The New York Times published a great piece yesterday on mental health and athletics. The article, “With No One Looking, a Hurt Stays Hidden”, contrasts the obvious nature of physical injuries for athletes with the more hidden nature, and stigma, surrounding mental health issues in the world of sports. Mental health issues for athletes are too often hidden away and masked from view, despite the incredible toll they can take.

Giving mental health issues more open discussion and publicity is one of the first steps to starting to try to address the problem in a more significant way. As this article points out, concussions and traumatic brain injuries in sport have gained growing attention and media coverage. However, we need to make sure that mental health issues can get similar recognition so that we can help reduce the stigma attached to it amongst athletes and encourage getting help, rather than hiding.

You can read the whole New York Times article here.

Yes, it’s been a hard football watching season for Minnesota Vikings fans. Why couldn’t this team turn it around and win more than 3 games? This week’s Star Tribune Exit Interviews article ponders this question.

Several players chime in, but linebacker Chad Greenway explains the disappointing season well. “To me, I think the biggest thing was the way this season started.  Those first three games. The way we lost them sort of creates the negative momentum, the negative mentality. Winning and losing is a culture. I think when you create that early on, you create a bad culture about, in your mind, can we do this? Can we not do this? How do you overcome that? You overcome that by getting a few wins and getting that confidence back. We just weren’t able to string that together and overcome all that. I’m certainly proud of the way we hung together. It’s not easy to do that in the situation like this, the season we’re having when people are frustrated with whether it be a position group or a coach. People can get frustrated because it’s a long season and you’re out there putting everything into it. I’m definitely proud of the fact we didn’t get into that,” says Greenway.

After three loses in a row right off the bat, the Vikings never successfully overcame this culture of losing.  But these exit interviews show the team never completely gave up. Defensive end Brian Robinson says he “fought every game as hard” as he could, and he believes 98 percent of the team did the same thing.

In 2012, the Vikings need to turn this losing culture into a winning environment. Robinson says this is about every single player fighting for every game. However, even when one works as hard as they can, negative momentum and energy in a locker room can become a norm and can be difficult to get past. This is why in the face of losing streaks and negative momentum, it’s not just about working hard, it’s about positive mental coaching for both individuals and teams.

This blog post is Part 4 of a 4-part blog series featuring the work of University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock.

Even a small chunk of meditation practice goes a long way, says Sian Beilock, Ph.D., in a recent interview on the website Brain Science Podcast. At the University of Chicago’s Human Performance Lab, psychologist Sian Beilock has found that simple meditation instruction helps people perform better under pressure.

In the lab, people underwent a mere 10 minutes of meditation instruction before taking a test. This appeared to make a significant “difference in their score.” Beilock quotes research that shows “as little as 10 hours of meditative practice can change some of the wiring of the brain.”

Beilock says research suggests people can use meditation “even sparingly to really improve … performance.”

Why does this practice work so well? Meditation helps us “let go of information—to not perseverate on it.” This lets us focus on the task at hand without worry taking away “our cognitive horsepower” and our ability to perform well.

If you have never explored meditation as a practice, you’ll be relieved to know how simple it is to learn how to meditate. Try Herbert Benson’s relaxation response method, or ask a sport psychologist to teach you the basics of this simple practice.