3 Mental Training Tools That Build Confident Athletes

In this episode, I'm breaking down the 3 skills that actually build confidence (because "just be more confident" doesn't work). Grab the full system at coachfreetraining.com 

Most coaches tell athletes to "be more confident" without teaching them HOW. Here's the problem, confidence isn't something you can talk someone into. But it IS something you can teach. 

👋🏼 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. 

After struggling with anxiety as a college athlete and being a championship coach, I've learned that confidence comes from having tools, not from motivational speeches. 

🧐 What You'll Learn:

• Why "shake it off" and "next play" don't actually teach a skill
• The Snapback Routine - a 3-step system for bouncing back from mistakes in 2 seconds
• How body language coaching changes confidence in 30 seconds
• The 321 BRAVE daily mindset routine (5-7 minutes that rewire your athletes' brains)
• Why visualization isn't "woo woo" - it's neuroscience 

This isn't theory. These are the exact tools my team uses, and they've helped us win 4 consecutive state titles.

🕓 Key Moments:
00:00 Introduction
00:15 Why "Be Confident" Doesn't Work
01:52 Tool #1: The Snapback Routine
03:49 Tool #2: Body Language
05:08 Tool #3: Daily Mindset Routine
05:22 The 3-2-1 Brave Method
07:17 Visualization & Neuroscience
07:30 Wrap Up & Next Steps

💬 Coaches - comment below: Which tool are you going to try first with your team? Snapback Routine, body language, or 3-2-1 BRAVE?

📌 Free Tools & Next Steps
🔹 Grab our in-depth FREE training → https://coachfreetraining.com
🔹 Follow us on IG → @elitecompetitorcoach
🔹 Follow us on TikTok→ @coachhergame   

🔔 Subscribe for More → Never miss an episode of Coach Her Game!  

P.S. A few stats worth knowing:

• Girls are 2x more likely to quit sports than boys by age 14, with lack of confidence cited as the primary reason (Women's Sports Foundation, 2020)
• Mental imagery training improves motor skill performance by 23% compared to physical practice alone (Psychological Bulletin, 2018)
• Athletes who use pre-performance routines experience 47% less performance anxiety and demonstrate greater consistency across competitions (Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, 2017) 

The Coach Her Game channel is hosted by The Elite Competitor and is dedicated to helping coaches of girl athletes strengthen their mental game and team culture in order to develop a competitive edge. 

#mentaltraining #coachingconfidence #girlsathletes #snapbackroutine #321BRAVE

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

Transcript

1:04

Coaches, stop telling your athletes to be more confident. You're wasting your breath. Confidence isn't something that you can just talk somebody into, but it is something that you can teach. And if I haven't met you, I'm Coach Bree. I am a longtime head volleyball coach, also a mental performance coach. And if I had a dollar for every time that I used to say to an athlete, you have the skills. You just need to be more confident. You have a lot of dollars, but here's the truth, it doesn't work. You can't actually just tell somebody to be confident and they know what that means, but you can teach the skills to create it, and that's exactly what we are covering today. Three tangible tools that you can start teaching your team this week so that you can just stop with the, you just need to be more confident and expect that they know what that means, and I get why. We say that it's the athlete who is awesome in practice and then they kind of freeze in games and all that talent just kind of disappears when the pressure is on. And honestly, I was that athlete. I, you know, in high school, struggled a lot with the pressure and this, you know, need to be this, what I thought needed to be a perfect athlete. And I, I struggled a lot with it and it wasn't until I was in college and actually learned. Some of these mental training tools when I was playing volleyball in college that I realized, oh, confidence is actually something that you can teach through simple sports psychology skills. But nobody up until that point taught me like how to actually be confident. They just would say, do it, and that doesn't work. And it wasn't until I was a coach that realized, oh, this actually. Is also something that my girls can learn, right? So the three tools that I teach my athletes, and by the way, I've been using mental training with my team for the past seven years and it's really made a difference. Uh, we've won four consecutive state championships, so my girls will tell you that it hasn't hurt us. Okay? But tool number one, one of the most important things is to teach them how to get over mistakes fast. And that is one of the things that tends to kill athletes' confidence the most when they make a mistake and then they get pulled out immediately. Or they're expected to come back fast, but they don't actually have the skill to do that. And here's the problem. I see coaches and I hear coaches all the time saying, shake it off next play. Things like that. Like it's okay to make aggressive airs. And that's all fine, but it's still not teaching them a skill to get over a mistake because they make the mistake. You tell'em to shake it off, but they're like, I don't really know how to shake it off. Or you pull them out immediately and they need to have a tangible skill to be able to get over mistakes so that they can feel free to take risks and play hard knowing they know how to recover. So we teach our athletes something called the snapback routine. It is a combination of three things, a breath. And a reset word at the top. So breath reset, word at the top. This is custom to them. It's found based on best pass playing experiences, how they wanna feel in that moment. Some words that they use are like fun, free, fierce, calm. Sometimes it's a funny word, sometimes it's a choice word, but whatever. It's in their own head. And then on their exhale, they're doing some sort of reset signal. So they're snapping their fingers, they're looking at something stationary on the court, adjusting a hair tie. It's all like very simple short things to help ground them in the present moment. So we teach the snapback routine at the very beginning of the season. We practice it in practice. They have that as a tool that they can use in games, and it's also, now I have a common language with my athletes. So I can call a timeout and I can say, Hey, say your reset word, or, Hey, do your snapback routine, and they know what that means. Now, if you wanna know more about how to teach this to your team, I break this down at my free training. Um, it's at coach free training.com. You can learn that skill and a little more in depth on how you can actually bring it to your team, but that is one of the number one skills that you could be teaching them because. That directly impacts their confidence. Mistakes, like I said, are one of the number one things that cuts an athlete's confidence, and if they have a tool to come back now they're going to be more confident. Okay, number two. Is teach them about their body language. This one's almost like so simple. It seems too easy, okay? Because your body tells your brain how to feel, and so teach your athletes that how they carry themselves, especially after mistake, if they're slumped, if their head is down, if they're dragging their feet. Then their brain is telling them that it's not okay, I can't do this. I'm not good enough. And now if we flip that though, like we teach shoulders back, head high, chin up, like purposeful movement, power poses, things like that, your brain reads that as I'm okay, I'm still in this. And it also gives a message to everybody around you, right? It gives a message to your teammates, um, gives a message to your opponents, to coaches. And I coach my athletes on this. All, all the time. I literally tell them to stand like a champion even if you don't feel like one. Because when you have bad body language, there're two, there's two things that are happening. You're discouraging yourself and you're encouraging your opponents, and we don't want to do either of those things. And so just teaching them about their body language and how they carry themselves, especially after something happens in a competition that they, that doesn't go their way. Is really, really key. Okay. And listen again, if you're realizing that your athletes like don't have these tools, you're not alone. Like most coaches were never taught how to teach the mental side of the game, which by the way, they say controls 90% of it. So again, go to coach free training.com. That's where I kind of break down. These skills in depth. But the third one that I started teaching that made a big difference in an athlete's confidence is their daily mindset routine. So I start practice every single day with a set five to seven minute routine. We call it three, two, one, brave, and it includes a a few different elements. Okay. So I'll break it down for you. But, um, 3, 2, 1. That stands for three affirmations. They're writing down in their journal. Three affirmations every single day. These are found at the beginning of the season based on what their goals are for the season. Our brain is constantly looking for things in our environment to, you know, mostly help us, but sometimes our brain, uh, you know, has this negativity bias. It'll find all the negative, it'll find all the things. To affirm a thought that's not really serving your athletes. So we need to put good inputs in, and that's what that's for. For writing those down. I give them two minutes to free journal or I'll prompt them. I'll say like, you know, what does being a good teammate looks like to look like today? And so they'll spend two minutes kind of journaling on that and getting it out. One stands for one piece of gratitude. There's a lot of evidence that comes from. You know, gratitude in how they show up and how they play. And then one piece of evidence that one of the affirmations is coming true. So they're finding, they're actively searching for evidence in their environment that one of their affirmations is coming true. So say, one of their affirmations is, I'm a. Fast, aggressive defender. What evidence do you have from the last 24 hours? That that's true? And since they have three affirmations, they have three to choose from. From. But it could be something small, it could be like I laid out for a ball I didn't think I could get. So they're constantly training and rewiring their brain to find the good in their environment. And that leads to confidence. And then the brave is a visualization. It's a three minute visualization that I read for the players. Um, that's also an acronym. So it's five breaths. The B stands for breaths. FR stands for reset words. So they say their reset word at the top of that breath. A stands for affirmation. So they say each of their affirmations, V stands for visualization. So they actually visualize each of those affirmations for about 15 seconds because they're creating those patterns in their brain. And then the E stands for energetic shifts. So AF at the end, they should feel like, okay, I'm ready to go to practice. And again, that's rewiring their brain because when they visualize, they're actually firing the same pathways as if it's happening in real life. So they're preparing themselves. For what they're about to do in practice or in competition. So this isn't woo woo, it is neuroscience. When you visualize again, your brain creates the same neural pathways as if you actually did it. So they're doing that every single day before practice, and that will help them show up more confidently. Okay, so this is hitting home. Do me a favor. Hit the like button, subscribe, but head to our free training@coachfreetraining.com. That's where we break more of these things down. And if you want to, if you're finding that like your athlete's confidence is being impacted by Team Dynamics, I've got a video for you. I'll link that right now. I have a quick routine that I do every Friday during season. It's called the Open Circle Method, and this is also helpful to help athletes feel included and psychologically safe so that they can show up confidently because they feel like they're connected to their teammates. So. I'll see you in that next video.