Train Your Mind
The dreaded pre-game jitters. We've all probably experienced them before and they’ve probably wrecked our performance a time two. But I'm not convinced that it is the nerves that themselves that wreck our performance but it's more that we don't know what they are, why they happen, and how we can handle them.
This might sound a little crazy at first, but one thing that I think athletes should prioritize over being confident is being courageous. And again, I want to reiterate that being confident is incredibly important and it comes from being competent. But sometimes the athletes who are competent and who should be the most confident in their abilities really struggle from a lack of confidence and you see this a lot in athletes who overtrain or get really nervous before games or who seem to be perfectionistic and if any of these sound like you, you might be wondering how you can put in so much work and still doubt your abilities when game time rolls around.
Stop chasing your past performances. More often than not, when we have a really good game or a really good bat or a really good rep or whatever it might be, we tend to think that we have to follow it up with another performance that is just as good, if not better.
If you’re an athlete and you’ve never done mental training before, you might be wondering what it is and how it helps. To put it simply, it is the development and strengthening of mental tools and strategies that help you perform your best.
