Teaching Young Athletes How To Refocus When Distracted

Youth Sports Psychology

Helping Sports Kids Refocus

With spring almost here and sports kids spending more time outside, young athletes may be distracted by a number of things.

When they’re outside, bad weather, mud, barking dogs, birds and other distractions may pull their focus away when playing sports.

When kids are distracted, they can’t focus on what’s most important to execution in their sports.

Distractions hurt both their confidence and performance.

But here’s the good news: Young athletes can actually work on improving their focus–just like they can improve their physical skills.

We teach parents and their athletes the entire process in The Focused Sports Kid, but here is the short version….

First, help your athletes identify the thoughts, events and other triggers that distract them. They might make a list of them to boost their awareness.

Second, when they find themselves feeling distracted, they need to refocus as soon as possible.

They can follow the three R’s of refocusing

  1. Recognize–they are off task and take action
  2. Regroup–tell themselves to stop and get ready to refocus
  3. Refocus–point their attention back to execution

Number one and two above help them interrupt or stop thinking about the distraction so they can get back on task quickly.


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Help Your Young Athletes Improve Focus In Sports!

The Focused Sports Kid

Are your young athletes easily distracted by people shouting on the sidelines? Do they obsess over their mistakes? Do they worry about what people think of them?

These issues will cause their concentration and performance to suffer!The Focused Sports Kid helps kids overcome distractions that can hurt their performance in sports.

The Focused Sports Kid program is actually two programs: one for sports parents/coaches that provides mental game tips especially designed for parents and coaches, and for young athletes, ages 8 to 12, that will walk them through 7 simple lessons in mental focus in sports.

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