Mental Performance Coaching

What does a Mental Performance Consultant (MPC) do?

MPCs specialize in optimizing one’s performance by exploring with the individual their actions, emotions, and thoughts both in and outside of their performance domain.

What areas can we work on?

This list is not exhaustive:

• Injury rehabilitation
• Specific competition preparation
• Performance evaluation
• Mental skills training
• Transitions in and out of sports
• Building routines, habits, and systems outside of the sporting environment
• Improve decision making processes

What is my philosophy?

My philosophy is based around 3 pillars of mental performance that need to be continually improved in order to optimize performance:

• Mindset: your approach to your performance and life in general. How you view successes and failures. Your ability to reflect and adopt change to yourself and your environment. Your values, your objectives, your purpose.
• Mental health: your overall wellbeing. Involves strategies based around self-care, recovery, and wellbeing check-ins.
• Mental Skills: in the same way that sports have technical skills athletes need to develop, there are essential mental skills that also need to be developed to improve as a performer. Strategies around arousal and emotional management, attentional control, imagery, self-talk, time management, confidence, etc.

Myth1: MPC sessions are only beneficial for elite athletes.

Everybody needs to perform in life. Whether it is on the field, in school, or at the workplace, techniques and strategies used in sessions are transferrable to different performance domains.

Myth2: MPC sessions are only beneficial when things go wrong.

Mental performance training should be viewed the same as physical training. In the same manner that athletes do not begin a training program a couple of weeks before a competition or after they get injured, mental performance training needs to be adopted as a year-round process focused on continual improvement rather than a bandage solution to any arising issues.

Myth3: MPC sessions are done as a quick fix for my problems.

Though mental performance strategies can work in the short term, they need to be implemented on a long-term basis to achieve long lasting, consistent change.

Myth4: MPC sessions are only for adults.

Athletes of any age can engage in mental performance consulting. The only requirements are some level of maturity to talk about subjects that might be uncomfortable (e.g. failures, worries), a willingness to learn, and participation in workshops/sessions.

Metaphors for Mental Performance

Golf bag

Just like a golfer needs a full set of clubs to be able to optimally play through the various shots he might face on a course, a performer also needs a bag of strategies to manage the different situations that may arise in their sport.

Physical training

Just like with physical performance breakdowns (i.e. physical injuries), mental performance breakdowns can occur (e.g. confidence or motivation slumps). In both cases, the goal of rehabilitation is to bring the performer back to a state of pre-performance breakdown by looking at the performer holistically and targeting the root cause of the issue.

Performers need to engage in strength and conditioning training to get stronger, faster, and more flexible to be able to manage the physical demands of their sport. In the same way, performers also need to be strong, fast, and flexible mentally to manage the psychological demands of the sport.