NLP Sports Training and Coaching Tips for Performance Coaching

Picture the scene: you’ve been in intense training all year for one big event and today is the day, competition day. Your preparations have gone well, you’ve remained injury free, and your results in practice have been consistently good; you’re competition ready. Recent competition results confirm that you’re ready, your coach’s comments confirm you’re ready but yet a nagging voice inside your head keeps telling you otherwise. As the big moment approaches, it yells louder, “You’re not ready!” When this happens, no matter how physically prepared you are, you’re NOT ready because you’re not mentally prepared. Mental preparation is key to competitive success. If you don’t believe you’re ready - you’re not!

If you believe it, you can achieve it.

There’s convincing evidence to suggest that you’re ready for the big event, in fact, there’s only thing one thing suggesting you might not be and that’s the voice inside your head. So why do you choose to believe it? If you’ve been producing consistently good results in training , you know what you’re capable of achieving because you’ve already proven yourself to be capable: there is no doubt so why does nagging self-doubt convince you to believe otherwise? Clearly, mental preparation for competition requires more than physical skill practice.

Self-doubt, or lack of self-belief, will often result in an attack of competition nerves when the pressure is on and competition nerves are the most common cause of under-achievement in competitive athletes. Effective competition preparation must combine physical and mental preparation. You can only ever be ready when you believe you are.