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You are here: Home / Mental Coach Articles / Uncovering Underlying Mental Game Challenges

Uncovering Underlying Mental Game Challenges

January 8, 2017 By Patrick Cohn Leave a Comment

What’s The Real Mental Game Challenge?

Do parents, coaches or athletes contact you about their lack of focus or confidence in competition?

Often, the presenting problem may not be the underlying problem…

Athletes and parents often don’t know the REAL mental game challenge. They just understand a lack of focus, tentative performances, and less than par performances.

But as a mental coach, you know better not to accept their presenting problem as what’s actually going on….

For example, an athlete might be afraid to disappoint a parent. He might be afraid to make mistakes. This looks like the athlete is not trying as hard as he can.

That’s why doing an AMAP assessment and discovery session with your athletes is so important…

You have to uncover the real issue underlying what’s happening on the surface. Athletes and parents are often not aware and need your help for this.

What do you look for?

You might consider:

  • Fear of failure
  • Fear of embarrassment
  • Worrying about disappointing others
  • Perfectionism
  • Trying too hard
  • Post-injury lack of trust in skills
  • Recent changes in technique

Quick story… I remember when a top high school baseball player I worked with on his hitting. His presenting problem was inconsistent hitting.

As we talked more about his mental approach to hitting, it was clear he was overthinking his mechanics.

I find out via discovery that his team hired a new hitting coach who wanted to “improve” his mechanics early in the season–even though he was already the top hitter on the team!

This mental game challenge was easy for me to identify, but my athlete didn’t see it at first.

In the MGCP program, you’ll learn how to do assessments, drill down, and do discovery sessions to help you identify the real underlying issues with your athletes.

And you learn what to look for and how to ask the right questions.

One mental coach recently asked about how to identify the underlying challenges with athletes…

He asks:

“How do you identify major causes of an athlete’s discord and where to start in peeling back the layers? How do you know when you’ve “drilled down” and got to the real issues?”

Part of the fun of doing mental coaching with athletes is when you become an investigator—what we call the discovery phase of mental coaching.

But every athlete is different when you examine the underlying issues that prevent peak performance.

I teach a process called “drilling down” in the MGCP course, which helps you get more details from your athletes that an assessment might not reveal.

Here, you ask relevant questions to help you athlete identify the real challenges they face.

I call this the underlying issue.

For example, lack of focus might be due to frustration, but frustration might come from not meeting high expectations. And the athlete might be afraid to not reach a coach’s or team’s expectations.

In my work, I find that most underlying issues revolve around fear of failure.

And I see two categories of fear of failure:

  1. Fear of failure based on social approval issues.
  2. Fear of failure based on wanting badly for hard work and sacrifice to pay off.

When Bob Rotella was my mentor at UVA in the late 80s, he didn’t care what the real issue was when working with athletes. His philosophy was: “just do this” to improve mental toughness.

But I think it’s important for athletes to understand why they choke, get tight, get frustrated, or tank in competition.

You can learn my entire system for working with athletes on the mental game based on my 25 plus years of experience in this area…

You’ll learn all about the tools I use to help athletes uncover their mental game roadblocks in the MGCP program.


Apply for the MGCP course today.

Apply for sports psychology certification today!


Here’s what one participant had to say about the course:

“I thoroughly enjoyed the MGCP course! The information you provided us was so practical and the workbooks and other course materials will be invaluable to my practice. Thank you again for the fantastic experience.”

~Nicole J. Adams, PhD. USAC Level 3 Coach

Filed Under: Mental Coach Articles, Sports Psychology Certification Tagged With: Mental Game Assessments

MGCP - Sports Psychology Certification Course

  1. The MGCP 20-chapter workbook including exercises to teach you how to identify mental game challenges and obstacles that influence performance; develop mental skills individual and team members; and improve teamwork and communication.
  2. The Athlete's Mental Edge workbook system to help you stay organized and accelerate your athletes learning and progress with mental skills.
  3. 12+ Real-life video and audio case studies to accelerate your learning of mental game coaching.
  4. MGCP Summaries, outlines and flow charts to help you understand the over mental coaching process and the phases of mental coaching taught by Dr. Cohn.
  5. Examples of mental imagery programs (hockey, dog handling, and golf) including how to create imagery scripts and audio programs for your athletes.
  6. A series of sports psychology e-books on goal setting, confidence, focus, pregame and preshot routines.
  7. Use of Dr. Cohn’s Athlete’s Mental Aptitude Profile (AMAP) and several sport-specific versions to help you identify an athlete’s or team’s mental game strengths and weaknesses.
  8. Use of the Team Cohesion Aptitude Profile (TCAP) to assess team cohesion; and a sports parent’s profile to use with sports parents.
  9. Examples of pre-seminar questionnaires to use before you give a seminar to a group to help you identify mental game challenges and areas to teach.
  10. How to do team mental game assessments efficiently using an online assessment tool.
  11. Over 160 mental game coaching “handouts” or one-page summaries and worksheets you can use to help you stay organized during sessions and as summaries for your student or team.
  12. 18 real-life case studies focusing on a different challenge in sports psychology and Dr. Cohn’s solution to each. You understand the real-life issues with athletes and how to address their mental game barriers.

Apply for sports psychology certification today!

Resources for Mental Game Coaches

Please browse our programs for mental game coaches and sports psychology professionals below. With the purchase of each program, you can upgrade to the Self-Paced Course or the Full MGCP Certification Course. Contact us at Peak Performance Sports, LLC for more details: 888-742-7225

AMAP Assessment System

The AMAP System licenses to you our exclusive mental game assessment. You learn how how to easily identify your athletes’ mental game challenges, what mental game issues to look, and how to do a summary of the AMAP. The AMAP has several purposes beyond its use as an assessment tool.

BUY NOW

OR READ MORE

Mental Game Assessments

Athlete's Mental Edge Workbooks

The Athlete’s Mental Edge workbook system 2.0 is designed for both mental coaches and sports team coaches. And no matter if you are a 20-year mental coach veteran or just starting your career as a mental coach, you’ll love the simplicity of the workbooks, and your athletes will appreciate your organization.

BUY NOW

OR READ MORE

Workbooks for Mental Coaches

Mental Coaches' Playbook

The Mental Coach's Playbook is a tool for mental coaches to help them improve efficiency and success as a mental game coach working with sports parents and their young athletes. Learn the top issues for young athletes and their parents. Learn how to be more successful when working with young athletes. Digital Download Only.

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OR READ MORE

Working with Sports Parents

Improving Credibility for Mental Coaches

This program helps new and experienced mental coaches gain credibility in your field of expertise. In “Improving Credibility,” sports psychology professionals learn how to get organized with your business documents, how to harness social proof from athletes and coaches, and learn the top tactics to improve your credibility as a mental coach.

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OR READ MORE

Mental Coach Credibility Program

Call 888-742-7225 for More Information

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