If you are here, you are probably either already practicing mental training with your team OR you fall into one of the two categories: 

1. You don't believe that mental training is the fastest and easiest route to higher performance.
2. You don't know how to train the mind. Maybe you've done some training in the past, but you've never had a proven system to teach mental training.

If you have a healthy appreciation of mental training, you may have even tossed around the idea of bringing Positive Performance (or another mental training expert) to your campus to work with your team.  

While bringing another coach in to train your athletes has its obvious benefits,  I want to propose another option, one that you may not have thought about before: Why don’t YOU become the mindset coach for your team? 

Before diving into these benefits, I want to first address the coaches here who are still not convinced mental training is the key to higher performance by outlining 8 ways mental training will transform your team. 

8 Ways Mental Training Will Transform Your Team

1. It Will Reduce Breakdowns and Inconsistencies

In any sports career, expect to face adversity, failure, and some serious mental roadblocks.  Sports wouldn’t be very interesting without these factors. The great athletes have learned how to be proactive in dealing with these issues. Mental performance training is like weight training. Just as proper weight training will improve performance, strength, and make your athletes less prone to injury, mental training will improve performance, minimize mental barriers, and give your athletes the tools they need in order to deal with all the mental challenges they will face.

2. It Will Align the Body and Mind

Your athletes want to be successful, but do they know how to align their minds to work in unison with their goals? Do they get frustrated not knowing what to do or maybe feel that they are holding themselves back? Many athletes believe that they are worthy of only a certain level of success. Once they reach that level, they actually begin to self-sabotage. Have your athletes ever done that? Mental training teaches your athletes how to get their minds to work for them, instead of against them.

3. It Will Promote Time Efficiency

In as little as 5-10 minutes a day, your athletes can make significant improvements in their performance. For instance, we did a study of our clients and found that they won 15% more games, had less mental issues as a team, and reduced wasted time post-training in comparison to pre-training. In one instance, the coaching staff saved 20 minutes each day because their team was focused and ready to practice.

Sports may be 90% mental, but thankfully, mental training doesn’t add a lot of time to  physical training. The important thing is to integrate it into your athletic routines.

No building is better than its structural foundation, and no man or woman is better than his or her mental foundation.” -John Wooden, former UCLA Men’s Basketball Coach –winner of 10 NCAA championships

4. It Will Improve Every Part of Your Athletes' Lives. 

Mental performance training is 100% applicable outside of sports. The sooner your athletes learn these mental skills, the better they will do in athletics and in life. Here is an example of mental training and its applicability to life outside of athletics. 

1. Problem: An athlete has a lot of anxiety about taking tests at school. They know the material but can't handle the pressure and routinely failed tests. This same athlete also has a lot of anxiety around competition or other high stress situations.
2. Solution: The athlete learns and practices the mental skills and routines of great competitors.  Example: How to regulate emotions, how to prepare, how to handle mistakes during competition, what to do afterwards, etc..
3. Results: By learning the mental skills and routines of great competitors, this same athlete is now able to do well in high stress environments (school, sports, job interviews, etc...).

5. It Will Help Your Athletes Embrace and Overcome Challenges

Let’s face it, losing hurts; failure is not fun. Mental training can’t change this, but it can help your athletes reframe failure so that the pain of disappointment is channeled into something productive. When your athletes face adversity, they will be more prepared and ready to grow from challenges, rather than be defeated by them.

6. It Will Increase the Confidence of Your Athletes

Does your athletes' confidence come from playing well, or does playing well come from confidence?

Many athletes build confidence by playing well but often times they can’t play well until they have confidence. It’s a catch-22. We will train you to build confidence in your team, so that they can go play their best today. Even when positive outcomes seem elusive, mental training will give your team the tools to keep fighting.

7. It Will Teach Your Athletes to Relax 

The ability to control emotions in the heat of a competition is critical. Yet most athletes are rarely taught how to relax and regain control. In athletics, pushing hard, trying a lot, intensity are all rewarded because they are all important. But your athletes also need to know when and how to relax. Sports isn’t always about intense exertion, it’s also about relaxing. Mental training will teach your athletes to find the balance between the two.

8. AND.... It Will Increase Happiness!

What makes people happy is complicated. However, research tells us that happiness is often times a result of expectations, performances, and outcomes. Think of a time when you were expecting something and didn't get it (maybe a birthday or holiday). How did that make you feel? What about a time when you weren't expecting anything and you received a lovely surprise? How did that make you feel? Since sports are so outcome focused, most athletes over-focus on the outcome to define success or failure. Think about how many times your team has played a great game yet felt unsuccessful and like a failure because they lost.

It's normal to focus on the short term outcomes and get tied up in the emotional roller-coaster of wins and loses. Yes, outcomes are important but mental training focuses your team on the long term process. In turn, your athletes will not only be more successful but also happier (we've seen this with thousands of athletes).

Why You're the Best Mental Coach for Your Team

So now that we've made a strong case for the importance and dramatic effects of mental training, it's time to circle back to why you should become the mental coach you want for your team. 

Here's the truth: When mental training has been the most successful, it's not actually because I gave a stellar presentation, it’s because the team has a coach that nerds out on mindset work, organizes team meetings, and talks to each of their players about their mental game. A coach that walks the walk and talks the talk. A coach that shares articles with their athletes that talk about mindset, focus, and confidence. A coach that practices tools like the BRAVR™  or researches free mental training tools like the Coaches Cheat Sheet to help their athlete gets in the right mindset before practice and competition. The kind of coach that athletes visit when they need a mental boost. 

If that is you... 

(dare I say) it’s time to take mental training to the next level. 

You are the one person that's in a unique position to help your athletes the most. 

Your athletes NEED you to become a mindset coach.

Even if you do have the budget to bring a mental training expert to your campus for a week, here are some challenges you'll face:

• Your athletes don't know or trust them.
• Your athletes might feel weird asking for help.
• The expert doesn't have the full picture.
• The expert is stretched, working with several teams at once.
• The expert is not in the trenches with you every day.
• Their help is limited to whatever timeframe you hire them for.

At the end of the day, you know that the long-term mindset work falls on you, doesn’t it? 

So, what happens when you have an athlete crying in your office and you don't know what tools to give them? I'm willing to bet that you'd like to have a few more in your toolbox so that you're never caught off-guard feeling powerless to help a struggling athlete. 

If you believe in the power of mental training, believe in its holistic value, and it's ability to transform the lives of your athletes...

The only things that are keeping you from becoming the mental training coach that you want for your athletes is you AND a proven system that works.

It’s not rocket science; I’ve spent 12 years distilling research, hands-on practice, and mindset concepts down to the tools that actually work.

If you have the passion and are ready to step into being a mindset coach and impacting lives in a BIG, LONG-TERM way (including your own), PLEASE look into our certification. It was designed for someone just like you.

Note: Applications for the Mindset Coach Certification open once a year. To be the first to know when the doors open for the next cohort of our 4-month hands-on certification course, join our waitlist.