In our continuation of Sports Motivation month to keep you motivated through the Holidays, here is a relatively new video we found with some good mountain bike video clips.

Align Your Mind With Your Heart

XC Mountain bike racing can be about testing how well you perform mentally and physically on any given day.  Your race results are an extension of how well you’ve trained, prepared your MTB, how well you’ve recovered with rest and nutrition, and how much your mental training has helped you believe in yourself.

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By Patrick J. Cohn, Ph.D.

Every day of your life, you are either thinking in ways to help you succeed and reach your goals or thinking in ways that limit your success, causing you to move away from goal achievement.

I am certain you have a practice routine you do on most days to build competence in your skills and thus gain confidence – most great athletes do have specific routines they follow in practice to get better.

Some athletes follow a specific routine to help them prepare for a match or game. They eat the same pregame meal, arrive at the event 1 hour prior to competition, and engage in a precise warm up they have developed through trial and error.

Other athletes prefer to jump out of the team bus or car and compete right away. One of my recent golf students, for example, has no pregame routine and prefers to jump out of the car and onto the first tee.

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Sports Motivation – What Is My Race Day Objective?

You see the finish line in front of you, only 100 yards to go…  You’ve worked hard on your mountain bike training program and now it’s all paying off.  You still feel strong after the tough hilly course and you can see your family and friends now.  You give it all you’ve got, peddling as fast as you can on your mountain bike. Read the rest of this entry

By Patrick J. Cohn, Ph.D.

Sports Motivation – Visualization

Can sports mental training or visualization help you trust in your ability during competition?

One Olympian thinks so.

To perform your best, you must have trust instead of over-think your performance…

I certainly learn a lot from Olympic athletes when I pick their brains. That’s why I do several interviews a year with top athletes and coaches.

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By Patrick J. Cohn, Ph.D.,

Is your XC mountain bike potential held back by fear? If you can’t breakthrough your MTB performance barriers and are spinning your wheels, it’s a good bet that you are limited by a wall of worry – your own fears.

What is fear? Fear comes in many forms – fear of failure, fear of success, fear of embarrassment, and so on. Many of my students hit a wall of worry caused by these fears and many others.

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By Patrick J. Cohn, Ph.D.

From my experience, many athletes spend too much energy worrying about things they cannot control on the mountain bike course, athletic field, or court. They waste energy on irrelevant thoughts. Read the rest of this entry