Complete Athlete Training:
You must train mind, body, and spirit.

Complete athlete training is rarely found. I have had college coaches and even directors of training centers tell me that there simply are not enough programs that prepare athletes for the mental and spiritual aspects of athletic competition. We address human spirit in another section so I won't go into it here. Athlete mindsets are not being trained. They need to be.

The higher you rise in the athletic world the more likely you are to be able to find good mental conditioning training. If you are a teen or college student trying to compete at any level, but particularly the Division 1 level, it does not get its due place. When it is offered, it generally consists of someone coming in and giving a workshop spread out over a couple of days focusing on goal setting, visualization, and relaxation techniques. All very important aspects to mental conditioning but are not a training program in and of itself. They provide information for the teams, coaches, or individual athletes to then create their own training regimen. It simply is not good enough.

Complete athlete training needs to cover sport specific skill development, strength and conditioning, nutrition, well-being, and the mindset of a champion, which can be broken down into the psychological and spiritual. In this context we are talking more about the spirit of a champion versus spiritual in the metaphysical sense though they are connected.

Complete Athlete Training:
I can't overstate the importance of mindset training...

A complete athlete training program should be training athleticism, specific skills, and a  mindset. If you have been checking out the other pages, you know the importance of first doing a personal breakthrough program . When done properly that program will help the athlete discover and remove hidden (unconscious) obstacles to their peak performance. It will lay the habitual foundation necessary for proper mindset training, and it will teach and train the emotional management and attitude building techniques that are utilized to form the mindset of a champion.

If anyone tells you they have a shortcut and can get you trained in a weekend workshop or a week or two training view it with heavy skepticism. The fact is, as mentioned in other places within these pages, habits are vital in any complete athlete training program worth the heavy investment you should be making. Habits take time  and dedication. One of the reasons a good training program should be premium priced is you need all the external leverage you can get to internalize the motivation and build the self-discipline to create this life-long pursuit. A complete athlete training program is a life mindset training program, which encompasses your...  lifetime.

Goal setting, visualization, and relaxation techniques that are commonly taught - not trained - in mental conditioning “trainings” are absolutely important and should be taught. There is so much more though and a complete program should have long lasting impact on the athlete's entire life.

The mindset of a champion is not applicable for the athletic field or arena only. It really is about succeeding in life. After clearing the mind of potential obstacles, a young athlete will probably already see improved athletic results, and they have not even yet trained their mindset. For an athlete, while the entire mindset of a champion arch would have life-long value, the bundle of trainings that are the core of athletic success and general success outside of athletics would be developing a mindset of love, faith, faithfulness,

Complete Athlete Training: The Big Four Mindsets
# 1: A mindset of love

Training a mindset of love  will make you an invaluable teammate. Your love and passion for the sport will lead to patience, hopefulness, and perseverance, which are three incredibly important characteristics of a teammate and leader. Furthermore, a mindset of love will build other incredibly important character traits.

Kindness, being slow to anger, not being envious, not being boastful or proud, not being self-seeking, being protective, and being trusting and trustworthy are all characteristics of a champion and characteristics of someone who others want to have on their team. Wouldn't you like to have a teammate who is

• Genuinely kind 
• Someone who does not quickly or easily lose their temper 
• A teammate who genuinely wants you to succeed even if you are competing for playing time with each other 
• A teammate who is sincerely humble 
• Interested in the team before their own stat line 
• Protective of you not just as a teammate but as a person 
• Trusting and trustworthy. 

Those are character traits of a love mindset and will get you far in life. 

Complete Athlete Training: The Big Four Mindsets
# 2: A mindset of faith

A complete athlete training program should include training faith. Faith is a complex concept. Certainly you understand the importance of having faith in your own abilities, in your teammates, in your coaching, in your training. Of course, that level of faith is part of what we mean when we say you need to have faith. It really is much deeper than that.

At the deepest levels, faith deals with how we understand the world. It is our worldview, which answers four fundamental questions. There is much more on faith on those pages in this site . The important thing to recognize here is the need to be sure you are congruent with what you think you believe and what you do believe. When you are incongruent, you can in the worst case lead a hypocritical life. You say one thing and do another in part because you do not really believe that what you believe is really real. That in-congruency is often, though not always, quite unconscious.

What I am finding in the western world and America specifically there are increasing numbers of people who have in-congruencies because of the deeply cultural conflicts between the Christian heritage and a much more secularized modern culture. Many people are experiencing internal worldview conflicts that impact their behaviors in subtle but important ways. Making sure you find and address any of these conflicts can be quite powerful and have a surprising impact on your ability trust. It is hard to trust when on the unconscious level you do not trust your own beliefs.

Complete Athlete Training: The Big Four Mindsets
# 3: A mindset of faithfulness

Faithfulness is a little more straight forward. Again, there is much more information on faithfulness on our page on that component of the mindset of a champion arch. Suffice it to say that being trustworthy is one of the important components of faithfulness. You really want your teammates to have faith in you. We are not just talking about faith that you will come through in that clutch moment. It most definitely includes having the faith that you will do your job in making the team better. You will do what needs to be done to put team first and work for the team goals. You can probably see the overlap here with the characteristics of love already discussed. In its essence, faithfulness is about how others perceive you and your desire and ability to put your own self-interests aside for the good of the team. 

The other aspect of faithfulness is the idea of ​​being faithful to the team. That means whatever the team ideals and goals are you have bought into them. Being faithful or showing faithfulness is buying into doing it the way the team or program wants things done. In Major League Baseball, people talk about the Dodgers and doing things the Dodger's way or the Oriole's way. In the National Football League the New England Patriots have that reputation of expecting you to be faithful to the Patriot's way. Red Auerbach expected you to do things the Celtic's way. In that context then, having faithfulness is being true to your own and or team creed. If there is not a match between your own values ​​and creed and that of the team, 

Complete Athlete Training: The Big Four Mindsets
# 4 The Spirit of a Champion.

Developing the spirit of a champion is the keystone to the mindset of a champion arch. It is that final piece to training the mindset of a champion. There are many components that go into this part of your complete athlete training program. More components get built into your daily habits. These components will have specific applications for athletes but are convertible to life outside of athletics. Of course these components are about further building the habits, emotions, and attitude needed to win at the game of life.

The entire design of Growth Mindset Training Academy's athlete mindset training bundle is to build the initial habits that you use in every subsequent training to build more and more pieces to your new mindset. The final portion is enhancing your self-discovery, emotional management, and attitude formation. During this training, your focus is training your ability to control your thinking, push your limits, control your emotions, and use the powerful tools taught earlier to further push you to become the best person you can become. This final training should be about building your life-long habit of self-discovery and self-improvement. Obviously, this goes far beyond athletics, but athletics offers the ideal environment to put the training to the test and get the skills fine tuned before using them in other contexts.

Complete Athlete Training: Train Your Mindset, Become a Champion

With all the money being spent on athletic coaching with the hopes of competing at the college level why wouldn't parents spend money on athlete mindset training, which is far more important for long-term success in life? College coaches tell me they find so many young adults coming into their programs ill-prepared for the mental side of life from home and college athletics specifically. For all of you coaches why would not you build mindset training into your training programs?

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Complete Athlete Training:

Athlete Psychology

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