Prepping for Rivalry Games: Mental Game Hacks for Coaches

⚡️Rivalry week exposes cracks—don’t let “pressure moments” decide the game. Build real mental toughness fast. Grab the free training → https://coachfreetraining.com
 
Rivalry games feel bigger—for athletes and for us as coaches. In this episode, I share the exact coaching strategies I use to normalize the moment, run game-like practices, and install simple mental prep tools (like a SnapBack routine and short visualization) so your high school athletes perform under pressure instead of crumbling.
 
I’m Coach Bre—a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a long-time head volleyball coach and 4-time state champion. 💜🏐
 
You’ll learn:
How to normalize big games (“just another turkey dinner”) so nerves don’t hijack execution
3 costly mistakes coaches make in rivalry games (over-hyping, over-coaching, ignoring the mental side)
The SnapBack routine to recover from mistakes and get back to peak performance fast
Visualization that actually works (2 minutes, sport-specific cues, pre-competition scripts)
Practice design tweaks for big games: score flips, timed constraints, loud-gym simulation, fatigue reps
The most important mental skill: adaptability—and how to train it daily with 3-2-1 BRAVE ✍️
What to do about social media noise + keeping your team aligned with program values 💬  

🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction to Rivalry Week
01:28 The Pressure of Rivalry Games
02:44 Common Coaching Mistakes
06:32 Mental Game Hacks
08:01 Training for Pressure Situations
09:34 The Importance of Adaptability
14:21 Visualization Techniques
15:21 Final Tips and Conclusion
 
Rivalry games and big games don’t raise your team to the occasion—they drop to the level of their mental preparation. Use these sports psychology tools to build confidence, improve mental performance, and turn pressure into your team’s advantage. 🚀
 
📢 Coaches—comment below: What’s one pressure scenario you’ll script into practice this week? 👇
 
📌 Free Tools & Next Steps
🔹 Grab our in-depth FREE training → https://coachfreetraining.com
🔹 Follow us on IG → @elitecompetitorcoach
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Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

1:04

It is the week before our rivalry game. You better believe that the nerves are a little bit higher, the energy is feeling different. All the social media buzz is buzzing around this game, and my players can feel it too. So in this episode, I'm gonna talk about how we prepare for rivalry games because it seems like everybody's. Thinks that we are their rival. So there's a lot that happens throughout the season and the biggest mistakes that coaches make when they prepare for bigger rivalry games like this and some mental game hacks that we can be all doing as we prepare for these games throughout your season. Because here's the truth, rivalry games and big pressure, pressure games like this just expose any cracks that are happening on your team. You got drama, you've got confidence issues, you've got anything else going on, just. It happens to pop up in the times that you really don't want it to. So we'll talk about how you can take care of those things head on. And if I haven't met you, I'm Coach Bree. I'm a 14 year head volleyball coach. Have won four back to back to back to back state titles as a coach. So you better believe that I've been in some pressure situations. As a coach. You've coached a lot of these rivalry games and like I said, because. We've had that level of success. Everybody thinks that we're their rival, so I, I get to have a lot of experiences with that. I will say that I probably lost more rivalry games than I've won, but that's beside the point. I've learned a lot of lessons around all of this. I'm gonna share that with you, so let's get into it. First of all. Why does the week leading up to rivalry games feel different? It's pretty obvious, right? There's more eyes on the game. Family school pride, social media buzz. Athletes tend to feel this extra pressure and start to think things like, well, we cannot lose to this team. And so they just have this narrative in their head and it's. It's kind of hard to coach through that sometimes if they just are totally fixated on the outcome. RI rivalries, like I said, can magnify what's already there, so confidence cracks start to show up. Drama can intensify Energy often gets wasted on nerves instead of execution because they're so nervous and. Excited. So it's just a lot on their nervous system. But as a coach, your tone really sets the ceiling for this. So if you treat this like a Super Bowl, so will they. And if you normalize it, then they can just focus on their job. And like I said, throughout my season we tend to have a lot of these rivalry games. For some reason we used to only have one rival. Now we have like four. And so they get hyped up a lot and, uh, we get our, we get everybody's best. Um, and that's typically what happens in rivalry games is that, you know, we're gonna bring our best. And that just kind of brings a lot of extra, extra stuff. All right. And so we always talk about how this is just another. Match. It's another part of our season to try and normalize some of that. So I'm gonna talk more about how I do that. But first three mistakes that coaches often make when it comes to these bigger rivalry games. Number one, over-hyping the game. Okay. Putting it on a pedestal. Um, instead, let's normalize it. It's just another match. And my college coach used to always say, it's just another Turkey dinner. Anytime we would play any of these like playoff games or championship games where the tension can be a little bit higher, the pressure is a little bit higher. She used to say, you know what, you could eat Turkey mashed potatoes, stuffing gravy, all the fixings of a Thanksgiving dinner any day of the year. But then when it comes to Thanksgiving, you can eat that same stuff, but somehow it feels magical and special and different when in reality the contents of the meal are all the same. It's just another Turkey dinner, so let's treat it like that. It's just volleyball. Okay, we we pass that hit serve, dig. Every single day, and we're just gonna do that again. So try and normalize it a little bit. Right? Um, mistake number two is over coaching. In practice, we try and throw in, and I, I have done this before and, uh, I, I don't anymore, but we throw in new plays, we change the game plan. We're like, all of a sudden we're gonna start doing this because we're playing this team. And rivalry week is not a time for an overhaul. We need reps and confidence. So we need to get good at what we are good at so that there's no like wrinkles in the game plan. And athletes can go out feeling confident, not like, oh my gosh, we just overhauled our offense and I don't feel confident that I know what I'm doing. And so get really good at the basics. Now, that's not to say if you know tactics and strategies and like, you know, you're trying to scout the other team and you're just adjusting things based on what you see. I will say at the high school level, for the most part, like that's typically wasted time. I know I'm gonna have some coaches that are like, no, this is, but I mean, it depends on the level of your team, all of those things. But for the most part, you know, be good at what you do instead of trying to overhaul things for what you think you might be seeing. Okay. And then number three, ignoring the mental side. The mental side is huge and every day, but especially when it comes to these big rivalry games where there's a ton of pressure and all this athletes, you know, if we just think that they're gonna rise to the occasion without the actual tools to get them there, um, we're gonna be disappointed. And that was the boat that I was in so many years as a coach, is that. I would have really good practice plans. I would train really well and practice. I would, you know, replicate game-like scenarios and you know, my athletes were prepared physically. And then we would get in these playoff games where it's like a winner to state loser out and there's a ton of pressure and my athletes would crumble and they couldn't handle the pressure and they would let one mistake turn into two and three and I'm like, oh my gosh, what's happening out here? We look so good in practice yesterday. And so that's when I actually took the hard route. You don't have to do this, but I went back. To become a mentor performance coach, I dove into sports psychology. I started bringing strategies to my team. Now I have done the work for you. So if you go to my free training@coachfreetraining.com, I break down some really easy strategies that you can be implementing with your team. Things like a pre-game routine, things like as. Uh, snapback routine to get back over mistakes faster. How to train some good positive self-talk in athletes so that they're not saying like, don't pass the ball to me, or don't serve to me when you need them to step up and perform. So we can't ignore the mental side of the game because big games like this. Will not let your athletes rise to any sort of level of what you expect them to. If they don't have the skills to do that, it will only fall to the level of their mental preparation. And if you haven't prepared them mentally, then that would be nothing. Okay. So rivalry week is really what exposes the gaps, not what you think like, oh, they'll just somehow. All of a sudden be mentally strong, um, when I haven't actually trained any of that. So I'll talk more about the specific things that I do leading up to it. But if you wanna know really great strategies, go to coach free training.com. That's where I break most of that down. Okay, let's talk about mental game hacks for the week. Leading up to a rivalry game or a big pressure game. Now, pre-game focus. I already said this, just another Turkey dinner. Let's try and normalize things. You could even steal that. Just another Turkey dinner that came though again from my college coach, Diane Fl. So give her credit. Okay, but consistency and routine, same warmup, same pre-game timing. The brain feels calm, the nervous system feels regulated when athletes can just trust that they know what they're doing instead of like. You know, I'm gonna do something totally different now, and we're gonna mix it all up. Okay? That, that's really not helpful for athletes. Your presence also matters in this too. So, I've mentioned this before. Um, you know, this comes from Dr. Becky Kennedy. I love this analogy, but when you're in an airplane and you're going through some turbulence, right? Um, if you're like most people, you kind of look towards. The flight attendant and you're like, okay, if the flight attendant is freaking out,'cause they do this every single day, if the flight attendant's, you know, looking like she's a little uneasy, then that gives me, um, that gives me a green light to probably freak out a little bit. But if the flight attendant looks like, okay, it's calm, it's under control. All right then. Then we can handle this. Like I want you to think of yourself as a flight attendant in this scenario. Like if you're freaking out and you're like, oh my gosh, this is like the biggest thing ever, then they're also going to do that. So be the calm, collected person, be the coach that they need that sturdy presence so that they can just not have to worry about you flying off the handle and, and doing weird things. Okay? And so pre-game focus is important in this. Now, um, let's talk about practice. I, I think it's important in practice always to train specific scenarios that your athletes might encounter when they, when they get into a game. Um, now as we, we can't always replicate every single thing that's going to happen though, and it's hard to replicate the exact pressure of what they're going to see. But we can do our best. We can manipulate the scoring a little bit. So, um, we can put them in a situation where they're down by some points and they have to fight back. Um, we can also do that like mid game, flip the score. We can put pressure, um, with timing. Like you have to get X amount of whatever it is, whatever sport, sport you coach. But for me, like, you know, X amount of passes in a certain amount of time. So we're just adding some time pressure. I'm not a huge fan of exercise as punishment, but I think sprinkled in every once in a while, um, you know, the, the little like short bursts of sprints and things like that. So we're kind of putting some pressure on, um, physically. You know, all of those, like having tough practices leading up to it where they have to execute when they're under fatigue. So like creating some of those scenarios is really, really good. One time leading up to a rivalry game, well, I used to do this a few years, I haven't done it for a while. Um, we used to play this team and their gym was just super loud. Like it was hard. It was not the same as our normal training environment. And so. For a certain part of our scrimmages, I would play over the loudspeaker, just like the sound of crowds and you know, just play that in the background. So they kind of got used to having to like speak louder to each other, um, over that noise. So training is, you know, you can kind of, I wouldn't say adjust or overhaul anything, but, you know, training for what you might see is really important. The other thing, the other part of this is that. You cannot train for every single situation. That is why the most important skill, the most important mental skill that your athletes can have is adaptability. And so teaching them simple ways to adapt to whatever situation that they're in, and even equipping them with the belief in themselves that I am a adaptable. Um, in our program, we have athletes do a daily mindset routine every day. It's called 3, 2, 1, brave. They write down three affirmations. They do two minutes of journaling. One thing they're grateful for. One piece of evidence, one, their affirmations is coming true, and these affirmations are found, uh, based on. You know what they want for the season. They're not just like random affirmations, but I always encourage athletes, like in one of your affirmations, if you're gonna pick anything, uh, is I am adaptable. That is one of the most powerful affirmations that an athlete can have because when they're in those tough situations, to fall back on a mantra of I am adaptable is so great. It's almost like getting out of victim mindset and why is this happening to me to, I'm deductible. Don't know necessarily what I'm gonna do in this situation, but I know that there's a way out and there's a way through. And one of the skills that we give athletes is called a snapback routine. So it's a combination of a breath, a reset word at the top, a reset signal on their exhale. It takes like two seconds. So a mantra of I'm adaptable, combined with a reset method like the snapback routine is so powerful because now when they're in that situation and they. You know, can typically freak out and the crowd is loud and they're saying like, oh my gosh, we're losing and what am I gonna do? Take me out. I don't wanna, you know, they start going down this spiral. Now they're falling back on more positive self-talk. They have their snapback routine to get over a mistake faster. So equipping them with those skills, not just in prep for rivalry week, but really setting the foundation early, like is so powerful.'cause that's what they're gonna lean back on in those pressure situations. I've been in a lot of, you know, tight situations. I will say in championship match last season it wasn't a rivalry. We were actually kind of surprised to even be in, in that match to be honest. Um, but we were in a tough situation. We were down championship point in the fourth set. So talking volleyball here, you need to win three outta five. So the other team had won two. Um, they were going for their third set win. They had. They had championship point, they were serving the ball. They had one state in 36 years, so their whole, you know, uh, the whole crowd was on their, their feet. They were like, we've got this, and they served the ball to, to win the game. We were able to actually side out and convert that point and. Transpired from there was pretty amazing. So now we've tied it up. We've gotta win by two in order to win this set and stay alive for a fifth set. My sophomore goes back to serve, who had never played in a state tournament before, had never been on varsity before. In fact, that was the, that was the truth for most of the people on my team that year, last year. And so she goes back and I'm like, sophomore, all right, let's go. Love this for us. But she was looking pretty confident. Um, she goes back, she serves the ball. Great. Serve. Um, the other team, you know, they pass, they kind of. Botch the play and one of their best players who's going on to play division one volleyball. I mean, she's doing that this fall right now. Free balls, the ball into the net, which is very like uncommon. That is like an unforced error that's not common at that level, especially from a player. That way the nerves we're getting to them. Right. So now they were falling back. They were, they were falling back on what their training was in that moment. So my sophomore, we got that point. Sophomore goes back to serve again. They set their best hitter, best hitter, goes out, hits the ball out of bounds, another unfor air. And I just saw it real time full unfold that my team, and when I asked actually the, the reporters interviewed her afterwards, by the way, we won that set. I mean, and then we went on to win the fifth set and win state, which was like. Amazing. But the reporters interviewed her and they were like, what were you thinking? What were you doing? And she was like, I was just saying my, or doing my breath, saying my reset word, our snap pack routine that we had been training every single day that season. And honestly, I was like, is this working? Are we spending, are we, is this worth our time? It is because it, it really like expose, you get exposed in those, in those games. Your athletes will fall to their level of their preparation, and if their mental preparation is not there, then that's what's gonna happen. And so giving your athletes skills that they can fall back on, I mean. And it saved us time and time again in these like championship and these big, big games. Now, obviously, I'm not saying that it's you're gonna win every single championship game or win every rivalry game because that there's a lot of that that goes into it. But I don't wanna lose a game to mental errors anymore. That's kind of what I decided as a coach is like, I, I wanna give them the skills that they need, um, so that they're fully prepared and I've done everything in my power to train them physically and mentally so that they're ready to go. And if the other team just ends up being better than us, then that's that. Okay. But it's, we're not gonna lose to mental errors anymore. Right. So you can do that for your team too. The other thing I like to do is some visualization. Hey, I visualize leading up to it because visualization is proven to recruit some of the same, um, neuro pathways and neuro it fires the same motor neurons, um, as if she's, as if your athletes are doing it, um, physically. And so we incorporate a little bit more visualization leading up. And when I say a little bit more, I mean like two minutes. Not, not a lot, but we visualize being, you know, on the court. I, I have them visualize being in tough situations and how they're getting out of it. Visualize some reps and then right before a game. And we have some pre-competition visualizations that, um, we rotate through. And all of those visualizations, by the way, are inside our program plug and play Elite Mental Game for teams. So if you want a really simple way to do this, play visualizations for your team. Just play trainings that they watch and listen to and then implement. Um, and these trainings are like five minutes long. Then at that training coach free training.com, you get to um, get to learn all about plug and play and you get a little discount for it. So. Head there if you wanna know more and just make it easy on yourself. Okay, so that is kind of what we do. Leading up one little note too, I always remind my athletes like. There can be some drama leading up to rivalry games, right? There's like some, there can be some stuff on social media and it's really easy to fall into that trap and I just remind them of what our values are around our program and, um, that we are a program of class and that we don't engage in that. And so I think that sometimes that needs a reminder because we're dealing with high schoolers and you know, things happen. So we teach them, focus on here what we feed grows, control what you can control. That's another great activity to do leading up to rivalry games. Like, get out a piece of paper, what's in your control and what's not in your control, and just reminding them of like, focus on what's in our control, focus on our, our team, our energy, um, all of that. So hopefully this is helpful coaches. So if you want more ways though to integrate mental training in your season without having to like overwhelm your schedule or anything like that, go to coach free training.com. Those are great tools for. Your whole season, but specifically as you are heading into and playing in rivalry games or, you know, pressure situation games, um, you'll be, you'll be glad that your, your, your girls or you know, if you coach boy athletes, have these skills so that you're not wasting time and energy coaching the emotional side of game when the emotions run high in some of these games. Alright, coaches, I am Coach Bri and I will see you in the next episode of the Coach or Game podcast.