Mental performance coaching involves working one-on-one with a mental coach to help strengthen your mental skills.

As an athlete, strong mental skills will allow you to take the talents you work hard for in practice and consistently translate them into competition.

With the athletes I work with, one of the main challenges they face is knowing that they’re highly skilled, proving so in practice, except come game time, they’re almost a different player.

Something is stopping them from performing at a high level when the game starts.

When you are performing well in practice, this disconnect falls on your mind. Certain mental game challenges are keeping you from performing at your peak.

To overcome these mental game challenges is the main goal of mental performance coaching.

In this post, I am going to outline the main benefits you can expect from mental performance coaching and how they work to increase your level of play.

Benefit #1: Increased Confidence

If I could automatically instill in every athlete I work with a single trait it would be high self-confidence.

Having high levels of trust and belief in yourself and your skills is crucial. So much so that I’ve seen more athletes with average talent but high confidence perform better than those with high levels of talent but low confidence.

Confidence is key and through mental performance coaching your coach will show you mental tools and techniques to increase self-confidence.

Benefit #2: Decreased Anxiety

When you get overly anxious before a game this causes you to perform timidly. You tense up and are worried about what may or may not happen.

Instead, you need to be able to let go and perform freely.

To do so requires a calm and controlled mind. Something you will gain through working with a mental coach.

Benefit #3: Increased Focus

Have you ever played a game with your focus darting from one thing to another? My guess would be it wasn’t your best game. That’s because, to compete at a high level, you need to be focused.

Yet, athletics are full of distractions. Making having strong focus quite difficult.

Through mental performance coaching, you will strengthen your ability to concentrate and hold your attention throughout a game.

Benefit #4: Stronger Resilience

Setbacks and failures are going to happen to you as an athlete. This leads you not to ask yourself if you’re going to make a mistake, but how are you going to respond when you do make a mistake?

It’s not easy to face setbacks with a smile. They hurt and can quickly destroy your confidence.

However, if your aim is to reach your full potential, you need mistakes to grow. Through mental training, your mind will be strengthened and your ability to be resilient will be increased.

Benefit #5: Greater Self-Awareness

Whether we’re talking about confidence, resilience, focus, or anything else, you first need to understand what influences your mind. Without this knowledge, growth in any of the other areas is very difficult.

Which is why, working with a mental coach, you will learn the valuable skill of self-awareness.

This helps you understand what you’re thinking, how that impacts how you feel, and how both then drive your actions. Once you understand this, you can control yourself at a higher level, leading to greater performance.

Final Thoughts

Working on your mindset is a valuable thing for any athlete to do.

No matter how skilled you are physically, if you do not have strong mental skills, your performances will always fall short of your potential.

If you are interested in mental performance coaching, click here to learn how you can get started with the 1-1 coaching offered at Success Starts Within, today.