Author: Donato Fanelle, MA
Sports can be an emotional roller coaster, so it’s important for athletes to be able to maintain composure while they compete. Lack of emotion isn’t always the answer, as many athletes need some emotions to perform their best, put in the effort, and maintain their best focus. On the other hand, playing with too much emotion can cause athletes to l...
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Author: akimball
Face Your Fears: How to Handle Failure
Author: Alexandra Salerno, LPC, NCC
Imagine you’re minutes away from giving one of the most
important speeches of your career. You’ve prepared for this moment for months;
reviewing and revising your thoughts, clarifying talking points, rehearsing out
loud, and memorizing your lines. All of a sudden, a moment of dread hits and
you think to yourself, “what if I mess up?”
...
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When The Steps Count!
Author: Alexandra Salerno, LPC, NCC
And a 5-6-7-8! . . . For performers and dancers, part of the training process involves learning basic fundamentals in order to build on artistic skills. Basic fundamentals allow a performer to expand their knowledge of the activity they are preparing for (a dance concert) and mold them into becoming experts in their ability (technique; tu...
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The Best Time to Repair a Roof: Misconceptions about Mental Toughness and Mental Health
Author: Donato Fanelle, M.A.
It’s usually when a storm hits and the water begins to leak through the ceiling that we notice our roof needs to be repaired. The roof provides protection from the storm, so it needs to be fixed – but it could be dangerous to climb up there to fix it in the midst of howling winds, treacherous rains, and booming cracks of lightning. It would be ...
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Goal Setting: A Tool to Help You Achieve Your 2019-2020 Goals!
Author: Sarah Swenson, M.S.
Do you ever set a goal for yourself, but you have no idea what the steps should be in order to achieve the goal? Or do you ever have a large list of things to do, but you just aren’t sure what to tackle first? With the start of a new school year for students, parents, teachers, and other performers, there is an opportunity to set goals for onesel...
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Resilience in Sport
What is resiliency? Resiliency is a necessary mental skill that can help you to cope with the obstacles sport and life throw at you. The best way to demonstrate the concept of resiliency is by using a rubber band. Take a rubber band and stretch it as far as you can. Now release the tension. After being stretched, it returns back to the form it started in, loose and ready to be ...
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Quality Training: How to Start the Sports Season with the Right Mindset
Often when people talk about being mentally prepared, the focus is on competition. However, your training habits are going to strongly influence your game habits and your competitive mentality. Therefore, it is essential develop effective habits and make each training session a quality one.
Let’s Call it Preparation I’ve always had issues with calling practice “practice.” To m...
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PARTICIPATION TROPHIES: IS JAMES HARRISON RIGHT?
Participation Trophies: The Good, the Bad, and the Lessons Learned
By Aimee C. Kimball, PhD
Yup. One parent, albeit an NFL player, decides that he doesn’t want his kids to have a “participation trophy” and now the floodgates have opened and every parent who has ever had a little kiddo in sports has an opinion. You just want to know what the right thing to do is so you don...
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Creating Confidence in Sport
Creating Confidence
Having confidence in your abilities is critical in achieving the goals you have set for yourself. This article will focus on how to create a confident mindset through preparation, trust, and your choice of focus.
Confidence is a Choice
We all know someone who isn’t good at something, yet thinks that they are. The people who audition for “American Idol”...
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A Performance Slump: It’s All in Your Head
You are What You Think: Thinking Your Way into Great Performances
Someone once said, “A slump is like a soft bed, easy to get into and hard to get out of”. I disagree; I think a performance slump can be easy to get out of if you know how. A slump begins in our head and ends in our head-once you think you are in a performance slump, you are. Once you think the slump is done, it...
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