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We love to talk about the mental game... why don't we train it?

Writer's picture: Chris DeMarcoChris DeMarco

As a sport psychology consultant, I enjoy watching various sports in my free time. One thing I have recently noticed while tuning into different sporting events is the amount of time the commentators, reporters, coaches, and players spend talking about the mental aspect of sport. The events recently where the commentary stood out to me were the PGA's Fedex Cup playoffs, the Ryder Cup, and the tennis US Open. During competition, a large part of the commentary was on what the player's mindset is or should be. How would they react to this or that? Can they handle nerves/pressure?

What intrigued me was the amount of airtime the mental aspect received on these broadcasts. It seemed that this emphasis adequately reflected the importance of the mental game. Anyone who has ever played a sport, given a speech, or been in a theatre production understands how important the mind is if you want any chance of success. So my question to everyone is: If the mind is this important (which it is), than why don't we spend a lot of time and energy training it?

I want you to imagine an offensive line coach in football. There is a certain stereotype (which may or may not be accurate) I think of. Big, maybe slightly overweight, former player themselves, yells a lot, etc. Ok so you get the picture. Now imagine the offensive line coach gathering his players and sitting them down to have a discussion. He wants to convey how important it is for them to be physically strong in order to be a successful offensive line unit. He brings in quotes about strength and talks to them about how a large percentage of being a good lineman is how strong they are. He doesn't just do this once, but over and over. Every day he sits them down and tells them it's crucial they are the strongest they can be and why it's so important if they want to compete at a high level.

Now also imagine if this coach never took his players to the weight room, didn't gave them a plan of how to get stronger, and didn't hire a strength coach to help them. He would go down as the worst coach ever! His linemen would surely struggle and be weaker than any team they played.

This is what I see in a lot of sport cultures and coaching right now. We understand the mental aspect of sport is important. We talk about how important it is. But we don't actually do anything about it! There are famous quotes by athletes that say their sport is mostly mental. Yogi Berra had his own way of putting it saying, "Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical." Dick Fosbury, the inventor of the Fosbury flop in high jump, said that sport at the elite level is 90% mental. If this is true or even close to being true think about how crazy it is to not do any mental training!

This disconnect between knowing your mind is important and actually training it is one of the reasons I do what I do. You can and should train your mind!

Don't know how or where to start? MPG specializes in maximizing your journey in mental performance.

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