The Olympic Games are at the pinnacle of human performance. The athletes who compete at these games are the strongest, fastest, most skilled in the world. The games don’t just test an athlete physically, they also test players mentally – and it’s the players who are mentally the toughest who emerge at the top. It’s no wonder then that people often say that the most important distance is the six inches between your ears.
This distance though, as important as it is, is not always very well understood. How does the mind really play a role and what are the elements that an athlete needs to train to win this mind game? Mental health, well-being and peak performance all lie on a spectrum and a simple way of understanding it is to think of it as analogous to physical training. The spectrum of physical training lies all the way from rehabilitation and recovery to strength and conditioning. It’s the same with mental health too – the spectrum lies from the management of mental health concerns to self-care and mental conditioning. From personal well-being to performance enhancement.
