Mental Training Tips: What’s Worth Your Time (and What’s Not)

 Stop wasting time on mental training that doesn’t work. Here’s what actually builds toughness + confidence in your athletes → https://coachfreetraining.com

Coaches—you don’t have hours to waste, and when it comes to mental training not everything is worth your time. In this episode, I’ll break down the 3 things that aren’t worth it (like telling athletes to “shake it off” 🙄 or long motivational speeches) and the 3 simple strategies that are—tools that actually help athletes bounce back, reset, and perform in big games and pressure moments.

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. 🏐✨ Over 14 years of coaching, I’ve seen exactly what helps high school athletes handle nerves, mistakes, and adversity—and what doesn’t. These proven coaching strategies can transform your team’s mental game in minutes a day.

You’ll learn:
Why telling athletes to just “shake it off” wastes your time—and what to do instead
How to use the SnapBack routine (breath + reset word + signal) to recover in seconds 💨
Why visualization beats motivational speeches every time (and how to do it in 1 minute) 👁️‍🗨️
The power of a daily mindset routine (3-2-1 BRAVE) for confidence + focus before practice
How to integrate mental prep seamlessly so you’re not sacrificing physical training

🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction to Mental Training 
00:38 Why 'Shake It Off' Doesn't Work 
01:40 The Snapback Routine 
03:14 The Power of Visualization 
04:57 Daily Mindset Routine 
06:32 Conclusion and Next Steps

Bottom line: Your athletes won’t magically “be mentally tough.” They’ll rise—or fall—to the level of their mental preparation. Learn how to give them the tools to reset, stay confident, and hit peak performance when it matters most.

📢 Coaches—comment below: Which mental training tool do you want to try first with your team?👇
 
📌 Free Tools & Next Steps
🔹 Grab our in-depth FREE training → https://coachfreetraining.com
🔹 Follow us on IG → @elitecompetitorcoach
🔹 Follow us on TikTok→ @coachhergame
 
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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

Coaches. Here's the truth when it comes to mental training. Not everything is worth your time. You don't have a lot of time and you don't have a lot of hours to waste, and thankfully you don't have to. I'm gonna be talking about the three things that you don't need to waste your time on when it comes to mental training and what actually is worth your time. These are the things that I have built into my season. Season after season, I've been coaching for 14 years. I've been doing mental training in my program for about seven years as a head high school volleyball coach. We won four state championships, and a lot of those have come down to key crucial moments where the mental training really pulled through for us. So let's break it down. The first thing that's not worth your time is just telling your athletes to shake it off. Next play. Be mentally tough. How many of us have been on the sideline and our athlete is, you know, spiraling or making some errors? And you can tell she's getting in her head a little bit and we say things like, get outta your head or shake it off. You've got this next plate. These aren't bad things to say, but you are wasting your time because you're not actually giving your athletes skills to get through those moments. If only it was that easy to tell your athlete, shake it off, and she just does. And I get into some, you know, debates on TikTok about this because I tell coaches all the time, telling your athletes to shake it off is not actually giving them the skill to shake it off. And I will fight, um, and tell my grave about that because telling isn't teaching. Okay. And I was a teacher also for 10 years and um, I know a lot of you listening and watching are too, and you get that just telling. Your athlete to do something is not teaching them how to do it, but what is your worth? Your time? What is worth it? Teaching your athlete a skill like the snapback routine to get over mistakes in seconds. A hundred percent. 10 outta 10. That is worth your time. It takes me about 15 minutes to teach this skill to my athletes. It's called a snapback routine. They come up with a reset word that they find based on past playing experiences and how they wanna feel in that moment. Some examples are calm, present, joy, go next. Some of'em are funny because let's be honest, this is a game and sometimes we just need to like realize that and that helps us ground now the reset word. Part two of the snapback routine. The first part is a breath. So we teach them to take a deep breath. I know, groundbreaking, right? But that engages their parasympathetic nervous system, which is the opposite of the fight or flight response. So instead of spiraling and, you know, getting all worked up, now they can kind of calm down. They say they're reset word at the top of that breath. On their exhale, they're doing a reset signal. So like snapping a finger together, looking at the antenna on the volleyball net, whatever it is, is short and it helps ground them in the present moment. Snapback routine. 15 minutes to teach. I incorporate it into practice so that they're using it and not just relying on it in big pressure situations because it will not work if they haven't practiced it ahead of time. Absolutely worth your time to do. Okay. You'll get back so much more time because you won't be that coach on the sideline just saying, shake it off next play. And your athletes aren't shaking it off or doing anything better on the next play. In fact, you can say something like. Hey, say your reset word or do your snapback routine, and then you're actually giving them something to do, so that is definitely worth it. Okay? Not worth your time. Long motivational speeches. Just not okay. Athletes have the attention span of a goldfish, and so your long motivational speeches probably are doing more for you. Then they are for them. I'm sorry to break it to you. Okay. Now, if you have amazing stories and you're super funny, engaging, then yeah, okay, maybe. But for the most part, athletes are zoning out. They're worried about the game. So they're thinking about that. So keep it short if you are gonna do some sort of motivational thing. But what's even better is some sort of quick visualization before a game instead of a long motivational speech. So visualization is scientifically proven to help. Athletes recreate or create images in their brain that recruit the same neural pathways as if they're doing it in real life. And that can decrease their anxiety level. It increases confidence because they probably are already doing some sort of negative visualization. That's what worrying is. So they create images in their head when they're worried about a game, and it's usually of them like totally messing up and not doing well, which causes them to worry more. So we're gonna put some positive images in their head of them performing well of maybe even making a mistake, but. How they came back from it, of encouraging their teammates so that then they're putting better images in their head. And if they're doing it correctly, it's like they're getting some, some mental reps, um, and some physical reps without actually having to do any physical work. So I would swap visualization for a long motivational speech. Visualization is also 10 outta 10 worth your time because it doesn't take a lot of time. Okay. Our visualizations that we do are like 30 seconds, maybe a minute. It doesn't ha it shouldn't be long actually. Um, and it helps kind of calm their, their, their nervous system. Regulate their nervous system a little bit and give'em something productive to. To fill their brains with. Okay, last one. Not worth your time. Just kind of hoping and wishing and praying that your athletes are gonna figure it out with time. You're like, ah, maybe by the time they'll get to be a senior, uh, they'll have figured it out and maybe then they'll be mentally tough. The skills that they have or don't have when they come into your program as a freshman are only going to be amplified by the time they're a senior. So if they come in with strong mental training skills, then yeah, they're probably going to strengthen those as they go on. But they're also going to hit some bumps in the road, and they have to have skills to navigate them. They don't come in with any mental training skills, which is the, the reality for the majority of your athletes, it's only going to amplify. Those bad habits are just going to. You know, get more and more ingrained in what they do as they go on in their sport. And so instead, what I think is worth your time and what I do in my program is a five minute daily mindset routine before practice. It's called the three two un Brave. I break it down. If, in fact in this next video I'll link to it. Um, but it's very simple way. For them to, um, get some visualization, get some breath work in, but also reflect a little bit because, um, one of the things that leads to confidence is stacking up evidence that they are, are working towards their goals and that they're getting better. And if athletes don't intentionally do this and find the good in their environ. Um, that supports that they are getting better, then they're going to default to negative. And so allowing them to, you know, find that evidence that they are getting better and write it down is part of the daily mindset routine. So, 3, 2, 1, brave. That's what I do. It is totally worth your time because it takes five minutes and it saves me that first 20 minutes of practice trying to get everyone to focus. So if you wanna know more about that specific skill, I will see you in the next video where I break down. My pre-practice routine that includes mental training, so I will see you there.