Sport Psychology
Articles and Videos
A popular group of articles on what ‘is the difference that makes the difference’ in sporting success. The mental game and sport psychology is where true champions emerge. You may find our sections for our most recent articles, resources and materials, latest newsletters, or 5 Minutes with Bo Hanson video series valuable too.
Ensuring Your Game Preparation is Complete
Why would you leave a gap in your game preparation, asks Kyle McDonald, Mental Performance Consultant. He questions why some athletes and coaches have a plan for physical and technical development, but not for mental growth and mastery. Kyle prepares some of Canada’s best and most competitive ice hockey athletes and teams for their professional, Olympic and Paralympic campaigns. In this article he reveals the impact of stress and pressure resilience on performance and underscores it as the #1 differentiator between elite athletes. He details the essential precursor to mental skills acquisition, the link between hardiness and high-performance and the ideal age to start mental skills training.
Combatting Athlete Isolation
Powerful new research published recently reports that super-connected Gen Y and Z are lacking critical real-world interaction, making them the loneliest generations ever. The report emphasizes the importance of social interaction so we ask Senior Consultant, Bo Hanson, about the value of face-to-face communication, why it’s critical in sport and how coaches can make it a central part of their program.
Hungarian Sport Reaches For New Heights
Szombathely might be 15,588 kms from the Sunshine Coast, but it’s home to our newest consultant client, Szabolcs Hollósi. Experienced in brokering change, Szabolcs now has the tools and resources to partner with Hungarian sport on a national level, creating opportunities for athletes and coaches to take their performance to exciting new heights based on DISC Behavioral profiling.
Get WISE on a TOUGH Challenge
Coaches are unanimous in saying their athletes are lacking resilience, they’re not as ‘tough’ as their teams in previous times. And, not just physically tough, mentally tough. But, do todays Gen Y & Z athletes understand toughness? Do they know that the mental framework that lets you complete every training session, perform in a competition, and get you through a 20 second sprint are all unique mental skills? Have they got strategies to rely on when things don’t go to plan in the middle of competition? Are they resilient enough to bounce back from injury? Our goal is to get wise on this tough challenge.
The Coaching Connection
Sport Psychologist and Mental Performance Coach, Dr. Ed Garrett or Dr. G. as he’s known, explains the link between the coaching connection and behavioral types. His simple explanations and situation-specific examples make the process easy to understand and his suggested solutions will have an immediate impact on your coaching.
Equipping Athletes to Evolve
When we think CrossFit, gyms and performance coaching, most people immediately think physical, but Mental and Fitness Performance Coach, Jared Cohen, is achieving exceptional results using mental strategies in combination with physical improvement.
How Happiness Affects Athletes
A 75 year-long Harvard study reveals that authentic, honest and reliable relationships are the source of happiness, physical and mental health. In a TED Talk on the study, one of the longest continuous studies of adult development in the world, Director, Robert Waldinger’s discusses the findings and the popular talk has recorded some 13 million views. In this article we speak to Athlete Assessments’ Senior Consultant, Bo Hanson, about what these important findings mean for athletes, teams and coaches.
What to Look for in Losses
I was listening to a podcast with a successful Australian cyclist who had won an incredible 11 world titles, but, it wasn’t these titles that shaped her as a competitor, it was the 29 world titles that she contested and lost.
Sandra Chu – High-Performance Consultant
Our Extended Interview By Mim Haigh, Sports Writer – Athlete Assessments When we interviewed Sandra Chu for our recent article “Game Changing” there were just too many valuable insights for only one article. To overcome
Olympic Mental Challenges – Insights from Dr Nicole Detling
Mental Performance Coach, Dr Nicole Detling, is distinguished by her ability to cultivate exceptional progress in her athletes. Professionally, she was a fundamental part of Team USA’s incredibly successful campaigns at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang. She worked with the US Speed Skating and Freestyle Aerial Ski Teams as well as the Snowboarding team for PyeongChang. Over 2 decades she’s developed a unique insight into the pressures associated with Olympic performance, how to work through them and lay the foundations for success.
Coaches, Don’t Let Your Athletes Miss This In Their Training Journals
We’ve all heard about the importance of athletes keeping training journals to improve performance, and like all valuable performance strategies it isn’t whether or not our athletes know about it, but whether they do it. Bo Hanson, Senior Consultant at Athlete Assessments says, “a training journal is one of the first activities we encourage athletes to do. The kind of things we like to see in a training journal include; the way an athlete feels about the session, any mental, physical or technical challenges they identify, things they want to improve on, things they were coached to improve on, strategies they tried and the values they lived on the team that practice.”
Results | Evidence | Impact – Mental Performance Consultant in Action
The dynamic and innovative Mental Performance Consultant, Dr Tiffany Jones gets results. Her portfolio of winning clients evidences her impact. The mental skills dynamo teaches strategies which immediately influence a team’s score line and through this article we’ll create a window into her work.
Game Changing Consultant – Sandra Chu
Sandra Chu, High-Performance Consultant, Princeton Graduate, Director of Two Tigers Consulting, successful Collegiate Rowing Coach, is a proven game changer. In any sport, in any field, her commitment to excellence, ability to analyze the obstacles, develop strategies and institute changes, transforms lives and fundamentally the ability and performance of teams.
Extended Q&A with Nicole Detling
Mental Performance Coach, Headstrong Consulting By Mim Haigh, Sports Writer – Athlete Assessments In writing the recent article ‘Olympic Mental Challenges’, we had the opportunity to interview Dr Nicole Detling. She had so many valuable
Answer to THE Coaching Question
What’s the difference between super champions, champions and athletes who don’t quite make it? It’s the quintessential coaching question and in this article we’ll recap the research findings that reveal the answers and tell you everything you need to know to apply the academic knowledge to everyday coaching.
Largest Annual Sport Psychology Conference Worldwide
Exceptional outcomes are possible when people work together, and the Annual Conference of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) showcases the leading strategies that support sports industry professionals in their quest to perform at the highest possible level.
This annual conference is the largest of its kind in the world, an apex event, and Athlete Assessments is once again hosting an exhibit at the conference to share information about its sport specific DISC Profiles, Consultant Program, Academic Program and popular ATHLETE TOUGH™ workbook and video series. These tools are currently in private practice, in the classrooms, with individuals and with teams, but a visit to the exhibit will ensure you know exactly how these tools can benefit you.
Domino Effect in Sport
Many believe in the ‘domino effect’ as a natural force in life and subsequently, sport. It’s often referred to as the concept of ‘momentum’. The domino effect is best explained as looking at life, or sport, as a series of somehow connected events or situations. When one domino is pushed, the others all fall until the inevitable end result occurs and a thousand dominos are all lying flat.
The Pressure of Perfectionism
How the pressure of perfectionism can be alleviated by coaching strategies that focus on effort not execution, beliefs and behavior
By Bo Hanson, Director and Lead Consultant – Athlete Assessments
‘The Rise of Perfectionism’ among college students is a significant trend according to an article by the Harvard Business Review. In summary, the article was reporting on research conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO), which surveyed 41,641 American, Canadian, and British college students from 1989 to 2016 and found an increasing tendency to
Why Bullying Doesn’t Build Mental Toughness
Accountability is a prerequisite for high-performance and is an essential theme or value, which takes specific systems and strategies to establish. Bo Hanson, Senior Consultant for Athlete Assessments talks about two of the key factors he encounters regularly which prevent the outcome of accountability occurring.
Getting Comfortable with The Uncomfortable
Earlier this year I released a Handbook and Video Series called ATHLETE TOUGH™. This project came about because I wanted athletes to understand that qualities such as mental toughness, resilience and grit were in fact teachable skills. Mental toughness is not a mythical quality some are born with and others without.
Do Millennials Really Lack Mental Toughness?
Mental toughness is like a muscle that needs to be exercised regularly. In this article we’ll examine whether we as Coaches are providing Millennials (or any aged athlete) with enough opportunities to grow the mental skills that produce award-winning performances.
Cutting Through the Confusion Encompassing Mental Toughness
You’re not alone if you’re confused about the various terms used to describe mental toughness, from grit, sport psychology and mental skills to resilience, there are numerous ways to describe and refer to mental toughness. Do they mean the same thing, or are there important distinctions between them? In this article we cut through the confusion surrounding mental toughness and focus on the most important elements for success in sport.
The Ultimate Equalizer in Sport
Is the obsession with state-of-the-art equipment and facilities a misguided focus, even a missed opportunity? By Mim Haigh, Sports Writer – Athlete Assessments Visit the Athletic Departments of any of the Power 5 Universities in
Forum For Sports Thought in Sport Psychology
Athlete Assessments Exhibit At 2017 AASP Conference In Florida, October 18 – 21, 2017. By Mim Haigh, Sports Writer – Athlete Assessments Amidst the intersection of ideas at the Annual Conference of the Association for
Back to Basics – Developing Resilience
In the moments leading up to a game or race, it’s easy to visualize success and feel mentally tough. It’s easy to sit back and talk team strategies with our heart rates low and our breathing under control in an environment where we feel comfortable, unbeatable, ready. But toughness is not defined by pre-game talk or how well you practice your sport.
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Learn more about Athlete Assessments
DISC Profiling
Learn how to master the people side of sport using DISC Profiling...
What We Do
We specialize in helping our clients create and sustain winning results...
Our Clients
See who we work with and read what they say about us...
