Sublime

Both the Inner Game and coaching focus on improving performance (P) by growing potential (p) and by decreasing interference (i). Internal obstacles are often more daunting than external ones.

The mixed martial arts pioneer and multi-title champion Frank Shamrock has a system he trains fighters in that he calls plus, minus, and equal. Each fighter, to become great, he said, needs to have someone better that they can learn from, someone lesser who they can teach, and someone equal that they can challenge themselves against.

The more you can bring yourself to put trust in the natural process that is at work, the less you will tend to fall into the usual interfering patterns of trying too hard, judging and thinking—and the frustration that inevitably follows.

Players who are able to relax in brief moments of inactivity are almost always the ones who end up coming through when the game is on the line. This is why the eminent tennis players of their day, such as Ivan Lendl and Pete Sampras, had those strangely predictable routines of serenely picking their rackets between points, whether they won or lost

So it is with the greatest efforts in sports; they come when the mind is as still as a glass lake.

“If you’re going to play the Tour, you have to love golf all the time,” he said. “It’s not going to work if you can only love it when everything’s going your way, every putt’s going in the hole, and every carom is bouncing into the fairway instead of out of bounds. It’s not going to work if you practice every day and only love it when the ball is

The mixed martial arts pioneer and multi-title champion Frank Shamrock has a system he trains fighters in that he calls plus, minus, and equal. Each fighter, to become great, he said, needs to have someone better that they can learn from, someone lesser who they can teach, and someone equal that they can challenge themselves against.

There’s about five times a year you wake up perfect, when you can’t lose to anybody, but it’s not those five times a year that make a tennis player. Or a human being, for that matter. It’s the other times. It’s all about your head, man. With your talent, if you’re fifty percent game-wise, but ninety-five percent head-wise, you’re going to win.

There are hundreds of sports coaching books on the market, with the work of Timothy Gallwey being prominent.