Teaching Mental Toughness - Craig Sigl
Channel: Mental Toughness Trainer
Date: 2012-03-06

http://www.mentaltoughnesstrainer.com

Teaching Mental Toughness  http://www.mentaltoughnesstrainer.com/coaches

This is part 2 of Craig's workshop on teaching mental toughness at the Pacific Northwest Coach's conference.

Transcript:

Teaching Mental Toughness

Welcome to the Mental Toughness Academy for Youth Sports.  This video is the next segment of a series of trainings for coaches to learn how to teach mental toughness to their athletes.  

Item number one is to get these kids onboard by saying something like "Hey!  A lot of your problems are due to your lack of working on your mental game." 
 
Point out a specific time when they did really well and felt fabulous about it.  And if you can when they do do fabulous, interview them.  Or even better yet, carry around a recorder and ask them, "What worked for you?  What was going on?"  I can't tell you how many times I'll ask a kid about their best performance.  "Oh my gosh, I jumped 40 feet, what happened?  I don't quite remember."  But ask a kid, "what about your worst time?"  They can tell you all the details about their worst time.  

So this is really important for you as a coach, when you see great performances, even if it's in training -- get all over it.  Get it on record, take their words down and reflect it back to them later when they're feeling low. 
 
Then they'll start to realize, "Wow, you know look at that - my thoughts actually created that.  I can recreate that thinking that I had that day." Or maybe it is some ritual they had that day like they ate their cereal a certain way. Fine tell them to go eat their cereal the same way every day before a competition.  It doesn't matter.  

It's when they start believing in themselves on their own and you're backing them up that they then go, "Wow!  There is something to this mental game."  Then you can start giving them the tools, which we're going to go into next, starting with focus.  

Go to SportsMentalToughness.com to get your free video training and guided visualization MP3 on how to perform under pressure.  I'm Craig Sigl, the Mental Toughness Trainer.