When to start the mental coaching?

To develop and maintain during the season a good set of mental skills, the athletes must train them as they do for the physical skills.  The mental skills training must be integrated into the daily sessions. Mental and physical skills have to proceed in parallel every day. The best moment to start this practice is off-season or early pre-season. For instance, to start the attentional training it’s easy at the beginning when the athletes are more calm and less tired and practice is not yet  very difficult as compared to the following training periods. The worst moments to start is when the athletes have shown problems during their performances and the coaches thinks that they are mind difficulties. At those moment they ask for an intervent of the sport psychologist. Usually this happens because the coaches believe that they have done all that they can do but the athletes look de-motivated, or anxious or distracted and they do not know any other options to training them.   It’s a crisis intervention that the sport psychologis can manage but the coaches and the athletes need to understand that the mental training must be integrated inside their sessions and not only used as a solution for the bad moments.