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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...

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...

It’s Halloween week and I’m bringing you one of my “sweetest” stories & tips to celebrate!

In anticipation of my book “The Empowered Athlete” coming out VERY soon…I also wanted to share with you a small snippet about my work with an athlete. This is a part of the story, but you’ll have to grab my book to read the full thing ;)

“I worked with an athlete who experienced anxiety every time his coaches did film sessions. His stress levels would go from 0–100 without him even realizing it, and before he knew it, he was almost having full-blown anxiety attacks. To assist with this, I introduced mindfulness (among other things), and taught him how to implement this to help him during his film sessions. The key to alleviating his anxiety was to “catch it” before it got to 100 (or the red zone), because when anxiety escalates to its highest point, it is very difficult (although, not impossible) to get...

Momentum is defined as “strength or force gained by motion or by a series of events” according to Merriam-Webster and our good friend Google.

It’s like when you take a small snowball and roll it down the hill. Eventually it attracts more snow, creating a bigger snowball, and begins traveling at a faster rate.

This is momentum.

In sports, it can start with a great mindset, add in a great play, resulting in a great win. It is the result of one action building upon another and then another and as an athlete, man it feels great. When you have a great streak in the game, it’s like nothing can stop you, and you’ll do anything to keep that going right?

Maybe you’ve been having this momentum since your practices kicked back up in August, maybe you’re feeling that speed and the effects of your own snowball you’ve been building. You’ve got a few tournaments under your belt now, and you want to keep that momentum...

Let’s talk about a student athlete named Jessica, and her story around setting goals and managing expectations (it’s a story I think we can all relate to on some level.) 

Jessica is a high achieving student AND a killer soccer player on her high school team. 

She has big goals for herself, and set a goal to earn the top scorer for her Varsity team as a Junior.

She mapped out her training plan to improve her shot accuracy, nailed down her nutrition plan, organized her calendar to ensure she got all her training and studying done, and set process goals prior to each game to increase the percentages of her scoring and earning that spot.  

She had her plan NAILED DOWN. 

Jessica kicked off the season on a positive note, with a game leading 3 goals. But in game 4 of the season, she got hurt. She had to miss a few games.

So she needed to revisit her plan AND her expectations around her goal.

Was it still...

You’ve heard the buzz word, maybe you’ve even received feedback on it, and you wonder…what the heck is this all about??

Time Management. 

Not excited yet? LOL. I know this topic maybe isn’t everyone’s cup of tea..maybe it even sounds a little boring… But what if I told you that time management might just be the key to your success? Here me out…

Imagine you have an upcoming tournament this weekend, plus a massive paper due, a huge test in bio, it’s your Moms birthday (& we know you can’t miss that!), you’ve got several classes that you want to get your grade up in, and you need to fit in all the training this week to get ready. Oh and don’t forget that team fundraiser you have to attend!

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired even reading through that. And we all know that that is how real life looks when you’re a competitive student-athlete. But the difference...

Every single player on the ice, field, or court has a role to play. A role that is critical to the success of the team, critical to whether they perform well, critical to whether they ENJOY being on the team, and even critical to whether or not they’re successful. And the funny thing is, this role has absolutely nothing to do with the position they play. 

We often think of roles as whether an athlete plays offense or defense, and while these are super important positions on the team, what is even more important is how each athlete contributes to the team dynamic. 

Some athletes may not play as much but are relied on heavily for cheering their team on or keeping things light and fun when they get too intense.

Other athletes are top scorers or top defenders.

Others are the ones working their tails off, leading by example, showing what hard work looks like no matter the situation.

Others may be there inspiring their team, motivating...

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." – Helen Keller

Teamwork is the foundation of almost everything we know; family, friend groups, sports, work... Teams build a sense of connection and belonging, create an atmosphere to challenge, inspire, learn and grow. They bring a shared determination and motivation as the team drives towards a common goal together. Teams drive individuals forward through a shared effort and focus towards those goals. 

And when teams have the right communication, respect and understanding of each other coming together to meet those goals is not only possible, it is significantly more likely. Effective teams crush their goals, and have fun doing it.

But what about ineffective teams? They’re often dysfunctional, lack respect for individuals, focus on individual goals rather than the team, and have a lower chance of reaching their desired outcomes. In other words, they’re more likely to lose, and not...

Not everyone is going to agree with this, but it needs to be said. 

Taking a break from your sport is actually a really, really good thing.

In my last blog, I talked about what can happen to athletes who don’t take breaks from sports, such as getting burnt out, developing unhealthy habits and an unhealthy mindset, losing a love of their sport, etc. This message of taking breaks might be in contrast to what we hear from other parents, coaches and athletes perspectives, but it's an important one. 

As year-round sports have become more and more prevalent, taking a minute to understand why it’s actually good to let your athlete focus on other hobbies, sports and FUN is extremely important because it really is incredibly beneficial to your athlete in many ways. To cut right to the chase, athletes who take breaks will have time to learn, to become more well rounded, to have some pressure taken off them and mostly to have fun. Each of these has...

We’ve all felt it as parents. The need to protect our child, to make sure they are thriving in a crazy world, to help them achieve their goals, no matter how challenging those goals might be.  You spend hours driving them to practices, traveling to tournaments, buying their equipment and spending a good chunk of your time watching them. Our job as a parent of an athlete is never ending, and part of that is ensuring that our children have a healthy mindset when it comes to sports, school and life.

In case you’ve missed it, professional athletes, from Michael Phelps to Simone Biles to Nathan MacKinnon are speaking up more and more about the importance of having a healthy mindset, and how it has impacted their ability to perform. But how do you ensure your athlete keeps a healthy mindset? In my blog “The Mental Performance Corner”, I cover a LOT about mental health and my tips for ensuring athletes have the tools they need to maintain that healthy...