By David Smith, M.Sc., CSCS., SDL (He/Him)
Within my professional practice as a sport psychology practitioner, strength & conditioning, and mental performance coach, I find that most people generally have two perceptions about the services I offer.
- “I don’t need to see a psychologist, I’m not sick/ there is nothing wrong with me.”
- “That sounds like something more suited for professional and Olympic athletes, not for us.”
Those perceptions certainly are valid, our society has built upon things like counseling and psychological care as treatment options rather than tap into their value in enhancing quality of life. While something like mental performance coaching is often associated with elite and professional athletes given that is who we tend to see utilize such services. The reality is that mental performance coaching is useful and beneficial for anybody and everybody who stands to benefit toward improving their performance. By “performance” could be everything from competing in sports, stepping out on stage in front of an audience, or simply just placing a food order at the counter of a busy restaurant.
Ever get nervous driving down the highway? That’s a performance. Deliver a public speech? Performance. Take part in a job interview? Performance. Ask a crush out on a date? Performance. Step up to the starting blocks to swim a race? Performance.
When it comes to “performance” we find ourselves as performers in everyday activities and all throughout our lives. We perform at school to get good grades, we perform at work to do a good job, we perform at our hobbies so we can learn new skills and find enjoyment from the task, we perform at even the most mundane tasks and basic social settings. It’s all just a big show! But do you need mental performance coaching to go about your daily life?
Maybe so, maybe not.
When we look at idea of “sport psychology” as it pertains to mental performance coaching, we look at the person relative their environment and the task at hand. That is, who are you, what are doing, and where are you doing it? And most importantly, how do you feel about it? This represents the core of what sport psychology and mental performance coaching taps into.
Say you are an exerciser joining a new gym for the new year, how are you feeling?
- At the beginning: Motivated, excited, anxious.
- After a few weeks: Tired, sore, disappointed in the lack of results.
- After a few months: Bored, uninterested, lacking motivation.
Despite your good intentions to make a healthy lifestyle change, you fall back into old habits. You felt out of place in the sea of equipment, the workouts pushed you too hard, you weren’t seeing the results you hoped, etc. After a while, it’s easier just to stay home.
What if you’re the captain of a grassroots inclusive sports team gathering your team for the next season of competition. While you hope to compete at the next championships, your team has struggled with communication breakdowns and lack of cohesion. How do you feel?
- Worried about how to bring the team together and overcome the internal issues.
- Frustrated with the lack of individual and team focus toward your season goal.
- Anxiety over upcoming practices and matches due to team drama.
While you love the sport enough to put forth such hard work into bringing the team together and pursuing your goal of competing at the championships. It can be challenging when personality clashes, drama, and conflicting motivations among your athletes threaten to undo all your hard work.
Perhaps you are a stage performer, be it a musician, actor, drag performer, comedian, or something else. While you love what you do, getting up in front of an audience is challenging for even the most experienced and professional performers. You can spend hours rehearsing and perfecting your act, but are you training for your performance?
Performing, whether you’re an artist or an athlete, is more than just executing a task for an audience, it’s an expression of who you are, what your capable of and what you’re passionate about. We often spend hours training and rehearsing our technical skills, tactical capabilities, and physical conditioning. Yet, for all this effort, we find ourselves derailed upon show time because of butterflies in our stomach.
Thus, for all the technical, tactical, and physical conditioning you do, the mental conditioning is a crucial component in bringing all of your hard work together so that when it comes time to show your audience who you are, you are commanding the stage, the field, the arena, and yourself to express the best of who you are.
To give you a glimpse of how mental performance coaching works.
- Get to know you, your motivations, goals, interests, issues/struggles, things you want to improve upon, etc.
- Get to know your environment and the task at hand, including task/sport context, teammates, coaches, etc.
- Utilize goal setting to develop long term (mesocycle) goals, then break them down into mid-term (macrocycle) and short term (micro-cycle) goals.
- Engage in a cyclical process called the “Action Cycle” for every session = one micro-cycle to check in on your progress.
- Reflect upon the last cycle, what went well and what could have gone better? Decide on what the next steps and goals are based on this reflection.
- Take action toward those next steps and proceed with the next cycle.
- Click here to learn more about the Scales of Goals and Action Cycle
During the reflection, if you find yourself experiencing things like anxiety, lack of focus, or other things that are inhibiting your progress. We then take this information and incorporate into the plan for the next micro-cycle, which includes exercises and activities for you to learn how to do (during the session) and then incorporate into your training.
Of course, this is a broad breakdown of a standard mental conditioning session as each one takes its own unique shape relative to the individual, environment, and task at hand. What I hope it shows you though is how you, as a performer of any and all levels, can benefit from such guidance. While this is what elite and professional athletes and performers use, it is inclusive of performers of all levels, ages, types, and interests.
Furthermore, this process is suitable for both individual athletes and with groups/ teams. Consider it as a training session equivalent of any traditional sport practice focused on mental conditioning. In this context, the team/group gathers together and collectively reflects and discusses the events of the previous cycle. This is is key for team/group work in developing…
- Team communication.
- Group cohesion.
- Individual and team based reflection.
- Resolve potential conflicts and disagreements before they escalate.
- Collective goals that are reflective of the goals of the individual group members.
- Social identity reflective of the team/group.
From there, the team/group discusses and considers their goals for the next cycle/phase based on the reflection/discussion. These goals include process and performance goals that encompass all aspects of their training, communicated with other coaches as necessary and next steps of training shaped around the pursuit of these goals.
Within the next steps of the mental skills training session, the mental performance coach leads the team/group through exercises toward improving the kinds of mental skills that are judged to be most crucial. This includes…
- Overcoming performance anxiety and building confidence.
- Learning and practicing performance under pressure.
- Visualization and mental rehearsal.
- Developing emotional and arousal regulation skills.
- Fostering and improving group communication and cohesion.
- Enhancing cognitive capabilities and performance.
- Improving judgement and decision making behaviors.
- Developing and fostering tactical creativity.
- Enhancing situational and proprioceptive awareness.
- Improving game intelligence, individually and collectively.
David Smith’s work as a mental performance coach is built upon this philosophy and coupled with his work as a strength and conditioning coach. This makes David a unique practicitioner within the fields of sport psychology and sport performance toward incorporating the mental, physical, and tactical conditioning capabilities all within his scope of practice focused on the holistic development of athletes, performers, and people.
At Stonewall Performance, our mission is to empower confidence and authenticity through exercise and sport, but our work goes above and beyond the gym and the playing field. Our mental performance coaching services are for anyone and everyone who is looking to develop resilience, grit and a mental edge to help them find success within the grand stages of life! Contact David today and let’s discuss ways to collaborate!
stonewallperformance.com 