Carrie Cheadle - Mental Skills Training Coach
Master your mental game & take control of your sport performance
techniques used to help improve sport performance
Perfectionism is a hot topic to explore in sport psychology. When you’re working with athletes that are striving to be the best in the world, how can you tell them that perfectionism isn’t something they should be trying to achieve? Could an athlete’s perfectionist tendencies actually be beneficial? There is a difference between striving for [...]
Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can feel that the air is charged with energy and excitement for the upcoming Super Bowl XLVII (yes I had to look up how to convert the number 47 in roman numerals). I can’t wait to watch the game this Sunday and I’m not the only one. [...]
“I don’t want to workout today!” This is the time of year when it sometimes becomes difficult to get your workouts in. When it’s cold and wet outside, you start to think that maybe it would be OK to skip your workout today. When you’re overbooked with obligations and holiday parties, the thought of getting [...]
When it comes to sport psychology and working on your mental game, I have to remind people that first and foremost, there are some realities to how we operate. In fact, we are animals before we are humans, and we are humans before we are people. And believe me, when it comes to emotions and [...]
In honor of my upcoming workshop at the Wipro San Francisco Marathon Expo, I decided to write a post for all of you amazing athletes out there with an upcoming race! (If you’re going to be out at the expo the day before marathon, come check out my workshop at 9:30a the day before the race! [...]
Have you ever noticed that sometimes you have a hard time letting things go? You made a mistake or wish you had done something differently and you obsess about it, driving yourself crazy, and no matter how much pain and angst it causes you, somehow you just can’t manage to move passed it. One of [...]
This is the final installment of my unscripted video blog. I’m back home and sharing my tips for how I got the most out of that final day of camp and the two key Mental Skills to employ AFTER your event. Final Day As I got back to my room after a full day of [...]
Video #3! I took this video at the end of my first day of camp. After we got set up into our groups and went out with our coaches for the day, I started to feel like the expectations I had for the camp weren’t matching up with how the camp was going. I had [...]
This is the 2nd video blog post documenting my “Carrie Goes to Snowboarding Camp” adventure! This series of posts includes unscripted videos of me describing my thoughts and demonstrating how I’m using Mental Skills Training throughout my experience of getting to camp and snowboarding while I’m there. This video was done on Day 1 of the [...]
The Mental Skills Coach is going to Snowboarding Camp… and she’s nervous. Pre-event jitters. It’s normal to be nervous when you’re taking on a new endeavor or getting ready for an upcoming event. For some of you, the closer you get to the “big day”, the knots in your stomach get tighter and the voices [...]
The topic of humility has been coming up in my work a lot lately. It first came up while I was reading the book Assault on Lake Casitas, by Brad Alan Lewis. The book is the story of Lewis’ journey to the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games where he competed in the double scull. (It [...]
I recently sat down to read my February 2012 issue of Outside Magazine and one of the articles highlights Lolo Jones, an Olympic hurdler. Jones is one of the fastest female hurdlers in the world. If you don’t know what hurdling is, imagine sprinting at a breakneck speed and, without breaking stride, jumping over a [...]
Credit: Free photos from acobox.com The recent tragic deaths of two triathletes during the New York City Triathlon brings up the fears many novice triathletes have about the open water swim. If the thought of the open water swim gets your heart racing, you’re not alone. Many people feel butterflies when they think about all [...]
I was inspired to write this post because of all the local triathlons that have been happening around here in the last couple weeks. I had the opportunity to volunteer out at the 70.3 Vineman a couple weeks ago (that’s me before the race start gaining confidence by practicing my volunteering skills!) and we just [...]
We are in the final week of the tour and there is one major topic we haven’t touched on yet. How can you push yourself through those moments when your legs are on fire, your eyeballs feel like they are going to pop out, and you just might start crying as you think to yourself [...]
In cycling, there are a few situations I hear about over and over again when it comes to feeling anxious on the bike. Steep fast descents, tight technical turns, and riding in a pack are situations that can get your heart pumping and your hands sweating. During these moments, some cyclists will find themselves hitting [...]
Climbing! As we move into the mountain stages of the Tour de France, this Mental Skills Minute will be focused on climbing. If you are filled with dread every time you approach a climb, you are burning matches that you are going to need in order to make it over the top. Stop wasting matches and [...]
The topic for this Mental Skills Minute is all about recovering from a bad stage. In a stage race as long as the Tour de France, you are bound to have a day that doesn’t go as planned. When you have a day that doesn’t go as well as you hoped it would, you need [...]
I’m bringing all of you cyclists out there some special videos during the 2011 Tour de France from my new YouTube channel. These first videos will be on topics specific to mental skills training for cyclists. Each topic relates the challenges that these pro cyclists will face in the tour, but also the challenges that [...]
This blog post was inspired by a recent conversation I had as well as a request from a fantastic follower on Twitter to write something about discipline. It also happens to tie into the most recent chapter I have been working on – goal setting. We have all had the experience of wanting something to [...]