Off-season is the best time to work on the mental side
Most families seek sport psychology when their young athlete is in the middle of an athletic season or specific setback. This makes sense. Of course you would actively seek a sport psychologist or therapist in response to a specific problem, or mid-season if your child isn’t performing the way they want.
At Bloom Psychology, we tell families the best time to seek sport psychology services is actually in the off-season!
Sport psychology services are still effective mid-season, and we help many athletes this way. Sometimes it’s easier to find motivation and time for therapy when you’re looking to solve a specific problem, such as staying calm under pressure, overcoming a mental block or the yips, or overcoming a mid-season performance slump. But a proactive approach can be beneficial for many reasons.
Mental skills must be practiced just like physical skills
When I teach athletes mental skills, I almost always give an example of learning a new skill in their sport. I ask, “When you learn a new skill, do you put it into competition right away?” The answer is almost always, “no.” Because that skill gets practiced. Over and over again. Ad nauseum… until it’s competition ready.
Same thing with mental skills. If you practice a breathing technique once and then expect it to stop a panic attack, you’re setting yourself up for failure. If you practice that breathing technique for 5 minutes a day, when you already feel calm, and then practice using it when you’re anxious to calm yourself down, guess what? That skill is going to be much more effective than one you haven’t practiced. It will have a better chance of calming you down when you’re already anxious.
Just like you wouldn’t throw an unpracticed physical skill into a game/competition, we don’t want to do that with mental skills either. This ensures your mental skill will be well-practiced and available when you need it most.
It’s better to learn new skills and habits in low-pressure situations
In situations of high anxiety, like games or competitions, the brain is built to survive rather than learn new things.
There is clear sport psychology research behind why trying to adopt a new mental skill mid-crisis backfires. Cognitive scientist Dr. Sian Beilock, author of Choke, has spent decades studying what happens to our brains under stress. Her research shows that acute pressure and anxiety eat up our working memory, which is the mental bandwidth we use to consciously process new information.
When your teen is standing on the line with the game tied and the clock running down, their brain doesn’t have the spare mental room to think, “Wait, what were the four steps of that new calming routine I learned on Tuesday?”
Instead, high pressure causes the brain to instinctively dump anything brand-new and default straight back to old, automatic habits. Even (and especially) the ones that don’t help, like holding their breath, rushing, or negative self-talk.
This is why the off-season is so valuable. Trying a new routine feels awkward at first. Without coaches watching or points on the line, kids have room to feel clumsy, test out a strategy, realize it feels clunky, and tweak it until it feels natural. Much of sport psychology is trying a new mental skill or routine, coming back to session to strategize, and then adapting it until it works.
Practicing when calm also gives new mental tools time to move from “something I have to think hard about” to “second nature” before the pressure situation.
When the season starts and the adrenaline kicks in, your athlete won’t have to scramble for a solution. The mental skills are already learned, reliable, and ready to go when the spotlight turns on.
Getting parents on the same page
Athletes don’t practice mental skills in a vacuum. Parents are right there in the passenger seat, in the bleachers, on the ride home, and at the dinner table.
If your teen learns how to reset after an error during our sessions, but gets bombarded with play-by-play critiques on the car ride home, those mental skills can’t work. Their harsh inner dialogue doesn’t have an environment where it can change.
That’s why we bring parents into the therapy process. While your teen needs their own private space to be honest about the pressure they feel, we make sure you know the tools they’re working on and how you can support them at home. We talk through practical, real-world situations, like:
- What to say (and what not to say) right after a tough game or a bad routine.
- How to support their drive without accidentally feeding their performance anxiety.
- How to emphasize effort rather than outcome.
If nothing changes at home, nothing changes. Supporting what they’re doing in session helps new patterns and habits stick better.
Start sport psychology before the season starts
Most families call us when things are already falling apart, like midway through a massive slump, after a brutal mental block, or when an athlete is dreading every single competition. At that time we can still help, but it’s kind of like trying to patch a boat while you’re in the middle of a storm.
Starting sport psychology before the season kicks off puts your athlete ahead of the curve, and ensures they’re not trying to learn a new set of mental skills and behaviors when everything already feels like it’s falling apart.
Instead of waiting for a high-stress moment to expose where they struggle, you’re giving them the tools to handle the pressure before the pressure even shows up. They walk into tryouts and preseason knowing how to calm their heart rate, how to shake off a bad call, and how to stay locked in when the game gets tight.
If you want your athlete to feel steady, confident, and ready for whatever this upcoming season brings, don’t wait for a crisis to start. Reach out to Bloom Psychology Group in Apex to get sport psychology support lined up before the schedule gets chaotic. So you and your teen can enter competition season feeling calm.
Signs it’s time to start sport psychology, or at least reach out
At Bloom Psychology, we know that it’s genuinely hard to tell what’s normal teenage sport stress and when it’s something more. Here are a few subtle (and some less so) signs worth paying attention to:
- Your athlete is dreading the upcoming season instead of looking forward to it
- They snap at family members more than usual
- They can’t seem to relax, even in times of “rest”
- Sleep is a struggle (either falling asleep or staying asleep)
- Training and diet rules are rigid (no wiggle room for change)
- Their confidence has dropped, in a way that doesn’t match how well they’re playing
- They feel they “choke” under pressure, not performing their best
- They always have something negative to say about their performance, or have trouble acknowledging what’s going right
That last one matters immensely. At Bloom, we work with a lot of high-achieving girls who hide deep anxiety and self-criticism behind excellent grades, strong stats, and standout performance. Everything looks like from the outside. But on the inside, they’re scared to rest, scared to slow down, and terrified of being anything less than perfect.
The off-season is a natural, low-pressure moment to check-in on how your teen is really doing, without waiting for a crisis or breakdown to force the conversation.
Help your young athlete build confidence and resilience
If your child is dealing with performance pressure, self-doubt, or a setback that’s still sitting with them, we’d love to help.
At Bloom Psychology Group, our youth athlete counseling in Apex, NC, supports the mental side of sport while paying attention to who your kid actually is, not just what they play. We work closely with families and focus on practical strategies your athlete can start using right away.
To schedule an appointment or just ask a few questions first, please contact us.