Discover articles, podcasts, and resources designed to help parents and coaches support children and young athletes who perform well in training but struggle under pressure in matches or competitions. Common symptoms include stomach pain, nausea, chest tightness, or “zoning out.” Parents often say: “great in training but freezes on game day,” “they feel physically sick before matches,” or “they’re a different player in competition.” Learn strategies to reduce sports performance anxiety and build confidence.
Conversations with Kids: When Your Child is Trialling at an Elite Sports Academy For parents and guardians where we give you prompts so that you can have more meaningful conversations with your children to help them build key characteristics such as mental toughness, resilience, confidence, creativity, focus and so on. A Questions for Your Kids …
Football Psychology Tips: My Son is Trialling at a Cat 1 Academy How do I Protect His Mental Health? A discussion we have with a lot of parents whose children are trialling at a Cat 1 Professional Football Club Academies is around protecting their child’s mental health? This is often the scenario where you’ve watched …
Book Review – How the Body Knows Its Mind by Sian Beilock Introduction: Why This Book Matters for Young Athletes Today For children and young athletes, sport is becoming faster, more competitive, more public, and more emotionally demanding than ever. Whether they’re transitioning into new sports or squads, experiencing professional contracts for the first time, …
Youth Sports Psychology Tips: How to Help Kids Overcome Performance Anxiety Channelling nerves is possible Many children can get very fearful and uptight before they play competitively in their sport. So much so that they dread playing, they may be very irritable with you the parent on the journey in the car, they may even …
Football Psychology Tips: 7 Tips on Taking Penalty Kicks Under Pressure Taking a penalty has to be one of the most nerve racking moments As the fallout from England’s loss to Italy, on penalties, in the Euro 2020 final continues. I thought I’d write a piece about penalty kicks and the link with Mental Toughness. …
Goalkeeper Psychology Tips: Helping Boost Young Goalkeepers Self Confidence Confidence in your ability is essential to succeed Often children are placed in goal as a punishment or because no-one else wants to go in goal – what sort of message is that telling them about the position? Especially as the goalkeeper’s role is arguably the most …