Author: Dr. Jim Taylor

Sports: Competitive Lessons from the World’s Best Athletes

I define Prime Time as the most important game of your life in which you’ll be up against your toughest opponents and competing under the most difficult conditions. Prime Time is what sports are all about. It’s the reason why you work so hard on all aspects of your sport. And Prime Time is probably the reason why you’re reading my article.

Prime Time is that moment that defines you as an athlete. It shows you and others how skilled you are, how well conditioned you are, and, most importantly, how strong you are mentally. All of my work in the psychology of sport is directed toward your achieving Prime Sport, playing at a consistently high level under the most challenging conditions, in Prime Time.

This notion of Prime Time emerged from my work with one young athlete who was making a difficult, though successful, transition from high-level junior competition to professional sports. What became clear to both of us was that the world’s best athletes hold little resemblance to lower-level athletes. Sure, they compete in the same sport and go through the same motions. But what enables them to be at that rarified level goes beyond just exceptional physical ability. The best athletes in the world don’t just do things better, they do things differently, particularly those things that occur between their ears. These lessons that we learned together helped this athlete overcome the challenges of professional sports and enabled him to progress up the world rankings. They also taught me lessons that athletes at all levels could use to raise their level of play and achieve their highest level of sports success. These lessons are divided into categories: competitive and mental (I’ll discuss the mental lessons next week). Read More

Sports: 5 Ps for the Big Game

The greatest challenge that athletes have is to play their best when it really counts. Regardless of the level of competition, whether a state championship, nationals, the Olympics, or World Series, every athlete needs to rise to the occasion of the big game (I will use ‘game’ to denote any sports competition including those that […]