Encore: How UCLA's Cori Close Built a Mentally Tough Team—And How You Can Too!

🏀 Want to know how Coach Cori Close built UCLA into a national powerhouse?  It wasn’t just talent—it was MENTAL TRAINING. Learn how to train your team’s mindset too → https://coachfreetraining.com 👈

In this episode, we dive into the mental side of the game that separates elite programs like UCLA Women’s Basketball from the rest—and how YOU can bring the same sports psychology techniques to your high school or middle school team. Whether you're coaching 7th graders or state contenders, you’ll walk away with simple, powerful mental training techniques you can implement right away.

👋🏼I’m Coach Bre – a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a long-time head volleyball coach + 4x state champion. I help coaches build resilient, confident athletes without the overwhelm.

Here I break down: 
✔️ How Cori Close and UCLA created one of the most mentally tough teams in the country
 ✔️ The game-changing Mind Gym system that transformed Lauren Betts from a transfer struggling with confidence into an All-American leading scorer
 ✔️ The top 3 mental training techniques championship teams use: visualization, self-talk, and failure recovery systems
 ✔️ Why your team can’t reach peak performance without training the mental side of the game
 ✔️ How to build daily mindset habits in your practice—even if you have zero extra time or budget

👀 We’re unpacking the sports psychology coaching strategies behind programs like UCLA, so your athletes can learn to:
• Navigate pressure with poise
• Bounce back from mistakes
• Cultivate peak performance with confidence
• Strengthen team dynamics and communication

🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction: The Real Reason for Losing Games 
00:23 The Importance of Mental Training in Sports 
01:48 UCLA's Mental Training Success Story 
02:53 Mind Gym: The Secret to Mental Toughness 
03:51 Key Mental Training Techniques 
08:25 Implementing Mental Training in Your Team

🧠 Want to help your team recover fast after mistakes? Learn the Snapback Routine and more in our free coach training → https://coachfreetraining.com

👇 COACHES – comment below: What’s one mental skill your team needs to improve most right now?

✨ Bonus links:
• Grab our in-depth free training → https://coachfreetraining.com
• Learn more here → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT1LkVw5Xvg&list=PLYeP0oZHlVGnxJfK4m7ViFejx8r3hnHWL 
• Dive into the full breakdown of recovering from mistakes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ6OmF7gC3I

Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

1:04

Coach, I'm just gonna say it. You're not losing games because the other team wanted it more. You're losing because your team isn't mentally prepared for when the challenges hit for when the tough times come. When they make a mistake, when the momentum shifts, when the pressure is on. The game plans that work great are the ones that can withstand that too, and you can't train that with physical skills alone.

Speaker: 1:28

We just got done watching the NCAA March Madness Women's Tournament, where we got to see the top dogs on the biggest stages. Do. Just. That. Perform under pressure when the stakes are high, when all eyes are watching, and the teams that had players who led with confidence could bounce back from mistakes and handle the pressure were the ones that all had something in common. I went on a deep dive to find out what that was. Wasn't too hard to find. It was this mental training. All of these teams that went deep in postseason had one thing in common. They had a mental performance coach or some sort of mental performance training that they were incorporating into their practices and into their training. And in this video, I'm gonna be breaking it down for you, the mental training strategies that the top programs are using. Specifically how UCLA built one of the most mentally tough teams in the country, and how you can start implementing these strategies in your gym and with your teams. Even if you're like, uh, Bre, I don't have the time. I don't have the money. You don't need it. These things that we're gonna be going over today, these top skills that these athletes are learning are ones that transfer all the way down to middle school and in high school. And if I have not met you, I'm Coach Bre. I am a mental performance coach for athletes, but also a longtime head volleyball coach and I'm still in it in the trenches with you. A four time state champ coach and I help coaches develop cultures that they're proud of with mentally strong athletes. Who are leaders. Let's get into it. These top programs that we just saw compete had a lot in common. Now, UCLA was the front runner when it came to a program who prioritized mental training. And the thing about it is that their results spoke for themselves. UCLA heading into the NCAA postseason tournament had its first ever 30 win season. Their first ever number one seed going into the tournament. And Cori Close their head coach was the national coach of the year. They also had Lauren Betts. I'm sure that you have heard her name, but the story behind Lauren Betts was phenomenal. She came out of Stanford. She was a transfer, but she was one of the number one recruits in the nation out of high school. But she went to Stanford and only got nine minutes of playing time. At the end of her freshman season, she was at an all time low. It was quoted that she said. Her confidence was very low. She wasn't playing how she wanted to play. She entered the transfer portal, went to UCLA, and this last season became an All American heading into the postseason. She is the leading scorer, averaging 24 points a game. So what happened here? The difference. Something called Mind Gym. So Coach Close, Cori Close when she took over the program in 2011, highly prioritized the mental side of the game. Mental training was part of the foundation of her coaching, and specifically something called Mind Gym. And in all the research around UCLA and a lot of other programs had this in common as well. All the, the teams that went deep into the post postseason had some sort of training system like this, but there, Mind Gym, we're actually gonna be breaking down. In this video, what it is, what are the top three skills that Mind Gym is teaching them? And when I say Mind Gym, it's just like the gym. Gym where you get better at your physical skills, but for the mind. So they met with a mental performance coach once a week for about 25 minutes. They had different activities that they were doing, and then there were other specific things that they were doing to help train their mind so that they could perform under the pressure, under the big lights and. So that players like Lauren Betts could go from low confidence not performing well to a 24 point leading scorer all American player. One of the common things that all of these teams that went deep into the postseason and prioritized mental training did was visualize. And inside UCLA's gym, they would start their practice with three minute highlight reels. I'll talk about what that is in a second, and a highlight reel visualization. Now this is really cool. What they would do, they would actually sit down and watch film of themselves for three minutes. So players would have their own individual little film session of themselves. For just three minutes of them making good place of them playing well. And this is really important because a lot of times athletes self-image and how they see themselves is not very positive. You see this with your athletes, you know, they do a lot of really great things, but then they can't stop focusing on the one thing that they they did wrong. And that's the thing that's over. Playing in their head and that's what they see. So replacing that image and helping them realize like, Hey, no, you are good. You do have the skills, you, you've got this. And allowing them to see that on film is really, really great. So that three minute highlight reel is a staple of what Coach Close's team did. Now, a highlight visualization, they also added in a little bit of visualization. So. This is really great. If you actually don't have access to film and you can't give your athletes film of themselves, they can visualize themselves. So having them recall their best playing moments, even if it's like their top five best playing moments, and then having them replay those moments in their brains so that those are top of mind is really gonna impact how they see themselves, how they go into practice, how they go into training situations, how they go into games when they're remembering and they're keeping top of mind the. Vision and the image of themselves playing well, you can do that with your athletes in your gym. Sitting down and having'em write out their top five best playing moments and then walking them through and just having them see that and having them visualize that is a really great way to kinda get those things into their subconscious. The next skill that was so important in all of these teams and all the mental training strategies was self-talk. How athletes are talking to themselves is so important because we know that thoughts. Create feelings. Feelings create actions, or inaction, and action or inaction creates results. So literally what they say to themselves becomes reality on the court, in the field, wherever they compete. So individual affirmations were key inside the UCLA gym identity beyond performance. So their coaches were trained and how to make sure that they are highlighting who their players are beyond just their performance. And then this. Key thing that they were telling their athletes is that you will never outperform your self-image. You will never outperform your belief about yourself. That sets an athlete's ceiling. It doesn't matter how much their parents say they're great. How? How much? You say like you are very talented and you have the skills. You're probably saying that to your athlete. You can say that all you want. If they don't believe it in themselves, they don't believe that about themselves, that is what's going to set their ceiling. So having these affirmations and these mantras that athletes can fall back on are so, so important because get this, when you have an athlete who's in a stressful and pressure filled situation, what do you want them telling? Themselves. We were in this situation in the state championship and I had my sophomore go back to serve. She was first year on varsity, first, um, first time playing in a state championship tournament. We were in a situation where we were, we were fighting for the comeback, and she was serving in a situation where if we missed our serve or we lost that point, we would be done. The other team was gonna win state, and as she went back to serve, I was thinking to myself, I wonder what she's thinking now. We've trained mindset, we have trained self-talk, we have trained these skills all season leading up to this moment. So she went out. Side note, she made her surf. We won the point. We actually ended up winning that set and then winning the next set to win state for our fourth consecutive year. And the reporters actually interviewed her after and asked her, what were you thinking about? That's exactly what I wanted to know. And she said, all I was doing was saying my reset word. And doing my breath, doing my breath, doing my reset word she was relying on, and she fell back on what was trained because do you want your athlete in that situation saying what most athletes would say to themselves, which is, I hope I don't miss, I hope I don't mess up. Oh, what is my team gonna do if I, if I mess up? Like this moment is too big. Okay. Because if she's thinking those things, remember thoughts, lead to feelings, lead to action, lead to results, she likely is going to have that play out. She's gonna miss her serve. She's gonna like be nervous, more nervous than needed. She's going to hesitate and she's gonna probably make a mistake. Okay? But when athletes are telling themselves things that are productive, and I'm not saying false positivity, but they have mantras, they have affirmations, they can fall back on. That is what they're going to have playing in their head in those moments that matter most. So you could do this with your team. We do this with our team with a daily mindset routine called 3 2, 1. Brave and I break down my daily mindset routine. 3, 2, 1. Brave in our free training for coaches. So if you go to coach free training.com, you can register for that free training. I break down what this daily mindset routine is. It's every day before practice, but it only takes about five to seven minutes and the. Really great thing about mental training is that you get out more than you put in just that five to seven minutes where they're training their self-talk, they're training what they're seeing, that actually is going to lead to more productive practices. It's going to lead to less spirals. It's gonna lead to less self-doubt, right? You're, you're actually able to coach a lot easier when you've got the mindset figured out and athletes are able to do this themselves. The third skill is having a failure recovery system. Every team that was doing mental training that made it deep into the postseason. Said something around this. Everybody had a way to reset, so personal reset cues. They also practiced their mistake recovery and their teammates supported it. So those were the kind of like the three main things around failure recovery is that every athlete had some sort of personal reset cue for us. If you have listened to any of our content, you've heard us talk about. Snapback routine. It's a combination of a breath, a reset word, and then on the exhale, some sort of reset signal to ground them in the present moment. But athletes need some sort of way that's predetermined and pre-practice to respond to challenges that happen in their sport because challenges will happen. You can prepare them as much as you want physically. You can run all the plays, you can give them the scouting report, you can talk about it, but. Things are gonna happen that you can't anticipate. And they need to be able to adapt and adapt quickly. And if you want your athletes to play free and, um, not hesitate, and you want them to take risks, they need to have confidence that when they do, they have a way to recover. And so having some sort of failure recovery system, like I said, ours is called the snapback routine is so important. And if you want to learn more about how to help your athletes recover fast, including the snapback routine, I actually have a video that you can dive into this even more. So if your athletes tend to spiral, if they tend to hesitate, if they get in their heads after a mistake, I want you to watch this next video because this is going to break it down even further for you so that you can teach this skill to your athlete because these skills, visualization, self-talk. In a failure recovery system. These are the top three things that are the common threads between all of these teams that made it deep into the postseason, specifically with the front runner of UCLA, that team that is leading the pack when it comes to mental training. So if you wanna learn more about specifically the failure recovery system, which makes a huge difference, head on over to that next video and I'll see you there.