The past few years have been nothing short of challenging for athletes, coaches, and those in sport. As the world seemingly came to a standstill in spring of 2020, athletes and coaches grappled with the unknowns regarding their season plans. Sport psychology providers saw heightened levels of stress, anxiety, and depression for athletes and coaches alike. As a sport psychology consulting firm committed to understanding the intersection of performance and wellness, our team wanted to give athletes everything they needed to be at their best—both mentally and physically. In the fall of 2020 we launched a research project to answer one important question: What are the actions, thoughts, and feelings that athletes need to optimize mental health and performance? As the sports world tries to find its rhythm once again, our team at Premier Sport Psychology is excited to share our research findings. Our findings stem from an online brainstorming, sorting, and rating process with athletes, ...

We’ve all had it, that niggling voice that discourages us before or during competition.  Self-talk is our inner narrator, and when it directs our attention to destructive thoughts or feelings, it can deep-six our performance levels.  Thankfully, mindfulness training teaches us an easy way to strip power from this kind of talk, and separate ourselves from its consequences. Mindfulness teaches us to shift away our attention away from analysis or judgement, and toward observation and acceptance.  An analytical mind evaluates and reacts.  It examines the past, it anticipates the future.  It worries and it avoids.  The observing mindset merely notices and accepts.  It doesn’t get hooked by negativity or try to change an undesirable thought or event, it neutralizes it by letting it pass by, like a leaf in a stream. “I’m not good enough,” is a prototypical example of negative self-talk and, like nearly all negative self-talk, it’s analytical.  It’s an assessment of...

To become resilient, routine and mental health are paramount.  Let’s dive into a practice that achieves both, and create a Healthy Daily Mental Health Routine.  

Morning Routine: Set Your Intention

Starting the day with an intention can be a very positive, a very important first step.  So often, we just wake up and we let the day, and the stress of the day, hit us without thinking of how we want to be, how we want to respond. Some of the best athletes and the best leaders that I’ve worked with set their intention for the day when they wake up in the morning.  They think through what the day might look like.  They think through how they want to navigate it, how they want to be. They can’t control what comes at them, but they can control how they want to respond, and the type of person that they want to be—living more closely to their values, being the leader that they want to be.  By setting that intention, they’re gi...