Understanding the mental (psychological) side of sport and competition is very important for the athlete today.

Our team of experts are here to help you understand and effectively deal with situations you will face in competition, so that you are free of the distractions that can hamper performance.
Attitude
Charles Swindell writes, "The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me, is more important than the facts..."
Centering
Centering is a refocusing skill that allows the athlete to recover composure, and to redirect focus. It is promoted as a basic stress control technique.
Choking
Choking, what is it? How is choking prevented? How is choking overcome?
Cool, Calm and Collected...Wins!
Why do some athletes choke or get crazy with anger in adverse competitive situations and other athletes stay calm and focused on the job at hand? Find out how to stay focused to win!
Developing a Championship Attitude
Before you ever can be a championship team, you first must develop a championship attitude. Find out the four important characteristics that you need to get to the top!
Distraction Management
Distraction is damaging to your athletic performance - it interferes with your ability to focus, grabs away your attention you need to apply to maintain good technique, and it causes stress.
Expose Your Weakness
Very powerful thoughts, images and emotions are just like heavy weights. They require more energy and therefore are more stressful. With this understanding, how do you build mental and emotional weakness into strengths?
Finding the Zone
The zone is characterized by a combination of feelings including high self-confidence, a task focus, fearless attitude, and self-composure. The mind and body work in harmony to produce optimal performance. It is impossible to force yourself into the zone, but you can create a mindset that helps you enter the zone more often.
Flow
Psychologists call it "the holistic sensation people feel when they are totally involved, or in automatic pilot." Michael Jordan calls it "being in the zone."
Free to Fail
Athletes, as with all people, fall into two motivational classes: 1) those who truly want success, and 2) those who simply try to avoid failure. Which are you?
Goal Trees
One of the techniques used for goal setting is called Goal Trees. It is a system of designing long term goals, then building the steps it takes to reach those goals.
Handling the Distraction New Mental Skills Article!
Distraction is damaging to your performance because it interferes with your ability to focus and it disrupts flow. It also interferes with the attention that you need to apply to maintain good technique. This causes stress and consumes mental energy that is better applied to your game!
How to Develop Visualization Skills
Swiss Triathlete, Brigitte McMahon, stated that she had visualized the final sprint to the finish of the 2000 Olympic Games in her mind many times before ever coming to the Olympics in Sydney. Brigitte claims that this technique gave her the advantage because she was prepared for it...in fact, she planned the outcome already - in her mind.
Imagery
Tips and techniques on how to use imagery to enhance performance, build confidence, accelerate reaction time and improve coordination and accuracy
Improving Focus
Focus is an important element in sports. Focus in a skill, a skill like any other in sport. To improve it takes training and practice. Learn the secrets to improving your focus.
Introduction to Mental Skills
Mental skills expect Beasey Hendrix explains why the mental side of sports is critical to successful sports performance.
Keeping Your Head in the Game
Keeping focused on the right things, at the right time is an important key to having a successful performance. Understand what you need to do to keep your head in the game!
Make Change Happen!
Morphing can do several things; it helps the athlete deal with pressure, gives the athletes the opportunity to try something new, it is a new mental game to play, and in puts fun into training.
Making the Right Choices New Mental Skills Article!
According to Olympic champion Steve Fraser, "Your future as an athlete is much more dependent on what decision you make, rather that on your genetic make up." The key is choosing your attitude and learning how to think.
Mindset of a Champion
How does a champion think? What makes them different from all of the rest?
No Pain, No Gain Theory
"No pain, no gain." Is it a winning philosophy for you or not? You must determine whether it is based on the issues of "over training and under training."
Physical and Mental Practice
There are three aspects that should be included in any training program; techincal improvement and refinement, physical conditioning, and mental practice.
Playing in the Zone
To be a peak performer you need to play in the zone - having your mind and body working with one another in perfect unison. Tips and techniques to get you there.
Preventing Choking
Anxiety is a natural part of performing, whether you are on the baseball diamond, giving a speech, or taking the SAT's. Even seasoned veterans get butterflies before the big game. Where problems begin is if you focus on the wrong things.
Raising Your Athletic Self-Awareness
Athletes at the top know that when physical differences between individuals are reduced, it is often the mentally stronger athlete who pulls out the victory. But before searching into the bag of mental skills, you need to develop an athletic self-awareness.
Rituals for Preparation
A warm up ritual can offer time for mental preparation, planning strategies, tactics and even help with stress control - which will help your athletic performance.
Self-Confidence
Self-confidence is arguably one the the most important traits an athlete can possess today.
Self-Evaluation
Now is the time that offers both athletes and coaches a challenge - that of making new goals. What do we need to do? How do we accomplish that? Where do we go from here? These questions must be answered before an athlete can set goals and effectively move forward.
Self-Talk...building a winning dialog
Almost all athletes "talk to themselves" during competition. Many of these thoughts help performance, and other thoughts harm performance. One thing is for sure, successful athletes control their self-talk.
Set Goals to Succeed
There is a secret of success in goal setting. Here is the secret: sit in a quiet room with a yellow legal pad and a pen. Make a lest of all your goals for this year, now do this...
Sleep Induction
Many athletes have trouble sleeping on the day before competitions. This is normal problem that annoys many athletes. This problem is called insomnia – the inability to achieve restful sleep. Fortunately, there are ways that you can learn to control this problem.
Staying Relaxed Under Pressure
Do you crumble under the pressure of big games? Does your performance suffer because you lack the composure necessary to effectively execute your talents and abilities? Learning how to stay composed under pressure is a key skill for performing your best in any situation.
Stress
Stress can be a friend or foe. Too little stress and you will under-aroused, too much stress and you will be over-aroused, either way your performance will suffer. Learn how to deal with stress.
Stress, Anxiety and Energy
Too much stress and anxiety can seriously affect your ability to focus on your skills and flow in an athletic performance. It is important that you realize that you are responsible for your own stress level. Very often they are a product of the way that you think.
The Big Mo
What is momentum? In sports, momentum is a feeling or idea that you are playing well and that luck is on your side. It is also charaterized by a feeling that you will continue to play well.
The Most Powerful Computer on Earth!
Imagine for a moment that you are relaxing in your favorite lazy chair one afternoon and you fall asleep. You start dreaming about a magical coach that comes up to you and gives you a small computer device that he calls a success machine...
There's No Limit...
2x Olympic Gold medalist Cathy Turner talks about how visualization turned around her athletic career and paved the way for Olympic Gold.
Three R's for Getting Refocused
Do people tell you that you often lose focus, or that you don't know what is going on? You need to learn how to refocus - we are always focused, but it may be on the wrong things!
Training for Mental Toughness
What is Mental Toughness? By definition, toughness is ?to be strong and resilient; able to withstand great strain without tearing or breaking.? Toughness is being able to create positive emotions upon command, enabling you to bring all your talent and skills to life in a moment, no matter what is happening around you.
Training Stress Syndrome
Training Stress Syndrome affects many people in all areas of life, not just the athletes! Learn how to recognize the signs and avoid the final result - BURNOUT!
Watch What You Say to Yourself
We regularly carry on an inner dialogue with ourselves, this is called self talk. Your self talk can be negative and self distructive, or it can be positive and helpful. The key point is that you choose what you say to yourself.
Winning the Mind Game
Today in the world of sports the levels of performance are increasing. More and more the difference isn't in the training - winning and losing rests with psychological factors, or the "mind game."
Copyright (c) 2000-2003, TTNL Reprinted with permission.