Some athletes train to compete
Others train to win
We train you to dominate
At The Mental Switch, we adhere to a straightforward belief system that underpins our teaching philosophy. We want you to be a part of it.
“Some athletes train to compete
Others train to win
We train you to dominate”.
A scientific fact.
“When athletes feel stress the brain will always fall back to your trained habits, No Matter What”.
Every athlete needs the technique of their sport to be as close to 100% as possible. Few athletes can say their mental habits are above 50%.
Why Mental Strength Training.
If you can get yourself to perform at your best technically and physically then we will prepare you to perform at your best mentally.
We function at the intersection of sports and mental health.
Depending on your age and sport, training hours per week will differ. One thing that should never differ is your mental training.
A survey in 2022 found that 90% of college athletes agreed their mental strength and resilience levels produce a minimum impact of between 54-68% on their results. They practice their sport a minimum of 36 hours per week. The time they spend building mental strength and talking through challenges is less than 60 minutes.
Here are some thoughts from elite athletes.
NFL Buffalo Bills player, Von Miller put it simply. (career income $191,644,811)
“There’s a stigma but heck, it’s help,” he said. “Sometimes you can’t control what happens physically. Like the body’s going to do it what the body’s going to do it. But if you’re solid mentally, all the other stuff works.”
Rory McIlroy, on breathing and meditation. (career income to date $181,000,000)
“Literally keep your mouth closed all day and breathe through your nose. Just keep breathing through your nose, especially in pressure situations. I meditate I would say semi regularly, probably goes hand in hand with some of the breathing exercises and everything that I do. No one is going to close their eyes for 10 minutes, do some breathing and come out of it and say they feel worse.“
An online survey was used to investigate athlete perceptions of lifestyle practices and support services amongst 135 Australian Olympic, Paralympic, National, and state-level athletes across 25 Olympic sports.
International athletes perceived psychological skills and attributes, along with strong interpersonal relationships as vital to their success, and they also rated ‘Recovery practices’ as very important and made extensive use of available support services. These athletes also indicated that they would have liked access to these services earlier in their careers, a wish that was reiterated by the sub-elite athletes
Resources and Recommended Reading
All books are recommended to clients and anyone wanting to learn:
Endurance
Author By: Alfred Lansing
Experience one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age: The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole.
In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day’s sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic’s heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.
In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton’s fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.
The Talent Code
Author By: Daniel Coyle
A cutting-edge exploration of how talent works and how it can be created and honed.
'Talent. You've either got it or you haven't.' Not true, actually.
In The Talent Code, award-winning journalist Daniel Coyle draws on cutting-edge research to reveal that, far from being some abstract mystical power fixed at birth, ability really can be created and nurtured.
In the process, he considers talent at work in venues as diverse as a music school in Dallas and a tennis academy near Moscow to demonstrate how the wiring of our brains can be transformed by the way we approach particular tasks. He explains what is really going on when apparently unremarkable people suddenly make a major leap forward. He reveals why some teaching methods are so much more effective than others. Above all, he shows how all of us can achieve our full potential if we set about training our brains in the right way.
Breathe
Author By: Rickson Gracie, Peter Maguire
*** Instant New York Times bestseller ***
*** USA Today bestseller ***
*** Wall Street Journal bestseller ***
From legendary Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and MMA master Rickson Gracie comes a riveting, insightful memoir that weaves together the story of Gracie’s stunning career with the larger history of the Gracie family dynasty and the founding of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, showing how the connection between mind and body can be harnessed for success both inside and outside the ring.
Undefeated from the late 1970s through his final fight in the Tokyo Dome in 2000, Rickson Gracie amassed hundreds of victories in the street, on the mat, at the beach, and in the ring. He has joined the pantheon that includes Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and Jackie Chan as one of the most famous martial artists of the twentieth century. Jiu-Jitsu, the fighting style developed and pioneered by his family, has become one of the world’s most prominent martial arts, and Vale Tudo, the “anything goes” style of Brazilian street fighting over which the Gracies had a monopoly, was an early precursor to the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Simply put, without the Gracie family, there would be no sport of “MMA,” no 4-billion-dollar UFC empire, and no “Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu” at strip malls all across America.
Stealing Fire
Author By: Steven Kotler, Jamie Wheal
It’s the biggest revolution you’ve never heard of, and it’s hiding in plain sight. Over the past decade, Silicon Valley executives like Eric Schmidt and Elon Musk, special operators like the Navy SEALs and the Green Berets, and maverick scientists like Sasha Shulgin and Amy Cuddy have turned everything we thought we knew about high performance upside down. Instead of grit, better habits, or 10,000 hours, these trailblazers have found a surprising shortcut. They’re harnessing rare and controversial states of consciousness to solve critical challenges and outperform the competition.
New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler and high-performance expert Jamie Wheal spent four years investigating the leading edges of this revolution from the home of SEAL Team Six to the Googleplex, the Burning Man festival, Richard Branson’s Necker Island, Red Bull’s training center, Nike’s innovation team, and the United Nations headquarters. And what they learned was stunning: In their own ways, with differing languages, techniques, and applications, every one of these groups has been quietly seeking the same thing: the boost in information and inspiration that altered states provide.
