John Danaher

Now, your question was, well, is there a way to resolve this?

Yeah, there was.

And for eight to nine years, I was very successful with this.

But there's also a tipping point where things can flare out of control and there will be periodic breakups.

You know, they're not the first students I had that left.

I've been coaching a lot longer than I've been coaching the squad.

And I'm sure in the future, there'll be other students who leave me.

That's just the nature of the beast.

It's sad when it happens, but life goes on.

I really don't.

think that people, when they talk about mental preparation, need to take a step back and realize that almost every element of what people describe as mental preparation has physical underpinnings.

literally 95% of what I teach the athletes is physical skills.

And it's my belief that every mental aspect of competition, the most important of which will be confidence on stage, is a direct result of the accumulation of physical skills.

People tend to see things like confidence as a mental state.

It is, but it comes out of the performance of physical skills.

all my life, I've seen sports psychologists try to create confidence in athletes through non physical means.

And it always ends up being the same kind of cheesy motivational speeches, highlight video reels where they try to pump artificial confidence into people.

And

I've never been impressed by this, nor have I seen it have any kind of positive effect on athlete performance.

What I do see build confidence is the sense that athletes are developing skills and using them successfully under conditions that closely mirror the event they're preparing for.