How to Build Confidence in Sports - Craig Sigl
Channel: Mental Toughness Trainer
Date: 2012-03-08

http://www.mentaltoughnesstrainer.com

How To Build Confidence In Sports  http://www.mentaltoughnesstrainer.com/coaches

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 learn how to teach mental toughness to their athletes. 

How Athletes Use Mental Training To Build Confidence
 
Today we are going to talk about the benefits of athlete's learning mental training so they can build confidence. To begin with forget the idea that confidence must be obtained from success. It can be, but it's not required. If your athletes feel it has to derive from recent accomplishments, it shuts them down from achieving confidence.

 I've heard many coaches in the sports world say the only way to gain confidence is to have success. It is best to remind them that they came out of the womb with no success and were able to create amazing outcomes for themselves.  That belief definitely does not help your kids who haven't had any accomplishments yet.

While you're young and you begin learning to walk, because you really want it. That's all that was needed for success. Get them on board that way. That's all you've got to communicate is, "If you want it, it will come around, it's that simple."

A lot of times athletes feel like success is a Catch-22 situation. Similar to us saying in the adult world, "How can I get a employment if I don't already have a job?" Well basically you need to remove that perception from your thinking. Instead point out to your athletes that they've all had some successes in their lives, but it has more to do with just believing in yourself that you can have success and really wanting it.

A lot of times we just need to dumb the teaching down and get simple with them to help them build their mental strength and confidence.  Just give them one little concept a day or a few times during the week, but be sure to pound in positive messages multiple times to counter the negative stuff that's going on in their head throughout the week.

Another essential step to using mental strength training to build confidence in sports is to get rid of the mental baggage. Everybody's got some and this may not be very easy as a coach because of your limited time. This is the kind of thing I help coaches with their athletes all the time in my office and in my programs. 

The bottom line is that you need to be aware that these underlying beliefs live in the cellular tissues of the body and at times it can literally be the subconscious mind that gets in the way and stops an athlete from performing their best.

We will address this more in upcoming mental strength trainings and how to deal with it 
 
Go to http://www.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.