When I type here about successful athletes, I focus on the psychological skills and techniques they learn to separate themselves from their competitors. Successful athletes build mountains in their mind of tough, durable terrain to protect and separate them from their opponents. Over the past 50 years, researchers filled shelves of evidence to argue that at every level (e.g., non-elite, junior elite, elite and super-elite), successful athletes show the highest levels of (1) m

To love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world and the seed-plot of all other virtues. John Locke, letter, 1703 (Cooper, 2022) Back in 1990, ‘Put ‘em under pressure’ was the official song for the Republic of Ireland national football team’s FIFA World Cup campaign in Italy. Jackie Charlton’s exhortation was to ‘put ‘em under pressure’. It seems axiomatic that each team puts the other under pressure, so coping with pressure represents a

If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard. Jesse Owens, American Olympic gold medallist for track and field (1913–1980) When you think about the greatest rivalries in any sport, whether it is team or individual sport, the epic battles for dominance fascinate us all. It might be Liverpool and Manchester United in football, Europe and the United States in the Ryder Cup, or Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal in tennis. Whatever your choice of