Almost none of those tools measure what we actually know predicts whether a player makes it.

The Insight

The 2026 NBA Draft Combine runs prospects through anthropometric measurements, shuttle runs, agility drills, and 5-on-5 scrimmages. These are legitimate data points. They tell you about a player’s physical tools.

They are not, however, the predictors that have held up best in 85 years of performance research.

The physical measurements give us a starting point. The questions that actually govern whether those tools translate to professional performance are psychological.

How does AJ Dybantsa respond when a workout doesn’t go his way? Not what he says. What he does in the next rep. That tells you something about resilience under performance pressure that no vertical jump number captures.

How does a top prospect handle the transition from being the best player on his college team to an unknown rookie in a professional system?

The psychology of that transition — specifically the ability to accept and embrace a temporarily subordinate role — predicts development trajectories more reliably than any measurable physical attribute.

We know this because Schmidt and Hunter’s 85 years of research showed cognitive ability combined with structured psychological assessment produces the highest validity for performance prediction.

The teams in Chicago this week who ask the right questions in private interviews, who have structured behavioral assessments, who are measuring cognitive processing and motivational architecture alongside wingspan, will consistently outperform the ones making decisions based on tape and feel.

The margin compounds over years and over draft classes.

The Evidence

• Frontiers in Psychology (2023): Athletic intelligence and NBA performance: Cognitive assessment was associated with NBA performance outcomes beyond physical athleticism. Alex’s take: The data is available. Front offices that use it gain an evaluation edge that most organizations haven’t closed.

• Schmidt & Hunter (1998), Psychological Bulletin: Structured selection methods produce validity coefficients of .63 for predicting performance. No physical combine drill comes close. Alex’s take: The combine is a necessary input. It’s not sufficient. The gap between what it measures and what predicts performance is exactly where Caliber operates.

The Play

If you’re evaluating anyone this week — from a draft prospect to a job candidate — add one structured behavioral question to your assessment: ‘Describe a time when you were certain you were right and turned out to be wrong. What did you do in the next 24 hours?’

The answer tells you more about resilience, adaptability, and ego management than any speed drill or skills demonstration. It’s a one-question screen for coachability.

What the Combine measures is real. What it misses is the difference between a good player and a great one.

— Alex

He’s hitting every number. His board loves him. He can’t remember the last conversation with his daughter where he wasn’t half-thinking about a slide deck.

He didn’t come to me for burnout advice. He came because he thought something was medically wrong with him. He was ready to quit and was knee-deep in imagining a different future.

Subscribe now

There’s a lie high performers tell themselves, and it sounds like this: “I’ll rest when the season’s over.”

Athletes say it. Executives say it. Founders say it. Military operators say it. They all believe, at some level, that recovery is a reward for output.

That’s the exact wrong frame.

Recovery is not the thing you earn after performance. It’s the condition that makes performance possible. When you skip it, you don’t get more output. You get the same output at a higher cost, and eventually less output at a much higher cost.

The research on this has been around forever. Allostatic load, the cumulative wear on the body from chronic stress, shows up in cardiovascular risk, cognitive decline, and emotional volatility.

But the part that matters for you is simpler.

Your body keeps a balance sheet. Every week you spend more than you earn, you fund the deficit with something you haven’t paid back yet. Your sleep. Your connection to your kids. Your ability to feel pleasure from the work you said you loved.

The CEO I worked with didn’t have a medical problem. He had 104 weeks of unpaid invoices.

The Evidence

Dr. Matthew Walker on sleep. One finding worth the email alone: one night of five hours of sleep drops your natural killer cell activity by roughly 70%. Your immune system is your recovery system. Treat a late night like a tax, not a shortcut.

Kelly McGonigal on stress mindsets. Viewing stress as a challenge rather than a threat doesn’t just make you feel better. It changes your cardiovascular response. What you believe about stress shapes what stress does to you.

The Move

This week, schedule a single 15-minute recovery window in the middle of your workday. Not at the end. The middle. No phone, no podcast, no “productive rest.” Sit somewhere you can see the sky. Let your nervous system exhale. Do it three times this week and tell me on Sunday if your Thursday felt different than usual.

The body doesn’t negotiate. Pay yourself first.

Alex

Hitting a Wall

Every high performer I’ve worked with who eventually hit a wall had one thing in their story: they had reframed exhaustion as evidence of commitment. They were tired, and they were proud of it. The tiredness confirmed something for them — that they were serious, that they were doing what it took.

That reframe is lethal.

Not because rest is virtuous or because hustle is bad. Because the physiology doesn’t care about your narrative. Your nervous system doesn’t grade on effort. It runs the numbers, and when the numbers say you’re in deficit, it starts borrowing — from your decision quality, your emotional regulation, your reaction time, your immune function. It doesn’t ask permission. It just starts withdrawing.

Research on high-performer recovery points to a simple threshold: roughly 42% of your day needs to be spent in states your nervous system classifies as “downward.”

Sleep is the biggest piece, but it also includes eating without a screen, actual social connection, and quiet that isn’t just waiting for the next thing.

Most of the high performers I work with, when they actually count, are hitting maybe 25–30%. They’re running a 10–15% daily deficit and calling it discipline.

The athletes who last 15 years don’t work less than the ones who burn out at seven.

They just stopped treating recovery like something they had to earn.

What I’m Reading

Why We Sleep — Matthew Walker

Most coaches have read everything written about training load. Almost none have read Walker. His data on what 17 hours of continuous wakefulness does to cognitive performance — it’s functionally equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.05% — should be required reading for every high-performance program in the country. The part the performance world hasn’t caught up to yet: you can’t out-train a sleep deficit.

Emotional Intelligence Training in Elite Military Settings — Scientific Reports, 2026

Sixty-six soldiers, 15 hours of EI training, then simulated combat. The trained group had lower cortisol, better shooting accuracy, better memory retention, better cognitive performance under fire.

The finding I can’t stop thinking about: the training gave people a vocabulary for their internal state. You can’t regulate what you can’t name. What looks like mental toughness from the outside is often just someone with a finer-grained awareness of what’s happening inside them in real time. That’s a skill. It’s trainable in 15 hours.

The 6 Stages of Burnout Recovery — Brandon White

The research this draws from makes an observation I think about a lot: the people who are best at performing are frequently the worst at recovering, because they’ve built their identity around output. Resting doesn’t just feel unproductive to them. It feels like a character failure. The recovery research is clear: you can fully reverse burnout with the right inputs.

The hard part is never the rest. It’s giving yourself permission to rest without treating it as evidence that you’ve stopped caring.

One Thing to Try This Week

For the next three days, track your actual recovery hours. Not just sleep — your full recovery: sleep, meals without a screen, real social time, anything your body would classify as genuinely restful. Don’t try to change anything yet. Just count.

Most people who do this are surprised by their own number. Seeing it clearly is the whole intervention. You can’t fix a deficit you haven’t measured.

That’s it for this week. I’m curious what your number looks like when you actually add it up.

— Alex

Self-Regulation Makes You a Better Shooter

Researchers at the University of Queensland published a study in Scientific Reports earlier this year. They took 66 elite special forces soldiers and randomly split them into two groups.

One group got 15 hours of emotional intelligence training. Not a weekend retreat. Not a meditation app. Structured training in recognizing, understanding, and regulating emotions in real time. This is the core of what I’ve written about extensively in self-regulated learning.

The other group got 15 hours of standard control training.

Then they dropped both groups into a high-stress simulated combat scenario, and they measured everything.

Cortisol levels. Shooting accuracy. Memory recall. Cognitive speed.

The EI-trained soldiers hit their targets 94.1% of the time.

The control group hit 51.6%.

Same soldiers. Same selection pipeline. Same physical conditioning. Same weapons.

Nearly double the accuracy.

Share

But here’s the part that really got me.

The EI group recalled 66% more mission-critical details during the scenario. They solved complex problems faster under pressure. And their cortisol levels were measurably lower throughout.

They weren’t calmer because the situation was easier. They were calmer because they had learned to regulate their internal state while the chaos was happening around them.

This is the thing I’ve been trying to explain to every athlete, executive, and operator I’ve worked with. Stress isn’t the enemy. Your relationship with stress is.

I had an NBA player a few years back. Incredible talent. But in the fourth quarter of close games, he disappeared. Not because he lacked skill. Because his nervous system hijacked him. His heart would beat out of control and he’d basically hide in a corner. His decision-making collapsed. He looked like a completely different player.

We didn’t work on his jump shot. We worked on his breathing. We worked on him noticing when his chest tightened and naming it before it took over. We worked on the two-second gap between stimulus and response.

Within a season, his fourth-quarter numbers were unrecognizable. Same player. Same skill set. Different relationship with pressure.

That’s what this study quantified. 15 hours of training. Not years. Not a personality overhaul. 15 hours of learning to notice what’s happening inside you and choosing a response instead of reacting on autopilot.

Simone Biles is the highest-profile example of this. After Tokyo, everyone focused on the withdrawal. What they missed was the rebuild. She didn’t just get back in the gym. She got into therapy. Before her two biggest competitions in Paris, the team final and the all-around final, she had sessions with her U.S.-based therapist who was up in the middle of the night to work with her.

Then she won three golds and a silver.

She didn’t become a better gymnast between Tokyo and Paris. She became a better regulator. And that made her gymnastics better.

We have this cultural obsession with “mental toughness” that usually means “ignore your body and push through.” That’s not toughness. That’s dissociation. And it works right up until it doesn’t, which is usually the moment that matters most.

Real toughness is the opposite. It’s paying such close attention to your internal state that you can steer it in real time. That’s what those soldiers learned. That’s what Biles rebuilt.

Performance isn’t a trait you either have or you don’t. It’s a skill. And the foundation of that skill is self-regulation.

If 15 hours of training can nearly double accuracy in some of the most elite operators on the planet, what could it do for your team?

What I’m Reading

Emotional intelligence training improves stress regulation and performance in high-stress occupations (Scientific Reports, 2026). The full paper. Read the methodology section. They used objective physiological measures, not questionnaires. That’s what makes this study different from most EI research. If you need ammunition for why your organization should invest in emotional regulation training, this is it.

Born at the Wrong Time: Selection Bias in the NHL Draft (PLOS ONE). Completely different topic, but I’ve been obsessed with it this week. 40% of NHL players are born January through March because of age cutoffs. The kids born late in the year who survive the system become better players and earn 51% more. We’re filtering out talent everywhere and don’t even realize it.

Carol Dweck Revisits the Growth Mindset (Education Week). Worth re-reading. Dweck herself addresses how “growth mindset” has been distorted into “just try harder” when the real insight is about how you respond to failure. Connects directly to the self-regulation conversation.

One Thing to Try This Week

Next time you feel stress rising before a big moment, try this: name the physical sensation out loud to yourself.

“My chest is tight.”
“My hands are cold.”
“My breathing is shallow.”

That’s it. Don’t try to fix it. Just name it.

Neuroscientists call this “affect labeling.” Research consistently shows that naming an emotion or sensation reduces its intensity. It moves activity from the amygdala (your threat center) to the prefrontal cortex (your thinking center). It’s the same foundational skill those soldiers learned in their 15 hours of training.

Try it once this week. Before a presentation. A hard conversation. A moment where the stakes feel high. Name what’s happening in your body before you react.

It sounds too simple to work. That’s how you know it’s foundational.

See you next week!

But the greatest teams—those that consistently rise under pressure—win because they are built on a deeper foundation.

They share a DNA of elite teamwork, a set of behaviors that make them more than just a collection of individuals.

The science is clear: cohesion, clarity, and collective identity drive peak performance. Whether you’re leading a team in sports, business, or any high-stakes environment, these three team behaviors can elevate your performance to the next level.

Foster Psychological Safety

A great team isn’t one where everyone agrees—it’s one where everyone feels safe enough to challenge, contribute, and collaborate without fear of judgment.

Here’s how:

• Leaders set the tone. Acknowledge mistakes openly and encourage others to do the same.

• Replace blame with curiosity—when something goes wrong, ask, “What can we learn?” rather than, “Who messed up?”

• Encourage open communication by making sure every voice is heard, especially in high-stakes moments.

This isn't just theoretical—the data backs it up.

Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety was the #1 predictor of high-performing teams. Without it, people hesitate, hold back, and ultimately contribute less. With it, teams take more risks, learn faster, and recover from setbacks more effectively.

Subscribe now

Master Role Clarity and Adaptability

The best teams don’t just know their roles; they know when to step outside them. They operate with structured flexibility, or what I’ve come to call “freedom in the huddle”—clear responsibilities combined with the ability to adjust when the moment demands.

Here’s how you get clear:

• Define each person’s role before game time, but prepare for shifts as needed.

• Encourage “functional leadership”—in key moments, the right person (not just the most senior) should take charge.

• Make adaptability a core value: “What’s best for the team right now?” should be a guiding question.

You see this all the time in sports - especially basketball. The San Antonio Spurs, known for their selfless, adaptive play, dismantled a more star-driven Miami Heat team in the 2014 NBA Finals. Their role clarity and seamless adaptability showcased the power of a well-oiled team over individual brilliance.

Commit to a ‘We Over Me’ Identity

The highest-performing teams share a deep, intrinsic belief that they are playing for something bigger than themselves. They have a self-transcendent purpose—a reason for working together beyond personal gain.

Here’s how you access that bigger purpose, consistently:

• Reinforce shared values daily—what does this team stand for beyond winning?

• Celebrate “team-first” plays as much as individual brilliance.

• Use language that emphasizes the collective: “We,” not “me.”

The New Zealand All Blacks, one of the most dominant teams in rugby history, have a simple rule: “No one is bigger than the team.” Even the biggest stars sweep the locker room after games—a ritual that reinforces humility and the collective over the individual.

Key Takeaways: The Blueprint for Elite Teams

1. Psychological Safety: Create an environment where players can challenge and contribute without fear.

2. Role Clarity & Adaptability: Define responsibilities but embrace flexibility when it matters.

3. We Over Me Identity: Build a shared purpose that fuels commitment and selflessness.

High-performance teams aren’t just built on talent—they’re crafted through intentional culture. Start reinforcing these processes today, and watch your team transform.

Share

It started as a discussion with a friend of mine — a pediatrician — who’s exploring a business for himself. We were talking about the types of transformations work like his or mine deliver.

When your work is helping other people, your main job is to deliver some kind of change that makes a meaningful difference in someone else’s life - a transformation - that takes them from current state to desired end goal.

As we explored what he wants to do in his business, we sifted through the journeys a helper can take someone on. Each of these journeys have different value propositions from a business perspective, but more importantly, reflect the fact what drives transformation can be different for everyone.

When you understand which journey you’re on, it shapes the questions you ask, what you invest in, what you consider success, and what gnaws at you.

Recognizing the motives that are fueling your behavior allows you to unlock a next, better version of yourself.

The question is: what are the journeys and how are they different?

As I got deeper into this question, I landed on a framework I’m still exploring — the 3 paths of self-development.

Path 1: Self-Discovery (Who Am I?)

If you’re interested in finding your core values, developing your identity, or understanding how your past drives your future - this is the journey you’re on.

You might believe this is the first journey you have to go on to get to the next two. I’m not so sure.

This journey is about figuring out the deeply ingrained patterns and aspects of your identity that drive your behavior today. It’s not about changing who you are or redirecting who you want to become, but simply knowing yourself and being aware of yourself in a way you aren’t today.

It’s a journey about understanding - but insight doesn’t always compute to action.

I think that most people believe this is the most important journey to go on. There’s an ingrained belief in our culture that you have to know yourself before you can do anything like love someone else or raise a kid. Our culture is also fascinated with insight and deep meaning, which certainly are valuable but don’t always facilitate change.

My theory is that this journey is great for a majority of people to go on, but that most of those people will also stop here once they have a sense of who they are. It feels rewarding to know yourself more, and that reward alone once reached may be enough for people to then slow down, settle in, and live their life with more complete awareness.

Since this is a publication about greatness, it’s important to know that this journey and type of settling in won’t get you there.

Path 2: Self-Definition (What Can I Produce?)

The second is a journey focused on outcomes. It’s about seeing what you can do in the world, how famous you can become, or how much money you can make.

It’s a journey about creating an identity for yourself based on the outcomes of today and tomorrow.

This is the journey I see a lot of athletes on - and the occasional executive. Rather than learning about themselves or becoming the best they can, they’re focused on getting the next contract or the best exit. They let this outcome define their success and dominate their thoughts.

I also see this with founders. They focus on the exit and how big their company can be, not who they’re becoming running their company or how to become the best CEO they can be. Their business scoreboard drives their decisions and actions.

Path 3: Self-Actualization (How Can I Become My Best?)

The final journey is one to become the highest, best version of yourself.

This is the journey the all-time greats go on, that their slightly-less-elite counterparts can’t seem to get right.

It’s LeBron James setting the scoring record by focusing on becoming the best player he could be, or Tom Brady winning 7 titles by emphasizing becoming his best at each stop.

This is a consistent thread amongst the best.

Now, the way I’ve framed this makes it seem like this is the journey you should be on. But that is not the case. Some people don’t actually want to become their best. They want the big outcome or they want to know who they are, without worrying about optimizing who they can be. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Each path just leads to different destinations with different obstacles along the way.

Which one are you on?

As I’ve said throughout this piece, there’s really no right or wrong journey.

But, knowing which one you’re on can help you do the key thing required for any transformation: be honest with yourself.

I believe that ultimately, the world’s best performers end up with some combination of the 3.

They first embark on a quest to know themselves. Once they feel grounded in their identity, they shift to an emphasis on becoming the best version of themselves. But while doing that, they keep an eye on what they can produce. They use it as a way to measure their improvement, instead of a marker of their worth (like those who skip the “become your best” journey fall prey to).

Perhaps one of our errors is thinking that we need to do these journeys linearly or that they’re in some way mutually exclusive.

Whichever transformation you’re on will determine how you approach self-improvement today. But in the long run, you’ll need some form of each for you to fully realize your potential. Greatness isn’t as simple as knowing yourself or as simple as the numbers on a scoreboard.

The real value here is knowing what game you’re playing.

So help me be helpful…

What would you like to know about peak performance, well-being, or leadership from the perspective of a sport psychologist?

Reply to this email, and I’ll answer them all.

Share

When Olympic rower Hamish Bond crossed the finish line to claim gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics, he wasn't just physically stronger than his competitors—he was mentally tougher. The difference between gold and fourth place in Olympic rowing events averages just 1.3%. With margins that slim, the psychological edge becomes everything.

High-intensity sports (HIS) like rowing, swimming, track cycling, and 800-1500m running push athletes to their absolute limits. These sports require maximal energy output for 1-8 minutes, creating a perfect storm of muscle fatigue, lactic acid buildup, and psychological pressure. While physical training is essential, the world's best athletes know that mental skills make the difference when everyone's physically prepared.

But here's what most coaches get wrong: generic mental skills training doesn't cut it. Research from performance psychologists Daniel Birrer and Gareth Morgan shows that psychological training must be specifically tailored to the demands of high-intensity sports to be effective… and the same principles translate to high intensity work across industries.

Let's dive into the seven psychological skills that separate the champions from the also-rans.

1. Self-Skills: Building Your Mental Foundation

Elite athletes don't just know their bodies—they know their minds. Self-awareness, self-efficacy, and self-concordance (alignment between goals and values) form the mental foundation that everything else builds upon.

Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps didn't just visualize winning races—he built a comprehensive understanding of his mental landscape. "I knew exactly what was working for me and what wasn't," Phelps has noted. "I could tell when my mind was drifting even before my coach could."

How to develop it: Start by simply tracking your thoughts during training sessions. What triggers negative thinking? When do you feel most confident? This awareness is the first step toward mental mastery. Then, work on predicting your performance in training tasks before you attempt them, gradually improving accuracy between your expectations and reality.

Research shows that athletes with stronger self-skills not only perform better but also have greater psychological resilience—they bounce back from setbacks faster and adapt to changing circumstances more effectively.

2. Arousal-Regulation: Turning Pressure Into Performance

The difference between choking and clutch performance comes down to how you interpret your body's signals. Elite athletes don't try to eliminate pre-race nerves—they reinterpret them as readiness.

Studies by Hanton and colleagues revealed that successful athletes experience the same pre-competition anxiety symptoms as others, but they've learned to interpret these sensations as performance-enhancing rather than debilitating.

How to develop it: Instead of trying to eliminate butterflies, rename them. That racing heart? It's delivering oxygen to your muscles. Those jittery hands? They're charged with energy ready to be directed. Research shows that simply labeling arousal as "excitement" rather than "anxiety" can significantly improve performance.

Most importantly, practice this reinterpretation during training when the stakes are lower. As Thomas and colleagues demonstrated, athletes who systematically practiced reframing anxiety as beneficial showed significant performance improvements when it mattered most.

Share

3. Volitional Skills: When Your Mind Says "Stop" But You Don't

When lactic acid floods your muscles and your lungs burn for oxygen, it's not physical capacity that keeps you going—it's volitional control.

Elite athletes develop what psychologists call "implementation intentions" and "shielding intentions"—specific plans for how they'll respond when their body screams to slow down.

Olympic track cyclist Sir Chris Hoy put it perfectly: "When the pain comes, you know exactly what you're going to say to yourself, exactly where you're going to focus, and exactly what you're going to do with your technique."

How to develop it: Create specific if-then plans for moments of pain or hardship. For example: "If my legs start burning in the final 200 meters, then I'll focus on my breathing rhythm and remember my strength training." Research shows these pre-planned responses require far less mental energy in the moment of crisis.

4. Attentional Control: Finding Focus When Everything Hurts

In high-intensity sports, where to direct your attention can make or break your performance. Research with elite rowers and swimmers shows that associative strategies—focusing on bodily sensations and performance-relevant cues—lead to faster performances than dissociative strategies (distracting yourself from the pain).

Scott and colleagues found that rowers using associative attentional strategies improved their performance by an impressive 3.76%—more than enough to turn silver into gold at the Olympic level.

How to develop it: Practice "internal association" during training by deliberately focusing on specific bodily sensations like muscle tension, breathing rhythm, and movement technique. Start in shorter intervals, then gradually extend the duration of your focused attention as your mental stamina improves.

5. Pain Management: Embracing Discomfort as Data

What separates good athletes from great ones isn't pain tolerance—it's pain interpretation. Elite performers in high-intensity sports don't see pain as something to endure; they view it as information to use.

Research from pain management specialists shows that exposure to pain leads to habituation—your perception of pain decreases with repeated exposure. More importantly, how you think about pain dramatically affects how much it impacts your performance.

How to develop it: Gradually expose yourself to increasing levels of discomfort in training, focusing on managing your thoughts about the pain rather than trying to ignore it. Use positive self-talk like "this is making me stronger" rather than "this hurts too much."

In one study, athletes who underwent specific pain management training showed significantly improved performance times and higher pain tolerance during physical tasks.

6. Harmonious Passion: Loving the Process, Not Just the Outcome

Psychologist Robert Vallerand distinguishes between harmonious passion (autonomous love for the activity itself) and obsessive passion (controlled internalization driven by external pressure). His research with athletes shows that harmonious passion leads to better performance and psychological well-being, while obsessive passion often leads to burnout.

Elite athletes find deep joy in the daily grind of training, not just in competition victories. They're intrinsically motivated by mastery and improvement, not just external validation or results.

How to develop it: Regularly reconnect with what initially drew you to your sport. Create training sessions that emphasize enjoyment and mastery rather than just hitting performance targets. Studies show athletes with harmonious passion not only perform better but are more resilient when facing setbacks.

7. Recovery Skills: The Art of Strategic Restoration

Training hard is important, but recovering intelligently is equally crucial. Elite athletes in high-intensity sports master the art of psychological and physiological restoration.

Contrary to popular belief, not all relaxation techniques work equally well for recovery. Research suggests that progressive muscle relaxation might actually be detrimental when used immediately after training, while self-hypnotic relaxation shows promising recovery-enhancing effects.

How to develop it: Create personalized recovery rituals that help you mentally disconnect from training. This might include mindfulness practices, visualization, or specific breathing techniques. The key is consistency—making recovery a non-negotiable part of your training regimen rather than an afterthought.

The Mindfulness Revolution in High-Intensity Sports

While traditional psychological skills training remains valuable, a growing body of research points to mindfulness-based approaches as particularly effective for high-intensity sports athletes.

Unlike traditional techniques that focus on controlling thoughts and feelings, mindfulness emphasizes non-judgmental awareness and acceptance of present experiences—even uncomfortable ones like pain and fatigue.

This approach aligns perfectly with the demands of high-intensity sports, where athletes must maintain performance while experiencing extreme physical discomfort.

Research by Gardner and Moore shows promising results for mindfulness-based interventions in sport, teaching athletes to perform effectively while experiencing (rather than fighting against) the natural physical and psychological responses to intense effort.

Putting It All Together: Periodizing Your Mental Training

Just as physical training follows a periodized structure, your psychological skills training should be systematically organized throughout your season.

Elite athletes don't just practice mental skills randomly—they integrate them into their training cycles, emphasizing different skills during different phases of preparation. During high-volume training blocks, recovery skills might take priority, while pre-competition periods might focus more on arousal-regulation and attentional control.

The key is consistency and specificity. A 3% improvement in performance might seem small, but in high-intensity sports where winning margins are razor-thin, that difference is everything.

Remember: Physical training prepares your body for what it might experience. Mental training prepares your mind for what it will experience. Master both, and you'll find yourself performing at levels you once thought impossible.

Subscribe

You might pursue a career that brings financial security but leaves you feeling empty, or maintain relationships that drain rather than energize you.

This disconnect isn't merely uncomfortable—it's actually working against your psychological well-being and performance.

The science is clear: when your actions align with your core values, you experience greater fulfillment, higher motivation, and improved decision-making.

Share

Why Value Alignment Matters

First, let’s define values:

Values serve as your internal compass, guiding your decisions even when the path forward isn't clear. Unlike goals, which are outcome-focused and finite, values represent ongoing directions you want to move toward throughout your life. They act as the foundation for sustainable motivation and authentic performance.

When I worked with the Toronto Raptors, I saw firsthand how athletes who connected their daily training grind to their deeper values—whether that was excellence, family legacy, or community impact—consistently outperformed those who were primarily motivated by external rewards like contracts or fame.

External rewards matter, but they only matter in the context of true intrinsic drive. Without values - a fundamental piece of internal motivation - you can only go so far.

Now, let's explore five research-backed benefits of aligning your actions with your values.

1. Enhanced Decision-Making Under Pressure

When facing difficult choices, especially under time constraints or high pressure, values provide a reliable framework for making decisions that you won't later regret.

Research in neuroscience shows that value-based decision-making engages specific regions of the prefrontal cortex that are distinct from areas activated during impulsive reactions or purely analytical thinking (Berkman et al., 2017). These pathways connect to areas responsible for long-term planning and emotional regulation, giving you access to a more integrated form of intelligence.

I've seen elite performers across domains use this to their advantage.

Rather than being paralyzed by options or swayed by immediate emotions, they quickly reference their values to determine the right move.

A basketball player might choose to pass instead of shoot based on their value of team success over personal statistics.

A CEO might prioritize corporate social responsibility or team cohesion over short-term profits.

A coach gives athletes permission to take risks because they actually believe failure can help teach, instead of chastising them each time something goes wrong.

2. Increased Resilience During Setbacks

Life inevitably brings challenges and disappointments. When your actions are aligned with your values, setbacks become easier to contextualize and overcome.

Think of values as providing psychological suspension—they absorb the impact of failure and disappointment. Rather than being devastated by a single outcome, you can view it as part of a larger journey toward living out what matters most to you.

This isn't just theoretical. Studies with both athletes recovering from injuries and professionals facing career setbacks show that values-clarity is one of the strongest predictors of resilience. Those who can connect their recovery process or career pivot to their core values demonstrate significantly lower stress hormones and faster returns to optimal functioning.

3. Greater Energy and Sustainable Motivation

Unlike motivation fueled by external rewards or fear, values-based motivation doesn't deplete your energy reserves.

In fact, it often replenishes them.

Psychologists call this "concordance"—when your actions align with your authentic self, you experience less internal conflict and greater vitality. That’s why some activities energize you even when they're objectively demanding, while others leave you drained despite requiring minimal effort.

Consider the difference between an athlete who trains because they fear losing their starting position versus one who trains because they value continual improvement. Both may complete identical workouts, but the values-driven athlete will likely experience less fatigue and more joy, leading to more consistent effort over time.

4. Improved Relationships and Team Dynamics

When you operate from clearly defined values, you communicate more consistently and authentically with others.

This transparency creates trust—the foundation of effective relationships.

In team environments, whether in sports or business, shared values create a powerful alignment mechanism.

Research shows that teams with aligned values outperform teams with similar talent but divergent values. They coordinate more effectively, resolve conflicts more constructively, and adapt to challenges more cohesively.

I've helped leadership teams conduct values alignment exercises that transformed their collective effectiveness. When team members understand not just what each person brings to the table, but why they show up in the first place, it’s easy to put it all on the line for each other.

5. Enhanced Well-Being and Life Satisfaction

Perhaps most importantly, values alignment contributes significantly to what psychologists call "eudaimonic well-being"—a sense of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment that transcends momentary happiness.

Multiple longitudinal studies demonstrate that people who consistently align their actions with their values report greater life satisfaction, fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, and even better physical health outcomes over time. This effect holds true across cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, and life stages.

Even small shifts toward greater values alignment can yield substantial benefits. In therapeutic settings, values clarification exercises often produce more significant improvements in well-being than direct attempts to increase happiness or reduce negative emotions.

Putting Values Into Practice

Moving from understanding values to living them requires intentional practice. Here are three evidence-based strategies to strengthen your values-action connection:

1. Conduct a values audit: Take time to identify your core values, then evaluate how your daily actions, relationships, and commitments align with those values. Look for discrepancies that might be causing internal friction.

2. Practice values-based reflection: Before making significant decisions, explicitly consider how each option aligns with your values. After difficult experiences, reflect on whether your response honored what matters most to you.

3. Build environmental supports: Structure your physical environment and social connections to support your values. This might mean removing temptations that pull you away from your values or surrounding yourself with people who share your core commitments.

Values aren't abstract concepts—they're practical tools for navigating life's complexity with greater purpose and effectiveness. When you consistently align your actions with what truly matters to you, you don't just perform better—you build a life that feels authentically yours.

The next time you face a difficult choice or find your motivation waning, return to this simple question: "What matters most to me, and how can my next action reflect that?" Your answer will guide you toward both greater performance and deeper fulfillment.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Subscribe

Here's how I think about mental strength:

It's the ability to persist, even when things get challenging. To will your way to success despite obstacles or suboptimal conditions.

For example:

• Instead of failure leading to more self-doubt, mental strength allows you to put it in perspective and think of a new way to tackle the challenge.

• Rather than snap back at someone who's criticized you, mental strength helps you remain calm and in control so you don't make things worse and can deliver your message in a way they understand.

Of course, sometimes it makes sense to move on or to set a firm boundary.

Being mentally strong isn't about being able to bully your way into what you want.

Mental strength means developing the skills you need to stay doggedly persistent in pursuit of your goals, and to overcome any obstacles along the way.

Share

Benefit 1: You Gain Control Over Your Reactions

Mental strength gives you the power to choose your response rather than simply react to circumstances. When you develop mental strength, you create space between stimulus and response—allowing you to act with intention rather than impulse.

For example:

• You can't control if you get playing time, but you can control how hard you play when you're out there - and you use the skills you have to give your best, rather than worry about getting pulled from the game.

• Your game plan gets disrupted by an injury or a last-minute change. But rather than panic, you simply select your next-best path, based on the quality preparation you put in - with no hesitation or "woe is me."

Research from sports psychology shows that mentally strong athletes maintain performance levels even under intense pressure, precisely because they've trained themselves to focus only on factors within their control.

Benefit 2: You Develop Emotional Resilience

Mental strength builds your emotional immune system, allowing you to bounce back faster from setbacks and disappointments.

When you're mentally strong, you're able to:

• Process negative emotions without being overwhelmed by them

• Recover more quickly from failure and disappointment

• Use challenges as learning opportunities rather than evidence of inadequacy

For instance, rather than spiraling after losing an important client, a mentally strong professional might acknowledge the disappointment, identify lessons learned, and immediately refocus energy on improving their approach for the next opportunity.

Studies show that emotional resilience is one of the strongest predictors of long-term success across various fields. Mentally strong individuals don't experience fewer setbacks—they simply don't allow setbacks to define them or derail their progress.

Benefit 3: You Achieve More Consistent Performance

Perhaps the most valuable benefit of mental strength is the consistency it brings to your performance, whether in athletics, business, or personal endeavors.

Mental strength allows you to:

• Perform at your best even when conditions aren't ideal

• Maintain focus during high-pressure situations

• Sustain motivation through inevitable plateaus and challenges

For example, while others might perform well only when they're feeling motivated or when external conditions are favorable, the mentally strong person can deliver quality work consistently—regardless of mood or circumstances.

This reliability is why mental strength is so valued in high-performance environments. Research on elite performers across domains shows that consistency, not occasional brilliance, is what ultimately leads to exceptional achievement.

Putting It Into Practice

Building mental strength is like building physical strength—it requires consistent practice and gradual progression. Here are three ways to start developing your mental strength today:

1. Practice intentional discomfort: Regularly do things that push you slightly beyond your comfort zone, whether it's public speaking, trying a challenging workout, or having a difficult conversation.

2. Implement the 10-minute rule: When you feel like giving up on a difficult task, commit to pushing through for just 10 more minutes. This builds mental endurance gradually.

3. Develop a performance routine: Create consistent pre-performance rituals that help you enter an optimal mental state, regardless of external circumstances.

Mental strength isn't about never experiencing negative emotions or challenges. Rather, it's about developing the skills to navigate those experiences effectively, learning from them, and continuing to move forward toward your goals.

What mental strength challenges are you currently facing? I'd love to hear how you're working to overcome them.

PS…

If you’re a mental health practitioner looking to expand your practice, send me a message simply by replying here.

I’ve partnered with Michael Fulwiler to offer a special course helping practitioners diversify their income, and would love to help you.

When I was working in the NBA, a common problem was being distracted by something simple - a turnover, missed shot, or the occasional embarrassing play.

Share

The same things happen with executives I serve. They blow up in a meeting, say the wrong thing to a client, or make an error on a product release and end up ruminating for days on end about it.

These are prime examples of dealing with mistakes at the wrong time.

In sports, the right time to deal with mistakes is much clearer. During the game, you should ignore them (generally). You want to adjust your play, but not focus on fixing them.

The time to fix mistakes is in film the next day.

The time to analyze and really dissect what went on has to be different from when the action is at its peak. In the heat of the game, you can't extract all the information you need from the mistake. You're too close to it and don't have the proper time to really reflect, consolidate your learning, and move on.

If you choose to do it during the game, you're choosing distraction.

For the executive or leader, the same principle applies. If you say the wrong thing in a meeting, there's time to try and correct it - but you need to stay present to do that. Beating yourself up in the moment, second-guessing your impact, or getting inside your head about the failure won't help you.

You want to give yourself permission to address the issues when you can do it justice and actually learn. Otherwise, leave it be and stay focused on performance.

Subscribe now

You may have seen on social media… but I recently launched a community for sport psychology professionals. It’s designed to help you level up your business and your skills as a professional, while getting some support and connection to other professionals going through the same thing.

If that’s you, and you’d be interested in joining - reply to this email.

When I was a (slightly) competitive athlete, the best thing I could do was keep my composure.

With a clear head on my shoulders, I was able to do my job better than just about anyone on my team - despite what I’d consider to be pretty underwhelming physical skills.

As I came up in sports, I spotted a pattern around this very process.

Share

The best leaders and players had a quiet, killer instinct about them. It wasn’t the loud leadership you see promoted on TV, but a controlled energy, a clear sense that they were unshakeable.

Whether it was a GM, Head Coach, or Captain, the best were always under complete control.

Poise is perhaps the most powerful performance state we can enter (aside from flow, maybe).

When you’re fully present, immersed in the game, playing it moment-to-moment, and you execute your elite skill at a high level, you’re going to be borderline unstoppable.

That’s part of what makes Steph so special (the same is true for Kobe).

It's what allows the best to deal with the inevitable ups and downs of the game. Even as the best shooter the NBA has ever seen, Steph still "fails" with a missed shot more than he hits. This pattern is true across sports, even for the best athletes -- the rate of failure is always much higher than the rate of success.

Poise lets you deal with those failures with grace. It minimizes the downstream effects of the mistakes. It maximizes your opportunity to get it right the next time.

If you want to rise to the top of your field, you’re going to want to develop this kind of psychology.

In my view, developing such poise comes from:

1. Building your sense of agency. The more you feel responsible and capable of shaping the outcomes you deliver, the more poised you can be.

2. Clarifying what you can control, what you can influence, and what to ignore.

3. Training in presence. Like Kobe mentioned, the stillness comes from being fully present - which helps you get not too high or too low, but just right.

4. Having control of your effort. There’s a cliche in sports that you can only control your attitude and effort. But most people don’t realize just how much control they have over how hard they work. Being able to consciously raise your effort on demand (and relax on demand) gives you the ability to flex to the demands of any situation.

This list probably isn’t exhaustive, but reflects several key things you need to get right to have this level of domination.

So here’s what I’d suggest you do:

1. Rate yourself in each of these areas from 1-10.

2. Identify your lowest score.

3. Pick an action you can take to train it.

4. Get going.

Subscribe

Being ordinary.

Share

And all of ordinary's permutations. It's being in the middle, average, forgettable. Leaving no impact, mark on the world, making no difference.

Ordinary is irrelevant.

It's leaving untapped potential on the table. Never seeing what's possible at the edge of your skills. Knowing you didn't give it your best and left more in the tank.

I get it.

That's scary.

And managing (or altogether overcoming) this fear requires a great deal of work. On your skills, on your technique, but mostly on yourself.

That's why I developed my own framework for high performance. I use it for myself. I use it for the people I coach. I use it to give clear guidance on how to get better, so you don't have to worry about settling for mediocre.

Here's what it looks like:

And here's how you get started using it:

1. Assess where you are in each area on a 1-10.

2. Take your lowest area and identify 1 action you can take to get better in that area.

I've put together a starter pack for you. These 5 articles will give you areas to address or exercises to try on your journey to mental excellence.

1. How to be successful.

2. Build your confidence.

3. The 3 mindsets of all high performers.

4. Develop psychological flexibility.

5. How to learn from failure.

Let me know what resonates by replying to this email. I read every response I get!

Peak performance is about playing the odds.

There's a lot you can't control... how the other team prepares (or the other companies in your industry), the tactics they use, or who's available when the lights come on. Each of these things, for better or worse, will change your odds of winning.

There's also plenty you can control -- your effort, attitude, preparation, and execution.

And then, there's perhaps the most important thing you can control: your environment.

Share

The data show that somewhere between 50 and 70% of our behavior is influenced by our environment (Plomin et al., 2016; Culp & Flory, 2025). The environment influences how we feel, the beliefs we hold, the decisions we make, our cognitive abilities, and ultimately, what we do. The influence runs so deep that the environment even activates (or deactivates) inherited traits (Meaney, 2010).

Think about that for a moment.

What's going on around you can actually change the expression of your genetics. The environment literally alters your DNA.

That's why this is one of the first areas I address with any elite performer.

The people around you, where you work, and your broader community all impact the way you show up in the world. They impact how you think, feel, and perform.

They tilt the odds in your favor or work against you.

If you want to make any meaningful improvement in your performance, it starts with significant changes in what’s going on around you.

Your environment is either helping or hurting.

In Western culture, we've turned that into "strive against."

And while it can be helfpul to have an opponent to strive against, over the course of your life, you'll go farther faster using your competition as a measuring stick for yourself than you will making the competition the enemy.

Competing with themselves is what allows the all-time greats to be great.

They focus on being better than they were last game, last month, or last season.

They compare themselves to who they were early in their career, not the person on the other side of the court.

They're interested in how they become the best they can be. Competition is a way to monitor progress, not define their future.

This focus on being better than yourself allows you to let go of one of the main killers of motivation: comparison with others.

There will always be someone bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, or more talented than you are.

Focusing on that, and striving against them, is only likely to make you feel small and hopeless, since there's nothing you can do to change that.

By shifting your focus to competing with yourself, you can assume complete control of your progress and destiny. You can know intimately if you're getting better or getting worse.

If you're on the path to being the best you can be.

And being the best you can be is the only thing that gives you a real chance to be elite.

I'm too busy.

Really? Too busy to invest in the only thing that makes the rest of your universe possible?

Nonsense.

The reality is you're avoiding it because it's uncomfortable.

You think it seems weird. You’ve been told it means you’re “weak.” You don’t know where to begin.

Those I can accept, because we can overcome them.

Telling me you don’t have 10 minutes to make progress on your mind, however, I can’t.

Plus, the downstream benefits will save you way more time than what you put in up front. You’ll be better focused, more even-keel, and more purposeful in your action.

As a result, you’ll be more productive, a better performer, and likely a more enjoyable person, too.

What are you waiting for?

Here are 5 things you can do for your mindset in 10 minutes or less:

1. Walk for 10 minutes outside.

2. 10 minutes of meditation.

3. Performance journal.

4. Gratitude journal.

5. Practice imagery

It’s not hard to reap the benefits…

3 Ideas

1

The typical mental skills training program rarely considers order. Like physical skills, there’s a right order to train:

1. Arousal regulation

2. Attentional control

3. Cognitive strategies

You need this order to maximize the ability to use the skills in the moment.

2

Nothing will debilitate performance faster than low expectations and low self-belief. This combination is the killer of all ambition and excellence.

Share

3

Take a look at what makes LeBron one of the GOATs. His basketball IQ is off the charts. Intelligence, across domains, is one of the best predictors of performance. This carousel explains it all:

2 Performance Tips

Here are the two tips I’m teaching this week to the teams I’m working with:

Release-reset-refocus

After a mistake or setback, this 3-step sequence is what I teach performers to be resilient.

1. Release: a physical movement to acknowledge and “let go” of the mistake.

2. Reset: typically a breathing or grounding movement to come back to the present moment

3. Refocus: answer the question “What’s important now” to guide your next action (WIN)

Ideal Future Self

Based on positive psychology, this exercise allows athletes to examine the discrepancy between who and where they are today, and who and where they want to be by the end of the season.

I wrote about it more here.

1 Quote

“When smart people say, ‘you make your own luck,’ what they’re really saying is that luck is less mystical than it seems.

The best way to be lucky is to persevere, because luck overlaps with longevity.

If luck is by definition unpredictable, you have a greater chance of being lucky the longer that you push.”

- Adam Alter, The Anatomy of a Breakthrough

It makes sense. The idea has a lot of appeal. If you can break winning down into just getting a little better each day, it makes the whole endeavor feel less overwhelming and easy. And for those who've read James Clear's work, you know this 1% better each day turns into 37x better over the year.

The problem is nobody actually tells you how to do it. You're supposed to get 1% better each day, just by “showing up and being consistent.”

Share

Nonsense.

There’s a framework you can follow that’ll hhelp you get 1% better each day — for real.

It looks like this:

Let’s break it down briefly.

1. Have a goal. If you don’t have one yet, set one. Goals create the context for our focus and action.

2. Make a plan. A goal without a plan is just a wish, they say.

3. Get after it. Put the plan into action.

4. Monitor progress. As you’re acting, keep track of how it’s going and adjust on the fly.

5. Evaluate your training. Not, “it was great” or “it sucked,” but, “is what I’m doing getting me closer to my goal?”

6. Reflect. Debrief after training. Reflection consolidates learning. 

7. Adjust. Based on today’s work, what do you need to focus on tomorrow?

7 simple steps (not easy) to getting 1% better every day. If you follow this cycle daily, you’ll be engaged in deliberate practice - the type of high-quality work that leads to meaningful progress. 

Follow these steps each day on a skill you want to improve. You’ll get better. With enough practice, you might become expert. 

Pick something you want to improve.

Practice taking yourself through the cycle today.

Subscribe