An Intro to mental conditioning and sports

Written By: Elliot Allen

It’s an exciting time to launch this blog “Mental Conditioning Sports” as another arm to the Mental Conditioning Movement!  I believe that how we train our minds is the main driving force to the direction of our lives!  That statement is without exception.  It has been my life’s mission to show this point.  The journey is very challenging and I attempt to illustrate the power of Mental Conditioning through many everyday examples in our lives.

Being an avid sports fan for over 35 years, I believe sports is a perfect metaphor for our lives.  Often when I facilitate workshops or give short speeches, I find myself using sport analogies to help make my points!  However I must be conscious of using sport analogies because it is not relatable to many people (I know that’s ridiculous to us sports fans).  So when the time came to create a platform in which I can freely marry my passions of Mental Conditioning and Sports, I jumped all over this opportunity. 
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To me sports is a microcosm of life, only at one million times faster than life.  Sometimes in life we have hours, days, months or even years to make decisions.  In sporting competitions, we have milliseconds to make decisions and the decisions have to be made under tremendous pressure.  For professional athletes the pressure is greatly magnified playing in front of thousands of spectators live and also being viewed on television by millions more!  I have great respect for what a professional athlete has to endure Mentally.  Professional Athletes get full credit for their physical conditioning.  However very little get the credit for being mentally in great shape.  Now of course, just as in physical conditioning, not all athletes are in good Mental Conditioning!  We certainly will be looking at and discussing that in depth here in Mental Conditioning Sports.  It’s my contention that today’s athlete is physically bigger, stronger, faster and has better Physical Conditioning than ever before.  However because of that, and other variables it has inevitably taken away from some of the Mental Conditioning of today’s athlete.  This is something we want to highlight here at Mental Conditioning Sports with of course the daily nuts and bolts conversations in regards to sports and athletes!  Yes we will be looking at what in the world is going on with a particular team’s offensive woes or inept defense.  Why is a particular player not living up to their ability while another player may be totally exceeding expectations?  There is no way around discussing the physicality’s of those situations.  At the same time we will be adding a different element to the conversation.  Mentally where is this player?  Mentally where is that team that is either under or over achieving?  I believe if we can really look at it from a realistic and as relatable a standpoint as possible it will open up a whole new angle to viewing sports, which so many of us are so passionate about.  Contrary to popular opinion I believe that sports fans play a great role making up the attributes of professional athletes.  So maybe, right here we will be starting a movement to make our sports even more competitive, our athletes even more dominant and reaching higher grounds with their already off the charts talent!