Mental Skills

BORING is good when you want to be good Written and contributed by Dr. Chris Hobbs ( Follow him at Twitter @Dr_ChrisHobbs)   My youngest daughter is a 14 year old aspiring athlete. Early on in her sport endeavors she’s demonstrated strength, grit, commitment, and some explosive athletic ability. I don’t know how accomplished she’ll become but ...

Air Force Special Ops Lieutenant Colonel Heath Kerns discusses how to help your team develop mental toughness and perseverance. His discussion is targeted to Football coaches, but many points are applicable to coaching volleyball as well. Please make sure to click on the video to start the presentation and make sure that your ...

By Dr. Rob Bell Dr. Bell is a Mental Toughness Coach and Certified Consultant of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology.  He consults with hundreds of athletes, coaches, and teams and has served as the mental coach for PGA tour winners, USTA Champion, and Olympic Medalists.  He is also the author of several mental toughness books. ...

By Dr. Rob Bell Dr. Bell is a Mental Toughness Coach and Certified Consultant of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology.  He consults with hundreds of athletes, coaches, and teams and has served as the mental coach for PGA tour winners, USTA Champion, and Olympic Medalists.  He is also the author of several mental toughness books. ...

This article is republished with permission. The original article appears at Peak Performance Sports. How to Perform well on the court in big moments By Patrick Cohn Your mental game for volleyball is especially important when: Your team is the underdog – Facing a powerhouse can be daunting. The mystique of a powerhouse can cause some teams to see the game ...

By Dr. Rob Bell Dr. Bell is a Mental Toughness Coach and Certified Consultant of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology.  He consults with hundreds of athletes, coaches, and teams and has served as the mental coach for PGA tour winners, USTA Champion, and Olympic Medalists.  He is also the author of several mental toughness books. ...

This article is republished with permission. The original article appears at How to Prepare for Pressure in Volleyball. Using Visualization to Overcome Pressures in Games How well do you perform during a volleyball match when the game is on the line? Are you able to focus when under pressure or does your performance fall off dramatically? Have you ever ...

This article is republished with permission. The original article appears at Athletes Who Are Self-Critical. How to Grow Your Confidence Without Excessive Self-Criticism   Are you happy with where you are with your game? Most athletes would answer “no” because they want to achieve more. After all, the goal of every athlete is to achieve as much of their athletic potential as possible. Some athletes think ...

This article is republished with permission. The original article was written by Björn Galjaardt Approach for Success. The golden egg? Shortcut in becoming successful? A proven model everyone can use? Actually, a little bit of all. The skeptics will stop reading now, however I have to elaborate on the above. It’s an approach that is applied by ...

  This article is republished with permission. The original article appears at Peak Performance Sports. By Patrick Cohn What exactly is the champion mindset? A champion mindset is the firm belief that you can compete at a high level and develop the skills to accomplish what you have set out to achieve. The champion mindset is the embodiment of mental toughness or knowing you can overcome mistakesand obstacles and ...

This article is republished with permission. The original article appears at Peak Performance Sport By Patrick Cohn One point at a time… one set at a time… one match at a time. How many times in your athletic career have you heard a coach, player, teammate, commentator or parent mention the previous mantra? As a volleyball player, you know you ...

This article was provided by The Junior Volleyball Association By Mary Gonring (Bizzie) A volleyball coach is all too familiar with the dread that can affect a player in serve receive during a tight match. Coaches see it on the athlete’s face and the athlete certainly feels it.  The face seems to be saying, “Please, don’t serve ...

This article can also be found on Coaches Toolbox, a collection of free resources for coaches of all sports Every coach would like their players to perform better in the clutch. One of the things we must first recognize that performing in pressure situation is a skill that can be practiced. You can coach your players to be ...

  By John O’Sullivan, founder of Change the Game Project Is your child a great practice player, but one who struggles to perform in games? Does she score at will in easy games, but cannot the competitive ones? Does your team play great in meaningless games, but tense up and play poorly when the result matters? Does ...

This article was provided by Inner Drive and is part 2 of a two part series. You can click here to read part 1 Are our emotions something that help us when it comes to sport, or do they hold us back? The answer? Both. Learning how to balance and control your emotions is what matters. In our first ...

This article was provided by InnerDrive, is part 1 of a two part post. What does it take to really excel in the world of elite sport? The ability to deliver your best when it matters the most is a fundamental part of performing under pressure. Can this ability be taught, learned and developed? We have previously ...

By Dawn Redd-Kelley, head volleyball coach at Beloit College The following post was originally published on her coaching blog, Coach Dawn Writes Coaches ask for a simple, but very hard, thing from our athletes: complete focus for a couple of hours each day. I think this is a difficult mental task for our players to manage…I also think it requires ...

This article was provided by InnerDrive, a mental skills training company What should athletes be thinking about before a match? Are some thoughts more helpful than others? We’ve looked through the research from the world of sport psychology to find 7 tips to help people achieve the right mindset before a big match. Positive Imagery – Visualising successful performance has been found to increase confidence. Spending ...

By Juan Pablo Favero. Originally published on the Coach and Athletic Director site and republished with permission of both parties. It’s frustrating for athletes when they’re running on fumes, feeling like they have nothing more to give and that no matter what they do there is nothing left to push past a seemingly insurmountable wall. They can feel hopelessness, ...

Courtesy of Coaches Network By Kevin Bryant I have attended the Oregon Athletic Directors Association annual conference every year since 1999. This past spring, there was a first: A break-out session led by a sports psychologist. At these outstanding annual meetings, we’ve learned lessons on a broad spectrum of topics, but never before had attendees been introduced ...

  This article was provided by InnerDrive, a mental skills training company Why do some athletes improve at a faster rate than others? The answer it seems may (partly) lie in how they train. Researchers have been exploring the psychology of practice to explore what helps athletes develop quicker. Psychologists use the phrase ‘Deliberate Practice’ to describe the ...

Athletic performance can suffer  when an athlete is afraid  to fail. Athletes that are afraid to fail, may become ultra conservative and become less likely to take chances. To be successful athletes need to be willing to take chances. They cannot be afraid to make a play. In the article below by InnerDrive, their experts describe ...

By Dawn Redd-Kelly Fear is the reason today is like yesterday.”—Leadership Freak That quotation sucker punched me!  Our goal as coaches is to create an atmosphere where our athletes feel comfortable taking risks and are brave in the face of fear.  Those who aren’t involved in athletics may scoff, but the fear is real when the bases ...

This article was provided by InnerDrive, a mental skills training company Pressure is an interesting thing. For some people, it makes them nervous. Which often leads to making sloppy mistakes and generally under-performing. For others, pressure increases their concentration. They focus their efforts and as a result, perform to the best of their abilities.  So what ...

This article was provided by InnerDrive, a mental skills training company What separates elite athletes from the rest? Not all individuals that start sport at grass-roots level make it all the way to the top. The further you go along the pathway to excellence, the narrower the athletic pool becomes.  Are there certain psychological skills that ...

This article was provided by Coaches Network Day in and day out, coaches focus on developing effective practice sessions and better game strategies. Players need to improve their skills, and there are an infinite number of new drills to try. But there is more to coaching than the daily tasks. For a team to be consistently successful, ...

Teaching Female Athletes to Value Toughness By Dawn Redd-Kelly One of the things I hear a lot from young players is they don’t enjoy their team experience.  Sometimes they’ll say they don’t like their coach, their team isn’t very good, but many times (too many!), in a moment of honesty, they’ll say their teammates are bitches or their ...

The Side-Out Drill is designed to help players get focused on their service following a side out. To be successful teams must quickly refocus after a side out and back that point up with a solid service point. The simple act of winning back to back points can be the difference between winning a losing. The ...

These thoughts on clutch performance are from Spencer Wood Icebox Athlete Sports Performance Resources. Click that link to see his Mental Toughness Edge website. There are some articles on mental training and other resources as well. According to a study based on professional athletes in the NBA, NFL, and NHL, the following eight traits were found ...

Simple skills like passing the ball are generally executed with success. However, sometimes in the heat of battle simple tasks become more difficult. In the video below Jeff Meeker, Cornell College Head Coach and Sports Psychology Professor, provides coaches with the tools they need to sharpen and toughen their team’s mental game while developing volleyball-specific skills. ...