From crisis to confidence-Jake's return

So just over a year ago, Jake was going through surgery to have a large infection in his hip removed. As I'm sure you could imagine the family was going through a terrible time and credit to the parents kept everything as normal as possible for the kids despite their emotional distress.

Since the operation, Jake has slowly recovered physically and has made a return to playing for his football team. He was struggling however and his performance levels had changed for the worse.

Jake's mum (Laura) decided to get in touch with me as I coach Jake's brother Adam in MMA and mental performance, so we booked Jake in and got to work.

In our first session, I was able to identify Jake's motivation, the underlying issues, and how to resolve them. This is called the difference that makes the difference. A small change in one or a few areas makes a big difference. Being able to target these three areas was huge for Jake's development as a person and a football player.

His motivation for playing is to be on the first team so he could play with his friends. This was in jeopardy. The information was crucial.

His confidence issue was presenting itself giving up on 50/50 situations or areas that required a bit of a battle. Probably equated to 5% of his interactions but resulted in 30% of his overall performance in my opinion. In this situation, I had to be careful not to give technical advice as this is not my territory. I must respect Jake's relationship with his coach.

The other area we worked on was his strengths. Giving him the confidence to showcase his talents and allow them to flourish.

Mum and Jake left happy and we got great news. He played outstanding over 3 matches and got man of the match. As soon as he stepped off the pitch he said to mum that he wanted to see me. It was a huge honor to see the family happy.

Mum and Jake returned for another session to deliver the good news. We also had something else to work on.

Jake always had a mental block about shooting in front of the goal to the point he would be in front of an open goal and he would pass to someone else to shoot dispite the clear opportunity.

Jake is great at passing so I helped him make the association between passing the ball and shooting after some relaxation work and visualization.

I received a text from mum mid-game on Sunday to say he was playing excellently and he took a shot at goal which he never does. Mum was over the moon. Jake was a runner up for man of the match.

On a personal note: I witnessed the distress the whole family went through a year ago when Jake went into the hospital. Playing a small part to get to this stage is truly rewarding and watching them get through this has been inspiring.