Every young athlete gets coached on technique. Footwork. Form. Conditioning. Coaches spend hours breaking down the physical mechanics of sport — and they should.
But there's a whole side of athletic performance that most programs never touch. The side that determines who keeps going when it gets hard, who bounces back when mistakes happen, who shows up mentally when the body wants to quit, and who performs under pressure instead of folding.
The mental game.
And almost no one teaches it.
Why the Mental Game Gets Ignored
It's not because coaches don't care. It's because most coaches were never taught it either.
Sport psychology has existed as a field for decades, but its tools — self-talk, attention control, emotional regulation, resilience training — rarely show up in youth coaching curricula (McCarthy, 2025). We teach athletes what to do with their bodies, but not how to think when everything goes wrong.
I've been coaching the mental game since the late '90s. Back in 1997–1998, I started asking my softball team to do imagery before games, talk about what they wanted to feel on the field, and put their fears and mistakes on paper instead of letting them live in their heads. After every game, they filled out a short form I created about their performance and what was getting in their way, so I could better understand how to help them. At the end of the season, every player said it helped them improve — and the results matched it. We lost one game all year, won our league, and won the end‑of‑season tournament.
The athletic director didn't really understand what I was doing and wasn't fully on board. She had no idea how much it was helping until the team was holding a championship trophy. That's when it became obvious: mental skills weren't a "nice extra." They were a competitive edge I wasn't willing to ignore.
What the Mental Game Actually Includes
This isn't about motivation posters or pregame hype. The mental game is a set of trainable skills — just like any physical skill (McCarthy, 2025). Here are a few of the big ones.
1. Self-talk: The voice in your head
The voice in your head is either your greatest asset or your biggest opponent.
Most young athletes have never been taught to notice their internal dialogue during competition, let alone shape it. Negative self-talk after a mistake (“I always choke,” “I can’t do this”) is linked to higher anxiety, lower confidence, and worse performance (Peak Performance Sports, 2025; Quirky Kid Clinic, n.d.; Applied Sport Psychology, 2025). Neutral or process‑focused self-talk (“next play,” “find the target”) keeps attention on what’s controllable and helps athletes bounce back.
Imagery: Picture a young basketball player who just turned the ball over. In the next five seconds, two things can happen — she replays the mistake on a loop, or she resets and locks in on defense. That five‑second window is where self-talk training lives.
My job as a coach is to get inside that athlete’s head enough to hear how she’s talking to herself — and then help her reframe it in a way that helps instead of hurts. A coach should do more than run drills. A coach should help their athletes become the best versions of themselves, mentally and physically.
2. Attention control: Choosing your focus on purpose
Elite athletes know where to put their focus — and where not to.
The crowd. The scoreboard. The last play. The coach’s expression. Young athletes get pulled in every direction during competition. Under pressure, many athletes’ attention drifts toward worries and “what ifs” rather than the actual task, a major driver of choking in big moments (Van der Ven, 2011).
Attention control is the trained ability to bring focus back to what’s relevant and controllable, right now, in this moment. Mental training programs use tools like cue words, breathing, and game‑like distraction drills to build this skill (Sport Psychology Insights, 2025).
Imagery: Think of a gymnast standing at the edge of the mat before her floor routine. The arena is loud. The judges are watching. Everything around her is noise. The mental skill isn’t pretending the noise doesn’t exist — it’s choosing where to direct attention despite it and then running the routine in her mind before she ever moves. She feels each tumbling pass, sees each landing stuck, and hears the crowd in her head first.
Research on sport imagery shows that when athletes mentally rehearse skills in vivid detail, the brain activates many of the same pathways as it does during actual physical reps, and performance improves more when imagery is combined with physical practice than with physical practice alone (Taylor, 2012; Setanta College, 2023; Association for Applied Sport Psychology, n.d.). That’s why elite gymnasts, golfers, and shooters visualize the skill before they execute it.
3. Emotional regulation: Using nerves instead of fighting them
Nerves aren’t the enemy. Unmanaged nerves are.
Classic theories like the inverted‑U and more modern models like Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) show that performance is best at an optimal range of activation — too little energy and you’re flat, too much and you’re flooded and shaky (Hanin, 1997; Sullivan, 2022). Athletes who learn to recognize their own “sweet spot” and use tools like breathing, routines, and cue words to move toward it perform more consistently (Elitez Psychology Group, 2024).
Imagery: A soccer player stepping up to a penalty kick in a tied game. Her heart rate is elevated. Her hands might be shaking. The difference between a player who converts and one who doesn’t often isn’t physical — it’s whether she’s learned to channel that energy instead of fighting it.
Teaching simple regulation tools — like a 4‑count inhale, 4‑count exhale, combined with a short cue word — is exactly the kind of “mental warm‑up” used with professionals and can be scaled down easily for youth.
4. Resilience and mistake recovery: What happens after it goes wrong
How an athlete responds to a mistake in the next 10 seconds determines whether one error becomes two — or ten.
Resilience is the ability to stay composed, confident, and present in the face of mistakes and adversity (Applied Sport Psychology, 2014; Sport Psychology Today, 2014). Sport‑psychology practitioners often teach simple frameworks for dealing with errors — acknowledge, review, strategize, execute — so athletes can learn from a mistake without living in it.
Imagery: A pitcher who just gave up a home run is walking back to the mound. The crowd is loud. The dugout is watching. What happens in those 15 steps back to the rubber — the breath, the reset, the refocus — is the mental game in real time.
As a coach, I want to know which athletes get tighter and smaller in those moments and which ones grow. Not so I can label them, but so I can coach them. My job is to help athletes learn how to perform under pressure, not just in perfect conditions.
5. Identity and confidence: Who you are beyond the scoreboard
Young athletes who tie their self‑worth entirely to performance outcomes are one bad season away from quitting.
Research on athletic identity and burnout shows that when athletes define themselves only by results or status (“starter,” “scholarship kid,” “the star”), they’re more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and early burnout — especially when injury or loss threatens that identity (Giannone et al., 2017; Headstrong Mindset, 2025). A healthier identity balances “I am an athlete” with “I am a person beyond sport” and ties confidence to effort, growth, and character as much as to wins and stats.
My coaching has always been creative and progressive because I see mindset as another skill that needs to be built. The goal isn’t to create athletes who never feel doubt. The goal is to build athletes who know what to do with doubt when it shows up.
What Happens When You Don’t Teach It
When the mental game is ignored, the consequences are evident everywhere.
Athletes burn out. They quit sports they love because they can’t handle the emotional weight of competition. They develop performance anxiety that follows them into adulthood. They associate sport with shame instead of growth (Headstrong Mindset, 2025; McCarthy, 2025).
We’ve all seen it. The talented kid who disappeared after one rough season. The athlete who had everything physically but couldn’t hold it together when it mattered.
That’s not a talent problem. That’s a mental skills gap — and it was preventable.
The good news is you don’t need a full sport psychology program to start making a difference.
What You Can Do Right Now
Start here. You do not need a full mental performance program to make athletes better tomorrow.
You don’t need a sport psychologist on staff to start teaching the mental game. Here’s where to begin, grounded in what the research suggests works for young athletes (Quirky Kid Clinic, n.d.; Sport Psychology Today, 2014; McCarthy, 2025).
Debrief mistakes without shame.
After a bad play, ask “What would you do differently?” not “Why did you do that?” Language shapes identity. Treat errors as information, not character flaws, and you’re already teaching resilience (Applied Sport Psychology, 2014; Sport Psychology Today, 2014).
Teach breathing as a reset tool.
A simple 4‑count inhale, 4‑count exhale between plays is a legitimate performance tool used at the elite level to regulate arousal and return attention to the present (Hanin, 1997; Elitez Psychology Group, 2024).
Make mental skills part of practice.
Simulate pressure. Run drills where mistakes happen and recovery is the focus — not perfection. Add small distractions or consequences to teach athletes how to reset and refocus (Sport Psychology Today, 2014; McCarthy, 2025).
Talk about the mental game openly.
Normalize it. Name it. The more athletes hear that mental skills are trainable — self-talk, focus, mistake recovery — the more they’ll invest in developing them (Applied Sport Psychology, 2025; McCarthy, 2025).
If you have access to a sport psychologist — use them.
When elite athletes openly work with mental performance professionals, they’re showing young athletes that mental training is part of the job, not a sign that something is wrong (The Comeback, 2026; Yahoo Sports, 2026).
The Bottom Line
Physical talent gets athletes to the starting line. The mental game determines what happens after.
If we want to develop athletes who are resilient, consistent, and built for the long game — we have to teach the whole game. The mental side isn’t a bonus. It’s the foundation (Hanin, 1997; McCarthy, 2025).
And if the most dominant athletes in sport have mental performance professionals in their corner — maybe it’s time we stop treating that like a secret and start treating it like the standard.
You were built for this. Wear it like you mean it.
Build the mental game.
Wear the mindset.
— Coach Steiner, MA
Founder, Athletic Pride Gear
References
Applied Sport Psychology. (2014, July 10). Resilience and overcoming performance errors. Association for Applied Sport Psychology.
Applied Sport Psychology. (2025, February 5). Your words, your world: How self-talk shapes your reality. Association for Applied Sport Psychology.
Association for Applied Sport Psychology. (n.d.). Sport imagery training. Association for Applied Sport Psychology.
Elitez Psychology Group. (2024, September 22). Mastering the optimal zone of performance: Insights for athletes and business professionals.
Giannone, Z. A., Haney, C. J., Kealy, D., & Ogrodniczuk, J. S. (2017). Athletic identity and psychiatric symptoms following retirement from varsity sports. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 63(7), 598–601.
Gymnastics Mental Coach. (2017, January 11). Visualization to improve consistency.
Hanin, Y. L. (1997). Emotions and athletic performance: Individual zones of optimal functioning model. European Yearbook of Sport Psychology, 1, 29–72.
Headstrong Mindset. (2025, May 18). Balancing your athletic identity. Headstrong Mindset LLC.
McCarthy, P. (2025, August 13). Child sport psychology: A complete guide to helping young athletes thrive.
Peak Performance Sports. (2025, April 9). Use self-talk to improve athletic performance.
Quirky Kid Clinic. (n.d.). Sports psychology tips to stop negative self-talk.
Setanta College. (2023, January 30). Utilizing mental imagery to improve performance.
Sport Psychology Insights. (2025, October 23). How do athletes use attentional control in sports?
Sport Psychology Today. (2014, July 10). Resilience and overcoming performance errors.
Sullivan, B. (2022, August 8). Individual zones of optimal functioning. 3 Points by Brian Sullivan.
Taylor, J. (2012, November 5). Sport imagery: Your most powerful mental tool.
The Comeback. (2026, May 25). Caitlin Clark opens up about needing a psychologist.
Yahoo Sports. (2026, May 28). Caitlin Clark reveals why mental health is key to her WNBA success.
Youth Sports Psychology. (2025, July 10). How young athletes benefit from mental imagery.