Coaching is a process that helps people change. For changes to occur we need to change the way we think, what we attend to and how we see the world around us. Neuroscientist, Srinivasan Pillay remarks that coaching is the bridge between our imagination and action.

Coaching clients are generally mentally healthy individuals who desire psychological or emotional growth, or who recognise that their current thinking patterns no longer produce the desired results. The purpose of the coaching is to help them move forward in whatever way they want to move.

Changing your thinking is made easier when you understand how the brain works. Brain-based coaching takes advantage of studies in cognitive neuroscience in developing coaching methods that help clients change.

An old dog can learn new tricks. We now know that the brain is capable of constant change – the brain is essential plastic and malleable. Neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz provides a succinct description of brain-based coaching: he says “coaching … is way of assisting self-directed neuroplasticity”

You devote of hours and hours to training your body but how much to you spend training your mind?

More and more, athletes and sports teams are turning to sports psychology and mental game coaching to give them the edge in training and competition.

Sports psychology is a discipline within psychology that studies how mental processes influence athletic performance while mental game coaching is the practical application of Sports Psychology; helping athletes develop the necessary mental skills to improve their performance.

Mental Game Coaching can help you with:

• Goal Setting: deciding want they want to achieve, setting realistic goals, and working through the steps that must be taken to achieve them.
• Visualisation: creating vivid mental imagery of their goals, the mental rehearsal of training, race strategy, and planning “in-game” thinking.
• Optimal Intensity Regulation: finding their individual zone of optimal performance (IZOP) zone (e.g. through psyching up or psyching down techniques and “Flow” Training).
• Concentration: having the appropriate level and focus of awareness and maintaining focus during training and competition.
• Self Talk: Stopping negative thoughts and focusing on positive thinking before, during and after competition.

Remember, sport is played with the body but it is won with the mind.