The Benefits of Mental Training For Athletes
How can you help athletes understand the importance of the mental game? This is the topic of today’s tip for mental coaches.
A mental coach working with golfers recently asked:
“I work in golf and one of the biggest challenges is getting golfers to understand the game is at least 50% mindset. It’s simple once you have them there, but how do you get them there?”
Even today, athletes resist mental training–for many reasons. One reason is that they don’t really understand how sports psychology can help them succeed.
What athletes don’t understand, they shy away from. For example, athletes understand agility training and will partake because of the clear benefits.
Another problem: working with a mental game coach or sports psychologist still carries a negative stigma for many athletes. “What’s wrong with me if I have to do mental coaching?” athletes ponder.
The most important step to introducing mental coaching to athletes–who resist it or know little about it–is to educate them.
You can educate athletes in many ways, including:
1. Giving them an identification short test to take.
2. Providing weekly tips or articles.
3. Giving examples of role models that engage in mental training.
4. Sharing the benefits of mental coaching.
For number one above, this is a must do for any coach or mental coach. We use a one-page identification test to screen out athletes who need mental coaching.
The goal is to help athletes identify any mental game challenges they might have…
Here’s the challenge: most athletes don’t know how they can benefit from mental coaching because they don’t understand how it can help them.
In my regular newsletters, I help coaches and athletes identify with mental game challenges. This way they can better understand how mental coaching can help them improve!
So, I use a one-page identification test to help athletes identify with how mental coaching can help them.
If you want an example of this one-page test, visit my soccer website and download it free here:
Mental Game Assessment For Soccer Players
(Note: I only use this short identification test to help athletes understand their weaknesses. It’s not intended to be a full mental game assessment.)
If you want my entire package of mental game assessments including the AMAP, AMAT, TCAP and many others, you will need to join the MGCP self-paced or live certification program.
Please contact me if you would like to apply and enroll. Or please email us your enrollment forms if you have them already.
However, if you are interested in the self-paced non-certification course, you can begin this program at any time. Contact us for details.
Related Mental Coaching Articles
- 5 Reasons Athletes Don’t Do Mental Training
- Assessing Mental Training Effectiveness
- 4 Tips to Help Athletes Stay Committed to Mental Training
Mental Coach Assessment System
If you help athletes improve their mental game and want to be more effective with helping them build mental toughness, but don’t have a proven system for identifying and assessing your athletes’ mental game, I can help you…
I view this assessment as a way to “interview” athletes before they come in for coaching–and to improve organization and speed up the coaching process. Today, I call it the Athlete’s Mental Aptitude Profile or AMAP for short. Now you too can learn how to use the AMAP Assessment system with your athletes…
The AMAP System teaches you how to easily identify your athletes’ mental game challenges, what mental game issues to look for when reading the AMAP, and how to do a summary of the AMAP. In addition, you’ll also get follow up questions to ask and how learn about how to drill down on relevant topics.