Book Private Mental-performance Lessons with Coach Michael

I am a Certified Mental Performance Coach and teacher with 40 years of experience as an athlete, coach and educator, where I have worked as an Advisor, Counselor, Development Director, and Administrator.

I also have two degrees from the University of Notre Dame, which includes a degree in Psychology and Administration.

In addition, as a parent of competitive athletes, I understand that perspective of your child athlete working through these challenges.

​My experience has enabled me to work with a variety of individuals and teams in a variety of levels and sports.

Mental performance challenges range from a variety of issues, such as letting go of bad past performances, struggle with taking your practice game to competition, playing tentatively or afraid to make a mistake, or getting angry or frustrated often enough to impede performance. These may be just a few examples of how you notice your mental game challenges as an athlete.

I can help by providing the student-athlete with the tools, skills and strategies that you can use to overcome these challenges.

The vision is to help you become the best version of yourself, as possible.

Specifically, here are some of the main points I work with athletes on, when strengthening your mental game:

* Proactive confidence/Stable confidence (Essentially helping an athlete be confident before the competition begins rather than waiting for something good to happen first and then get that confidence boost. It also means being able to keep it during difficult times of the game, or season).

* Present moment/Focus/Concentration

* Letting go of mistakes and moving forward

* Emotional Composure

* Taking on a Growth/Learning mindset as opposed to fearing mistakes/fearing *failure

* Resiliency

* Taking your practice mindset to a competitive mindset

* Trust your skills

These are tangible skills and strategies that student-athletes learn and apply to their game to enhance their physical talent. These skills, once learned, are cross functional and universal, meaning that they can be used off the field in a variety of life settings, as well.

Originally, I have a self-assessment that I have every one of my athletes take and complete as honestly as possible. From that starting point, we take a deep dive together into uncovering core mental performance challenges. At that point, I create a unique mental game performance plan with the athlete.

Each individual session will start with a review of what has been happening both physically and in the mental game within your sport. I start off each session with the Three Questions - 1) What went well and why? 2) What did not go so well and where/how you want to improve that aspect of my game?, 3) What did I learn about myself during this time?

From there, then, we move into feedback on skill building from a previous session or introducing new topics and learning strategies and techniques.

Each session will be interactive. I am here to listen to you and to help you, as an athlete, learn specific skills to help with your mental performance. Even if we have to go through some skill development a few times, the goal is always to listen, teach and learn.

Sessions are typically 50 - 60 minutes.

I have always been fascinated with this aspect of performance as my mental performance game was challenged from the outset of my athletic career. I played baseball mostly (with hockey and golf coming later), and I was challenged with a steady stream of anxiety stemming from a real fear of failure. Because of that, I struggled with moving past mistakes, continually thinking about catastrophic "what if" scenarios and difficulty maintaining confidence.

That was the foundation of my interest in the field of mental performance. After playing, I coached for a number of years and saw this in my players a lot. Going on ever further, I saw this in my kids as they climbed the competitive ladder.

All of that experience prompted me to want to help athletes move past their mental performance challenges and really tap into their true potential. Now I have three different Mental Performance Certifications, as well as two degrees from the University of Notre Dame, with one of those degrees being in Psychology.

Having played, coached and parenting competitive athletes, as well as a long career as an educator, provides me with a variety of experiences that I can tap into when working with individual athletes and teams. My work as a mental performance coach has enabled me to help athletes in a variety of sports and in a variety of levels, including high school, college, middle school, and travel sports.

For the most part all of my coaches were pretty good, but what I realized as time went on is that the mental game part of their coaching philosophy was missing. Many coached from the aspect of fear, avoiding failure, and focus on outcome.

So, I would say that I learned a lot from each one of them as it relates to specific skill building strategies and techniques for the physical part of the game. With this philosophy, however, what I learned is that there is much more to tapping into one's potential than physical work (practice, conditioning, strength training, etc.) and that is to help with real confidence, process (in-the-moment), thought/emotional regulation and trust in oneself.

I am here because I care about student athletes and their passion for wanting to be the best versions of themselves as possible.

My experience as an athlete (both former and current), coach and parent of competitive athletes enables me to have perspectives that help me approach each athlete in a unique way.

The reward for me is to not only see an athlete grow emotionally in their game, but how I can see that growth in other areas of their lives, as well.

My very first student-athlete that I worked with did not take long to understand that the work we were doing with reducing anxiety and helping build real confidence could be used in some of his classes that were causing him some high stress.

Later on, a parent called and wanted to share with me the excitement she felt when not only seeing her student-athlete get better and enjoy their sporting experience more, but how much he grew as a person. She mentioned that he now tackled challenges in school and elsewhere with more curiosity, confidence and grit rather than angst, anxiety and negative reactivity.

Because I love helping student-athletes, I continually look to grow myself as a mental performance coach. I continually talk with colleagues around the country, dive into new research and continually look for educational learning opportunities.

I love doing what I do and the more I work with student-athletes the more it drives me to continue to do so.