“But Matt, I was doing so well! I don’t know how this happened,” said one of our NCAA players.

I said, “Well, walk me through it. What’s changed?”

He said, “I don’t know. I’m still practicing hard! I’m doing everything I need to do. I just don’t know.”

I didn’t buy it.

“No problem, leave it to me,” I said.

After our session I called our athletes representative and asked him to get a report for me from this players head coach to tell me what he thought of his practices.

“That’s easy, they’ve been going down hill ever since his game last Saturday,” was the coach’s response.

Unfortunately, that’s what I thought.

So, I had a follow up coaching session with our athlete, broke the news to him, and that’s when we got to the root of the problem.

“Can you get me some film?”, I asked.

So he did, and we studied it; we compared it to his practices a couple weeks before and how we was training leading up to the good game he had that coach mentioned.

“Woah,” was his response; “I can’t believe that’s really me.”

And that’s when the breakthrough happened.

I think one of the biggest lies that’s ever been sold to athletes is that once you start succeeding, you’ve “done it.”

I can say this with almost a decades worth of certainty from dealing with athletes of all kinds: there’s no such thing as “I’ve done it.”

The truth is that positive performances at an elite level are never a natural thing.

Meaning: the higher you go, the more you must realize that you need to earn it every single day.

And if you can build trust with yourself through your work, then you can relax and enjoy game days.

The reality, unfortunately, is that many athletes take their foot off the gas, without even knowing it, the moment they start to succeed.

And it starts to happen subtly: practices that you used to go hard in you’re now slightly cutting corners; the recovery work gets cut down from 10 minutes to 8; the cheat meals become more frequent.

The truth is that the only time you can take your foot off the gas is when the seasons over.

And I know, it sounds daunting, but it’s not.

You need to reframe results for yourself: a result is nothing more than an indication that how you’re preparing is working.

It’s not a sign to take it easy.

It’s not a sign that “you’ve done it.”

It’s not a sign that you can throw things into cruise control.

Success can sometimes be a trap if you let it, and this is my call to you to change how you see results.

Otherwise, you’ll fall victim to inconsistent performances and will constantly be in a cycle of beating yourself up.

There’s 3 surefire things you can do to guarantee this doesn’t happen:

✅ Use results as a way to let you know that what you’re doing is working

✅ Understand that winning isn’t a normal thing and that you need to constantly earn it

✅ Stay clear on your targets and never lose sight of the big picture

And if you aren’t getting the results you want, then simply change something.

Follow the process that I did with our athlete, and you can start to find subtleties that can change.

And if you want some extra help with this, then check out our YouTube channel - we created a free masterclass on building your confidence where we train you on how to properly use visualization, physical preparation, and film study to build your confidence and dominate in performances.

All you need to do is click this link to get it ===> VIDEO LINK

Until next time - stay resilient!

Your friend,

Matt “We Got You” Caldaroni