Reboot for Athletes: A Coaches Perspective

I grew up being an athlete and have spent my entire adult life coaching. During this time, I have not known how to approach the topic of Mental Fitness. As an athlete, I wasn’t aware of the pressures I was feeling nor how my mental state affected my performance. As a coach, I have had no reliable mental training skill set nor a way to confidently talk about mental fitness or how to train it. I knew if I was going to use Reboot for Athletes, I would need to have an open mind and be willing to change the way I coach, run practices, and approach races. 

There are many aspects of being a mindful coach that many of us skip right over. Taking the time to understand each athlete's Why, what motivates them, and go through proper goal setting and journaling takes up valuable practice time and isn’t as “fun” as physical practice. Managing parent expectations can be an uncomfortable topic to broach. Bringing your best Coach Self to every practice can feel overwhelming. And, talking to athletes about mindfulness and mental training can feel uncomfortable and silly.  

We can do better. I wanted to do better so I said Yes to Reboot and dove right in. The first thing I did was print out both the Coaches and the Parents Guides. I had a meeting with my coaching staff and told them Reboot is now a part of our team culture. They were supportive right away. On to the parents. At our first parent meeting, I passed around the Parents guide for them to peruse. There were a lot of “oh I say that to my kid!”, and “oh, I do that”’s. After explaining Reboot and how we were going to use it with the team, the parents bought in. 

Now it was time to put Reboot to use. I followed Reboot’s implementation guide for the Audio Guides. We listened to them, as a team, before practices. We talked about them during and after practices. Athletes chose the Audio guide that resonated with them on race day and listened to it before going to the start line. We used practice time to learn about what motivates each athlete, set goals and do post race recaps and journaling. 

Half way through the season, the athletes started asking about the Audio Guides and using them at home. They looked forward to goal setting and post race journaling. Parents were enjoying the races and their athletes were having fun and performing. It felt like we were one big mindful team. We could talk about mental fitness just as easily as we talked about physical fitness. 

Reboot for Athletes has been a game changer for me as a coach. I now have the resources to talk about and train mental fitness. It has made me a better and more well rounded coach, which in turn, helps my team.