Getting into the Zone: Understanding mindset and building empowered athletes

An excellent athlete has self-awareness, self- confidence, and knows their worth to their team or sport. Becoming mentally tough doesn’t happen overnight; it takes hard work and resilience, and a desire to learn. But you are capable of this.

And it starts with a better understanding of your own mindset when it comes to sports. All month we’ve been talking about the 4 mindset zones:

• 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.

But understanding each of these zones is only half of it. The other half is building the self-awareness to understand which zone you are in, and then learning how to move into the appropriate zone when it's the right time.

Do you ever watch a practice and see the players lining up to run plays over and over again, without the defense?

They run the play, make corrections, run it again and again and again, until it is so drilled into the athletes, that they know it like the back of their hand.

And then defense is added in.

What is the purpose of this?

Because knowing the techniques, the intricacies of how to run a play before adding in some pressure, allows athletes to understand how to do something so well in their minds, that the pressure won’t phase them as much.

The same goes for mindset. We’ve talked about  getting into the orange zone by zoning out, practicing breathing, and being mellow. The more athletes practice this at home, after school, at bedtime, or whenever, the easier it becomes in games to move into a positive mindset when the pressure gets added.

Practice your orange mindset outside of sports, and it will become easier in the moment to stay green.

The last few weeks we’ve been talking about mindset zones, and your athlete has been learning how to get into the orange zone. Practicing breathing, and relaxing after school shows them a tool to get into the right headspace, so that when it comes to game time, they already know how to do it. 

Because of the hard work they’ve been putting in to understand themselves, to practice orange zone moments, to practice self-awareness, and to implement tools to get them into the green zone, they are ready to hit the ground running when it comes to game time.

And this is what it’s all about... Increasing self-acceptance by understanding yourself whatever zone you are in, increasing self-confidence by building self-awareness, and ultimately building self-worth, because believing in yourself and your own contributions is the key to athlete’s excellence on and off the field.

My book is coming out soon (like, mid-December soon!!) and I am so excited to dive into these topics more with your athlete. There’s no better time than the New Year to show your athlete the tools they need to become an empowered athlete. So join my Facebook community where I’ll be sharing all the latest dates!