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?