Tips on how to focus your mental game.

Hello, I'm Paul S. Palmer, Director, Sports Motivation Clinic. Most athletes don't know exactly how to develop their mental game. Where do you focus your efforts? Each month I try to pick a topic that might ring a bell. Learning to master the mental side of sports performance is about fixing these types of things. Here is a new tip for you.

EMOTIONS RULE

Do you know what will screw-up any athletic performance? (Besides the other team kicking your butt because they came ready to play and you didn't.) Your emotions! Emotions can get in the way of your best performance every time, if you let them. I know what causes your swings in emotion. Everything!!! Your boy friend cheated on you with your best friend. Or, you fell in love again for the forth time this week and you can't think of anything else. Your agent just lost another million bucks of your money in the market. Your home situation isn't ideal, since you got caught with the bimbo! Your parents don't understand you. They want you to do your home work, eat your vegetables and not join a drug cartel. How unfair is that?
Coming ready to play on game day means leaving your emotional baggage at the gate. Learning how to focus ain't easy and requires practice and a good mind coach. You can't tell what emotional upheaval will befall you tomorrow. Preparing your mind for competition is not about solving each specific life crisis but learning to play in spite of them. Whether you are playing for the pure enjoyment of the game, to capture a scholarship, get to the BIG Show or to sustain your livelihood, learning how to focus your mind when it counts should be first on your list of things to learn. I teach you how to do that.

Previous months tips below.

Work on your Mechanics !!! or ???

Do you work on your mechanics? Of course you do. A big part of growing as an athlete comes from evaluating how you control your body. A big part of coaching is evaluating potential and identifying why an athlete fails to perform. I recently worked with a golfer who came to me with his own video and charts that dissected every body part. The video was cool, it showed several different angles of his swing. The charts were a breakdown of his problem areas and there were so many notes and body parts circled and arrows, I wondered if he could remember what it all signified. I believe he called it his kinesiology report. He wouldn't tell me what all this cost him but he did tell me how many years he had been playing golf. Almost fifty years!

Athletes, please sit down. I have some life changing news for you.

The reason you screw-up during the game is, your head is stuck in your evaluation mode. If after fifty years this man doesn't know how to bring the club head to the ball, he picked the wrong hobby. But he does know how. He has had moments where it all came together and he hit the perfect shot. Does he need to keep breaking down his swing to play more consistently. No. He needs to do what every athlete needs to do, let your body play the game and use your conscious mind for other things like plotting strategy and planning where you are going to eat after the game. You don't practice to get good at evaluation. You practice, so that your body and your mind act automatically during the game. Hasn't anybody ever told you that before??? DAH!
If you know what I'm talking about, I just might be able to help you. CALL ME. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you reached this page in error, please go away!

So, you want to be a Pro.

Do you have aspirations to become a professional athlete? Do you think you got "Game." Are you physically ready? Do you have the size, the strength, the stamina, the speed? Do you have your head in the game every time it counts? Fact: There are thousands of student athletes every year that have the same dream. One percent of one percent of amateur athletes ever get a shot at the Big Time. But, don't let the odds scare you.

What about you physical skills? There is always going to be someone just a bit bigger, stronger or faster, don't let that stop you either. There is one aspect of your game you can do something about that can make a world of difference in your performance. It's what can set you apart from the rest. Your Head Game.

Professional athletes, sports psychologists, and coaches will tell you, game time performance is 90% or more, in your head! Can you execute under pressure, when it counts? That's more important than being the best physical specimen on the field. The most important athletic muscle is between your ears. Do you work specifically on your mental game every day? Do you even know how? Want to go pro? You need a good head doctor.

At the Sports Motivation Clinic, I teach you how to master your mental game. I don't teach you how to play your sport and I don't interfere with coaching or training.

Mistake Recovery

Every athlete at every level makes mistakes. It's part of the game. If there wasn't that ever changing possibility of success or failure, what would be the point of playing or watching sports? Always your goal in sports is to make fewer mistakes than your opponent.

One important question I ask my athletes is how do they perform after a mistake. It's a delicate subject. Most athletes don't want to talk about it. They might have painful memories of how one little mistake cost them the game. Or more often then not, memories of how one mistake caused them to completely lose it and they never got back on track. Sound familiar?

Mistakes are part of sports yet mistake recovery is the one mental area that no one seems to want to prepare for. If you don't prepare yourself ahead of time to recover quickly, how do you expect it to happen in the game? I could give you thousands of examples of where the athlete who recovered from their mistake the fastest, won the day. I'm often looked at like I have two heads when I suggest the athlete spend more time working on getting their head back in the game, quickly. They always have other areas of their game that seems more important to fix. There is nothing more important to your game than how quickly you recover from a mistake. You are going to screw-up, even if you only play miniature golf. How fast you regain your composure is a mental skill and an essential part of being a winning athlete. I can help you prepare for those defining moments.

Use the off season!!!

When is a good time to start working on your mental game?

The off season is perfect. Use your off time to prepare for next season. No pressure. You work on your mental game at home anyway, right? Right! Mental training is a separate skill from your physical training. You don't need the playing field or the gym to work on your mental game. Starting early to get your mind ready for competition is a great idea, sadly most athletes don't do that. As you already know, when the season begins there are precious few extra moments to start learning new skills.

What has always drove me nuts is, I'm trying to fix a mental problem a week before the championship (if I get that much time). Mental skills are no different than your physical skills, they need to be practiced so they become automatic. The amount of time you spent at mental rehearsal is a fraction of the time you spent at physical training but it still needs to be learned and practiced ahead of time.

Tip: Fear Management

Fear can be debilitating. It makes the body and mind do strange things, all to help you combat or escape danger. The adrenaline rush, the heart pumping blood to the arms and legs and away from the brain. It's as primitive a response as it gets. We are all wired that way but exactly what triggers the fight or flight reaction is different for each one of us. Some learn to control it. Soldiers, police and firefighters find a way to deal with their fears and do their jobs. They run toward danger while the rest of us run for safety. While I would never confuse these real heroes with sports heroes there is a similarity. Each learns how to function under pressure. Each learns to overcome their natural fear of injury or fear of failure. It's called fear management. It's the ability to ignore the danger and press on or better yet, channel that fear into something productive. In sports, the day you step into the competition arena and have no butterflies, that's the day you better retire. All athletes at every level have nerves, as they say, it's just that some handle it better that others. Can you learn to deal with fear, channel that nervous energy, handle the butterflies? YES!

At the Sports Motivation Clinic, I can help you deal with your fears. Do I make you fearless? No. That would be stupid and besides I couldn't take away your natural ability to sense danger even if I wanted to. What I can do are two very important things. One, help you prepare for fear situations, defusing them if you will. Second, teach you how to channel any energy, good or bad, into productive energy. Believe it or not, your fears can be a tremendous source of energy, if you learn how to focus it. Give me an athlete that is a smoldering caldron of nerves and I'll give you an athlete that can use that energy during the best moments of competition. Don't be afraid to give me a call and make an appointment.

The tip before that: Home Field Advantage ?

Do you win more often in your own environment? Do other teams fear coming into your house? Is home court your advantage? Do you just feel more comfortable when you play at home? If you answered yes to any of the above, you just identified how the mind plays a major role in sports competition. Home Field Advantage is all in your mind!

But, home field advantage is no myth. When you have it, it's as tangible an asset as anything you actually plan for and work on. It defies logic though. It doesn't make sense. Especially if you play a sport where the playing field or the court is always the same dimensions, the advantage must be 100% perception. What does that tell you? It tells me, your mind got caught up in the hype that home field makes a difference. You allowed yourself to get psyched-up and believed that the location somehow contributed to the outcome. The practical side of your brain tells you it can't be true but you buy it anyway.

Are you a fool, are you an idiot? NO!

You experienced one of the best examples I can give you of the power your own mind has to direct how you play the game. If you can elevate your performance because you think you have an advantage, imagine what you could do if you purposely prepared your mind to have that advantage. What if you exercised your mind every day to play at the top of your game regardless of the venue, would that make a difference in your performance?
You bet!
My mental conditioning exercises prepares the mind for competition, no matter where you play. The same magic you experienced in home field advantage is the same mental advantage that you purposely put into your mental exercises.

Extra Tip: Ball control

If you are in a sport that involves manipulating an object, I can really help your game. Sports like baseball, football, hockey, volleyball, golf, basketball, bowling and soccer involve moving something around. Of the many facets of sports performance training, ball control is the easiest to focus in on and in some ways the easiest to fix. Why would ball control be the easiest to fix?, Because it's the focal point of everything you do and the perfect starting point to direct your mental exercises. If there is a ball, there is a POINT OF CONTACT.

In ball (puck) control sports, you are not graded on style. No matter how goofy you might look, if you make the ball do exactly what you want it to, nobody will care. It's a matter of letting the automatic part of the mind direct the show. Your subconscious will make all the necessary changes and corrections in your body, if it knows exactly what to do, and it will do that without you having to consciously think about it. You are putting the mind on automatic pilot so to speak. Confused? That's where I come in. I have lots of examples of the difference between automatic performance and a thought through performance. All athletes need to reach the point where they trust the automatic part of the mind to play the game. Helping you perfect this is what I do best.

Even one session at the Sports Motivation Clinic will be the best investment you ever made in improving your sports performance. A private session including a custom CD for amateur athletes is only $250. Pros pay $2500.

Sports Motivation Clinic

14810 S. Keystone Ave.
(1 block West of Pulaski)

Midlothian, IL. 60445

708-233-1111 Hours by appointment