The brains perception is the body’s reality.

“You can be a cheerleader or you can be a mind setter.”

We welcomed Mark Stephenson from the Detroit Lions to share with us what he’s doing to optimize performance and recovery at The 2019 Seminar. This vast area includes: athlete monitoring, training/workload, performance analytics, mental performance, and recovery. Mark shares with us the guiding principles to performance optimization. This covers the athlete’s perception of their situation, the impact of hard work, recovery, and how powerful knowledge is. Mark then talks about athlete monitoring and what it actually means for it to be evidence-based and actionable. He then dives into the realm of performance analytics and gives an equation of how he looks at performance. Aspects that impact this include: perceived stress, the ANS, HRV, and ACWR (Acute/Chronic Work Ratio).

Mark then shares some insight on training and its impact on mental performance. This starts with the mindset of the athlete, and how setting an athlete’s mindset can impact everything from training to grit. He then ties in deliberate practice to this and what he saw in a case study with his special operators he got to work with. This section of the talk also includes the coach’s mindset, and how we can be better to make the athlete more effective for their team. Mark finishes off discussing HRV, adaptability, and their impact not just ton performance and training, but the athlete’s ability to recover.