“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.” – Vince Lambardi

Just like our bodies, the football mind is what it eats. Pumping the mind with a steady and consistent stream of impurities, negatives and intangibles will result in automated responses that serve nothing more than to protect or feed the ego.

While protecting the ego is an ability that everyone must learn to effectively manage certain scenarios, it serves little to no benefit to an athlete. In fact, the opposite is normally the case.

The state of an athlete’s football confidence, football mental toughness and overall football psychology are all the result of how an athlete has trained their mind and thought process to respond to threats, failures and fears.

Over time, and particularly when left unchecked, the mind takes over the conscious cognitive aspects of the thought process and uses the predetermined or default reactions that were used in the past.

In essence an athlete that is not in control of their thought process and their actions will merely be a “slave” to their own mind; a mind that does not have the same goals as the athlete does on the field.

Becoming conscious to the mental mechanisms is usually the hardest step in the process that is required to elevate the athlete to a new and higher level. This is most athletes’ first step towards achieving their most desired and ultimate goal, at least when it comes to their mental game in football, that is, reaching their own peak performance.

Take the athlete that is predisposed to the perfectionist mindset. These athletes tend to work hard, if not the hardest, in practice but when it comes to a competitive game they crumble due to their fears and weak mental game.

This is because they are constantly worrying about making a mistake [i.e. not being perfect]. They are effectively chancing the illusion that is perfection … there is no such thing. These athletes tend to suffer from “never” achieving their goals and therefore “never” feeling satisfied as nothing is ever good enough for them.

The most successful athletes are the ones that possess the ability to perform with a functional mindset. This approach allows the athlete to perform fearlessly as they are not bogged down by the imperfections in their game. They might fumble the ball on one play and go one to score a touchdown in the next. It’s all about performing efficiently instead of perfectly.

By accepting that nobody is perfect and that as mistakes are part of the game they will inevitably happen, the athlete will start to feel that the huge weight that they have been carrying around with them on the field will gradually be lifted from their shoulders.

This will free up the athletes mind, calming their thoughts and relaxing their body in the process. In other words they are now primed for action.

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