Confidence is an integral part of success. Without this trait, it is difficult to triumph on any type of playing field. Luckily, we can learn how to be confident (or more confident). While preparation builds confidence — try winning any competition without working on the physical, technical, and tactical parts of your sport — mental skills also create confidence. In Prime Ski Racing: Triumph of the Racer’s Mind, author Jim Taylor, Ph.D., gives us numerous mental techniques to help us construct confidence. First, “walk the walk". Successful competitors move with confidence: Head held high and chin tilted slightly up, eyes facing forward, shoulders are back and with a spring in their movements. His next piece of advice — “talk the talk” — means making our self-thoughts and spoken words more positive. Dr. Taylor points out that it “takes 12 positive exp...

Have you ever really thought about focus? Prime Ski Racing author Jim Taylor, Ph.D., looks at focus from an athlete’s perspective, helping competitor’s concentrate attention in a winning way. He introduces us to the term “attentional field”: The thoughts, emotions, and physical responses within you as well as the outside sights and sounds you focus on. He asks us to think of focus as “the ability to attend to internal and external cues in your attentional field.” A well-focused athlete knows where to focus her attention for the best results on the playing field. Some people find success through an internal focus style; they concentrate on their sport and technique while training or competing, knowing they can be “easily distracted by activity in the immediate surroundings.” Other competitors do best with an external focus style, focusing on outside sights and sounds right up until the moment of competition or while training, knowing that they over think if t...

We bring every past moment to the present moment. This is both good and bad. Thankfully, we carry all of our hard work: Every game we have played and each step of the training and practice. We also take the last mistake we made, such as a swing at a bad pitch or the pass you just dropped. This is why playing in this exact moment is vital. We need to let go of the mistakes while focusing on the positive stuff. Of course, this isn’t an automatic occurrence, this learning how to be here right now. Luckily, we can learn how to play this way. Authors Ken Ravizza and Tom Hanson give us concrete steps to reach this goal in the book Head-Ups Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time. The first step on this path is self-awareness: “being aware of what is happening and then respond to it.” Think of this as a traffic light. When your body is in the green, you are playing in the zone. You are playing well with no need to think. When your body is in the yellow, you are startin...