily the athletes who never feel nervous, make mistakes, or experience adversity. They are the athletes who know how to prepare their mindset, stay focused on what they can control, and respond effectively when challenges arise.
If you can improve those three areas, you give yourself a much better chance of performing at the level you’re capable of.
If this is something you’re dealing with consistently, this is exactly what I help athletes work through in 1-on-1 coaching.
My 12-week 1-on-1 mental performance coaching program begins with a detailed assessment so I can understand exactly what’s holding you back.
From there, we create a personalized mental game plan and work together each week to build confidence, manage pressure, overcome fear of failure, improve focus, and help you perform more freely in competition.
The program is completely individualized to you, your sport, and your specific challenges. Whether you’re struggling with confidence, anxiety, overthinking, mistakes, or performing under pressure, we work together to build the mental skills necessary to compete at your best when it matters most.
You can click here to learn more about the coaching program, or fill out the form below.
Thank you for reading, and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
