There is nothing more important to achieving your athletic goals than what you do in practice. It is during training that you ingrain the physical, technical, tactical, and mental habits that will come out in competitions. If you establish good habits, you'll have a good chance of having a good performance. But if you instill bad habits, those will come out and you'll have little chance of performing your best. Despite its importance, most athletes don’t give much thought to how they can get the most out of their training efforts. That’s why the training time of athletes is often both inefficient and ineffective. So, in the spirit of total appreciation for the value of quality training, here are five tips that can help you get the most out of practice: 1. Have a goal and purpose. You must have a clear goal about what area you want to improve as you head out to training. For example, it might be technical, tactical, mental, or team related. You must also have a clear purpose for training each day. A purpose identifies specifically how you're going to achieve your goal for the day. If your goal is to improve something technical, your purpose would be certain drills that would ingrain that new technique.

I’ve been involved in high-level sports for most of my life. The first 25 years, I was an alpine ski racer who competed internationally. My athletic life has continued to this day with a 2nd degree black belt in karate, running marathons, and competing in Ironman triathlons. In all cases, I learned the ups and [...]

The Wimbledon Tennis Championships just concluded and the Women's Soccer World Cup is under way. And then there's you. You’ve worked hard in pursuit of your goals and, hopefully, you’ve achieved at least some of your competitive goals including qualifying for an upcoming big event. You may not be in the "Big Show" yet, but [...]

Sports can evoke a wide range of emotions, from inspiration, pride, exhilaration, and satisfaction, to fear, frustration, anger, and panic, often in a very short time span during training or competition. Emotions lies at the top of the Prime Sport Pyramid because it has been my experience that they ultimately dictate your ability to achieve [...]

Just prior to the Super Bowl in 1993, a news conference was held by a coalition of women's groups informing reporters of substantial evidence that domestic violence rose significantly (as much as 40 percent) on Super Bowl Sunday. The subsequent flurry of media attention resulted in this news becoming a "fact" (you'll see why I [...]

The New York Times Magazine had a cover story a few weeks ago that posed the question: Does college basketball matter? In answer to this rather existential question, I thought, well, it depends to which college basketball they are referring. Are they talking about the game that's "all about the Benjamins," including exorbitant coaches' salaries [...]

Whenever I talk to athletes and coaches, I ask them what aspect of their sport seems to have the greatest impact on how they perform. Almost unanimously they say the mental part. I then ask how much time they devote to their mental preparation and their answer is almost always little or no time. Despite [...]

Frustration may be your most significant obstacle to achieving your athletic goals. We've all experienced the feeling of frustration when we’re not able to do something as we pursue our goals; we feel stuck, we get uptight, and we have difficulty focusing. The best way I can describe the feeling is: AAARRGGHH!! It is a [...]

Note: This post has been adopted and expanded for the broader sports audience from my previous ski-racing-specific post about Mikaela. Have you heard the name Mikaela Shiffrin? Not likely, unless you're a big fan of alpine ski racing, a sport that only grabs America's attention every four years during the Winter Olympics. Over the last decade, alpine ski [...]

At the top of the Prime Sport Pyramid sits emotions. It's closest to the top of the pyramid because emotions will ultimately dictate how you perform throughout a competition. Emotions during a competition can cover the spectrum from excitement and elation to frustration, anger, and disappointment. Emotions are often strong and, most troublesome, they can [...]