Category: Sports

Sports!: Serious Sports Injuries Require Mental Rehab Too

The sad reality of competitive sports is that many young athletes either have or will hurt themselves so seriously that it will end their seasons and potentially their careers. The good news is that surgical and rehabilitative technology has become so advanced that a full physical recovery from an injury that two decades ago might have been career-ending is now commonplace.

But another reality of physical injuries is that the mind gets damaged too, but little attention is paid to how the absence of “mental rehab” can prevent athletes from returning to or improving on their pre-injury level of performance. As a result, I thought I would share some ideas I have about how injured athletes can ensure that their minds recover as fully as do their bodies.

Sports: An Amazing Video!

A must-watch sports video. If you aren’t in awe or inspired after watching it, you might want to check to see if you have a pulse!

Sports: Red Flags for Over-invested Sports Parents

One of your most essential goals in your children’s lives as athletes is to have them gain ownership of their participation. They need to feel that their sport is their thing. But ownership isn’t just something that they can gain on their own. Rather, it is a gift you give them that offers so many […]

Sports: 5 Tips for Quality Training

There is nothing more important to achieving your athletic goals than what you do in practice. It is during training that you ingrain the physical, technical, tactical, and mental habits that will come out in competitions. If you establish good habits, you’ll have a good chance of having a good performance. But if you instill bad habits, those will come out and you’ll have little chance of performing your best.

Despite its importance, most athletes don’t give much thought to how they can get the most out of their training efforts. That’s why the training time of athletes is often both inefficient and ineffective. So, in the spirit of total appreciation for the value of quality training, here are five tips that can help you get the most out of practice:

1. Have a goal and purpose. You must have a clear goal about what area you want to improve as you head out to training. For example, it might be technical, tactical, mental, or team related. You must also have a clear purpose for training each day. A purpose identifies specifically how you’re going to achieve your goal for the day. If your goal is to improve something technical, your purpose would be certain drills that would ingrain that new technique.

Sports: 5 Things I Hate to See Athletes Do in Practice

I’ve been involved in high-level sports for most of my life. The first 25 years, I was an alpine ski racer who competed internationally. My athletic life has continued to this day with a 2nd degree black belt in karate, running marathons, and competing in Ironman triathlons. In all cases, I learned the ups and […]

Sports: Get Ready for Your Big Event

The Wimbledon Tennis Championships just concluded and the Women’s Soccer World Cup is under way. And then there’s you. You’ve worked hard in pursuit of your goals and, hopefully, you’ve achieved at least some of your competitive goals including qualifying for an upcoming big event. You may not be in the “Big Show” yet, but […]

Sports: Become an Emotional Master

Sports can evoke a wide range of emotions, from inspiration, pride, exhilaration, and satisfaction, to fear, frustration, anger, and panic, often in a very short time span during training or competition. Emotions lies at the top of the Prime Sport Pyramid because it has been my experience that they ultimately dictate your ability to achieve […]

Sports: Is the NFL Bad For Women’s Health?

Just prior to the Super Bowl in 1993, a news conference was held by a coalition of women’s groups informing reporters of substantial evidence that domestic violence rose significantly (as much as 40 percent) on Super Bowl Sunday. The subsequent flurry of media attention resulted in this news becoming a “fact” (you’ll see why I […]

Sports: Does March Madness Matter?

The New York Times Magazine had a cover story a few weeks ago that posed the question: Does college basketball matter? In answer to this rather existential question, I thought, well, it depends to which college basketball they are referring. Are they talking about the game that’s “all about the Benjamins,” including exorbitant coaches’ salaries […]

Sports: Demystifying Sport Psychology

Whenever I talk to athletes and coaches, I ask them what aspect of their sport seems to have the greatest impact on how they perform. Almost unanimously they say the mental part. I then ask how much time they devote to their mental preparation and their answer is almost always little or no time. Despite […]