There are many ways a mental performance coach can help support an athlete’s mental health. When working closely together, they can be a key resource for cultivating a strong mind and overcoming mental health challenges.
Recently, the amount of athletes coming forward with such challenges has increased. This is incredible, especially as it drives more young athletes to realize that it’s okay to open up about mental health struggles.
Following awareness is action. Recognizing you are dealing with performance anxiety or the fact that the fear of failure is leading to many negative thoughts is important, but only if you proceed it with steps towards improvement.
A mental performance coach can help guide you on your path forward; working your way to a stronger and healthier mind. There are four main ways that can happen.
They Will Help You Understand Yourself
While external factors are at play which can contribute to your mental health challenges as an athlete, the true cause lies within your own mind.
For example, if you are struggling with performance anxiety, there are thoughts which are leading to the anxious feelings. Typically, these will include thoughts regarding what you don’t want to happen and worries about what you do want to happen.
Now, of course, that is a very simplified explanation. But the point is, if you understand the thoughts you’re having in specific situations, that can greatly help in working to reduce them. If you reduce the anxious thoughts, you will reduce the anxious feelings.
Beyond understanding what you’re thinking, a mental performance coach will also help you understand what exactly is affecting you.
You may not know whether it’s anxiety, depression, low confidence, or perfectionism. You simply may only be able to describe the fact that you no longer have the motivation to train and that the game has become a chore.
That’s where a mental coach will step in to help you truly get to the bottom of what’s negatively impacting you.
They Will Help You Change The Way You View Mental Toughness
One of the prevailing ways of thinking which leads to stigma surrounding mental health is the idea that it means you’re weak to open up about mental health challenges.
This causes athletes to remain silent, afraid of the negative labels which will be placed on them.
However, such an idea cannot be further from the truth. In fact, I hold to the belief that opening up shows true strength, as it takes incredible courage to be honest. In addition, by being truthful about your challenges, you’re provided with an opportunity to improve.
Through this improvement, you will gain more confidence along with other mental traits which will strengthen your mind.
A mental performance coach will help support an athlete in understanding the importance of being honest about their mental health challenges, along with guiding them through the growth process.
They Will Help You Find Joy
Working as a mental performance coach myself, one of the major complaints athletes come to me with is having lost the love for the game.
For the most part, this loss of passion is due to an underlying issue. An example is an athlete who feels a lot of pressure to perform perfectly. They judge themselves after every practice and every game to determine whether or not they were good enough.
After a while, this gets tiring. Not only that, but it leads to increased anxiety and fear due to the heavy focus being placed on the outcome.
A mental coach will help you identify and overcome those underlying challenges, allowing you to once more find joy in playing the sport you love.
They Will Help You Improve Your Performance
On the surface, this may not seem directly related to mental health. But the truth is, performing poorly can be a leading contributor to athletes struggling with their mental health. For that reason, increasing performance through mental coaching is incredibly valuable.
An example is when you’re performing inconsistently. One week you’re on and the next week you’re off. Or it could be even more frequently, involving differences in performance levels between practices or games that are just days apart.
This is incredibly frustrating. You get to the point where you simply don’t understand what’s going on and why on earth you can’t play as well as you know you can on a repetitive basis.
As a result, it’s likely you will develop anxiety and fear.
A mental performance coach will work on overcoming the mental barriers that are keeping you from playing consistently. This will lead to more control over your mindset, and likely more consistent performances.
Final Thoughts
With the many pressures and expectations felt by athletes, it’s natural for them to struggle with mental health challenges. Where the danger lies is when they remain silent about such struggles.
Luckily, many athletes recently have come forward, opening up about their own mental health.
Once such awareness has been made, the next step is improvement. A mental performance coach can help support you along your path towards a stronger and healthier mind.