Blog #13

Today I had the pleasure of shadowing multiple mental conditioning coaches at IMG Academy. My day started with a tour, I started with the draw dropping performance center. The performance center was three floors, they had 25 racks and a gatorade bar with smoothies, snacks, and all the protein athletes need to recover after a workout. The second floor had a mental training room, with two neuro trackers, a Dari, and a few other tools. The third floor was where all of the mental conditioning staff is housed. They have 11 mental conditioning coaches on staff. Each team member has one main sport and then two or three overlapping sports with their colleagues. This team is in the field while the athletes are training, each coach is always at practice to talk with the athletes and help them process mental to help it translate physically.

My first session was with the tennis team. I was about to shadow coach Jose and Duncan. Both of these men know the sport of tennis very well, they are training the athletes to succeed in there sport. Duncan is the head of the mental conditioning team, he was coaching the tennis players both mentally and physically. Duncan talked about attitude and how that translates to play. He encouraged the athletes to use positive self-talk and to take a breathe and refocus. Duncan told me that the problem was the athletes didn’t have a routine, they rush too often and forced themselves to keep going and lose point after point. While watching the practice and talking to Duncan and Jose I thought about the post shot routine: 1.) what was the plan? 2.)what actually happened? 3.) what did you learn from it? Jose and Duncan allowed me to break this down and explain it to the athletes. It was an amazing feeling to be able to educate athletes and coaches. I received multiple compliments and was able to share Dr. Shinitzky’s book which highlights all the points that they were trying to touch on with those athletes.

The next session I had was leadership. I worked with Bella, she is new and is working with the athletes to help develop their leadership skills in sport an in life. The first part of the meeting was to break the ice, Bella played two truth and a lie. She wanted to get to know the athletes and develop a relationship with them. The next activity was to talk about what qualities a great leader has. The young man came up with influence, actions, words, attitude. They then had to reflect on themselves, they had to break down and highlights their strengths and weaknesses. I thought this was amazing, to be able to have a problem process that supports athletes and drives them to be better leaders on and off the field. It was great to see the athletes reflect on themselves and be willing to grow and become the best people they can be. It is imperative that Proctor gets a program like this, a program like this could work wonders for the athletes on and off the field.

The last part of my day was a camp session. The session is called core mental conditioning. IMG runs summer camps and camp sessions all year long. This program allows athletes to train and work with the best coaches and a top mental conditioning team. The sessions were very engaging, Steph focused on the importance of positive self-talk. She asked the athletes to share some of the negative things that say when they aren’t playing well or are struggling. The young athletes were very engaged and were willing to share with her so that they can get wisdom to help them work though there problem. The last point was to focus on controlling your emotions and reactions, she wanted the young athletes to understand they have the power to control their minds. I thought this program was amazing, they are helping to set these athletes up to grow and succeed. I had a great day at IMG and I look forward to going back tomorrow!