It’s late October and you’re heading into the holiday season with feelings of dread rather than cheer. You may have been pretty good about eating healthily and working out regularly, but you know that November and December are different. You’ll be busy with holiday parties which means eating more. To make matters worse, it’ll be [...]
Over the past few years we have offered a variety of information on the mental aspects of dance training and performance in Dance Teacher Now. These articles described many techniques that can be used to develop dancers mentally so they may perform their best. However, it may have been unclear how these methods could be [...]
Dance, as a vocation or avocation, requires dedication, discipline, and other difficult decisions. Dancers may face choices that can impact their immediate lives and long-term development as performers and people. “Students are left principally to their own devices to figure out what dancing is all about,” states Teri Loren, author of The Dancer’s Companion: The [...]
Over the next several weeks, I will be migrating about 75 articles I've written on the topics of triathlon, tennis, endurance sports, and dance. So as not to inundate my social media followers, I will not post them on my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts. They will appear on my RSS feed, but I will [...]
In one of my final post this past season, I exhorted you to buy into the notion that Next Season Starts…NOW! With the start of June having just arrived, the summer is now officially upon us. The summer is an immensely important time to pursue your ski racing goals. You can get stronger, improve your [...]
Ironman is the ultimate in triathlon competition. It’s the standard by which triathlon is known to the world at large. When I began doing triathlons, almost every non-tri person I met would ask if I had done an Ironman (that’s all they knew), as if that is the only badge of honor in our sport. [...]
Obsessive man laying on grass, perfection I've written quite a bit about how unhealthy perfectionism is for both children and adults. Yes, it can drive you maniacally to become successful. But it can also create a powerful fear of failure that ultimately prevents you from being truly successful. Plus, I've never met a happy [...]
Like all endurance sports, triathlon success involves preserving and apportioning out your energy evenly during a race. Burn too much gas early in a race and you’re finished before T2. Run out of gas late in the race and you have no fuel for a strong finish. In either case, you’re in for one horrendous [...]
The most powerful psychological tool you have at your disposal to achieve your triathlon goals is positive self-talk. What you say to yourself when you’re in the pool, on your bike, or in your running shoes affects what you think, how you feel, and how you perform. It also will often determine the quality of [...]
Most sport psychologists work with athletes on the mental side of their sport in an office setting (usually one hour per week), providing them with mental tools that they can use during training and competitions. This approach makes about as much sense as a coach offering their racers technical instruction and then telling them to [...]