Holistic Athlete Weekly Newsletter

Mental Health and Performance

In 2024 and beyond, investing time and effort into the mental health of your athletes, as well as the development of their mental skills, is crucial to fulfilling your two primary roles as a coach: creating competent and successful young men and women — and winning.

The focus on mental health stems from roughly 50% of teenagers struggling with symptoms that would be considered to reach the level of a diagnosable mental health disorder. The most common of which: Attention Deficit Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, Mood Disorders, Eating Disorders, and Learning Disabilities.

As far mental performance, incorporating skills such as maintaining confidence, moving forward after a mistake, focusing only on stimuli that’s helpful, controlling emotions, and performing under pressure can create a significant advantage against opponents who aren’t spending time on this.

4 Domains of Performance

Anytime an athlete takes the field, there are four domains of performance that will dictate whether or not they play well. Analyzing performance can be broken down into:

Physical - Size, strength, speed. The athlete’s literal capability

Tactical - Strategy, gameplan, X’s and O’s

Technical - Mechanics and technique of playing their specific position or sport.

Mental - The skills we’ll be discussing throughout the year

In individual sessions, I often ask athletes to rank their four domains to determine what needs more time, energy, and effort. When a mistake is made, it’s helpful to use the four domains in order to diagnose the issue so we can make a plan to improve.