There is an old story about a giant ship whose engine broke down. Several mechanics were brought in to fix it, but no one could figure out what was wrong. Eventually, an older expert with decades of experience arrived. He walked around the engine, listened, inspected a few areas, and then pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped one spot and the engine immediately started.
Later, the owner received a bill for $10,000 and complained about the price. The expert sent back an itemized invoice: $2 for tapping the engine and $9,998 for knowing where to tap.
I think about that story often in mental performance training because the intervention itself is usually not the hardest part. Breathing exercises are not especially complicated. Cue words, routines, imagery, self-talk strategies, attentional cues, and reset plans can all be taught relatively quickly. The harder part is figuring out exactly where the problem is occurring in the athlete’s experience. In other words, where do we need to tap?
In my experience, some of the most useful work in sport psychology happens before an intervention is ever selected. It happens when an athlete begins seeing the details of their own experience more clearly. Athletes spend so much time inside their sport that they can sometimes be too close to what is happening to recognize the pattern. A coach or mental performance professional can help create a little distance and ask questions that bring those patterns into view.
Awareness, Acceptance, and Action
A simple way I think about this process is awareness, acceptance, and action. We tend to be drawn immediately toward action. Athletes want to know what they should do differently. Coaches want a strategy they can give the athlete. Mental performance professionals have a long list of techniques available to us. But action without enough awareness can easily become an attempt to solve the wrong problem.
An athlete might say, for example, “I lose confidence when I miss a few shots.” On the surface, that sounds like a confidence issue, so it would be easy to move straight into confidence-building strategies. But if we slow the experience down, the athlete may notice something more specific. After the second miss, they start checking the scoreboard more often. Then they begin thinking about whether the coach is going to take them out. Their attention shifts from reading the defense to evaluating themselves. They become hesitant, pass up the next open shot, and interpret that hesitation as proof that their confidence is gone.
Now the problem looks different. Confidence may still be part of it, but the more useful place to intervene might be the athlete’s attention immediately after a mistake. Once that pattern becomes visible, the next step is much easier to identify. The athlete might learn to recognize the urge to check the scoreboard as an early warning sign and deliberately return attention to a specific external cue such as reading the defender, sprinting into position, or making the next simple play.
What Is Metacognition?
This is where metacognition in sport psychology becomes so important. Metacognition is often described as thinking about thinking, but in sport it can be broader than that. It is the ability to notice your own thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, attentional shifts, habits, and reactions while beginning to understand how those things connect to performance.
The goal is not to turn athletes into people who constantly analyze themselves during competition. In fact, too much internal monitoring can interfere with performance. The goal is to help athletes understand their patterns well enough that they can recognize when something begins to change.
This kind of athlete self-awareness gives performers more information to work with. Instead of simply saying, “I choked,” “I got nervous,” or “I lost focus,” an athlete can begin identifying when the shift happened, what preceded it, where attention went, and what behavior followed. That is much more useful information for both the athlete and the coach.
Building an Early Warning System
Over time, athletes can start developing an early warning system for themselves. They begin to notice the things that tend to happen before performance drifts. One athlete may begin talking less when frustration is building. Another may start rushing their routine. A swimmer may suddenly become much more aware of the athletes in the surrounding lanes. A golfer may shift from thinking about the current shot to calculating what a score will mean. A hockey player may stop making simple plays and begin forcing difficult ones.
None of these things are automatically problems on their own, but they can become useful signals that something has shifted.
Those early signals matter because they create an opportunity to respond before the athlete is completely caught up in the problem. Saying “I lost focus” after the fact does not give us much to work with. Recognizing that focus tends to drift toward the outcome after a mistake gives us something much more specific. We can begin asking what pulls attention away, what the athlete notices first, and where attention would be more useful instead.
This is one reason mental skills training for athletes should involve more than learning techniques. Athletes also need to learn how to recognize the situations in which those techniques are useful.
What Gets in the Way of Flow?
I also like to think about this in terms of resistance. Athletes often want to know how to get into a flow state in sport or how to perform at their best more consistently. Rather than only asking how to create flow, it can be useful to ask what gets in the way of it. What creates friction or resistance between the athlete and the way they normally perform when things are going well?
Sometimes that resistance is excessive concern about the outcome. Sometimes it is comparison, fear of making another mistake, uncertainty about a role, trying to consciously control a movement that normally happens automatically, or attempting to get rid of nerves before allowing yourself to compete. Sometimes it is something very practical, such as poor communication, lack of preparation, or fatigue.
The important part is identifying the specific source of resistance rather than treating “mental toughness,” “confidence,” or “focus” as one large, vague problem.
Once the resistance becomes clear, the intervention often becomes fairly logical. If checking the scoreboard repeatedly pulls attention away from the present task, then reducing those checks and creating a better attentional target may help. If an athlete rushes after mistakes, slowing the between-play routine may be useful. If uncertainty about a role is creating constant self-evaluation, a conversation with the coach might do more than another confidence exercise. If an athlete becomes too internally focused under pressure, the answer might be a simple external cue that brings attention back into the environment.
Acceptance Before Intervention
Before taking that action, however, there is another important step: acceptance. Athletes are often very good at noticing something and immediately deciding that it should not be happening. “I shouldn’t be nervous.” “I shouldn’t be thinking about the outcome.” “I shouldn’t care what the coach thinks.” That reaction can add another layer of resistance. Now the athlete is dealing with the original experience and also fighting against the fact that they are having it.
Acceptance does not mean liking the experience or giving in to it. It simply means acknowledging what is actually there. An athlete can recognize, “I tend to get nervous before important competitions because the result matters to me.” From there, we can work with the nervous system that is actually showing up instead of trying to solve an imaginary version of the athlete who never gets nervous.
The same applies to frustration, self-doubt, fear of failure, perfectionism, or distraction. We do not always need to eliminate those experiences. We need to understand them well enough that the athlete can respond effectively when they appear.
Why Awareness Should Come First
This is why I think awareness has to come before action. If we skip too quickly to the intervention, mental performance training can become a collection of tools looking for a problem. An athlete gets told to breathe, visualize, use positive self-talk, meditate, or create a routine without anyone first asking what is actually happening and whether that tool addresses it.
Sometimes the athlete does need a breathing strategy. Sometimes they need imagery, a reset routine, a cue word, or a different attentional target. Other times they may simply need to see the situation differently. Some of the most productive moments in this work happen when an athlete stops and says, “I never realized I did that.”
That sentence matters because once a pattern becomes visible, the athlete has more choice in what happens next. Without awareness, the same reaction tends to repeat itself automatically. With awareness, there is a small opening where the athlete can recognize what is happening, accept that it is happening, and choose a response that is more useful.
For athletes, coaches, and mental performance professionals, that may be one of the most important principles in sport psychology: do not rush to fix what you have not yet understood.
The hammer is rarely the impressive part. Helping the athlete understand where to tap is the part that takes time, experience, and careful attention.
Train the Skill of Awareness
Mental performance is not only about learning more interventions. It is also about becoming better at recognizing what is happening before, during, and after performance. The more clearly an athlete understands their own patterns, the more precise their response can become.
If you are an athlete or coach interested in developing greater awareness, focus, confidence, and consistency under pressure, The Mental Barbell provides individual mental performance training, team workshops, and coach support designed to turn these ideas into practical skills.
Leave a Reply