Raising Elite Competitors

Why Summer Is the Best Time to Train Your Athlete’s Mental Game—And How to Start Now

• Coach Bre • Season 2 • Episode 240

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🚨 Stop repeating last season’s struggles.

Summer isn’t just for camps and tan lines – it’s the #1 secret weapon to transform your athlete’s mindset. Learn how to turn her offseason into a confidence-building machine so she dominates next season.

🔥 What’s Covered:

✅ Why summer beats mid-season training. Build skills without pressure so mistakes don’t wreck her confidence.
✅ The 4 game-changing reasons to start NOW (hint: coaches aren’t teaching this, but she needs it).
✅ Real-story wins. How one athlete turned meltdowns into “just a blip” with summer mental training.
✅ The exact 30-minute/week plan to train focus, resilience, and leadership (no nagging required).
✅ What separates elite athletes. Summer habits that give her a massive edge over competitors.
✅ Parent scripts & lifetime access tools to support her (without stressing her out).

🎧 Listen to the full episode to:

💥 Unlock 50% OFF the Elite Mental Game training program (expires in 4 days!).
💥 Learn the snapback routine to erase mistakes in seconds.
💥 Get the step-by-step blueprint to make THIS summer her most unstoppable yet.

👉 Tap the link NOW before she loses motivation (and you lose the discount): elitecompetitor.com/emg

Your athlete’s breakthrough season starts TODAY. 🏆

Episode Highlights: 

[00:00:00] Introduction to Off-Season Mental Training. Summer is the optimal time for athletes to develop mental skills before the next season begins. Starting mental training now helps athletes enter their next season confident and unburdened by previous struggles.

[00:00:38] Why Summer is Ideal for Mental Training. The off-season provides athletes with a competitive advantage by allowing mental resilience development without competitive pressures. Summer’s flexible schedule creates perfect conditions for consistent mental practice.

[00:02:19] Success Story: Real Impact of Mental Training. A testimonial demonstrates how off-season mental training transformed an athlete’s ability to handle setbacks. What were once devastating mistakes became minor, manageable challenges.

[00:03:21] Four Key Benefits of Summer Mental Training. Summer offers schedule flexibility, low-pressure experimentation, motivation maintenance, and proactive skill-building. These advantages create ideal conditions for lasting mental game improvement.

[00:08:24] The Importance of Proactive Training. Addressing mental weaknesses mid-season often proves ineffective. Off-season preparation ensures athletes enter competition ready for pressure, mistakes, and coaching demands.

[00:10:38] Program Breakdown: Elite Mental Game. The EMG program features bite-sized videos, practical exercises, and off-season planning. Athletes develop recovery skills, confidence techniques, and pre-season routines.

[00:13:31] Special Offer for Listeners. A limited 50% discount is available exclusively for podcast listeners. This summer-specific opportunity makes mental training investment particularly timely.

[00:16:37] Parent Resources and Support. Additional materials help parents effectively support their athlete’s development. The program includes communication guidance and community access.

[00:17:27] Closing Thoughts on Summer Preparation. Summer mental training converts downtime into competitive advantage. Early starters gain skills to surpass previous limitations in the coming season.

Next Steps:

Thank you in advan

If you want your athlete daughter to enter into her next sport season without being held back by the struggles of last season, that work starts now, and especially if you're heading into an off season like summer with your athlete. Now is the best time to utilize this off season period to train her mental game. Summer is actually one of the best times that athletes have to lay the foundation of mental skills so that they can enter their next season strong, confident, and not held back by the same struggles as last season. So in this episode, we're going to dive into how our athletes train their mental game in the off season. Really how this is the best time, honestly, after working with. Thousands of athletes at all various stages of their sports cycle and sports career. Summer is one of the key times where they can get a leg up on their competitors and also give themselves a really good foundation so that they enter into their next season. Confident and strong not waiting for something to happen. And now they are mid-season and struggling. So I'm gonna jump into exactly how athletes can train their mental game this summer. If you are considering using one of our programs to train their mental game this summer, how we structure it and how it works so that they can actually enter their next season without the same issues as last season. Now, before we jump into it, if I haven't met you, I'm Coach Brie. I'm a mental performance coach for girl athletes and the host of the Raising Elite Competitors podcast. This podcast is for you no matter where you are on your sports mom or dad journey to help you raise a mentally strong, confident athlete. And today we're talking all about how to do that in the off season or in the summer. I'm in the Pacific Northwest, so we are heading into the summer in just a few short weeks. The weather is turning and I can already sense it, and I know for me as a. Sports mom myself. This is a really interesting time because the schedules change we get to reevaluate what we do for these next several weeks. We're traveling a lot, as you probably are too, doing, going in and outta camps and trainings and all of this. We're gonna tackle all of that in this episode and how even. With all of those things, training your athlete's mental game is very doable and actually works out better in the off season so that she can enter her season strong. Okay. Before I do, I wanna give a shout out to a mom in our community. Her name is Sarah. She. Messaged us this the other day. She actually had her daughter do mental training in an off season and was like, I don't know if we can really accurately assess how well this worked until we get into the season. So I was like keep us posted. Sarah said this the other day. She said, I'm seeing huge improvements in her perspective and recovery. Things that would've absolutely wrecked her last year are now just a blip. Now. I'm so thrilled and grateful. So that is the testament to. This work. And when your athlete is able to lay the foundation of mental skills, now she is able to participate in her sport, compete in her sport, play how she wants to play and not be derailed by things. That last season you were like, oh my gosh, that would've sent her into a spiral. Now she has skills to navigate it and she is prepared. So Sarah, super happy for you. Super happy that your daughter. Actually did the work herself and you are both seeing the results from it. Okay, let's get into this. Why is summer the best time for mental training? I will be honest. We have a lot of families join our program. The Elite Mental Game, that's our self-paced, online mental training program for girl athletes during the summer and. For the reasons that I'm going to lay out now, the first one being that there's more time and flexibility in your schedule. I think that's probably the number one thing because you now are looking at more unstructured time. Like I said, you might still be traveling and your daughter's probably in and out of camps and leagues and all of this, but there's not like the rigid. Of school and having to work around all of that. So our mental training program takes about 30 minutes a week. I'll go more into it later, but there's just a lot more flexibility to plug that into her calendar. There's fewer practices. Athletes can focus on their mental skills so that they can actually. Stick and there's just not as much to work around. It's a lot more of a relief and a lot of times if you're like me as a parent, as we transition into the summer, I'm looking at okay, what is this gonna look like? What are we going to put in place to actually add back in some structure? Because sometimes summer can get really willy-nilly with. Not a lot of structure happening. And the beautiful part about our mental training program and really mental training in general is a little bit, goes a long way. This is not like you're putting her back in school to be like, Hey, we're gonna train in the mental game. You gotta do this five days a week. And it's an hour each day. No not even close. So we'll talk about some structure later, but the more time allows for more freedom in how this fits in. So that really is number one, like why summer's an amazing time. Number two is that she's actually not under as much stress and pressure, so she has a lot more freedom to apply these skills to her training without being under a lot of the pressure of the season. And why this is good is that. It's like the perfect balance because your daughter probably is, like I said, going to camps, going to clinics, like she has opportunities to practice these skills that she's learning, but it's in much of a less lower stress environment. There's not like championships on the line and like all of this pressure of the season and teammate drama and all of that. Like, Yeah, there still might be a little bit of that, but. She can learn a skill like the snapback routine, and then she can apply it to her summer league and she can apply it to the camp that she's at. She can apply it to the college showcase that she's going to on the weekend. So there's a lot less pressure, but there's still ample opportunities for her to apply the skills that she's learning in the off season. Okay. So that's number two. Number one, really is she's got more time freedom. Number two, she can experiment with all of this stuff without all the pressure that comes with the season. And just like the urgency of season, you know, it's kind of hard when you're in the middle of a season, either club season or high school season and she's struggling and you're like, dang. We've gotta get this figured out fast. She only has like six weeks left in her season or even less, and she's struggling. There's not that going on. She will actually have those skills in place before the season starts. That's actually another point. But number three, it actually prevents some of this summer. Slump and lack of motivation. So if you have noticed this as a parent, you might, I kind of hit on this like summer presents a little more of a lack of structure and a lot of times athletes struggle with that. They struggle with staying motivated in the summer because they don't have somebody telling them what to do all of the time. It's a double-edged sword. It's. Nice to not have somebody telling you what to do all the time. But at the same time, like they're still expected to like keep up on their skills and train. And a lot of times parents are frustrated because they're like, she's not doing it. She's not doing the things like she needs to be doing ball control. She needs to be working out, she needs to do all this stuff. And when it's just left up to her a lot of times. Athletes lack the motivation to do that because they haven't actually had to create their own structure for themselves. And so why, like mental training in the summer is actually great, is because two things. First in our program we actually have an off season summer training plan for them. We have them set their off season goals. We have them actually create a plan for themselves on how often they're working out for how long, what they're doing. We try to get as specific as possible, including all the camps and things that they're doing as well. And so they actually have goals and they have it set for themselves in that off season. So they actually have a structure. We have'em print out a calendar so you're not the one that's nagging them like, Hey, do this. Why aren't you doing your extra reps and all of that. So they actually like. Create that for themselves. And then if, if we're talking specifically about the elite mental game we actually have a training plan listed out for them. So it's 30 minutes a week. They calendar it, they do it, and so it actually provides some structure for them in the summer. It's this is your. This is your plan for the summer. You're gonna do this 30 minutes a week, and it's very accessible, although we don't recommend athletes. If you're taking vacations yeah, take the vacation, but it is flexible. Like you can do it on the plane, you can do it in the car. It travels with them. So it's a really great way to add some structure back into a time where they can often lose motivation and get into a little bit of a slump. Okay, the fourth reason and the last reason, and before I go into like how actually athletes do this in the summer and how we see our athletes doing it in the summer is probably most important, and that is that. They build the foundation now so that they're prepared for their season, your athlete, whatever her goals are. Maybe it is. She wants to make a higher team. Maybe she wants to be a leader on her team. She wants to be a team a team leader that takes her team to state. She wants, you know, whatever it is. She probably has some goals or some things that she wants in her sport for the next season, or she doesn't wanna repeat what happened in the past season and the off season in summer is the prime way to do that. Like I said, if she goes into her next season without changing anything especially these things that are mindset related, her belief about herself, her inability to come back from mistakes, her inability to deal with pressure hard coaching, like all of those things that she is going. Two face. Again, if she has not worked on the skills to improve those things, which are mental training skills, then she's gonna be back in the same place. And so are you. You are gonna be watching her from the sidelines and you're gonna see, oh, here we go. She's spiraling after a mistake. Again, I thought it was gonna be different because she's on a new team. No, she either has that skill or she doesn't and it's gonna travel with her. She's going to not be able to handle the pressure if you're like, oh, I thought it was gonna be different because she's got a new coach. Her coach likely is not teaching these skills. Okay, so do not rely on your daughter's coach to teach these skills because most coaches are not trained in this. They don't teach them how to side of the game. It doesn't mean that they don't think it's important. In fact, they require it. They need your daughter to come back fast for mistakes. They need to count on her, but they don't typically teach these skills. So if you're expecting that things are just going to be different next season because she hasn't done anything to change it, then you're probably gonna be disappointed and you're gonna be watching her in the stands and you're gonna be like, here we are again. With the same things that we were struggling with last season, and you're telling her like, Hey, just shake it off. Or Everyone makes mistakes, or, you know what, you do belong on this team. Like all those things that are very true, but they're not actually giving her skills to work on her mental game. So this is why this is so important, is that this is her opportunity. This is her opportunity to enter next season with new skills, not just new physical skills, but with new mental skills so that she can fall back on positive and productive self-talk so that she can fall back on a snapback routine so that she can get over her mistakes fast instead of dwelling, so that she can meet the moment and meet the pressure of her season, because likely she's gonna be on another team that's at a higher level and the pressure's only gonna get worse. When I say worse, I just mean the pressure's gonna be more intense. I played college volleyball, so I've been through it all. And I'll tell you right now, every year got a little bit harder and every year I struggled a little bit more without these skills. And so giving them to her in the off season where she can really get that good foundation ensures that she is going to be prepared for what she's going to face. And you don't have to scramble in the middle of the season being like, oh my gosh, we didn't do any of this'cause I thought it was gonna be different. And then now we're in the same spot and I've got to now get her up to speed on all these mental training skills and, but you're trying to do it on top of homework and a full school season and all of the other things that are going on in your family. So it's just way better to be more preventative in this way so that she's developing these skills. And the really cool part about it, and I'll get into this when we talk about our specific program, is that. She builds the foundation and then it's just maintenance. When she gets into season, it's a lot easier to do her daily mindset routine in season when she's already built the foundation before she's gotten there. So that really is like the kicker for me and why I always recommend athletes like, Hey, use your summer to your advantage. Summer is what separates athletes because there's going to be athletes who do not use their summer in this way, and I'm not. Promoting that you shouldn't rest? I absolutely believe that athletes need to rest and they need to prioritize not doing their sport year round, but this is actually a good way for them to do that. And if you want your athlete, if your daughter wants a competitive advantage, if she has goals, then this is one way where she can use Summer to separate herself as an athlete from her competition. Those four reasons why summer, it really is a phenomenal time to work on your athlete's mental game. Number one, she's got more time, more flexibility. Number two, there's less pressure. Of the season. So she has more flexibility to apply these skills to non-pressure situations, but there's still tons of opportunities because she's still training in the summer. It prevents some of the summer slump and lack of motivation that happens. It adds a little bit more structure, more goals, more accountability so that you're not the one like nagging her all summer to like do the things and you're like, you're not gonna make varsity if you don't start doing stuff. Okay. So that's already built in. And then most importantly, she has these. This foundation of mental training so that she enters into her season feeling strong, feeling confident, and that she has skills to fall back on. And then it's just maintenance through her season. Okay, that is, that's why I will continue to preach this, if you will, to parents and to athletes. Like Use your summer to your advantage. Now let's talk about how we do this. We've had thousands of athletes come through our program, the elite mental game. So you can do this with your athlete in any way, but if you are considering EMG as the way. To do this for your athlete. I just wanna talk about how this looks in the summer and what our athletes do. I'll also mention that because we see this as so vital and important for athletes. If you're listening to this podcast, we have a special link that you can go to get a discount on our program, the Elite Mental Game. So I'll link that in the show notes. But if you go to a elite competitor.com/emg, you get a 50% discount on the program for being a podcast. Listener. So that's a special page. You'll see a 50% discount. So if you're like, yep, we wanna grab this so that we can start applying these skills in the summer, make sure you use that link. It's also linked in the show notes. So when athletes start EMG in the summer, they actually start with their off season training plan. So we have them go to a section of EMG called off season training plan. That's where we guide them to determine what their off season goals are, how often they're going to be physically training, when they're gonna do their mental training. And it gets them, you know, very clear. Like I said, they actually put it on a calendar and they print out the calendar and what a relief for you to not have to be the one like driving that. Okay. So when athletes have autonomy in this process, they're going to actually stick with their goals a lot better than if it's you driving the ship on that. Okay? So we actually have them. Create an off season training plan so that they're focused for the off season. Then the mental training videos they are very short, so three to 15 minutes athletes log in from any device, they log into their own personal training portal where they watch short three to 15 minute training videos from me on mental skills. And these are, like I said, they're short, they're engaging. I know. Athlete's attention span right now or just in general, is very short. I was a former teacher. These athletes actually say that these are engaging and they're not boring. So I don't do lectures, I don't do boring. So athletes watch these short videos and then after every video they have a little task to do, a little thing that they can apply to their training. They also comment in the training portal and I comment back to them. So it's very interactive and they go through our process. It's very step by step. Very easy to follow. There's five phases to it, and they build their mental skills. So phase one is all about learning their snapback routine, coming back from mistakes. Phase two is the foundations of mental game. Their self-talk, their daily mindset routine, how to visualize all of these sports psychology skills that are accessible to athletes in middle school and in high school. Phase three is a high performance game plan. So pre-com routines, post-competition routines, alter ego technique. Phase four is their toolkit. So things around perfectionism, comparison leadership, body language. Phase five is around habits. And so they just go through the phases in this 30 minute a week plan. And athletes can go faster, they can go slower. They decide, but we tell them and we lay it out here's what it looks like if you wanna do 30 minutes a week. And by the time the season rolls back around, now they have this strong mental foundation and we recommend they do phases. Two, actually just phase two. Again, once the season starts, phase two is where they set their goals. It's where they determine their daily mindset routine. Their goals are gonna change. Their off season goals are different than their season goals, and so we actually tell them, do phase two again. It's not very long. Nothing is very long in the program. It's just super effective. And so we tell them, do phase two again so that you are locked in. For your season goals. So that really is how it works for the athlete. Easy peasy. They have lifetime access to all the content, so they're going through they're doing maintenance throughout their season, but they also can revisit concepts that pop up if they've got teammate drama, if they've got a challenging coach, we have resources for that, for lots of those situations that they can always refer back to. The other side of it is that you as a parent have your resources. So half the program is for you to know how to best support your athlete in her journey. So you have short trainings that you can listen to, like a podcast. We got a private podcast for you. We've got a community for you that you can choose to engage in. And it's just a great way also for you to know what to say, what that to say, how to navigate all of the various things that pop up when it comes to raising an athlete. So we've got you taken care of as well, so. if you're interested, like I said, in using EMG as what your athlete is going to do in the off season to train her mental game, make sure you use that link that is in the show notes, elite competitor.com/emg. That's a special discounted link that we have for podcast listeners to get 50% off the program. When you click on it, you've got four days. It's valid for four days. So that is for you. If you're like, yep, sounds good. Let's do this in the off season so that she can enter her next season Strong. All right, moms, hopefully this was helpful. I am Coach Bree. I am a mental performance coach for girl athletes and I will see you in the next episode of the Raising Elite Competitors podcast.

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Coach Bre Smedley

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