Understanding Mindset Zones & Peak Performance

Red, green, yellow, or orange? I’m not talking about the colors of the rainbow, or that pack of skittles leftover from Halloween. I’m talking about mindset zones.

Picture this. You’re in the middle of a big game and suddenly you’re feeling angry. The referees aren’t making the right calls, you’re mad at your teammates for missing the ball, and your coach is giving you the wrong plays. You just want to win…but why is everyone not doing their job?! 👿

Have you ever felt this way? Do you think you can perform at your best when you’re feeling this? Better yet, when you're thinking like this?

This month I’m going to be talking to you all about mindset zones! We’ll chat about how you can move between mindset zones quickly, and about how getting into an optimal zone is KEY to performing at your full potential as an athlete.

Last month we talked a lot about mindfulness and why it is so important. It can help athletes identify which mindset zone they are in, how they are feeling, how they are breathing, etc. Mindfulness tools help athletes understand which zone they are in, and helps them navigate how they perform in each zone. 

But what are these zones? I will spend time talking about each of the zones in my next blog: green, red, yellow & orange, how they affect athletes performance and why you need to know each of these.

But at a high-level, 

• Green Zone is the optimal zone for performance; locked in, focused.  
• Yellow Zone is where bad habits form physically and mentally; boredom, apathetic.
• Red Zone is where most mistakes occur; angry, tense, irritable, stressed, anxious, etc.
• Orange Zone is out of sport; mellow, daydreaming, relaxing, resting, & refueling.

Understanding mindset zones takes work. It takes self-awareness, it takes mindfulness and it takes the ability to separate yourself from your feelings for a minute to address where you’re at in your mindset.

When athletes become more skilled at self-awareness, they’re capable of taking the mindfulness exercises we walked through last month, and using those to understand what zone they are in, and when. This is almost like collecting “data” on themselves so they can begin recognizing what those feelings are when they are in each zone.

When athletes are able to note this feeling, and identify their mindset zone, they can quickly insert tools before they spiral out of control.

As an athlete, you will be in each of these zones at different times. The key is to move through yellow & red quickly. The longer you’re in the zones, the longer your performance suffers. But we’ll talk more about each of these soon..

As athletes begin to learn these zones better this month, they can begin to collect that “data” on themselves and start to build their self-awareness. This level of self-awareness allows athletes to build self-confidence because they are able to identify what is happening within themselves at any given time, and how they can move through it towards a more optimal mindset (green.) This gives them control.

Make sure to join us in the Empowered Athlete community this month to join in on the conversation around mindset zones and mindfulness!