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I'm grateful to be given the time and space to write about the work of Dr. Ken Ravizza from reading his chapter in Expert Approaches to Sport Psychology. As many of us know, Ken was a giant in our field and yet in person he was a cuddly teddy bear. A sweet man, who talked close, looked you square in the eyes, truly listened, and truly cared. He embodied the idea of the practitioner being a walking talking example of mental skills by the very way of his being. I had the cha

Certainly a hot button issue last March Madness now, wasn't it? I've spent the last few years researching the ways in which basketball coaches value - good, bad, or indifferent - emotional regulation as a psychological skill within their coaching practice. While some of the results have been surprising, for the most part, the coaches responses were what you'd expect: emotional regulation matters for a coach's performance. Emotional regulation in coaching is a multi-facet

As I continue my work in Mental Performance training, a word (or 500) regarding my philosophy of practice are in order. I am lucky to have come through great training via my Master's program in Sport Psychology at JFK University and now serving as Affiliate Faculty with Holy Names University. Part of my Master's degree training was really honing in on a philosophy that is authentic and which encapsulates who I am and how I believe the work of mental training can best be prac

In researching emotional regulation among basketball coaches, gratitude came up, over and over again, as a technique that coaches actively use to maintain control of their emotional state. We know from research, and from the findings of Positive Psychology, that the positive impacts of gratitude reach far and wide. So, if we're drinking the Kool-Aid on gratitude, how do we train it? Like many other mental skills, it can be trained actively, but we must shift the paradigm

Often times we believe that if we change what we do, we will feel better. If we eat less junk food, we will feel better about our bodies. If we work out more, we'll feel like our day was more productive. If we get all of our work completed, we feel we are great at our jobs. In mental training, we help athletes and performers recognize that the reverse is true as well. When we think and feel positively and productively, positive actions and behaviors will flow more natura

In mental skills training we talk a lot about pre-performance routines. And it's for good reason: routines put in an athlete in a consistent state of mind by creating a "sequence of task relevant thoughts and actions" (Moran, 1996), A routine allows an athlete to keep consistency in the turbulent and ever-changing world of sport. There are many factors that change regarding your performance: location, venue, weather, time of day, opponent - just to name a few. By maintain

This isn't about Sport Psychology. Nor is it really a mental skill. This is truly a way to conceptualize your own free will and take hold of the choices and actions you live by. Think about a chessboard. There are 64 squares on the board. Think about these squares as the objective facts of your life: where you live, how old you are, how tall you are, that you live in a world with other people in it, that the moon exists (shout to Ali G). Sure, we can argue about what is

Raise your hands if you’ve heard of mindfulness? [All the hands in the virtual classroom go up]. Raise your hands if you’ve read an article about the benefits of mindfulness? [75% of hands go up again]. Now raise your hand if you’ve meditated once in the last week? [10% of hands go up]. There is a disconnect here. As a society we have never been more crystal clear on the benefits of mindfulness. We know what it is, we understand how beneficial it is, and yet, many don’t pract

Motivation. What is it and why, oh why, does it seem to come and go? In plain terms, motivation is the direction and intensity of effort....

“Long term consistency trumps short term intensity.” -Bruce Lee Everyone can go out and hit a homer once in a while. Greatness – or even...