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Do
You Have a Sport Psychologist On Your Success Team? – Discover
What This Mental Game Coach Can Do For You.
Top professional athletes and
coaches know how important it is to have a solid mental game. In
pro golf alone, it's been estimated that over 80% of men and women
pro golfers use a sport psychologist or mental game coach. Here
are seven major ways you can utilize a sport psychologist to help
you improve faster, and create sustainable success in your sport.
567
words.
Do You Have a Sport Psychologist On Your Success
Team?
Discover What This Mental Game Coach Can Do
For You
Bill Cole, MS, MA
Founder and CEO
William B. Cole Consultants
Silicon Valley, California
"I try to have peace of mind. If you have that,
you are a mental millionaire. It doesn't cost anything."
—Chi Chi Rodriguez, has 38 professional wins and an induction
into the World Golf Hall of Fame
"I was trying to get so far ahead I could choke and still win."
—Lee Trevino, at the 1968 US Open, which he won over Jack Nicklaus
by four strokes
"Pressure is something every golfer feels at one time or another...Sometimes
when I putted, I looked like a monkey trying to wrestle a football."
—Sam Snead, golfing legend
It's clear that top golf professionals know how important it is
to have a solid mental game. They should know. Of all the sports
in the world, pro golfers hire the most sport psychologists. It's
been estimated that over 80% of pro golfers, men and women, use
a sport psychologist or mental game coach.
Here are seven major ways you can utilize a sport psychologist to
help you improve faster, and create sustainable success in your
sport.
- A Sport Psychologist Helps You Develop Mental Toughness.
Mental toughness is learned, not inborn. Mental toughness is partly
borne from superb physical conditioning and discipline, but there
is more that makes a champion. A sport psychologist can teach
you this critical skill.
- A Sport Psychologist Helps You Build A Laser Focus.
If you are prone to being distracted, you may need a sport psychologist
who can teach you how to block out external and internal distractions.
They do this by teaching attentional control techniques. Learn
those and you will be able to maintain focus under any conditions.
- A Sport Psychologist Helps You Create Calmness Under Pressure.
Stress and pressure can create mental blocks that disrupt performance.
A sport psychologist knows how to teach you to relax and handle
these stressors.
- A Sport Psychologist Helps You Play One Shot At A Time.
Your best performances take place in the zone. The zone is in
the present, the here and now. A sport psychologist devises techniques
that help you stay in the now and play one shot at a time.
- A Sport Psychologist Helps You Prepare Mentally. It's
critical that you have a mental readiness system before you practice,
take a lesson or compete. A sport psychologist helps you create
this psychological preparation process so you can get your game
face on, and control your mind and emotions.
- A Sport Psychologist Helps You Shake Off Mistakes. If
you are prone to being thrown off when you make errors in a game,
you need a sport psychologist. He can help you refocus, relax
and get back into your mental groove quickly, using a mental trigger
process.
- A Sport Psychologist Helps You Reduce Your Mental Errors.
Mental errors usually come from poor focus. A sport psychologist
helps you gain and maintain focus on what is important, while
you let the rest go.
Now you know how a sport psychologist can help
you. They are either trained as a psychologist with a specialization
in sports, or come from the world of physical education with specialization
in psychology. They do this in an educational, rather than clinical
manner. A mental game coach can do everything discussed above as
well.
If you are a coach who desires training and certification as a mental
game coach, you may be interested in the training program offered
by the International Mental Game Coaching Association. The IMGCA
certifies qualified individuals at four levels as Certified
Mental Game Practitioners.
 Learn
about Bill's book, The
Mental Game of Golf, or purchase
the book from Amazon.com.
For a comprehensive overview of your mental abilities you need
an assessment instrument that identifies your complete mental strengths
and weaknesses. Here is a free, easy-to-take 65-item sport
psychology assessment tool you can score right on the spot.
This assessment gives you a quick snapshot of your strengths and
weaknesses in your mental game. You can use this as a guide in creating
your own mental training program, or as the basis for a program
you undertake with mental
game coach Bill Cole, MS, MA to improve your mental game. This
assessment would be an excellent first step to help you get the
big picture about your mental game.
Copyright ©
Bill Cole, MS, MA. All rights reserved.
Bill Cole, MS, MA, a leading authority
on peak performance, mental toughness and coaching, is founder and
CEO of William B. Cole Consultants, a consulting firm that helps
organizations and professionals achieve more success in business,
life and sports. He is also the Founder and President of the International
Mental Game Coaching Association (www.mentalgamecoaching.com),
an organization dedicated to advancing the research, development,
professionalism and growth of mental game coaching worldwide. He
is a multiple Hall-Of-Fame honoree as an athlete, coach and school
alumnus, an award-winning scholar-athlete, published book author
and articles author, and has coached at the highest levels of major-league
pro sports, big-time college athletics and corporate America. For
a free, extensive article archive, or for questions and comments
visit him at www.MentalGameCoach.com.
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