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Welcome to Sports Insights Magazine! Learn practical, cutting-edge sports psychology and mental training tips to improve mental toughness in sports.

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Peaksports.com News

The Confident Sports Kid CD and Workbook Program! Packed with mental strategies, this program teaches your young athletes how to identify confidence busters, manage expectations that undermine confidence, and mentally prepare to stay confident when faced with adversity. Improve your sports kids' confidence quickly>>

Instill Confidence in Your Baseball and Softball Players! Learn how to help your team play with full confidence and help them stay confident after mistakes! Learn more about Instilling Confidence in Baseball and Softball Players>>

Athletes: Improve Your Success with Online Mental Training! Peaksports Network teaches athletes and coaches cutting-edge and simple mental training strategies for a fraction of the cost of personal mental coaching. Learn how to boost your confidence and success...

Parents: Improve Your Kids' Success with Kids' Sports Psychology! Kids' Sports Psychology is a one-stop, exclusive 10-step plan for boosting confidence and cultivating positive mental game skills in young athletes! Download age-specific confidence-boosting mental game e-books for young athletes. Learn how to boost sports kids' sports success...

New Job Opening at Peak Performance Sports! Do you want to learn more about a career in sports psychology and train with Dr. Cohn? Dr. Cohn is hiring a new assistant to help with several tasks including research, promotion, customer support, product development and much more! Full to part-time job available. Please contact Dr. Cohn at 888-742-7225 if you are interested.

Free Mental Toughness Reports!

• Golfers and Instructors: Improve Preshot Routines.
• Golfers: Learn How to Overcome the Yips with Freer Putting Drills
• Baseball and Softball Players and Coaches: Improve At-Bat Routines!
• Tennis Players and Coaches: Improve Between Point Mental Toughness!
• Hockey Players and Coaches: Improve your Pregame Mindset!
• Equestrians and trainers: Improve Riders' Preshow Mindset!
• Parents and Youth Coaches: Boost Kids' Confidence and Success!
• NEW: Musicians: Overcome Performance Anxiety and Reach Your Peak

Locker Room Talk

"It Helped Me Tremendously..."

"I tell all my golf buddies and old college teammate about the work I did with you, Dr. Cohn. I don't know if it amounted to any more students Dr. Cohn, but you should know it helped me tremendously. Thank you!"

~Drew Denton, Golfer

Learn about how to improve your mental game for golf>>

Feature Mental Game Article

Does Your Training Instill Emotional Resilience?
By Patrick J. Cohn, Ph.D.

Does your training have a built in mental and emotional dynamic that helps you learn mental toughness and perform your best when it counts? Are you or your team practicing for optimal transfer--mental and physical--to competition?

Today’s coaches tend to focus their efforts on technical drills and forget to build in decision making and coping mechanisms that help athletes develop emotional control, which allows athletes toperform their best in competition.

That’s the message fromtwo-time National Championship Coach Jeff Moore who I recently interviewed for The Sports Psychology podcast.

Jeff coached women’s tennis for 23 years at the University of Texas. His Teams won Two NCAA Championships and 18 conference titles. He was named National Coach of the Year and was Conference Coach of the Year 10 times. Today Jeff is a leadership consultant for groups in business and sports at mooreleadership.com.

"The problem is that the conventional approach to coaching is to do drills and scrimmage a lot. What’s lacking is any game situation (or point scenarios in tennis) to create drills where you force athletes to make decisions," said Moore.

Many--or should I say most--athletes seek out my services because they can’t transfer their practice game to competition. They simply don’t perform as well in competition as they do in practice. Several mental game blocks can get in the way such as fear of failure, lack of emotional control, thinking too much about results, and so on.

Another factor that most athletes and coaches don’t consider is how you can set up training to help athletes transfer their skills to competition.

“If you make someone think and make decisions in training, it’s frustrating and creates emotional stress, along with physical stress. In that way, you are creating a positive transfer from practice to competition. You can’t create positive, optimal transfer without designing the practice around the mental dynamics,” said Moore.

Coaches and athletes must learn mental toughness during practice so they can handle the ups and downs they face in competition. The only way to do this is to set up practice to stress athletes—mentally, emotionally, and physically….

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“The way you set up practice can build emotional toughness. The role of the coach is way overdone today. Not enough of the responsibility is put on the athletes to make decisions and learn how to overcome adversity,” said Moore.

“In competition, you want a balance between intensity and poise. You need to have the ability to cope with the ups and downs in competition and what you can’t control. We would focus on problem solving in our practice” to equip players with decision making skills.

I agree with Jeff…. Many coaches today don’t stress the importance of learning the mental game in practice and developing emotional resilience. Some athletes don’t handle increased mental or emotional stress in practice. And I think some coaches are not sure how to set up the right practice scenarios without stressing the coach-player relationship.

The concept of “transfer of practice” is not new. Motor learning experts have studies this for years. You practice or train like you perform in competition. That’s why teams scrimmage, golfers play practice rounds, and tennis players do practice sets. But does this simulate enough pressure to help athletes develop greater mental toughness in competition?

How can you design practice for mental and emotional stress so you can have greater emotional toughness in competition?

In Moore’s playbook, he’d set up practice drills, given certain parameters, where athletes would have to figure out the solution themselves. He’d put pressure on players that would create frustration in practice. He’d also rate players on how they performed in various scenarios. These type of drills would build in emotional resilience. His athletes would learn how to play to win and learn how to manage their mental game.

I’ve always believed that you must learn the mental game during day-to-day training. You can learn a lot about yourself in competition, but it all starts with daily training and practicing for greatness.

I’ll publish Moore’s interview in The Sports Psychology Podcast soon. You can listen to recent podcasts at Peaksports.com Blog or subscribe to my podcast via iTunes using the links below:

Listen to past Sports Psychology podcasts

Subscribe to The Sports Psychology Podcast at iTunes

Sports Specific Mental Training Tip

Top athletes want the ball at the end of the game. They thrive under pressure of big games. James' confidence grows throughout the game and he comes to life at the end of the game. You have to be willing to make or miss the final shot of the game...

"We put the ball in his [Lebron James'] hands a lot at the end because obviously he's a great player. He's 6'8", he can see over the defense and he's a great passer and enjoys the moment. Confidence. I see more confidence in him at the end of games. He wants it. He wants to win games. He wants to be in that winning circle. So he's going to do whatever it takes."

~ DWYANE WADE, Miami Heat

Podcasts of the Month

Sports Psychology Podcast of the Month!
In this week’s sports psychology podcast, Dr. Cohn is joined by Todd Stofka of Philly Hypnosis Sport Psychology. Todd works with professional, Olympic, collegiate and high school athletes to help improve their performance. Sports psychology expert, Dr. Patrick Cohn helps athletes overcome the mental barriers that limit their performance.

In this Podcast, Dr. Cohn and Todd Stofka discuss how hypnosis techniques can help athletes, performers, and organizations get the most out of their performance. Listen to this month’s sports psychology podcast to learn how hypnosis is used to help athletes overcome the barriers that limit their performance.

• Show me the Sports Psychology Podcast of the Month!
• Learn more about our "Sports Psychology CD" Programs
• Watch the Sports Confidence Videos by Peaksports!
• Subscribe to the Sports Psychology Podcast at iTunes!

The Golf Psychology Podcast of the Month!
Dr. Patrick Cohn, golf psychology expert and author of the “Golfer’s Mental Edge” CD program, teaches amateur to tour professional golfers how to improve their mental game of golf.

In this week’s golf psychology session, mental game of golf expert and author of The Mental Game of Golf, Dr. Cohn, helps a an instructor who works with several talented players that don’t have the belief that they can play on tour. Do you have the physical talent or physical skills to make the next level, but don’t have the belief to match those skills? Listen to this months podcast and find out how to gain the confidence needed to perform at the next level.

• Show me the Golf Psychology Podcast of the Month!
• Learn more about "The Golfer's Mental Edge" CD program
• Watch the Golf Confidence Video series!
• Golfers and Instructors: Download a golf psychology report to improve your preshot routine overnight
• Subscribe to the Golf Psychology Podcast at iTunes!

Athlete Quote of the Month

"We can't worry about trailing during the game."

"We just got to continue to play our game and not worry about if we're trailing or not. We don't want to trail. We don't want to trail at all throughout the whole game, if it's possible. But we just got to maintain our focus."

~LeBron James, Game One - 2011 NBA Finals

Video of the Month

Sports psychology expert, Dr. Patrick Cohn of Peak Performance Sports, LLC answers a mental game of golf question from a golfer, in his new video series titled, "Ask Doc." This golfer wants to know the mental strategies for getting into the zone and performing his best. Find out how to set the conditions to get into the zone.

Visit Peaksports.com sports psychology blog to watch the video.

Ask Doc Cohn

"Help! I choke when I play with others!"

Golfer:

I have a real problem with playing golf in tournaments. Normally, on the course or driving range (when I'm by myself), my shots are relaxed, fluid and I feel like I'm in control and score well. But the minute I started golfing with others or especially am placed in a tournament situation, I choke, stiffen up, cannot perform well and no matter WHAT I do, or how many calming influences I try including positive self talk, I STILL cannot settle myself down. I have read several books and articles on mental game preparation but cannot seem to get over this hurdle during competition. I'm close to giving up on competing!

Read Dr. Cohn's answer to this question now!

Most Valuable Product (MVP)

The Confident Sports Kids CD and Workbook Program NEW!

"The Confident Sports Kid: A 7- Day Plan for Boosting Self Confidence in Young Athletes." Packed with mental strategies that you and your kids can start using immediately, this program teaches your athletes how to identify confidence busters, proactively deal with them, manage expectations that undermine confidence, and mentally prepare to stay confident when faced with adversity.

What's more, our new program teaches you, as sports parents and coaches, how you may be hurting your kids' confidence and gives you instructions for changing your behavior in ways that will improve your athletes' performance, confidence and enjoyment.

Read more about The Confident Sports Kid CD and Workbook Program!

Dr. Patrick J. Cohn
Master Mental Game Coach

Dr. Patrick J. Cohn is the President and founder of Peak Performance Sports of Orlando, Florida. He earned his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Virginia in 1991, and founded Peak Performance Sports in 1994. Dr. Cohn is an author, speaker and one of the nation's leading mental game experts. His coaching programs instill confidence, composure and effective mental strategies that enable athletes and teams to reach their performance goals. Dr. Cohn has helped athletes from a variety of sports backgrounds (both amateurs and professionals) identify and develop the mindset needed to achieve peak performance. World-class golfers, runners, shooters and auto racers, as well as motocross, tennis, baseball, softball, football and hockey players, are among those who have benefited from his mental game coaching and training.

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