Episode #12: Expectations of my Train Your Mind for Athletic Success podcast is the fifth of six in a series that examines the psychological and emotional obstacles that hold athletes back from performing their best, enjoying their sports experiences, and achieving their sports goals. This episode focuses on expectations and how they can become a weight [...]
The transition from U16s to U19s is an important and challenging rite of passage for every young ski racer. The year of FIS racing is also a crucible that tests racers physical, technically, tactically, and, especially, psychologically and emotionally. To continue to pursue your ski racing goals, you must “survive” and, in fact, find ways [...]
November has arrived and race season is just around the corner (or already started if you’re a World Cupper). So, now is the time when parents start to communicate (usually unconsciously) expectations for their young racers and, in turn, when those young racers can start to feel the weight of expectations that are placed on [...]
Episode #6: Perspective of my Raising Young Athletes podcast explores the influence of perspective on how you as sport parents and your young athletes perceive, feel about, and react to their sports experiences. When I talk about perspective, I mean lens through you and your young children look at their sports involvement in terms of [...]
The third episode of my Train Your Mind for Athletic Success podcast focuses on the costs of having an outcome attitude and the benefits of a process attitude. An outcome attitude involves a preoccupation with results, competitive success and failure, rankings, and comparing yourself to others. Contrary to what most athletes, coaches, and parents think, an [...]
Regardless of what sport you participate in, you have a championship season within your competitive season in which the stakes rise and how you perform counts the most. Yet, this is also the time of year when many athletes and teams aren’t performing at all well because of fatigue after a long regular season and [...]
For you to become the best ski racer you can be, you have to be darned serious about your ski racing. You must be motivated, intense, focused, and give your best effort every time you click into your skis. You have to put in the time in the gym, watch a lot of video, keep [...]
For every serious ski racer who has aspirations to ski in college or get named to a national team, a PG, or gap, year is almost an inevitable these days. PG years have been around for decades; they were common even back in my day when I took two PG years between graduating from Burke [...]
When most people in the sports world think of sport psychology, they think of mental training, that is, helping athletes prepare mentally to perform their best when it matters most. Mental muscles that help athletes strengthen include motivation, confidence, intensity, and focus. And mental tools I help athletes to put in their mental toolboxes include [...]
When most people in our ski racing community think of sport psychology, they think of mental training, that is, helping racers prepare mentally to ski their fastest when it matters most. Mental muscles that help racers strengthen include motivation, confidence, intensity, and focus. And mental tools I help racers to put in their mental toolboxes [...]
