Kapitel: Mental training in general

No. People returning after twenty years away, and people who fulfil the dream of their own boat at sixty, are among the most rewarding briefs there are.

No. We work with healthy people on performance, safety and enjoyment, not on clinical conditions. Radioing in should feel like an appetite for freedom and the best sailing of your life, never like a visit to the doctor.

Psychotherapy treats disorders with clinical significance and belongs in the hands of doctors and qualified therapists. Mental training trains abilities every person already has and can build on: directing attention, regulating tension, handling mistakes, setting goals and pursuing them. We do not diagnose and we do not treat.

The field. We know the place where you have to apply what you learn with us, because we are sailors ourselves, with our own strengths and weaknesses. Much of it we have lived through first-hand. A general coach has to have it explained to them what letting go in a tight berth in a crosswind […]

No. The most common level is the ordinary call with no emergency at all: ‘Channel Zero, this is [name], reporting for training. Standing by.’ You want to get better, get more out of it, move more freely. That is reason enough.

Every world-class athlete works with their head. That is standard, not luxury. Anyone who skips it leaves the advantage tied up in the marina while the competition has long since sailed. The methods were developed and studied in elite sport over decades. The only new thing is that hardly anyone in sailing uses them.

We have no standard programme, we have a buffet: methods that are scientifically studied and proven in practice. Which of them work for you is something we find out together. It differs from person to person and cannot be settled in advance at a desk. Four tools form the foundation of any serious approach: Goal […]

That is one part of it, the best known and the smallest. Going through movement sequences in your head — mental technique training — helps with a tack or hoisting a spinnaker. It does not help when you are shaking at the start, when you check out inside after a premature start, or when after […]

Positive thinking tells you the gust is not that bad. Mental training gives you something to do instead: a breathing sequence, a point to look at, a sentence, a routine to follow. Fearless never means disrespectful here. The sea is not talked down; you are made able to act.

No, you have to practise it. Scepticism is not an obstacle; usually it is a good sign. People who look closely also notice sooner what works for them and what does not.