Lacrosse Coach’s Secret to Mental Toughness That Wins Games

💥 Want to boost your team’s mental toughness and start winning those big games? Learn how mental training can help your athletes bounce back from mistakes and perform under pressure → https://coachfreetraining.com

In this episode, I’m sharing the secret mental toughness strategies that helped 
Coach Tom and his lacrosse team win two of the biggest games in their program's history—games they hadn’t won in over 20 years! Learn how to use mental training tools like the Snapback Routine to help your athletes handle adversity and perform at their peak.

🎯 You’ll learn:
✔️ How to Implement Mental Training without Being a Sports Psychologist
✔️ Why "Snapback" Routines Can Change Your Team’s Resilience
✔️ The Key to Getting Your Team to Buy Into Mental Performance
✔️ The Simple Techniques That Took Coach Tom’s Team to New Heights

🎙 I’m Coach Bre, a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a 4-time state champion head volleyball coach. I help coaches implement easy mental training to build confident, mentally tough athletes.

Key Moments:
 00:00 Meet Coach Tom and his success story
 01:15 Getting team buy-in for mental training
 03:12 The Snapback Routine in action
 05:26 Real results and game-changing wins
 07:05 Emotional regulation and resilience on the field
 08:08 Final encouragement for coaches


📢 COACHES – How do you handle mental toughness with your team? Drop your experience in the comments. Let’s support each other. 👇

📌 Want to coach the mental game with confidence?
🔹 Grab our FREE training for coaches → https://coachfreetraining.com
🔹 Learn more about Plug & Play Elite Mental Game → https://elitecompetitor.com/plugplayemg
🔹 Follow us on IG → @elitecompetitorcoach

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

Transcript

1:04

Hey, coach, have you ever watched your team shut down after a mistake and now all of a sudden the momentum is swinging in the opposite direction? Or have you ever been on the sidelines before a game and you're thinking, I wonder what team is gonna show up tonight? The one that was practicing really well yesterday, or the one that lost to that team that we probably shouldn't have the other night. Now, if you have, you're not alone. I'm Coach Bri. I'm a four time state champ volleyball coach. But let me be honest with you, I have lost more than I've won, and I've learned the hard way that when you just train the physical side of the game, you don't actually get the results that you want or build the mentally strong, confident players that you're looking to build inside your program. And today I'm excited because I actually got to chat with Coach Tom. He is one of the top lacrosse coaches in the nation and he used our system plug and play Elite Mental Game for teams to train his girls' mental game in as little as 20 minutes a week during his season. And no, he did not need to go get a sports psychology degree or add a bunch of extra prep to his already overflowing plate. And I wanted to give you just a little behind the scenes look at how he did it and the results that he got. Spoiler alert, their team did win. Two of the biggest games in their program history teams that they hadn't beaten over 20 years. So it was pretty cool the conversation that I got to have with him. And I'm just gonna give you a little glimpse on how he actually did it. So first up, the first thing I hear from coaches when they are thinking about implementing mental training, because they're like, we need it. It's this, how do I get my team to buy in to the idea of mental training or training their brain? The second thing I hear from coaches is. Well, how do I do it? Because I don't even know, I don't even know how to do this. I'm not a sports psychologist. So let's hear how Coach Tom did it. We were coming up with some big games and we, we had our first session, um, and I knew we were gonna be going through a little bit of a rough, rough patch.'cause we were playing, you know, some teams we've never beat before, right. And like mm-hmm. I'm talking ever or maybe like 20 years. And so, you know, how do we get through that? So we, we started to, we got into the iron of our schedule. You know, we started to implement this program. So I think the timing was good, but um, yeah, it seemed like the buy-in was right away. I mean, we talked about it like, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. But the first time, like I put your program up on the screen and sat down 37 girls there and like they were. All ears, all eyes. Um, it was quiet. They were focused, their phones were down. Okay. What I love about what Coach Tom said just there is that it was easy. It wasn't like this complicated thing. And I think sometimes we overcomplicate it as coaches and we think our athletes are going to perceive things certain ways, but the reality of it is that most athletes actually want a solution to this. They don't want to crumble under pressure. They don't want to let one mistake turn into 2, 3, 4. They wanna know how to get over it. And that's exactly what mental training does, especially when you frame it as something that will give them a competitive advantage. And the really cool thing about plug and play Elite mental Game for team, like you heard Tom say, was that you literally press play. Like I take care of it for you. I introduce what it is, the benefits, I show them examples of high level athletes using it. So mix it. Very easy to literally get your girls in one. Press play and I take care of the buy-in and get them excited about it. So if you're thinking it's hard or like you're not sure how they're gonna perceive it, I would argue that most actually are very receptive to it and are is something that they take seriously. Alright, next up. Tom actually introduced something. In the first little bit of mental training called the Snapback Routine, and it's actually the first skill that athletes learn inside our program. Plug and play Elite mental game for teams. So he had them watch the trainings and then he actually had them come to practice with, um, a little note card to turn in their routines. So I'm gonna let him describe what he did and how the girls responded to creating their snapback routines. Next practice, I want you to bring a notebook with a piece of paper so you can hand in your routine. Privately to us as a staff. Um, so they all sat there and they wrote the next mental Monday, they wrote it down. Um, and, you know, they, they were, they were talking about it, they were interacting about it. Um, a couple girls we had demonstrated, I thought it built some interactions with them, you know, especially like seniors and freshmen and, you know, we had five or six freshmen on the team. Um, and I think this was totally eye-opening to them because like, yeah. They haven't been in pressure situations like, not like they're getting into in our conference, but getting to see our older girls apply these tactics. Um, and so then, you know, we moved into what we decided is like some type of reward for the snapback. If I saw somebody in practice or somebody had a game that they overcame, like a bunch of adversity or, you know, maybe they, they made a bad play earlier and made a big play later. Uh, we would, we would award'em with like a snapback. Present and that present just happened to be a snapback hat, which I have here. So Awesome. And the girls loved it. We had a pick out the color. Okay, how cool was it that Tom did that? Now you don't have to do that inside plug and play elite mental game for teams. But pretty cool because remember, as a coach, best practice reward, what you wanna see more of, and that's exactly what Coach Dom did. So his girls were learning the snapback routine, which is basically a failure recovery method. It's a way for athletes to come back faster after mistakes. It's a combination of a breath. A reset word, A reset gesture. It takes less than two seconds to do and it's custom to each athlete so they all have theirs. But it's one thing to do mental training in the classroom at Mental Mondays is what he called it for 20 minutes a week. It's another thing to see how it actually plays out on the field. So I'm gonna let you hear what Coach Tom had to say about the results that he was seeing in his girls. Once they started implementing some of this mental training. They really, they got a kick out of it and you know, we won. Those games I was talking about. We happened to win two games in the next two weeks that were games that we just hadn't won a really long time as a program. Wow. Like, like, you know, culture, season changing historic type games. Um, one team we hadn't beaten over 20 years. The other one is our rival, um, that we beat at home. And, and the girls just like when you, when that happens, the girls just start to believe in it and, yeah. Like you set this nice like 10 or 15 minute video for us and it's like we expand it as coaches with our experience and what we do, and I think that's what's great about your program. It's not. They're not sitting down watching a video for 45 minutes. Yeah. They're just crushing it. Like quick 15 minutes, talk about it, 15 minutes, and then we'll, we're, we're off to work now. That's what you wanna see as a coach. That is like the best case scenario. Your team is able to. Go out and compete. You know, they're physically capable of beating these teams, but typically it's the mental game that holds them back and now it's not, and you're making program history. I do want to pull out though something that Tom also shared with me that I know we've been in as a coach, all of us. Right. Your player makes a mistake and you have to pull them out, right? Maybe they're making multiple mistakes in a row and you pull'em out and then all of a sudden they're shutting down. Tom left to share a situation where that happened. He was pulling somebody off of the field, and I'm really excited for you to hear how this player responded differently now that she had some mental training skills. I really started to believe in it. I mean, we had a situation late in the year where my start and goalie. Made a bad pass on the first save of the game, right? Mm-hmm. And they scored, they went down and scored. I pulled her, yeah, I pulled her on the sideline. She, she was obviously emotional. She thought she was getting pulled for the whole game. Yeah. We went through her snapback routine and the next 30 seconds I put her back on the field and she played great. And it was like that's, that was just example to the whole team that if you believe in this stuff. It, it works. I know we've all been in that situation as a coach, and how cool is it when athletes have the skills to be able to emotionally regulate themselves and then they can be ready to go back in? Because I know typically what happens for us is we're spending the rest of the game trying to get their head back in the game, and we've got. You know, a whole roster to manage. We've got a whole game happening in front of us. We don't really have a lot of time to sit there with a player and trying to try to like get them ready to go back in. So that's what happens when they have their own mental training skills to be able to regulate themselves, handle the moment, and get back in ready to play. All right. Wrapping up, I want to have you hear what Coach Cham had to say just at the end as an encouragement to all of you coaches who are listening, I would encourage. All coaches, men and women to use your program. I think that, I love the simplicity of it, right? Like I, I, I'm so overwhelmed when the season starts. A lot of times, I mean, I'm happy when the season starts'cause I get to actually coach. But the last thing we're looking to do is coaches, is like, add stuff to our plate. So. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, I love what you're doing with keeping it simple. You, your program's great. And, um, you know, it does cross over to all sports. I mean mm-hmm. Volleyball and lacrosse are very separate, but the lessons are still the same. So, you know, I'll give you a plug and play for your, for your program and to all other coaches out there, whether it's high school or, um, I wish I came across it earlier. But I think the timing on it's great and being in a, in the best conference in the country, I, I kind of had to come across it'cause I think we needed this to, to get to where we got to, um, which is arguably one of the best seasons the school's had in a long time. So, um, so keep, keep doing good work. We appreciate you. And, uh, my girls will be happy, you know, be, be pumped that we talked. All right? If you wanna do what Coach Tom did and implement mental training into your program without needing a sports psychology degree, or spending a lot of extra prep to bring this to your team, then head to coach free training.com. That's our free training for Coach, where I teach you some simple things that you can be doing with your team, but we also talk about plug and play Elite mental game for teams, and that is the system that Tom used with his girls this past season. So you can head there if you wanna learn more about plug and play. Specifically that's in the show notes below. All right, coaches, hopefully this was helpful and I will see you at the training.