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Lara Pence, MBA, PsyD

@drlarapence

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🧠 clinical psychologist | elite athletes
🥇 founder | the coaches collective
🎓 psyd + mba
psychology you can actually use in sport.
🏳️‍🌈 obviously.

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careers can look tidy. or like madness. but what if there’s a method to it all…

eating disorders. business school. hours and hours and hours of client work. athletes. groups. a book. television. a lot of rooms i never expected to find myself in.

every experience has come with me into the next one. the knowledge layered. the perspective widened. one part of my career keeps informing another until eventually the lines begin to disappear.

i’ve come to believe that very little of a career is wasted if you’re paying attention. apparently none of mine was a detour. it all became interwoven and necessary for where i sit today. what an adventure!

#athletemindset #coaching #mentalperformance by @drlarapence

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2 months ago

people assume professional athletes occupy an entirely different psychological world.

in some ways they do.

the pressure is different. the stakes are different. the circumstances are different. the money…

but the way they occupy that space?

remarkably human.

#sportpsychology #athletementalhealth #coaching #professionalathletes #mentalperformance by @drlarapence

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25 days ago

the coaches collective is back.
new cohort. deeper work. no psychology 101.
ready to work on your side of the equation?
apply at the link in bio.

#mentalperformance #sportpsychology #athletemindset #coacheducation #coachdevelopment by @drlarapence

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a month ago

coaching is a technical job. but it’s also a deeply human one.

the best coaches don’t just study their sport. they study themselves. they study their athletes. they understand behavior and emotion and motivation and pressure and relationships and the impact they have on the people they coach.

you don’t need to be a psychologist to coach with a psychological lens.

but you do need to be willing to learn how humans work.
#mentalperformance #sportpsychology #athletemindset #fitnesscoaching #runcoach by @drlarapence

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a month ago

we’ve spent a long time teaching athletes to be tough enough not to bend.

but rigid sticks break pretty easily.

the bendy ones? those are the good ones to find.

they absorb force. adapt to what’s coming. bend when they need to. and still hold.

maybe that’s a better way to think about mental toughness too.

not harder. not tougher. more range.

#athletemindset #sportpsychology #mentalperformance by @drlarapence

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a month ago

we spend a lot of time trying to help athletes feel less pressure. but pressure often shows up precisely because something matters.

the goal isn’t to convince athletes the moment is smaller than it feels.

it’s to help them discover they can handle how big it is.
#athletemindset #sportpsychology #mentalperformance by @drlarapence

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2 months ago

one of the easiest mistakes we make with athletes is assuming we know what a behavior means.

we see defensiveness and assume resistance.
extra work and assume motivation.
agreement and assume trust.
composure and assume resilience.

sometimes we’re right.

being a psychologist has trained me to pay attention to what sits underneath behavior. to listen for what isn’t being said. to notice when the words and the behavior don’t quite match. to get interested in the white space.

but that’s not a skill reserved for psychologists. it’s a craft anyone can cultivate. and it’s an art that coaches should study.

notice more. assume less. get better at staying curious about the space between what an athlete does and what you think it means.

because you can be right about the behavior and completely wrong about the why.
#mentalperformance #sportpsychology #athletemindset by @drlarapence

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2 months ago

after a bad performance the instinct is often to make an athlete feel better.

coaches (and parents alike) have a high propensity toward what we call the righting reflex : that urge to fix what feels wrong.

we reassure.
we minimize.
we point to next time.
we tell them to move on.

because watching someone we care about hurt is uncomfortable.

but a bad performance isn’t a wrong that needs righting. it’s an opportunity that asks for understanding and tolerating.

sometimes disappointment needs room. room to acknowledge how much they wanted it. room to honestly assess what happened. room to separate accountability from self-attack. room to figure out what they want to carry forward.

resilience isn’t learning how to care less when things don’t go your way. it’s learning how to experience disappointment without being undone by it.

so resist the urge to rescue an athlete from a hard performance. sometimes the lesson matters more than the relief.

#mentaltraining #sportpsychology #athletemindset #coaching by @drlarapence

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2 months ago

we put a lot of energy into trying to feel confident before we perform. but confidence is only a feeling. and feelings fluctuate.

sometimes you walk into a competition feeling certain. sometimes your brain hands you a very convincing list of reasons you’re about to fail.

neither one gets to decide what you do next.

the goal isn’t to manufacture confidence every time doubt shows up.

it’s to build the capacity to perform with either one in the room.

take the shot.
make the move.
run the race.
trust the training.

confidence is welcome. it just isn’t required.
#mentalperformance #mentaltraining #sportpsychology #sportperformance #athletemindset by @drlarapence

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2 months ago

extraordinary coaches care deeply. most of these phrases come from a good place. they’re meant to reassure motivate or calm an athlete down. but the brain doesn’t always hear them the way we intend.

telling someone to relax doesn’t reduce anxiety. telling someone to stop overthinking doesn’t stop thoughts. telling someone to have confidence doesn’t create confidence. and telling someone there’s no pressure doesn’t change the fact that they care.

language isn’t just communication.
it’s intervention.

every cue is teaching your athlete something about pressure and confidence and mistakes and what to do when things get hard.

so before your next practice or competition ask yourself one question: what is my athlete’s brain likely to hear?

because your cues don’t disappear.
they become your athlete’s inner voice.
#mentalperformance #sportpsychology #mentaltraining by @drlarapence

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2 months ago

most people think naming an emotion is an exercise in self-awareness.

it’s more than that.
it’s a strategy.

when you put a feeling into words you give your thinking brain a better chance to do what it does best. you create a little space between the emotion and your next decision.

use strategies more often. they’re not lame. just sayin’.
#mentalperformance #athletemindset #sportpsychology taken in Arco, Italy by @drlarapence

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3 months ago

female athletes have spent decades walking behind thin paper curtains with team doctors.

too many walked out carrying new trauma.

for nearly twenty years i’ve sat across from female athletes as they tried to find words for what happened behind those curtains. i’ve watched the tears come before the sentences. i’ve watched shame convince them it was somehow their fault. i’ve watched them question their own memory because the person who harmed them wore a white coat and held a powerful title and were given credentials and everyone else trusted him. and even many many years later these women still lower their voices when they tell the story. they still wonder if they misunderstood. they still question whether they should have said something sooner.

those stories don’t end when they finally disclose the abuse in therapy. or when these men are fired (which they rarely are). or when they testify in court. they follow athletes forever. they never leave. fully.

we know exactly what can happen when medical power and sport collide. we’ve lived it. we’ve documented it. we’ve watched entire systems protect doctors instead of athletes.

and now we’re told (by men in power) that ‘protecting women’ (a thing they know nothing about) means asking female athletes to undergo sex eligibility exams and trust those systems.

help me understand.

because last i checked the greatest breach of women’s safety in sport didn’t come from other female athletes.

it came from men in positions of authority. medical authority.

and somehow we’ve decided that ‘protecting women’ means handing over medical systems (and the men that run them) even more power over women’s bodies.

make it make sense.

#womensports #sportpsychology #womeninsports by @drlarapence

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