About Us
In the Mental Game Learning Lab, the focus is simple: helping athletes build the mental skills and systems needed to perform when it matters most.
Success in sport requires hard work, discipline, and preparation. But many athletes discover that effort alone doesn’t guarantee consistent performance — especially under pressure. Confidence fluctuates, focus drifts, mistakes snowball, and expectations interfere with execution. Our work is designed to help athletes navigate those moments.
Founded by Certified Mental Performance Consultant® Will Nigut, the Lab focuses on building skills such as confidence, focus, emotion regulation, resilience, and trust in preparation. Using evidence-based approaches from sport and performance psychology — including cognitive-behavioral and acceptance and commitment based techniques — training is practical, individualized, and tailored to real competitive environments.
As a former Division I pitcher, Will understands both the internal experience of competing and the demands athletes face from the outside. His approach emphasizes competing to a standard rather than circumstances, learning through experience, and focusing on the right thing at the right time.
Mental training isn’t a replacement for physical training — it’s what allows physical ability and preparation to show up consistently in competition.
Because at the highest level, performance isn’t just about what you can do. It’s about what you can do when it matters most.
Will Nigut, Founder
What We Stand For
- Mental Skills Are Trainable: Confidence, focus, composure, and resilience aren’t personality traits — they’re skills. With the right guidance and repetition, athletes can learn to access them consistently.
- Process-Driven Performance: Outcomes matter — they’re one of the main reasons we compete. But chasing results directly often pulls attention away from what actually produces them. We teach athletes to anchor their attention to preparation, routines, decisions, and responses — the controllable actions that give them the best chance to perform when it matters most.
- Learning Over Dependency: Our goal isn’t to create athletes who need constant instruction. It’s to equip them with tools they can use on their own in practice, competition, and everyday life — to help them become their own best mental performance coach.
- Clarity Over Complexity: The mental game shouldn’t feel vague or mysterious. We translate sport psychology concepts into simple strategies athletes can actually use when the moment gets big.
- A Community For Growth: Athletes develop faster when they’re surrounded by others who care about improving. The Lab is a space to learn, share, and grow alongside people who take the mental side of the game seriously.