Specialties
Real athletes. Real breakthroughs.
Two case studies from decades of practice – equestrian and golf – that show what’s possible when mental skills are trained as deliberately as the physical ones.
01
Equestrian · Junior to Grand Prix
From two years behind her peers to two National finals wins – and a Grand Prix in five months.
A junior rider, beginning her last year of competition in the junior division, was referred to me by her trainer. She was a very talented rider, but was two years behind in competitive experience compared to her peers. This rider had dreams of winning the end-of-year finals and going on to riding in Grand Prix show jumping competitions.
When she came to me, she was making mental mistakes in competition, her belief that she was behind her peers was always in the forefront of her thoughts, and she struggled with nerves in competition. We set up a program where she first worked through my book, did guided visualization practice three times a week, and together we did visualizations of her courses before she rode them in competition. We also started, through visualization, riding at the finals months before the actual finals.
She won two of the four National end-of-the-year finals. Next, was helping her get from the 1.15 jumpers to the Grand Prix. Using the same system, she rode in her first show jumping Grand Prix, and succeeded — five months after we started work on moving up to the highest level jumper courses.
From unable to finish a round – to finishing 2nd to Tiger Woods at the NCAA Championship.
An extremely talented collegiate scholarship golfer was playing terrible golf in his Fall preseason tournaments. His father – Dr. Bob Rotella – was unavailable and referred this golfer to me. His father pulled him out of college for the remainder of his Fall semester, and he worked with me three days a week.
At first we discussed his frustrations and the thoughts and beliefs that were causing him to become so frustrated and angry that he could not finish a round of golf. We worked on changing those self-defeating thoughts and beliefs for several weeks. Next, we went out to work on the golf course. His swing was perfect, as were his putting and short game skills. I was so impressed.
We went out on the course and he was playing very well — until the 10th hole, when he made a mistake. He immediately went into raging anger. We worked on calming strategies, yet he could not let go of his anger over the mistake. We went back to working on changing his thinking style, his perfectionism, and anger control. Lots of visualization, combined with calming techniques when he became frustrated in visualization with challenges I gave him.
Several weeks later we went back to the course, and he completed a round “in his good feel.” We continued doing this until he returned to college, then phone sessions when he got back to school. This golfer finished that year 2nd place to Tiger Woods in the NCAA Golf Championship Tournament.
02
Golf · Collegiate Scholarship Athlete