Articles
Bob Palmer is a published writer for North American magazines and newspapers and one of North America's top high performance trainers for sport. Check out his training strategies on high performance for athletes, coaches and teams in these articles.
Athletes
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Now that's attitude!How we handle failure forms attitude
I work with many different athletes in high performance such as one promising young hockey player. At the outset, he had great passion and guts but limited confidence and skills. Slowly but surely, over three years of training, he developed into a skillful, dynamic and confident athlete. A few months ago, he made the first cut of an elite, provincial hockey team. A month later, he failed to make the second cut. To many it looked like failure. Read more...
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Slumps in your sport
Five things to do when your game goes south
There were times in my martial arts when I’d be 100% prepared for a competition. Then at the event, I’d have no focus and it would be a disaster. With other competitions, I would have restricted training time due to an injury or a bout of the flu, and then do exceptionally well at the event. I began to realize that there were a lot of factors that could affect my performance, many of them peripheral or external to my sport. Read more...
Coaches
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Coaches are the Emotional Ballast
If I stay in the Zone, my athletes will
As a high performance trainer in sport, I have worked with Olympic level shooters who shoot near-perfect scores in practice and then falter in competition. I’ve also worked with baseball players who choke when facing critical situations and football players who are extremely quick thinking in practice but make mental errors under pressure. Read more...
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Own the Coaching Zone
Carrying the team with passion
A Texas university coach recently described to me how a parent had invited a mental peak performance instructor to work with four select athletes. The coach was concerned that the seminar had been closed to the majority of the team, and wondered what impact this would have on the team. Read more...
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Coaching success
Combatting negative coaching behaviors.
This article was sparked by my conversationwith a very successful coach I worked with. He has the ability assess an athlete’s skills and to build an image of what that athlete could look like at the end of one season or many (even though he might not know, initially, how he’ll get him or her there). And he is never disappointed, because whetherhe gets the result or not, it is simply feedback—feedback about his own skillas a coach or feedback regarding some unpredictable situation. This coach used to struggle because of some rather negative coaching strategies—or so other coaches have told me—but you’d never know it to speak with him. Read more...
Target Sports
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Quiet Eye Strategy
Making time stand still in your sport
As a high performance trainer, I was working the Quiet Eye Strategy* with a young hockey goalie. I had him imagine someone skating in fast on him. Before I could ask him what he was noticing, he said, “You are going to ask me to focus on the player aren’t you, because that is what my coaches try to get me to do. And that is not what I do.” Read more...
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Parents in the Zone
Becoming the "emotional" coach for your child
In another article I wrote on the topic of coaches being the ballast for their athletesand the incredible results they could get from this. I purposefully neglected to describe one of the key players in the process—parents. I’m very supportive of parents of young athletes because I am one and I know what they go through. They spend more time with the athlete than the coach and yet often feel undervalued by both the coach and the athlete. They also get blamed for the many behavioral sins of their child. Read more...
Martial Arts
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Kids are the best Teachers
Turning a new black belt sensei into a seasoned coach sensei.
As hard as I had worked on forms, techniques, and sparring, and as much as I thought I knew my stuff, it seemed like getting my first degree was starting at white belt all over again. I wondered how this black belt was equipping me to teach. I didn’t feel ready.
So, how does a lowly first degree sensei become a coach sensei like all the higher ranking black belts? Read more...
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Five steps to tournament winning kata
Creating passion in your kata.
Katas are beautiful, passionate and powerful movements of the human body. Or, rather, they can be. Here are five steps to creating a tournament-winning kata. Read more...
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Karate kids ban bullies
Learning the posture of self-esteem and confidence through karate.
With the remake last year of the Karate Kid movie, martial arts clubs are jumping on the bandwagon by touting the martial arts as a cure for bullying. And they should, because, by and large, children and adults benefit immensely from the self-confidence and self-esteem they get from the martial arts. However, as a karate instructor, I find that bullying usually stops before my students have the skill-set to adequately defend themselves. So what is going on? Read more...
