This article was published in the USA Water Polo Skipshot Magazine Article Archives When athletes perform their best, all of their mental and physical resources are directed to the present play. Research is discovering that athletes who perform at or near their peak potential have developed skills and strategies to continuously reset to now and find a type of cognitive and physiological rhythmic flow. There is a cadence to the speed at which peak performance occurs dependent

Belief systems are the main ingredient to confidence. They build and reinforce habits of thinking and how athletes and teams prepare, perform, and reflect. Without knowing it, athletes can sabotage their success with self-defeating self-talk. Developing an honest practice to learning about ones’ inner dialogue, connected to how they act, should be a daily practice of introspection. The biggest form of self-talk that interferes with an athlete’s performance is Judgmental Self-