Mental Game - Perfectionist athletes

Perfectionist athletes

Perfectionist athletes show up to practice on time and work hard to improve their skills. But there’s a problem with perfectionist athletes—often, both in sports and life.

Perfectionists set high expectations for themselves. They tell themselves they need to be perfect on the court; they must be the first to score and they should lead their team to the win.

It may sound like they’re ambitious hard workers, but the problem is these athletes get frustrated when they don't meet their high expectations.

The good news is you can help these athletes!

You need to help them lower their expectations and focus on mini-goals instead of on difficult-to-attain ambitions. Instead of “I’m going to be the top scorer today,” they should tell themselves, “I'm going to make quality shots on the goal,” or, “I'm going to be a good team player,” or, “I'm going to block three shots on goal.”

Often, these perfectionist athletes also harbor high expectations in other areas of their lives. If they can learn to beat perfectionism in sports, it’s likely these lessons will help them in other activities and area.