International Mental Game Coaching Association founder Bill Cole has been coaching and consulting in sports psychology for 30 years. He has served as a sports psychology consultant for various elite level athletes, including 2006 Olympic Gold Medalist and two-time world curling champion Russ Howard and the Performance Menu’s own Aimee Anaya. “I am a much calmer and more consistent lifter, thanks to him,” she said.

Cole has also worked as an NCAA Division I head coach, a sport psychology coach for the Stanford University Baseball and the Israeli Davis Cup Tennis Team and was the mental game consultant for the Irish National Cricket Team. We began discussing the importance of psychological preparation for athletic performance with Bill Cole last issue. This month we discussed mental training for various sports, and steps athletes can take to push through their own mental obstacles and limitations. Read on…

How do you know if you need to work with a mental game coach or not?

People call me because they are experiencing frustration in their sport performance in one of more of these ways:

1. They have lost their desire and passion to work hard and be committed.
2. Their sport is no longer fun and exciting.
3. They don’t know how to win anymore.
4. They are in a slump.
5. They turn in a great performance, in the zone, but can’t get there on command, again.
6. They are in transition in life or their sport, and lose their way.
7. Someone in their life is pressuring them to perform.
8. They play well in practice, but not in competition.
9. They have communication issues with key people.

My approach is to assess where they are, what got them there, discover where they want to go and help them devise a plan to achieve excellence.

My overall approach is to help people in these ways:

1. Improve their self-confidence in their sport.
2. Learn new and better mental approaches.
3. Improve their sports performances under pressure.
4. Discover new levels of awareness about themselves as an athlete.
5. Counsel them in the "big-picture view" of their sports career.
6. Help them transfer the many mental lessons from sport to the rest of their life.

No matter how good one’s mindset, there are often other factors at play. How do you assure success for all of your clients? Is it possible for someone to not hold themselves back mentally but still not succeed for other reasons?

Sometimes athletes don’t succeed in their events for a number of different reasons, none specifically mental. And sometimes these reasons are partly mental. Examples would be not playing smart tactically or strategically, not preparing properly, inadequate sleep and rest, and other fairly obvious causes.

To make sure my clients succeed I enlarge the reasons they come to see me. They come because their sport performance is falling short. I tell them that we will work on that, but that perhaps their performance issues in sport have larger ramifications. I do that to strengthen their motivation to change and to improve the quality of their lives beyond sport. Here’s what I tell them:

Mental game coaching is an educational learning experience. It's an opportunity to grow as an athlete and as a person. It's an enlightening growth process, and a very interesting one. You will learn more about yourself as an athlete, and as a person.

Even though the main focus is to help you improve your mental game as an athlete, you will also discover ways to more consistently learn, change and perform in these other pursuits:

• Academic studies and exams
• Speeches, presentations and interviews
• Sales, networking and influencing situations
• Music, writing, art and drama
• Stressful life situations

As you master your mental game there will be easily measured, objective signposts that confirm your improvement in your sport. These might be records, times, win-loss outcomes, etc. You also want to notice the subjective measures of your progress with your mental game. These are less obvious, but they are just as real, and just as important. Here are 66 subjective mental game goals you can strive toward.

1. Improve your mental toughness.
2. Improve your concentration.
3. More confidence.
4. Enjoy competition more.
5. Understand yourself more as a person.
6. Understand yourself more as an athlete.
7. More positive self-talk and mental images.
8. Handle pressure better.
9. Enjoy your sport more.
10. Progress accelerates.
11. Skills become more automatic.
12. More happiness and satisfaction.
13. Reduce and eliminate a self-critical attitude.
14. Reduce and eliminate self-defeating anger.
15. Better ball judgment.
16. Make better decisions.
17. More control over your thoughts.
18. More control over your shots.
19. Enter the zone more often, and when it counts.
20. People who know you volunteer that they see you improving.
21. People you don’t know volunteer that they see you improving.
22. Improve your positive mindset.
23. Overcome the fear of failure.
24. More patience with yourself and others.
25. Playing to win" more than "playing not to lose".
26. Reduce and eliminate self-sabotage.
27. Stay calmer and more poised under pressure.
28. Play as well in an event as you do in practice.
29. Reduce and eliminate perfectionism.
30. Reduce and eliminate mental blocks.
31. Fewer stress symptoms.
32. Fewer worry and nerves.
33. Better sportsmanship.
34. Analyze situations better and solve problems faster.
35. Improve motivation.
36. Better energy levels.
37. Better mental stamina.
38. Reduce and eliminate procrastination.
39. Better media relations.
40. Play better against weaker opponents.
41. Play better against stronger opponents.
42. Close out leads better.
43. Improve your stress control.
44. Keep slumps away and minimize them when they appear.
45. Reduce and eliminate choking.
46. Overcome the fear of success.
47. Better life-balance skills.
48. Handle setbacks better.
49. Handle opponent’s mind games better.
50. Improve communication skills.
51. Improve anticipation skills.
52. Improve mental readiness skills.
53. Skills take less effort.
54. Better learning strategies.
55. Transfer mental lessons from sport to the rest of your life.
56. Reduce and eliminate fears and doubts.
57. Improve emotional intelligence.
58. Recover mentally from mistakes more readily.
59. Improve self-coaching skills.
60. Control your muscle relaxation better.
61. Control your breathing better.
62. Improve your will to win.
63. Not embarrass yourself in a competition.
64. Feel comfortable enough to try new things.
65. Keep your mental game together more regularly.

In essence, mental game coaching is a valuable, specialized educational experience, one that will benefit you far beyond your sport experiences. It's a lifetime investment in yourself as a person. The insights you learn and the skills you build will carry over to many important varied applications for school, business and life itself. I want to help you maximize your sport experience. I want you to succeed and to help you grow as an athlete and as a person.

How do you modify mental training for different sports? I’m assuming getting prepared for an individual sport like weightlifting is different than a team sport like football and different yet from, say, wrestling or other sports where you will compete with one person individually.

Almost all of the methods and approaches I use are applicable across all sports, and also to the salespeople, public speakers, actors, musicians and executives I coach in my work.
The major common threads across these venues are:

1. Awareness
2. Learning
3. Development
4. Change
5. Habit Formation
6. Performance

I help my clients with these 16 critical performance issues:

1. Anxiety
2. Choking
3. Focus
4. Goal-Setting and Achievement
5. Perfectionism
6. Procrastination
7. Mental Preparation
8. Mental Practice
9. Self-Discipline
10. Getting In The Zone
11. Slumps and Confidence
12. Hecklers And Psych-Outs
13. Performing Under Pressure
14. The Fear Of Success
15. The Fear Of Failure
16. The Imposter Syndrome

I utilize these five major mind-coaching tools, but have a toolkit of hundreds of techniques.

Positive Thinking

Perhaps the most common mind tool of all, positive thinking involves being aware of thoughts and speech and making it as positive as possible.

Mental Practice

Mental practice is drilling or rehearsing your mind for an upcoming performance or shaping your mind to enhance a particular mental or personal quality.

Visualization

This involves using the "movies of your mind" to mentally practice, rehearse contingency plans, plan for goals, relax, energize, prepare or change mental, emotional and physical states.

Self-Hypnosis and Hypnosis

Once learned from a book, audio tapes, mind practitioner or a hypnotherapist, this mind-body skill may be utilized for a wide variety of mental training purposes. Uses include relaxation, visualization, habit control, fear reduction and performance enhancement.

Cognitive Restructuring

A more sophisticated mind tool, this involves changing thoughts and patterns of thinking so attitudes and mind sets are re-formed into desirable and intentional mental structures.

28 specific techniques and approaches I use in almost every session with clients include:

1. Managing The Inner Critic
2. Concentration
3. Recovery from mistakes
4. Mental Toughness
5. Mental Readiness Procedures
6. Championship Thinking
7. Maintaining Perspective
8. Breath Control
9. Affirmations
10. The Paradox of Letting Go While Maintaining Control
11. Relaxed Concentration
12. Closing Out Leads
13. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
14. Paralysis By Analysis
15. Trusting Skills
16. Managing Expectations
17. Emotional Intelligence
18. Life Balance
19. The Imposter Syndrome
20. The Zone / Flow State
21. Fear Of Failure
22. "Playing To Win" Versus "Playing Not To Lose"
23. "Hating To Lose" Versus "Wanting To Win"
24. Emotional Management
25. Intrinsic Motivation
26. Influencing Skills
27. Extrinsic Motivation
28. Personal Narrative and Vision

You’ve coached some Hollywood stars in tennis, and some very high-level athletes, and I’m assuming some athletes who are not at that level yet. What are the differences that you’ve noticed? Or are the same patterns just amplified at different levels?

The amazing thing about mental game coaching across skill levels is when my lower level athletes discover that the world champions I have coached have the exact same mental issues they are facing. That is always a shock to them. But it’s true. The difference? The high level people are more determined to succeed, have more mental toughness, and persevere in removing these mental and emotional obstacles.

Another unusual fact—many high-level athletes got where they are WITHOUT much mental training at all. They did it on pure mojo, desire and hard work and along the way they picked up mental toughness and personal success system. Kind of like they are on some sort of mental momentum. They feel they can’t be stopped.

But then I often get calls from these same athletes when they hit a wall, go through a tough transition, say high school to college, or college to pro, and they lose their way. They forget how to be great, and they doubt themselves. That’s where I remind them of their greatness, that they still have it, and give them ways to re-create that greatness, but with a new intentionality and focus.

So overall, the mental issues cut across all sports, levels and gender.