We breathe in the clean, crisp air of Lake Tahoe.  Five seconds in, five seconds out. Keep breathing.

A voice yells out over the microphone: “Spartans, are you ready?”

A resounding “AROO, AROO, AROO!” comes barking out from me and fifty others at the starting line.

I give a fist bump to my three friends joining me on this psychotic voyage and we take off to climb the mountain.

Heading into a performance or competition can be daunting. Our minds drift towards the unknown, the unpredictable, and the ‘what ifs’. This creates a lot of tension and fundamentally a lack of presence of mind to what were supposed to be doing. In most cases this is because athletes focus too much on the outcome. Having an outcome focus has been linked to excessive muscle tension, anxiety, and worry. This makes sense because the outcome is totally out of our control. Yet, we spent so much cognitive energy trying to change it.

Do you put in the work behind the scenes to train your mind? Well you should. Why? Because that’s what all the top performers and performers striving to make it as professionals are doing. Ok. I want to train my mind. What does that mean?

Imagery is a great tool many athletes use before competition. It's amazing because it gets your mind ready for action. A mental warm up. You use the same part of your brain when you imagine something as when you're performing the action in real life. How can you use imagery to enhance your performance?

Did you know that the average tennis point on hard court lasts 6 seconds while the break is 15 seconds? You spend as much as 70% of your time on court during a tennis match NOT hitting the ball. That’s a lot of time. How can you put this time to good use? 

So you're about to compete yet you don't feel as though you're in the optimal zone. This happens often. All's great in training, then right before competition, your body just doesn't seem to listen. You feel either low or high levels of body activation. Is there a way to get the ideal activation levels? Yes absolutely. Let's dive into what's happening first.