My new 12-week online mental training program will explore five important areas related to the psychology of ski racing: attitudes, obstacles, preparation, mental muscles, and tools. This article will introduce you to the first essential area—attitudes—and explain why they are so important to ski racing success. The dictionary definition of attitude is “The way you [...]
The race season is almost over. For every racer, it is a time of reckoning in which you look back and evaluate what kind of season you had: one to be proud of or one to reflect back on with disappointment and perhaps regret. One of the primary criteria that racers use to judge their [...]
Join in the world’s first and only online mental training program just for ski racers! Every ski racer wants to be as prepared mentally as they are physically and technically. But there hasn’t been a way to offer racers a high-quality and affordable mental training program developed by someone who really knows ski racing. That is, [...]
One of the most popular phrases in sport is "peak performance." Athletes in all sports typically think of peak performance as performing their best, as being at the top of their game. That sounds good, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to achieve peak performance? And when I came out of graduate school, peak performance was [...]
A fundamental question I have been exploring in the many years that I have been working with ski racers is: What does it take to ski your fastest consistently? Of course, you have to be physically fit, technically and tactically sound, and have well-prepared equipment. And most racers and coaches would agree that an important piece of [...]
I just did a video interview on the psychology of running for The Running Summit 2016. I talk about the mental side of running as well as how to get your kids into running.
Mitchell Gunn, with permission One of the most frequent comments I hear from the racers I work with is: “I had a lousy day of training.” This statement was almost always accompanied by a variety of emotions that are neither pleasant nor helpful including frustration, anger, worry, doubt, and disappointment, and, occasionally, despair. [...]
Over the many years that I've been working in the field of sport psychology, I have championed the benefits of mental training for sports to thousands of athletes. This work has ranged from talks to junior programs to ongoing consulting with individual athletes and teams. As many of you know from my dozens of articles [...]
This article is a challenge for you to take an essential, yet often neglected, piece of the ski racing success puzzle and make it a priority during the off-season. Let me elaborate in three ways. First, I speak to racers, coaches, and parents around world about the psychology of ski racing. Whenever I get the [...]
In this article, I’m going to talk about “mindset,” which I consider to be an essential contributor to athletic success and a mental area that has only come to light in my work with elite athletes during the past three years. This topic is also where professional and Olympic athletes offer wonderful examples in which [...]