The gap between an athlete's physical capacity and their competitive performance is almost always mental. Two athletes with identical erg scores or identical training paces can produce dramatically different results in competition — and the difference usually isn't fitness. It's focus, composure, self-talk, energy management, and the ability to execute under pressure what they've practiced in training.
Mental skills training has been part of professional and Olympic sport for decades. It's increasingly available at the youth level — and increasingly misunderstood. This guide explains what mental skills training actually involves (it's not motivational speeches), what evidence supports it, and how to evaluate whether a camp program's approach is substantive or superficial.
What "Mental Skills" Actually Means
The term "mental skills training" covers a set of concrete, trainable psychological capacities that affect athletic performance. It is not therapy. It is not pop psychology. It is not a coach telling athletes to "believe in themselves" or "want it more." It is the systematic development of specific cognitive and emotional skills that research shows improve how athletes train, compete, and develop.
The core skills most evidence-based approaches address include attention and focus control (the ability to direct and sustain attention on task-relevant information), arousal regulation (managing energy levels — physiological and psychological — to match the demands of the moment), self-talk management (recognizing and modifying the internal narrative that accompanies training and competition), goal-setting and motivation (structuring short- and long-term objectives that sustain engagement), and visualization and mental rehearsal (using mental imagery to prepare for performance situations).
These are skills in the same way that catch timing or pacing strategy are skills. They can be taught, they can be practiced, and they improve with deliberate attention. They are not personality traits. An athlete who struggles with pre-race anxiety isn't "mentally weak" — they haven't yet developed the regulatory skills that manage anxiety effectively. This distinction matters, because it removes stigma and reframes mental development as something every athlete can work on.
A useful distinction: mental skills training is different from mental health support, though the two can overlap. Performance psychology addresses how an athlete functions in training and competition. Clinical psychology addresses underlying mental health conditions. Both are important, both deserve attention, and they shouldn't be confused. A camp that offers mental skills training is not providing therapy — and shouldn't claim to.
Developmental considerations for high school athletes are worth noting. Adolescents are still developing the prefrontal cortex functions (executive control, emotional regulation, long-range planning) that mental skills training targets. This means two things: first, some techniques that work for adults need modification for teenagers. Second, this is an ideal developmental window — building these skills during adolescence, when the brain is most receptive to this kind of learning, creates habits that persist into adulthood.
Focus and Attention Control
The most common mental performance challenge athletes report — across sports, ages, and competitive levels — is difficulty maintaining focus. Distractions are everywhere: crowd noise, internal anxiety, a competitor's move, a bad start, fatigue, a mistake two strokes ago. The ability to direct attention to what matters right now and release what doesn't is perhaps the most practically valuable mental skill an athlete can develop.
Cue words are one of the most accessible focus techniques. A cue word is a single word or short phrase that redirects attention to the task at hand: "connect" at the catch, "smooth" during the recovery, "breathe" when anxiety spikes. The word itself is less important than the practice of using it — training the athlete to deploy a specific attentional anchor when focus drifts.
Process focus means directing attention to the process of performance rather than its outcomes. An athlete focused on "winning this piece" is attending to something they can't directly control. An athlete focused on "holding my catch timing through the next 10 strokes" is attending to something they can. The shift from outcome focus to process focus is one of the most reliable performance enhancers in sport psychology research — and it's a learnable skill.
Attention shifting — the ability to move between broad awareness (what's happening in the race, where are the other boats?) and narrow focus (what's happening with my blade right now?) — is particularly relevant for coxswains and for rowers in competitive situations. Training this flexibility of attention, rather than defaulting to either a broad or narrow focus, improves performance in dynamic situations.
In practice at camp, these skills develop through coached training sessions where athletes practice deploying cue words, through reflection exercises that ask athletes to notice where their attention was during specific moments in practice, and through racing situations that create genuine attentional demands.
Arousal and Energy Management
Every athlete has an optimal activation level — a zone where they're alert enough to perform but not so amped that anxiety impairs execution. Finding and maintaining that zone is a skill, not an accident.
The activation spectrum runs from flat (underaroused — sluggish, disengaged, going through the motions) to overstimulated (overaroused — anxious, tense, rushing, unable to settle). Both ends of the spectrum impair performance. Most athletes have a default pattern: some tend toward underactivation and need strategies to raise their energy before competition, while others tend toward overactivation and need strategies to manage anxiety and tension.
Pre-race routines are the most visible application of arousal management, though most athletes don't understand what their routines are actually for. A pre-race routine isn't superstition — it's a structured sequence of behaviors designed to bring the athlete to their optimal activation level. Some athletes need routines that energize (music, physical warm-up, competitive self-talk). Others need routines that calm (breathing exercises, visualization of smooth execution, quiet isolation). The most effective routines are personalized, based on the athlete's specific pattern.
Breathing techniques are the most portable and evidence-supported tool for real-time arousal management. Controlled breathing — specifically, extending the exhale relative to the inhale — activates the parasympathetic nervous system and reduces physiological stress markers. This is not mysticism; it's physiology. Athletes who develop a reliable breathing practice have a tool they can deploy in any situation, from a pre-race starting line to a stressful moment in the middle of a 2K test.
Reading your own signals is the self-coaching dimension of arousal management. Athletes who can accurately assess their own activation level — "I'm too tense right now" or "I'm flat and need to raise my energy" — can intervene before the imbalance affects performance. This awareness develops through the same reflective practices that underpin all self-coaching: observation, recognition, and response.
Self-Talk and Internal Narrative
Every athlete has an ongoing internal commentary during training and competition. For some, that commentary is productive: encouraging, instructive, process-focused. For others, it's corrosive: critical, anxious, outcome-obsessed. The content of that internal narrative has a measurable effect on performance — and it can be modified.
Identifying unproductive patterns is the first step. Common patterns include catastrophizing ("my catch is off — this whole piece is ruined"), generalizing ("I always fall apart in the second 500"), and fortune-telling ("I'm going to die in the last 250"). These patterns aren't character flaws; they're habitual thought sequences that can be recognized and adjusted.
Replacing versus reframing. There are two approaches to unproductive self-talk. Replacing it means substituting a negative statement with a positive one: instead of "I can't hold this pace," the athlete practices thinking "one stroke at a time." Reframing means changing the interpretation of a situation: instead of "this hurts, something is wrong," the athlete thinks "this is what the last 500 feels like — it's supposed to be hard." Both approaches work, and different athletes respond to different strategies.
The role of coaching language in shaping internal dialogue is significant and often underappreciated. Coaches who use process-focused, specific language ("keep your catch timing clean through this last 500") provide athletes with productive self-talk templates. Coaches who use vague motivational language ("dig deep!" "you want this more!") provide less useful internal scripts. The coaching environment at camp either builds productive internal dialogue or doesn't — which is one reason coaching philosophy matters.
Visualization and Mental Rehearsal
Visualization — the deliberate use of mental imagery to prepare for performance — is among the most researched techniques in sport psychology, and the evidence for its effectiveness is strong. But effective visualization requires more specificity than most athletes bring to it.
What effective visualization involves: not just "seeing" a race go well, but engaging multiple senses — feeling the connection at the catch, hearing the rhythm of the boat, sensing the acceleration of the drive. The more sensory detail incorporated, the more the brain treats the visualization as relevant practice rather than idle daydreaming.
When to use it: pre-race visualization of the race plan and specific tactical moments, pre-practice visualization of technical focuses for the session, and — importantly — visualization of response to adversity. Athletes who visualize only perfect races are unprepared when races don't go perfectly. Athletes who also visualize how they'll respond to a bad start, a competitor's move, or a rough patch in the middle develop the mental flexibility to adapt in real time.
Common mistakes include visualizing outcomes rather than process (imagining crossing the finish line first rather than executing the race plan), visualizing at unrealistic speed or with unrealistic ease, and practicing visualization only occasionally rather than as a regular habit. Like any skill, visualization improves with consistent practice.
How Quality Camps Integrate Mental Skills
Mental skills development at camp typically happens through three channels, and the balance between them indicates the sophistication of a program's approach.
Through coaching language and environment (implicit). The way coaches communicate with athletes — whether they emphasize process or outcome, whether they ask questions or only give answers, whether they normalize struggle or treat it as failure — shapes athletes' mental frameworks continuously. Programs where coaching staff are trained in performance psychology principles integrate mental skills into every interaction, whether or not there's a dedicated "mental skills session" on the schedule.
Through dedicated sessions and workshops (explicit). Some programs include structured mental skills instruction — sessions on goal-setting, focus techniques, arousal management, or visualization. The quality of these sessions depends on who's leading them (coaches with performance psychology training, or actual sport psychologists, deliver more substance than well-meaning generalists) and whether the content connects to the athletes' actual training experience.
Through reflection practices (embedded). Daily journaling, structured debrief sessions, and guided self-evaluation exercises develop the self-awareness that underlies all mental skills. An athlete who's practiced observing their own attentional patterns, emotional states, and internal dialogue during camp has built the foundation for all subsequent mental skills work.
What to ask camps about their approach: Who facilitates mental skills training? What is their background? How are mental skills integrated into daily programming — as standalone sessions, as part of coaching, or both? What specific techniques or skills do athletes learn? What do athletes take home for continued practice?
What to be cautious about: programs that promise dramatic mental breakthroughs, that use mental skills language without substantive programming behind it, or that confuse motivational speaking with evidence-based mental skills training. The field has depth and rigor. Programs that engage with it superficially may do more to create buzzword familiarity than to develop actual skills.
Mental skills are skills — they can be taught, practiced, and developed. They're not reserved for professional athletes or athletes in crisis. The best time to start building them is before you need them, when the habits can develop without the pressure of imminent competition. And the athletes who develop them earliest tend to carry the advantage longest.
At Sparks, performance psychology and self-coaching are embedded in everything we do — from daily reflection sessions to coaching interactions to the way we structure racing and feedback. If you'd like to learn more about how our programs develop the mental side of performance, visit our program pages or reach out at [phone/email].
