Improve your performance with these 7 strategies

1. Mental Preparation: Mental preparation is just as important as physical preparation. Mental preparation involves visualisation techniques, mental rehearsal, and focusing on positive outcomes. Find somewhere comfortable, close your eyes, and visualise your next match / performance. Imagine it going amazingly, imagine yourself performing better than you’ve ever performed. Mentally rehearse the whole event over and over again. Spend time regularly performing these visualisation and mental rehearsals. Check out this article where I talk about Visualisation. 

    

2. Goal Setting: Setting clear, achievable, and specific goals is crucial for athletes and sports persons. Set both short-term and long-term goals to maintain motivation and focus. You can use SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timed). Check out this article where I go into more detail about Goal Setting

    

3. Self-Confidence: Building and maintaining self-confidence is vital for peak performance. Try techniques such as positive self-talk, focusing on strengths, and learning from mistakes rather than dwelling on them. Try repeating phrases like “I’ve chosen to do this, and I want to do this”. “I am a champion, I train like a champion, I win like a champion”. “I train not just to win, but to dominate”. “I believe in myself”. Muhammad Ali said “I am the greatest”. He told the world he was the greatest, and he believed this, and in turn he became the greatest. Check out this article where I talk more about Self-Confidence. 

    

4. Focus and Concentration: It’s important to maintain focus and concentration during training and competition. Techniques such as mindfulness, meditation, deep breathing, and attentional control help athletes and sports persons stay focused under pressure. Hypnotherapy also helps to calm the mind, reduce stress and anxiety, and improve concentration. Check out this article where I explain how to stay in the zone.

    

5. Resilience and Mental Toughness: Developing resilience and mental toughness is essential for overcoming setbacks and adversity. I encourage sports persons to embrace challenges, stay resilient in the face of failure, and maintain a positive attitude. A key tool here is to understand the failure isn’t the opposite of success, it is part of success, it is part of the journey. Embrace every challenge rather than run away from it. Every successful athlete has faced rejection, knock backs, injuries, times when they didn’t win, the key it the ‘Bounce back factor’, to keep going, keep moving forwards despite any knock backs. Check out this article where I go into more details about cultivating resilience.

    

6. Team Dynamics: Fostering positive team dynamics is important for team sports. It’s also important for solo sports, as you might not be competing as part of a team, but you will need a team behind you supporting you from coaches, managers, mentors, nutritionists etc. Building trust, effective communication, and cohesion among team members are crucial for success.

    

7. Feedback and Reflection: Something that can be undervalued in terms of its impact on improving performance, is continuous learning and improvement through feedback and reflection. Athletes should be open to feedback from coaches and teammates, and they should regularly reflect on their performances to identify areas for growth. 

Summary. My approach to improving sporting performance combines mental skills training, goal setting, and a focus on teamwork and resilience to help athletes reach their full potential.

Are you a sports person (amateur or pro), and looking for help to improve your sporting performance. Perhaps you need help with: motivation, performance nerves, focus & concentration, bouncing back after injury or some other set back, a mental block on a particular move or something else that’s holding you back from reaching your full potential.  

Do get in touch. Email laura@laurabeadle.com and we can arrange a free consultation so you can find out how I can help you.