Coaching Mental Performance: Self-Care for Coaches and Athletes

Whereas the curriculum was the meat and potatoes of my education at Adler University, the broth was this concept of “self-care”; for without it all of my hard work, knowledge, and intention would leave my clients with a very partial pile of steamed veggies when they expected a full dish. If I could not muster the energy to sit with my client from an unbiased position, I would leave my clients who were expecting a full meal dissatisfied and ultimately worse off than when they arrived, which can be fatal in this profession. An article presented to me in lieu of becoming intentional with my energy written by Thomas & Morris (Vistas 2017), sponsored by the American Counseling Association, advocated for a self-care model that helped counselors manage compassion fatigue, burnout, and vicarious trauma that can be incurred through the workload of the profession. After reading this model I was stunned at how easily it could apply to coaches, athletes, and frankly everybody regardless of profession or status.

This model advocates for taking care of the Self in four distinct dimensions of health:

1. Physical
2. Mental
3. Emotional
4. Spiritual

From these four dimensions we create a plan of nourishing activities we can comfortably maintain week after week. We then want to support this original plan with restorative activities when we are anticipating stress in the upcoming week, prepare a list of emergency activities for unanticipated stress, and meet regularly with peers, other athletes and coaching colleagues for support.

APlan and Adjust Our Self Care Plan

The key aspect of this self-care plan is to recognize that we have to show ourselves the same compassion we show our athletes, and our athletes show their peers, when engaging in their plan. There will be weeks where we don’t feel like engaging in our planned activities because they feel daunting, we lack the energy, etc. It is alright for us to re-organize our self-care plan to adjust to the evolving demands of our everyday lives. Even the smallest amount of self-care can help!  It will also be up to us coaches to recognize that our duty is to engage in our self-care plan for the benefit of our athletes.

Here is a Self-Care Cheat Sheet to help you organize your plan

Spend some time at the beginning of each week before to start planning out when you are going engage in the bare-minimum of self-care activities based on your schedule and when you can add self-care activities depending on the expected intensity of your week….