Brain In The Game Sport Mind Coaching Podcast

Remembering Your Best Performance Under Competition Pressure –⁠ Remember what you need to remember, when you need to remember it, without that amnesia      We have all been there at some stage haven't we that "Performance amnesia" moment, where time stands still - just think back to school when all that study, all those late nights and all those anxious moments come down to tha...

Slaying your Performance Demons   We all have those demons that hold us back and stop us performing –⁠ it's what we do with them that makes the difference Be it as simple as a missed opportunity, a messed up skill or routine, or as complex as an injury or you were completely owned by your competitor in front of 100,000 spectators - we all have those internal demons who haunt us and our perfor...

Athletes –⁠ How do you Measure your Success in Sport? How do you measure your sporting success? Your gauge on success is as individual as your fingerprint. We all strive, at an animalistic level, to be successful. It’s part of our survival instinct, our social standing and our unique identity. And sometimes we are quick to judge others on their perceived successes. But do you really know what succ...

Is there more to the sexes than we were lead to believe, from a coaches perspective? We often gravitate to either coaching boys or girls in our chosen sport. We also hear coaches frequently identify themselves as a 'male coach' or 'female coach.' We frequently hear people generalise the genders by a stereo-typical behaviour However is this an accurate, productive or even fair way of thinking? Is t...

Sporting Performance Failures - It’s all about practical perspective. Elite, professional and extreme sport is a high investment way of life, not only financially but more importantly physically and emotionally too. And with that high investment comes the inevitable knocks and failures along the way. So how do you handle those failures to keep the journey alive? Knowing there will always be good a...

Your Sustainability as an Athlete –⁠ What you do in the shower could hold the key! There is no denying it we are creatures of habit and how we do one thing tends to be how we do most things. What this means is if things are going great we tend to stay in that place... however may not grow. If things are not going as well as you want, the likelihood of it getting better on its own is slim at b...

Emotions: Rocket fuel or Kryptonite? Your choice. Our emotions are an integral part of our sporting and performance success strategy. When used correctly our emotions can be the rocket fuel that catapults our career to heights beyond our wildest dreams. However if handled badly they can be our own personal Kryptonite and completely derail, or even crush, our career beyond salvation. When most coac...

Being A Parent versus Being A Parent Of An Athlete When we become parents it is often a culture shock. We don’t get that all-important and often joked about handbook telling us how to behave and how to do it right. And yes being a parent can be a little bit hit-and-miss, learning along the way, always vowing to do it better the next time. When we add into that mix (which can al...

Sporting Success – 6 steps to your best season ever Start the season the way you want it every time!    We naturally gravitate towards what we have always done, a sense of familiarity despite wanting more out of our performance - yet we tend to get to the end of each competitive season with regrets and promises to do it differently next year. So how do we get off this competitive merry-g...

How to Take a Break Without Paying for It Next Season Most athletes don’t struggle because they train too hard. They struggle because they stop too hard . Downtime matters. Rest matters. Switching off completely? That’s where momentum quietly disappears. You don’t need to stay at 100%. But you do need to keep the engine idling. In this episode of Brain in the Game , I walk athletes, coaches, and p...

Mind Games and How to Protect Yourself Against Them –⁠ The Ethical use of Mind Games We have all fell victim to letting someone getting inside our head and influence our performance. However, the use of Mind Games can be far more sinister than just thinking negative thoughts or allowing your competitors experience beat you! As sport becomes more commercial it also becomes more competitive and...

Athletes, How to Upgrade Your Coach and Feel Good About It Upskilling or Upgrading your Coaching Team –⁠ Building the Right Team at the Right Time. When we first start out on our sporting path, our needs and coaching requirements are quite simple. All we want is to have fun, feel comfortable and feel secure. However as we progress through the ranks towards elite, extreme or professional perfo...

You have the skills but do you have the mindset to be a consistent performer? –  Lewis Hamilton, you need a Mind Coach   Lewis Hamilton is (for my money) the best Formula 1 driver on the circuit today. However, he doesn't do it as easily as he should - and that is not due to lack of driving skill. Lewis Hamilton is currently on the top of the drivers board but he isn't doing it easi...

The ONLY 10 Questions a Coach Should Ask Athletes When Planning As coaches we are used to being the ring master, the fountain of all knowledge, knowing what to do now and into the future to build an athlete. It has been our role for so long, that now we just do it without thinking... and often without consultation. However this singular approach in our mind-set can be even more effective when we e...

If you have ever hit the wall, been dragged down or lost your Mojo, then this podcast is for you. Getting back in the mental game is all about becoming a mental rock climber. "What can I do when nothing appears to work?" We can so easily get sucked into the negative mindset that "Nothing I do is working!" This draws the focus on the overwhelm rather than the opportunities. When we get into th...

Begin by knowing where it comes from and how it impacts you. We are all impacted on some level by stress and anxiety caused by expectations –⁠ that's just human nature. However those human traits can also cause performance issues if not managed correctly. This episode looks at how you can better manage those internal and external influences and still perform consistently every time.

Three Key Lessons Learnt on Tour that Every Athlete and Coach Should Know I recently visited the Sepang F1 International Circuit in Malaysia with a young up and coming racing car driver. Here I made 3 key observations that every athlete and coach should be aware of when preparing to perform. ...It’s ALL in the preparation.

No magic wand supplied. When building for or engulfed in competition, it can be easy to forget to do stuff –⁠ and it is not until it comes back and repeatedly bites you do you realise you have forgotten to do something. Behavioural change and behavioural mastery are just the same, when I explain to a client that the reason they hare having consistent issues is because they have fed that action con...

Staying on Track  – the view from the front As an athlete much of our focus from an early stage is getting to the top of our sport, being number one, it is often our only thought, it can be what motivates, innovates and sometimes derails our progress forwards. The same can be said on a micro level too, our initial focus on beating those around us can sometimes lead to forming our outcomes and...

Check out this short, sharp, FOCUSSED episode and see how you can better prepare for competition. During a recent athlete and coach elite development clinic I observed a phenomenon that showed both athletes and coaches are more driven by what they don’t want than what they do want. And it is having an impact on their ability to produce a good performance. During this clinic I conducted an experime...

Building effective performance strategies that last Athletes and coaches strive for consistency in performance. We know in order to be successful we must perform on a consistent basis. This is what makes champions. However few really understand the mental process required to achieve such consistency. There are four stages that must be met in order to have a complete and replicable behavioural...

As the modern face of sport continues to evolve and with the innovations in science allowing our athletes to not only achieve younger, they are allowing them to stay in the game for longer. There is, however, still one demographic that has found it a less than smooth journey. Our female athletes! Our elite female athletes have arguably worked harder than most to be seen as serious and equal athlet...

In this episode we are going to look at a less desirable aspect of modern day sport, one that is growing and unfortunately in some cases, defining an athlete's career. And that is the Voodoo parent. These are the small minority of parents on the sideline, who take it on themselves to battle with the athletes, the other parents, take it out on the coach and officials, and who are willing to continu...

Five lessons we can take from our sport and use in the "real" world. Too often we are told sport isn’t a real positive influence for when we decide to grow up! However as a mind coach I have found that many of the lessons I learnt as an athlete have served me in my professional life. We just need to be open to look for them. So in this episode I hope to shift the way some view sport and the p...

Looking closely at the flip-side of managing unsuccessful performance strategies: the unspoken mental and emotional pitfalls of success. As an athlete, we expend much of our physical, mental and emotional energy striving to succeed –⁠ to get to the top, believing that once we are there then we have made it… only to find once we do arrive in the winners circle the hard work required getting us ther...