Most athletes want to train and compete at their best ALL of the time. Playing at your best always feels fantastic and it’s why you show up. Those days that are subpar in your performance are no fun and often are insanely frustrating. To help you with managing your emotions related to those poor days, you need to understand the Law of Thirds. The Law of Thirds breaks down your time spent in sport, both training and competing, into thirds. Each third is vital and all are necessary to create a complete sporting career.

The seventh Essential is learning to Handle Adversity. Adversity is actually one of the things that makes us love sport! It’s always thrilling to watch or be the athlete that overcomes adversity, or makes a comeback. It’s why we always cheer on the Cinderella story in sport. The greatest athletes are not the ones that never fail, they are the ones that recover the fastest.

The sixth Essential is learning to Adjust and Be Flexible. No matter the sport, every athlete has a game plan, a strategy for how they are going to approach their competition so that they can achieve their goals. Just like you have a game plan for what you are going to do on the field or court, you need to have a mental plan for how you are going to deal with the mental challenges that may come up.

The fifth Essential is learning to Manage Emotions. There is a specific reason as to why you need to MANAGE them instead of CONTROL them. Emotions are a good, healthy, and natural part of life. It’s what makes you human! The challenge comes when you experience an emotion that is too big and impacts your ability to perform in the way that you want.