Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

4x NCAA wrestling champion Yianni Diakomihalis is a big believer in working hard and doing the right things. However, he doesn’t believe that hard work and doing the right thing is enough to be the best. He states:

“If it was just about doing everything right, there would be no losers…

In an interview with Flowrestling prior to winning his 4th NCAA wrestling title, Yianni makes the point that it’s a fact that in highly competitive, elite environments everyone does everything right. Everyone works hard. Everyone pays attention to the details in their training. Simply put, everyone is capable of winning. Therefore, everyone is capable of also losing.

So, where does this leave you? If Yianni’s premise is true (which it is), in these razor tight situations can you do anything to get an edge?

Of course you can. There is an explanation that explains why some people seem to always win close competitions effortlessly and others seem to always struggle to eke out the nail biters. As Yianni alludes to in his interview, it’s not the physical skills that provide you with an edge, it’s your mental skills.

The Mental Skills That Separate Winners and Losers in Close Competitions

Every athlete is different; therefore, every athlete needs a unique set of mental skills to optimize their performance. However, there are several basic mental skills that separate the best from the rest that are universal. How much these mental skills are perfected without mental lapses during the process of execution often is what makes sports a game of inches.

These basic mental skills include:

• Maniacally stepping yourself through the same pre and post competition routine before and after each and every time you compete.
• Consistently showcasing optimistic, positive, or neutral body language and self-talk that makes you look and feel like you will win.
• Bringing a high state of emotional intelligence to high pressure situations.
• Getting in the optimal zone of intensity regardless of the environment around you.
• Spending as much time thinking about and planning your training routine as you do actually training.
• Using both the growth mindset and strategic mindset to learn from failure.
• Leveraging visualization techniques to train your mind to believe success is inevitable.
• Focusing most of your energy on achieving task goals instead of ego goals. 
• Proactively building your mental muscles as part of your daily strength training routine.
• Consistently using positive training pain to increase pain tolerance and mental toughness.

Everyone knows you can’t be great without physical skills. However, as Yianni points out, it’s a fact that being a physical specimen is not enough. If you want to be a winner in an environment where all the competitors are other winners, you must be mentally sharp, psychologically savvy, and use fanatical focus to train your mind.