Unlock Your Athletic Potential - by Dr Justin Ross

COURSE

Unlock Your Athletic Potential

With Dr Justin Ross

You are an athlete. You train your body. You train your sport. But you may be neglecting one of the most important skills of them all. Your mind. This course is geared for athletes of all ability levels, participating in any type of sport; Elites, professionals, Olympians as well as recreational athletes, weekend warriors, and beginners, and helps you understand key sports psychology skills in an effort to translate those skills to a tangible practice you can implement alongside your training. The next 10 days of content focus on learning how to implement high performance sports psychology skills. Sessions include experiential practices that show the power of the mind as it relates to your body, engagement exercises geared on reflection and personal awareness, and meditative practices for learning how to channel focus, energy, and concentration. Sessions work together to build a pyramid of skills. Starting with the foundational sports psychology skills of motivation, goals and commitment, you are then guided through higher level skills that include emotional regulation, mindset, setting the mind, and mental toughness. The final session focuses on executing when it counts; putting the skills together in a cohesive manner for executing in tough training conditions or in competition.


Meet your Teacher

Dr. Justin Ross is a clinical psychologist in Denver, CO. He specializes in human performance psychology as well as health and wellness psychology. He works with athletes of all ability levels, from beginners to weekend warriors to those performing on a world stage. He knows the athlete's mind, as he is an amateur, recreational athlete himself; an 11-time marathoner and 6-time Boston Marathon Qualifier with a marathon personal best of 2 hours 57 minutes. He has also completed 2 Ironman 70.3 distance triathlons, as well as too many shorter distance running and triathlon events to count.

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10 Days

5.1k students

4.5 stars

12 min / day

Performance

English


Lesson 1

Why Your Mind Matters In Sports Performance

Why leave the condition of your mind up to chance? You are an athlete. You train your body. You train your sport. But you may neglecting one of the most important factors of all for an athlete, your mind. This session discusses the importance of adopting a sports psychology platform through discussion and a playful experiential exercise I call Bowling Balls and Helium Balloons.

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Lesson 2

Your Current Psychological Framework

Understand that you already have a psychological framework that interfaces everything you do in life. Session 2 helps guide awareness to your existing thoughts, beliefs, and self-talk as the starting point for learning higher impact sports psychology skills. You will be guided through a series of self-reflection questions about understanding your current psychological framework and how that impacts performance in sport, using the self-talk framework of “I am.” Starting from awareness, then developing specific, targeted, and positive "I am" statements as they relate to life and sport is critical for success in athletic endeavors.

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Lesson 3

Motivation

Everything we do in life begins with a thought. Everything. Understanding what drives you to perform and compete on both an intrinsic and extrinsic level helps you connect to a deeper sense of purpose. Being clear about your motivational factors now is critical when you need to access and dig deep in training and competition. We also discuss important motivating factors of Autonomy, Mastery, Belonging, and Purpose.

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Lesson 4

Goals

We can not accomplish anything if we don't first set our minds to achieving it. The goals you establish stem from your underlying motivation. How you set goals shapes your level of commitment and how you deal with barriers. A basic framework for how to establish goals, how to make them clear, meaningful and appropriately difficult, yet within reach is the basis of this session.

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Lesson 5

Commitment

Achieving goals in any performance endeavor requires significant commitment, day in, day out. Establishing routines and remaining consistent is critical factor #1 as it relates to success. Bridging the connection to meaningful motivational and goal factors helps you stay consistent, even when life throws you barriers. Understanding your own personal barriers, and creating a basic plan of action will be discussed in this practice. You will be guided through an exercise I call "the barrier box."

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Lesson 6

Emotional Regulation

Emotions impact everything we do, and play a key role in how we show up in the gym, on the field, on the court, the course or the trail. Understanding that mood can both influence and be influenced is the focus on day 6. Learning how to emotionally course correct during difficult moments is a key to this session. You will be lead through an activation exercise that is quickly followed by a guided meditation practice to learn how to shift those moments of physiological arousal into dialed in, game-day ready focus.

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Lesson 7

Setting the Mind. Mindset.

Mindset is perhaps the biggest buzz word going right now in performance psychology. Mindset is the general, default setting by which we appraise our experience, our world, and our surroundings. We can work to channel our mindset through specific skills that I call, “Setting the Mind.” A setting the mind practice involves deliberate, intentional and proactive thinking, involving both What we engage and How we engage. Setting the mind occurs before, during, and after training.

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Lesson 8

Mental Toughness

Everyone in the sports psychology world wants to talk about mental toughness. But mental toughness is not something you can magically conjure up or fake. It doesn’t just appear at mile 20 of a marathon, or spontaneously arise when we face obstacles. Mental toughness can only be forged through practice. And practice can only be forged by purposefully taking on challenges and doing hard things. Mental toughness includes 2 key ingredients; willingness and optimism. This session will include learning how to approach willingness both in and out of sport, and leaves the listener with a finding a personal challenge both in and out of sport.

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Lesson 9

Doubt. Trust. Control.

You don’t rise to the occasion. You default to the level of your training. As you prepare for a hard training effort or competition, you may experience doubt, which can bleed into anxiety. Pre-competition anxiety is completely normal, yet doesn’t have to negatively impact performance. Rather, how you manage this experience is critical to successful outcomes. Channeling anxiety into excitement is one of those skills. Trust, in my opinion, is the biggest antidote that we have for anxiety, both in and out of sport. Learning how and where to connect to your own trust factors is crucial for high performance and will be taught in today’s session. And finally, control. We often focus on controlling variables outside our reach, especially as it relates to outcome. Focusing on controlling internal factors guides us and prepares us to access our training and perform at our peak.

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Lesson 10

Executing When It Counts

Everyone wants to excel in competition. This could be performing for a big event on the world stage, or simply performing in your own backyard. Competition may be attempting a personal best when no one is looking, or shooting for a goal after telling your friends, family, teammates or social network all about what you're trying to accomplish. Competition can come from within or from external sources. Mastering the skill set to channel these emotions is critical to executing when it counts most. Today’s session puts all of these skills together in a 10 minute pre-competition meditation practice, aimed at arming the mind and preparing the body to execute high performance.

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4.5 (196)

Recent Reviews

Allison

December 19, 2024

Amazing course jam packed with really high quality information for top performance. Highly recommend!

Louise

February 14, 2024

Excellent course! I’m using the information as a musician struggling with the same performance issues. Put into practice, the enlightenment has already proved successful! Thank you, please extend your target audience a little wider.

Deven

February 1, 2024

Great class! I learned a lot about mindset and different ways to view things like nervousness and challenges that have been helping so far wit my pickleball game. Thanks, Justin!

Monique

December 3, 2023

Brilliant. Thank you for sharing. It’s been an invaluable toolkit of knowledge to help in preparing me for my blackbelt exam on 16 December. I will listen to key lessons again over the next sixteen days.

Dara

December 3, 2023

So useful for all performance pursuits!

HyoSung

October 1, 2023

Great stuff.

Bee

May 31, 2023

Amazing thank you so much. I have learnt things I can use in everyday life as well as my training 🙏😊

Julia

November 15, 2022

Really nice overview of sports psychology. I really enjoyed the course. It left me wanting more and realizing although I am aging and my physiology is declining I can offset some of that with increased mental performance. Would love to take a more advanced course or Part II in this!

Wakki

October 8, 2022

Thank you very much for your course ! Im about to go to a full contact karate tournament at the age of 46 and am now feeling confident and powerful! Thanks again!!

Robin

August 12, 2022

Very helpful! Thank you!

Marie

May 27, 2022

How do I relisten. I am a believer in repeating

Martha

October 21, 2021

Very helpful and enlightening

veronica

May 18, 2021

Ok course

Alex

April 27, 2021

Great course. Been looking for something to take my competitive edge to the next level.

Julie

March 27, 2021

Love it, thank you!!!

Meet

February 19, 2021

Nice

Paul

February 18, 2021

Exceptionally well done. Clear, concise and definitely helpful.

Colin

February 16, 2021

Very good.

Eliana

January 3, 2021

Great course! Using these strategies atm to study a subject that is way outside of my comfort zone, but connected to my dreams. Really helpful. Thank you for putting together this course!

DeAnne

December 12, 2020

I found this course to be great for sport and life in general. I plan to listen again at new phases of training and/or life stuff because there are so many Golden Nuggets in here!

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