What is Mental Skills Training (MST)?

"What is mental skills training or sport psychology?" is a question I often get. I view it as the same training you do for your body to prepare for competition, but the focus is on the psychological aspect. The goal is strengthening your mental game to prepare for all competitive scenarios. So what exactly encompasses the mental game? Being able to focus on the correct cues, knowing how much energy to use and when, preparing for competition, controlling emotions, recovering from mistakes, etc. It pretty much affects all areas of the game. Once an athlete gets to a certain level physically, the mental game is what will set them apart for the others. Being able to control their nerves, their concentration, their energy, all go into making the top players who they are.

Delving into MST is like tacking a tough climb, it takes a lot of prep, dedication, hard work, but the reward is awesome. It takes the same effort as physical training, probably even more so in the beginning. As an athlete your thought processes and habits are well ingrained into your routine. Attempting to change those habits that are at a conscious and unconscious level take months of re-training. Changing your mental habits takes a lot of hard work and effort, but the payoff is vast. When you start noticing how you don't get as nervous stepping on the field, or you can relax when you feel tense up at bat, or you tell yourself that you are going to kill that climb, that is when you know something good is happening and it will only get better. The key is as long as you continue to work at it.

The next question is the all important one, how? How do I train and retrain my mental process? There are many skills and techniques an athlete can add to their so called "mental toolbox" to improve their game. Relaxation, visualization, self-talk, goal-setting, performance routines, focus exercises, among others. The goal is to be able to learn the skills/tools, have them available and implement them into their performance so they become automatic.

You maybe thinking, why should I add this and do all this extra work? I ask, how many days a week, how many hours do you train your body? Most likely a lot, now just take that effort and apply it to work on your mental game, I could almost guarantee you will notice improvement. If you are looking to improve your performance, this is it. No one said it was easy, that wouldn't fit the mentality of an athlete anyways!