By: Sarah Frey, MS, CMT & Robert Neff, Ph.D., CMT
Athletes and business people both face mental challenges that are surprisingly similar. Each must set challenging goals, persist through adversity, and be at their best when opportunities arise. Unfortunately, most people have no idea how to do that! As highly visible athletes and executives point to the effectiveness of mental training, the demand for these services has risen sharply. But how can the average person gain access to what the high performers are doing?
Common misconceptions about mental training are that it’s too expensive, too complicated, lacks customization, inconvenient, difficult to track progress, and challenging for coaches, parents or managers to support. Thankfully, learning mental skills is not difficult, but it’s tough to get people to practice them enough that they can remember them long-term. And then even if they remember them, they often still don’t know how to use them in situations where mental toughness is needed the most!
With this in mind, we’ve designed a first-of-a-kind mobile app, called MentalApp, to help athletes LEARN 15 key mental skills, PRACTICE them, and then be able to TRACK performance improvements. The MentalApp is compatible with all iPhone, Android, Windows and Blackberry phones. It’s been targeted for teens, but can also be used with any athlete or business person who prefers to do most everything on their phone.
MentalApp has been designed to make it much easier for sport or business professionals as well as athletic coaches and personal trainers to track the mental and physical training progress of each individual athlete, and even of entire groups, teams or clubs. Knowing what they’re doing and how they’re training makes it much easier to effectively support athletes with their training. MentalApp has removed the final barriers necessary to effectively provide mental training to individuals or groups of any size – even if there are THOUSANDS of members!
Ultimately, the biggest benefits of MentalApp are the price (less than $30/mo), the ability to mentally train groups of any size or skill level, and the added support that can be provided. Offering an exciting combination of high tech and high touch to enhance athlete enjoyment and performance, MentalApp is the first ever Mobile Mental Trainer®! Check out this video for a peek at the newly released MentalApp – https://vimeo.com/51416482.
About the Authors
Dr. Bob Neff is the founder of Mental Training, Inc. and has provided mental training services for athletes, performers, and business executives since 1990. His athlete clients include world champions, and Olympic Gold Medalists. Dr. Bob is on the United States Olympic Committee sport psychology registry.
Sarah Frey earned her masters degree in Kinesiology & Sports Psychology from the University of North Texas and is a Certified Mental Trainer®. Both Dr. Bob and Sarah are among 25 Mental Trainers® who provide 1 on 1 mental training in the Dallas area and worldwide through video Skype.
