Confidence in young athletes articles and tips for sports parents, young athletes, and youth coaches to improve mental performance and consistency.
Mentally Prepare to Compete Against Higher-Ranked Teams The main mental ingredient in upset victories is belief. By belief, we’re not just talking about pie-in-the-sky belief, but belief steeped in reality. The first step in understanding belief is to know the effect of a lack of belief. Young athletes who lack … Read Sport Psychology Tip
How Athletes’ Confidence is Fragile Athletes can feel confident in their ability to successfully perform in some circumstances and not others. For example, a basketball player may feel more confident when shooting free throws early in a basketball game than when on the foul line in the fourth quarter of … Read Sport Psychology Tip
Have a Calm Mindset to Reach Peak Performance Overthinking can cloud kids’ judgment and send too many signals to their bodies at one time. Philadelphia 76ers star Ben Simmons, after the 108-103 Game 2 loss to the Boston Celtics, tweeted about his “overthinking” during the game. He committed five turnovers, … Read Sport Psychology Tip
Elite and Travel Teams Can Hurt Kids’ Confidence That’s the view of Hal Phillips, a former sports parent and youth soccer coach, plus author of Generation Zero: Founding Fathers, Hidden Histories and the Making of Soccer in America. He spoke with us recently during an interview for our Ultimate Sports … Read Sport Psychology Tip
Parents and Coaches Often Overlook Players’ Emotions It may seem as if a player’s negative emotions or outbursts only affect the player, but the impact is much more far-reaching. In one of our Ultimate Sports Parent podcasts, our guest explained that negative emotions can spread, like a virus, from one … Read Sport Psychology Tip
At age 19, Cliff Meidl survived an electric shock that prompted doctors to say they should amputate his legs above the knee. But his mom did some research, and found Dr. Malcolm Lesavoy, a plastic surgeon and clinical professor of plastic surgery at UCLA School of Medicine. Lesavoy found a way … Read Sport Psychology Tip