Book Private Mental-performance Lessons with Coach Jalen

Football and Basketball athlete in high school where I won a New England Championship in both sports. Walked on at Pace University in NY where I played football for 3 years. I earned an athletic scholarship during spring ball. Defensive starter sophomore and Junior year. Record winning season sophomore year. Senior year I finished my eligibility at Ithaca college in NY where we won the Liberty League conference in 2021!

I can help an athlete improve their game by looking at their experiences through a different lens. Whether a practice, training, or competition is categorized as a positive or negative experience, an athlete can always learn and improve. If it was a positive experience then how can an athlete continue to build off their performance into the next experience. If there was a negative experience, learn how to accept it for what it is, and how can we learn from our experience to better ourselves as athletes. Our mind plays such a crucial role in our ability as athletes, understanding athletes have the power to control their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. I work collaboratively with athletes to reach optimal performance. Allowing athletes to come up with short and long term goals. Short term goals are crucial in developing ourselves as athletes because it'll allow us to have building blocks to ultimately accomplish our long term goals. I also believe in challenging athletes if they allow it because sometimes change or growing is a difficult thing to face but allowing athletes to gain a different perceptive on some of their own struggles. Diving into the understanding of a growth mindset, in sports it's rare for an athlete to do anything perfectly, how can we learn from our personal experiences.

A training session consists of meeting with myself for about 45/50 minutes, and working through whatever the athlete feels they may be struggling with that's affecting their performance. We will have conversations, run through different activities, and learn about what the athlete is experiencing and finding ways to develop strategies and techniques to help move us forward. Dependent on age, if the athletes is a minor, then for the last 10 minutes of the session, I will invite a guardian of the athlete to join us to debrief what the athletes and I have talked about. I will only express to the guardian what the athlete feels comfortable with!

The best coach I ever had was my 8th grade basketball coach. His idea of preparation and accountability was something that I tried to instill in my own athletes when focusing on developing their overall skills as an athlete. Holding oneself and other accountable when not meeting the standard set by an individual or the team. Preparation allows for an individual is be fully confident in their athletic ability, when unprepared it leaves doubt which can hinder performance

Being a Mental Performance consultant in training, I have recently surpassed my 400 hour requirement and am supervised by a certified mental performance consultant, Kelsey Varzeas. Any individual work with an athlete or any group work I do with teams, I meet with her regularly to be mentored in making sure I am providing the adequate work and experience to the athlete or athletes. My own experiences through my athletic journey and being a student athlete at the scholarship level allows me to understand some of the potential mental struggles a student athlete experiences no matter their age or sport. Confidence had always been a major factor throughout my sports career. When my confidence was running high I was a top tier athlete, but vice versa when I had low confidence I was a completely different athlete. Being able to develop the necessary mental skills to then add them into an athletes tool box. An athlete may not be experience any struggles or setbacks, but there will moments during practice, trainings, or competition where adversity hits, and being prepared before hand, will allow an athlete to be fully confident in their ability to reach successfully perform!