Creating team chemistry and unity- One of the biggest challenges facing coaches is how to take a group of athletes with different personalities and different backgrounds and blend them into a cohesive and unified team. The focus is on providing teams with effective strategies to enhance team performance and team cohesion.

Attention Control and concentration Skills- Once an athlete has developed the knowledge base and technical skills required to be successful in a highly competitive sport, the ability to stay focused, to concentrate on task relevant cues is what determines success or failure. Nothing is more critical to success, than the ability to focus. The speed and accuracy in decision-making is very important in sports. This requires players to have absolute concentration and razor sharp focus. The objective in this session is teaching strategies and skills on developing players focus.

Applied Visualization Skills- Visualization is one of the most powerful and effective techniques to enhance performance. Athletes can use Imagery in many ways to improve both physical and psychological skills. It improves concentration by priming the visual system by helping an athlete more effectively and selectively attend to relevant cues in the game. This supports in reducing and eliminating mistakes. It prepares athletes for competition, the more an athlete practices physically and visually the better the cerebellum of the brain becomes at knowing exactly which nerves and muscles to trigger each time. This is often referred to as “Muscle Memory.”

Accountability- To become great you have to be Accountable for your progress and setbacks. You have to develop a mastery approach to your game or performance. You have to develop an honest approach to assess your mistakes and failures. It starts from having deliberate self-observation. It is taking a honest look at yourself in relation to our goals. By taking an honest look this may cause a disturbance, it may shake you up. Hopefully it will likely wake you up or ignite you to make the necessary changes to reduce the disturbance. By increasing the teams self-awareness in relation to where they are in their goals the focus then is to develop the steps to reach them. In this process your team may begin to realize their further away from their goals that they realize. They may do two things they’re either going to readjust their goals or its going to build a fire inside of them that will ignite and create the necessary changes to reach their next level. If your teams goals are not congruent to their action steps then they are not going to experience success.

Developing an action plan for success- Starts with having a solid and systematic goal setting program. Goals provide you with a road map to get you to your desired destination. Goal setting is a powerful technique for enhancing performance. It has been proven that it increases confidence, reduces anxiety and increases focus on the task at hand. It also increases motivation.

Developing Resiliency- Resiliency is how you bounce back or respond to a setback or defeat. Your team will be faced with situations that will test how they respond to adversity. Your team will not only need to manage their anxiety and stress and to perform well under pressure, but also to refocus effectively after they have made a mistake or when their back is against the wall. In this session your team will strenthen its resiliency and learn to be able to make the mental adjustments during and after the game.

Strengthening a team’s belief- Part of mental training is building a belief that one can meet the challenge. You first have to feel comfortable with the idea of being at the next level. The focus is developing a positive mindset. What are thoughts that you’re team is telling themselves….does your internal voice support your commitment to your training? Does it give you the kind of mental toughness you need to play at the next level? Or do you doubt yourself, do you become intimidated by your opponents. Which voice do you hear? Which is louder the negative critic or the positive coach? Here is a pattern of how are thoughts get programmed. Our Thoughts become words-Words become actions-Actions become habits-Habits become character-Character becomes your Destiny…So…the question is…what is your destiny? and most importantly what is the story your team is telling themselves. In this session your team will cultivate a winning mindset.

Recovery and Energy-Management- Managing energy output is a very important component of facilitating the optimal performance state. Many mental mistakes can be directly attributed to players not managing their energy levels, leaving them to anxious or flat in the game. When our energy levels are too elevated, our ability to focus and concentrate on the relevant cues is reduced. On the other hand when we are emotionally flat this will slow down reaction times. Either extremes has a negative effect on performance. One of the areas of energy consumption that is often forgotten is the BRAIN. Not only are we burning energy from the chin down, but also from the chin up. Just like the body, the more the brain works, the more fuel it burns. Part of our physiology that controls all of the autonomic movements in our bodies is called the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). There are two branches of the autonomic nervous system that act as the “gas pedal and “the brake” on our physiology. One speeds us up (the sympathetic branch) and the other slows us down (parasympathetic branch) they work in tandem to create a balance in our bodies. if the sympathetic takes over it will stimulate the ANS and increase stress and anxiety resulting in an increase of stress hormones. In this session players will learn to bring more awareness to their energy state and apply skills to regulate it. This will allows the players to stay calm, loose and responsive to the emotional pressures of the game. Relaxation techniques can help players control their thinking, so they can trigger emotions that remove unnecessary tensions and conserve energy.