Tanya Lawton - Mind Performance Coach
My motivation is simple ...
‘To empower every individual I work with to become the best version of themselves and to fulfil their desired potential as an athlete.’
Having come from a strong coaching background as a former pro coach with United States Professional Tennis Registry, playing for Kent as a junior and taking on the ultimate test as a tennis parent, I have always placed the mind as the pivotal differentiating factor to competitive success. Tennis has always been a part of my life other that an interesting interlude to become a Chartered Management Accountant (quite a diverse tangent yes !) but having returned to the sport subsequently and with a few more years on the clock, I decided to move from the more technical side of the sport to the mental domain.
Sport is a wonderful life platform to learn much about how to deal with challenge and reward and it has been a privilege to build such a great foundation of understanding working with athletes of all ages and from such a wide array of disciplines. From Iron Men to Ice Hockey, I have explored many sports but primarily tend to work with young aspiring tennis players competing in ITF and TE Events internationally as well as domestic LTA tournaments. This has included a number of Top #10 Nationally Ranked Juniors and World ranked players.
Diving deep into the world of the mind is truly fascinating and it has become clearer and clearer as to how we are in fact our own biggest opponent. The inner conversation is all we have when out there competing and it is here where the balance can hang between success and failure. Learning to identify at what point the conversation changes is key and having the tools to deal with the negative and be able to convert those thoughts is essential if you are going to be able to reset as quickly as you run into trouble.
This is where our journey together begins and by progressively stepping through a systematic, but totally client unique oriented process, opportunities inevitably surface to address each and every block that could potentially hold you back from being that player YOU know you can be. The beliefs about strengths and weaknesses, knowing what really fires YOU up and brings YOU down, all of which being of paramount importance to connect with and understand. Only then can we go about creating a set of carefully customised techniques that are as individual as your own fingerprint. These tools are consolidated and embedded to give a solid but practical toolkit, to take out into whatever sporting arena you choose to play in.
Competitive sport is not an easy path and takes a huge amount of discipline, hard work and real desire to succeed. The mind can become your greatest asset or has the potential to be a limiting weakness and needs to be navigated carefully and nurtured gently. Taking the time to discover, learn, practice and embed this aspect of your sport as stringently as the physical, technical and tactical can only improve and increase your competitive advantage.
Over the last six years I have consolidated my therapeutic and peak performance work and now am passionate about helping as many young aspiring athletes as I can. If you would like to chat to see if we can work together please do CONTACT me.