The NSCAA and Provelop have partnered to provide coaches attending the 2013 Summer Symposium with the opportunity to attend the Provelop One-Day Coaching Intensive Program. Coaches will learn how to use mental conditioning in order to impact player performance.

More information about this program can be found here.

"You can’t take that out of him."

I often hear coaches make a comment like this about a player who finds himself in trouble due to his unmanaged emotions. "If you remove these from his game, he won't be half the player he is now" is another quote used in reference to a reckless challenge or a strong reaction to a referee’s decision. But is this true?

A player’s brain needs emotion to perform at a high level. But if you take this emotional intensity away from a player, is it really going to hinder his performance? In reality, we need to be asking the question in a different way.

Is the player aware of his emotional state and can he manage it to aid his performance?

Emotions are there to warn us of our physical and social well-being. They are a response to moments that have just happened or might happen in our physical and social environment. A game of soccer is filled with emotions. These emotions can affect the way a player is performing, and can often create both good and bad tendencies.

Emotions relate to an interconnected model of thoughts, feelings, physiology and behaviors. They make us aware of three points:

They notify us about important events. Both good and bad, emotions get out attention, they focus us, consciously and subconsciously – emotions are an attention-focusing feature.

They motivate people to behave and deal with a specific event. They create an urge and an impulse.

They produce changes in the body – a biological response. Therefore how we think, feel and behave after a given event is a bio-psychosocial response.

Let’s revisit the familiar saying.

"You cant take that out of him."

Yet, you can and you should absolutely empower players, especially younger players, with the knowledge and cognitive strategies that will enable them to manage their emotions. We should be exposing players to consistent pressures, while also making sure that the correct support framework is wrapped around them.

I have spent the past decade of my life working with athletes on exactly this. The success that I have had on a personal level with some of the game’s best players is why I created Provelop. I want to give coaches everywhere the tools and training needed to help players develop the mental side of their game.

Our team is excited to continue working on this with the NSCAA and all of their great coaches in the months ahead.

About Provelop

Provelop is a leader in the field of performance psychology. Tony Faulkner, Provelop founder, has been working as a sports psychologist in the English Premier League for over a decade now. While studying the best players in the world, Tony spent years developing the Provelop Profile, an online questionnaire that is designed to measure the key performance indicators of an athlete. To accompany this profile, the Provelop team has created a core curriculum that is designed to empower coaches everywhere. The Provelop system is currently used by coaches and athletes of all levels, ranging from development academies to colleges and universities to top-level professional teams.

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