Overcoming The Top-10 Mental Obstacles In Sport - https://go.sportmind.io/Mastery
The SportMind Portal - https://go.sportmind.io/Portal
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Your eight-year-old just played their heart out. They step off the pitch, still catching their breath, and before the adrenaline's even worn off, you're already running through what went wrong in the car ride home.
Here's the thing: whether you're praising them or criticizing them from the sidelines, the research shows it has the exact same detrimental effect on their performance.
Today, I'm joined by Dr. Simon Moore—a Chartered Psychologist with a PhD in psychophysiological research who's spent his career unpacking why people do what they do. He's worked with global brands, governments, even studied dolphin behavior. But what brought him to youth sport? Watching his own 14-year-old navigate the football academy system and seeing the massive breakdown in communication between parents, coaches, and kids. Now he's working directly with academies to stop the patterns that inadvertently crush young athletes before they've even started.
In this conversation, we unpack some uncomfortable truths that parents and coaches need to hear:
• Why the outcome-obsessed culture is killing enjoyment—and actually limiting performance
• The psychology behind why kids average down to their team's level instead of standing out
• How parents unknowingly cripple their children's confidence in the car park after matches
• The difference between process feedback and outcome feedback—and why one builds champions while the other builds anxiety
• Why confidence isn't where you start—it's what you earn through repeated courageous actions
Simon shares raw insights from the sidelines—the grimacing parents, the cognitive overload from coaches giving six instructions when three is the limit, and that heartbreaking moment when talented kids quit football entirely because they didn't make a Category One academy.
We also dig into the internal scoreboard versus society's scoreboard, the two wolves battling in every young athlete's mind, and why smiling during competition isn't weakness—it's a performance tool.
Whether you're a parent white-knuckling the sidelines, a coach trying to build resilient athletes, or a competitor wrestling with self-worth, this conversation will challenge how you think about success, pressure, and what we're really teaching the next generation.
Let's get into it.
Website: whatsmygoal.co.uk.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iokfootball/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsimonmoore/
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