Visualization helps program the subconscious brain to be successful. Here are the 5 reasons you should start practicing visualization today.

#1. Builds Confidence

Visualizing success in your training or racing and you can subconsciously improve your belief in your abilities. We all compete according to how we see ourselves. Change how you see yourself, and your performance changes. Just take a moment and think of 5 times you were at the top of your ‘game’. Write them down. Then take a deep breath, close your eyes and replay all seven of those instances in your mind.

I'll bet you feel more confident in your abilities and more sure of your enormous potential. It’s powerful stuff. Simple but brings out your BEST you.

#2. Controls Emotions

Controlling emotions is one of the most important aspects to mental training. Staying calm under pressure, reacting appropriately to adversity, getting hyped for competition, ignoring unhelpful emotions in the heat of the moment....

The dreaded slump. Is there anything worse? 

Whether you‘re the athlete in the middle of it, frustrated because you don’t know where to turn, or a coach, parent, or teammate watching from the sideline and feeling helpless, slumps suck!

The truth is, it doesn’t matter how talented or experienced you are...

Slumps hit all sports and all athletes.

But there are solutions...

In the past three days, I’ve worked with two athletes experiencing slumps. Unfortunately, coaching athletes out of their slumps isn’t unusual. Far from it. Slumps are very common, and they don’t discriminate; they hit every kind of athlete, no matter their sport, gender, seniority, age, or skill. Here are the stories of my two latest slump-stricken clients:

Jack is a 17-year-old baseball player who had an amazing junior year on the plate. He batted over .300 and set his sights on a college scholarship. Then senior year came and he experienced a few rough at-bats, starting...

The mind is an incredible thing. It can be complicated and frustrating, it can amaze you and disappoint you. It can limit you or allow unbelievable things to happen. But mostly, it can be unpredictable, in good ways and bad.

I’ve been working as a mental training coach for almost 10 years now and I’ve seen some pretty magical moments with the coaches and athletes I’ve worked with. Witnessing a mind change and shift in an instant is something that never gets old.

There is nothing quite as gratifying as watching a young athlete realize that they don’t actually have to stay in the self-imposed negative space they’ve built up. When they understand that their outlook and mindset is a CHOICE, it’s like a lighting bolt. You can actually see their whole body shift- they walk a little taller, relax a little more, breathe a little deeper, and sometimes, sometimes, there is even a little hint of a smile.

It’s pretty awesome, not because they’ll...

So the fall is my super, crazy, busy time. I'm doing kickoff trainings with teams, setting up programs with our online training packages, and doing live events with clubs and athletic departments. Truthfully, it's my favorite time of year.

But the downside of all these trainings,  is that I rarely get a second to really sit down and write new blogs, create new content or produce new videos. And I feel a little guilty about that. After all, this time of year is when YOU, and all the coaches that follow us are often just getting a first glimpse into their teams, seeing the areas they want to work on, and are ready for some new, juicy mental training from us.

And this is the deal. As you probably know, here at Positive Performance, we have a TON of free mental training resources. We have blog articles on everything from slumps to sleep, from confidence issues to nutrition. We have free mental training courses and guides and videos and e-books. So trust, me there is enough here to...

Seattle NFC Championship game between the Seattle Seahawks and Greenbay Packers

It was perhaps one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the NFL. And, while you can certainly look at the X's and O's, in my opinion the real keys to Sunday's NFC Championship game came down to the intangibles.

In particular, looking at Russell Wilson, the Seahawks quarterback, one can see the enormous importance of mental toughness. But it’s important to note that these displays of mental toughness aren't accomplished on the day they happen, but rather from a culmination of months and years of mental preparation. We know the Seahawks practice regular meditation, visualization, and other mental training techniques so they are prepared for moments of adversity.

Here are the...

3 ways Russell Wilson and the Seahawks' commitment to consistent mental training paid off

#1. Patience

Our first example is actually of how the Seahawks spent nearly 56 minutes of the game NOT being patient...

Previously, we published an article about leadership in athletics. More precisely, the article discussed how igniting a strong leadership mentality within each athlete infuses mental strength throughout the team.

That article only touched briefly on the subject of leadership, so we decided to delve further into what it means to be a great leader with this two-part leadership article, “Selfishness is Out of Season”.

1.    Leadership means giving, not taking

Sometimes individuals who are new to a leadership role confuse the purpose of their position. Leadership is not about taking charge; it’s about giving guidance.

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant." - Max De Pree

Managing an athletic team, whether you’re a coach or captain, is a lot like running a business: you need to weigh decisions, manage personnel, create strategic action plans, assess outputs, etc....

There are examples all around us. Two NFL coaches collapsing in a single weekend last fall. The Rutgers men’s coach ‘snapping’. Women’s basketball coaches being downed by health issues in recent years.

It’s enough to stress you out

While it’s easy to point to these health issues and blame stress, that’s not quite the whole picture.

Stress is actually really good for the body… that is, as long as it’s administered in the proper amount. It’s a very similar concept to lifting weights: stressing muscles to get them to recover stronger and, therefore, making them work better for us.

The problem arises when we forget about recovery. When we lift weights without allowing for recovery, the end result is physical injury. Just as overdoing physical exercise can lead to physical injury, overloading the mind with more than it can handle leads to a variety of both visible and non-visible problems.

Athletics are stressful....

If you don't think your anxiety and stress impact your physical health, think again." - Kris Carr

In our previous article—Coaches: Are You Good Stressed or Bad Stressed?—we described the difference between distress and eustress, and then listed three ways you could tell if you were stressing yourself appropriately, namely

1. Sleep Quality
2. Exercise
3. Mental Rest

So, you’ve spent the last few days creating a list of things that cause you distress and eustress. Great. Now what? Well, it's time to take action and

Break apart your stress

Sounds fun, doesn’t it? Relieving stress by breaking things? Ahhh... if only it were that easy (and reckless). What we mean by “breaking apart” is slightly less than literal.

Before doing anything to control the stress itself, you have to come to terms with what we spoke about in our last article: Stress isn't always bad.   As Kassandra Lamb, says,

Most stressors are not stressors until we interpret the as...

Thanks to http://www.entrepreneur.com/ for posting this video on youtube

We all want to achieve more in life - being a better coach, winning a championship, reducing stress, making more money, etc.

How do you get there? Typically, we start by goal setting. We figure out what we want, write that on a piece of paper and commit to it. Recently, after my wife had a baby, we set the family goal of getting back in shape.

Guess what - it didn't work. After a few false starts, our goal seemed too difficult and the road too long. Why? We made the mistake of focusing on outcome-based goals, rather than process goals.

I'll explain

Setting the right type of goals is just as important as what goals you set. As a coach, how often do you set goals that aren’t attainable for yourself or your team? Or see your athletes struggle to follow the steps needed to hit their goals?

While setting the goal of winning the division championship is great, if you lose the...

We talk with a lot of coaches about inconsistency. In fact, I’d go so far to say this is the #1 issue that we’ve seen this year. As an athlete, I remember being frustrated with my team’s and my own inconsistency. We’d often ask ourselves:

• Why would we play great one half and poorly the next?
• Why did I score 30 points one game and 10 the next?
• Why was I ready for the big game and lackluster for a minor game?

While the competition was part of it, I’ve realized that a big part of the problem was arousal management. We never effectively nor proactively managed our arousal level.

What is arousal?

Your “Arousal Level” is your state of readiness and refers to your physical, emotional and mental state. In simple terms, it is a measure of your internal energy level (also known as butterflies). It includes psychological (anger, confidence, fear, nervousness, aggression, etc.) and physiological (pulse, breathing, temperature, etc.) elements. The...