Mental Performance Series | Junior Volleyball Association

The goal of the Mental Performance Series is to provide coaches with the tools to help athletes further understand their own motivation and underlying strengths, necessary adaptations, and underlying needs in sport.

Mental performance is a key aspect of sport as athletes learn and grow within the volleyball domain. We often hear young athletes describe their struggles as ‘overthinking’ or ‘focus’ but rarely can they define the actual process behind what they are feeling.

This 8 part series addresses a different aspect of developing the mental performance of youth athletes each week. Coaches have access to a video, handouts and talking points to guide them through the various elements of mental performance with their team(s).

Club Directors, Club Coaches and Junior Volleyball Educators have the resources to provide an 8 part Mental Performance program below. Begin with part 1.

Part 1: Identifying Shared Values

Understand and identify core values and implementation strategies for how to work with your team as they grapple with this concept.

Part 2: Self Efficacy and Goal Setting

Help identify how athletes build and grow their confidence in their ability to act through self-efficacy, and how coaches can support growing self-efficacy beliefs through a variety of sources.

Part 3: Emotion Regulation

Develop an understanding of how to help athletes notice their emotions and employ tools to help them adapt and thrive in unexpected, negative, or important situations.

Part 4: Understanding Personality

Identify different factors that contribute to personality in your team and apply your understanding of personality to help guide interactions.

Part 5: Stages of Team Development

Learn important developmental considerations to help you engage with your team, negotiate the tensions present within each stage and best support your team as you navigate these stages together.

Part 6: Finding Flow with your Team

Discover what you can do as a coach to help achieve flow state more quickly and frequently for your athletes and help your athletes prepare to enter flow state each week as they build towards more and more challenging tasks.

Part 7: Mastering Concentration and Attention

Help your athletes move fluidly between points of focus and avoid getting caught up in distractions, and find flow faster through adapting new skills that can aid them in returning their focus to the court more quickly and with less cognitive energy.

Part 8: Growth Mindset

Brings together many of the concepts throughout the series and gives coaches tools for how to help your athletes listen to their self-talk and grow physically and mentally.

Meet Lauren Pierce, PhD

Lauren Pierce is a Performance Consultant for athletes, coaches, and players in Tucson, AZ. She is currently a Mindset Coach for Club Cactus Juniors Volleyball, a JVA member club, and holds her PhD in Educational Psychology where she studies aspects of team and individual motivation. Lauren grew up playing sports and continues to compete at the elite level in obstacle course racing. Her time as an athlete and coach motivated her to pursue research applications related to ‘the mental game’. The passion and commitment of the athletes and coaches that she has worked with inspired her to continue her work by developing a mental performance program as she pursues future research and teaching in academia.

mindsetcoachlauren@gmail.com
520-474-0652