The Importance of Mental Strength

Today’s episode features athletic performance coach, Scot Prohaska.  Scot is distinguished as a nationally recognized sports and executive performance consultant.  Scot runs his performance center out of Los Angeles, California, and works with a wide range of athletes, from professionals and Olympians at the highest level, to scholastic athletes. Scot has traveled across the globe studying with leading experts in exercise physiology, kinesiology, physical therapy, biomechanics, strength, conditioning, nutrition, mental and emotional focus, as well as strength.  Through his years of coaching, and learning from leaders in multiple fields, Scot has developed the “Six Lanes of High Performance”, which is a holistic view at looking at all elements that go into being an athlete (not just the physical element).  Scot’s athletes not only find success on the field, but are impacted by his work on a holistic level, and often achieve positions of leadership in their subsequent athletic, and life, endeavors. As I’ve gone further along in physical preparation/athletic performance, I’ve truly realized that there is much more to offer athletes than simply increasing their 1-rep maxes in lifts, or even trying to increase KPI metrics, such as sprint ability or jump height.  These improvements are enjoyable to attain, but I’ve noticed that they don’t always transfer to winning on the field.  Through looking to other elements of athletics, such as the mental-emotional side, perceptual and visual ability, and recovery to name a few, we can offer athletes so much more than simply the ability to increase their muscular strength, and even physical outputs. On today’s show, Scot will cover some of his key mentors and life experiences that brought him to his current view of sport performance.  He’ll cover the “6 Lanes of High Performance” (Psychology, Sensory Motor, Technical, Tactical, Physical Preparation, Recovery, and Restoration) and get into these distinguishing traits of high performers, as well as how he assesses and trains those traits in his own athletes.  He also gets into the 11 leadership tenets he teaches, which have powerful effects on not only the success of the individual as a part of a team, but also into life beyond sport. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more. Timestamps and Main Points 4:45 Defining moments in Scot’s career as an athlete and young coach that led him to where he is today 8:15 What success in sport really means to Scot 12:15 Some major mentors in Scot’s coaching process 16:25 An overview of the “six lanes” of performance and why they are important 32:40 The importance of universal distinctions for key facets of behavioral and emotional traits in athletes 35:55 How an experience in Scot’s facility, in relation to the 6 lanes, unfolds 43:35 The results of the “six lanes” in regards to high rates of leadership and sport captain position acquisition of Scot’s former athletes 47:00 Digging into the elements of leadership in Scot’s system, particularly that of ambition in athletes 59:40 How to teach/cultivate innovation in a weight room style setting 1.04:40 How Scott cultivates optimal communication in his training groups “If you are living your dream, you are feeling fulfilled, then that is success to me.  Enjoying the daily optimal experience seems to be sustainable to me.” “Where I’ve really found immense value (in behavior chance, sport psychology, leadership and team cohesion) is Special Forces training” “It starts with self-regulation in three domains: the physical (can you push through difficult physical conditions), the mental (can they stay focused), and then there’s the emotional (can they shift into the right emotion at the right time)” “When you change behaviors you see a lot of things change physically,