Mental coaching ABC

I am often asked what is the  mental coaching ABC. For me is to know what it does, what it says and feels an athlete after he made ​​a mistake. We all know that it is easy to make mistakes and that the error is always present in every aspect of a competition. There are not athletes who do not make mistakes, and the champions are athletes who make less mistakes. So if you do not have direct experience working with athletes is important to read their stories, in order to understand how they have learned to react to a defeat or a negative period. In this case, before relying on psychological techniques (from the PNL to the many cognitive-behavioral techniques, the gestalt rather than to those of stress management) it should understand the value of the error in sport. For example, reading the book by Andre Agassi shows  as the way of life the error is closely related to the relationship you have with the sport. The book by Alessandro Del Piero, however, shows the relevance of motivation as a child can lead a young person through the thousands of repetitions that are necessary to learn to kick the ball. The same appears in the story of Johnny Wilkinson (rugby) that to acquire the skills needed to put the oval between the posts for years he has trained to repeat these kicks through the same routine. Or how to interpret the Michael Jordan’s phrase apparently paradoxical  when he says “In my life I have often failed and continued to fail. For this reason I succeed.” In other words, the ABC of mental coaching is to enter (even through reading) into the world of athletes and hear them tell their stories, before providing them with a prepackaged solution.