High School

Question
Hi my name is Adam and I am going into the 9th grade.  Can you tell me anything that I can do to not be intimidated by the juniors and seniors at practice.

Answer
Hello Adam

There are a couple of things that can help you.  First is to REALLY understand that those juniors and seniors were 9th graders once too, and I can tell you they were concerned about being intimidated by the juniors and seniors.  It's a natural thing that everyone goes through.

What's important is to realize that you can't control what they do or say.  What you CAN control is what YOU do, and how you react to the juniors and seniors.

Mental training can really help with this.  You can train yourself to be confident and focused on command.  I help athletes do this a lot.  Here's a good way to do it.  Get in a safe and relaxed position, close your eyes, and take five slow deep breaths.  Then, picture or imagine a time when you felt really confident. It could be doing anything (including a football game or practice), as long as you felt confident doing it.  Really focus on that, everything you saw, heard, felt and experienced.  Now let a word represent that feeling of confidence from that experience, it can be any word.  Let that word - your key word - become attached really strongly to that feeling of confidence.  Practice this a lot.  When it's working well, and you feel that confidence when you hear, say or think about your key word, than visualize going on the playing field, use your key word, and pull in that confidence.  Practice this a lot and what will happen is when you go on the field and say your key word, your confidence flows into you and you feel great.  I've helped many players using this tool - it works!

Good luck and let me know how it goes.

David

David Kenward, The Mental Coach
Sacramento, California
http://www.thementalcoach.com
Win the Mental Game: Perform better under pressure in any sport