Raising a Confident, Composed Competitor

They are different jobs, and the line is bright.

Mental performance training is applied education in the arena. It teaches skills — attention, self-talk, emotional regulation, preparation routines — to people who are functioning well and want to perform closer to their capability. And it is applied: it happens where the sport happens, on deck and in practice and in the twenty minutes after a race, not in a room away from it.

There is a philosophy underneath that which is worth saying plainly. We are not here to fix problems. We are here to optimise potential. In the vast majority of cases an athlete does not have a disorder — they have simply never been taught how to use their mental capabilities to help them perform. That is a gap in their training, not something wrong with them.

Therapy and psychiatry are clinical care. They treat mental health conditions, they are delivered by licensed professionals, and they are about health rather than performance.

The two are compatible. Plenty of athletes do both, and one does not replace the other.

What matters is what happens when something crosses the line. If an athlete needs more than performance training, we say so directly and connect the family with licensed professionals rather than working around it. We do not diagnose, we do not treat, and we do not take the place of clinical care.

Nate Last is the founder of Mental Grit and Utah Swimming's Official Mental Performance Partner.

He holds an M.S. in Performance Psychology and an MBA from the University of Utah, is a co-author of the Amazon bestseller Deliberate Discomfort, and previously served as Chief Engagement Officer at Mission Six Zero, working on high-performance leadership. He played collegiate lacrosse at the University of Utah and has completed three Ironman triathlons and sixteen half-Ironmans.

Over the last decade he has worked with hundreds of teams and thousands of athletes, parents and coaches.

The reason he does this is more useful than the résumé: he quit sports as a young athlete — not because his body gave out, but because his mental game did and nobody was coaching it. He found performance psychology in his collegiate years and decided to become the person he needed as a teenager.

Lauren Poole coaches with Mental Grit, and when it comes to swimming specifically she has lived every inch of it.

Four years swimming at the University of Kentucky — team captain and school record holder, SEC champion, six-time All-American, and a two-time Olympic Trials qualifier (2016 and 2020).

She holds an M.S. in Sport & Exercise Psychology from Kentucky, is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC), and has worked in the Mental Training Lab at the US Military Academy at West Point.

She also swam through shoulder injuries, time out of the water and the rehab afterwards, with a sport psychologist in her corner throughout. She coaches the thing she needed, for the sport she came from.

First, a note on titles, because the distinction is real and worth being precise about.

Coach Poole and I are sport psychology consultants, not sport psychologists. A sport psychologist is a licensed psychologist who specialises in sport and can provide clinical care. A consultant is trained in the performance side and works on skills — Lauren holds the CMPC (Certified Mental Performance Consultant) credential, which is the certification for exactly this work. The difference is one of scope, and it is why we refer rather than treat.

On the work itself: traditional sport psychology is often reactive and clinical in shape — an athlete has a problem, they are referred, they meet a practitioner, and the work happens away from the sport.

What we do is proactive and built like coaching.

• It is skill-based, not problem-based. You do not need something to be wrong to train your attention or your self-talk, any more than you need an injury to train your aerobic base.
• It is taught, drilled and repeated — the same shape as physical training, with tools the athlete keeps and uses on their own.
• It happens inside the sport, not in an office. On deck, in practice, in the twenty minutes after a race.
• It includes the parents, because the athlete goes home to them and the environment around an athlete is part of the picture.
• It is named, so the athlete can run it themselves rather than experiencing it as a good conversation they once had.

The mechanisms are well established. Structured practice with a single focus and honest reflection is the most researched idea in skill development. Self-talk, attention control and pre-performance routines all have a substantial research literature behind them in sport.

What we will not do is promise you a time drop. Nobody can honestly tell you what an individual athlete will swim in March.

What mental performance training reliably does is let an athlete use the fitness and technique they already have. A swimmer who can think clearly under pressure gets access to their training on race day. One who cannot, does not — and the gap between practice speed and race speed is where that shows up.

Where we reference specific research, it is cited at the foot of the article.

Earlier than most people expect, with the caveat that it looks different at different ages.

Nine to twelve: the basics travel well — breathing before you step up, what you say to yourself after a bad swim, letting a race go. Taught simply, these become normal long before the stakes are high, which is the whole advantage of starting young.

Thirteen and up: this is where the deeper work lands. An athlete with years in the sport who knows their events can do real optimisation — routines, attention control, competition planning. Club workshops are for 13-and-over groups for exactly this reason.

The honest answer to when is: the best time to start is before you need it. Most families arrive after a season where something went wrong, which works, but it is harder than building it in a September.

Often, at first — and that is reasonable of them.

Nothing here is framed as fixing a problem, because most of these athletes do not have one. It is framed as training, which is a thing they already understand and already do.

A practical note: this tends to go worse when it is delivered by a parent as a suggestion, and better when the athlete finds it themselves. The tools are written to them, not about them. Leaving one where they will see it usually beats handing it over.

Their mentality is ultimately theirs. You cannot do this work for them, and trying to is one of the more common ways it goes sideways.

And you are the most present adult in their sporting life, which makes you an input — in the car, at the dinner table, in the four seconds after they climb out of the water. Not a cause. An input, and a significant one.

Both halves are true at once. The parent material here is built around your behaviour rather than around fixing your child, which is a deliberate choice and the thing that makes it useful.

Then we say so, directly, and help you find the right person.

Mental performance training is education about skills — it is not treatment, and it is not a substitute for clinical care. If what an athlete is carrying is beyond sport, the honest and useful thing is a referral to a licensed professional, not a routine.

You will never be left guessing which one you are looking at.

Everything in the Utah Swimming partnership is free to members — the masterclasses, the club workshops, the monthly articles and the tools. No cost to your club, no cost to your family, and nothing is sold to athletes on deck.

Mental Grit separately offers a private one-to-one program that families can choose to purchase directly. That sits outside this partnership, Utah Swimming is not a party to it, and it is never pitched at a workshop.