Why I decided to become a Mental Conditioning Coach.

I started tennis coaching at the age of eighteen as an assistant while I was trying to earn some money to help finance travel and expenses as a professional tennis player. I instantly fell in love with coaching and found it more rewarding than I could have imagined seeing the pupils improve week after week. I decided immediately that I wanted to make coaching a career and I have not looked back since.

After completing the Tennis Coaches Association of Australia, Advanced Certificate, I set up my own Tennis Coaching Academy by the age of twenty. I then spent the next three years developing my clients’ techniques, working with all standards of player from beginner to elite.

During this time I started to play golf in my spare time. Within three years of playing golf sporadically during any free time available I had achieved a handicap of 1. It was during my time playing golf that I fully realised how important the mind was, and what a considerable impact mindset could have on achievements and results. This realisation led me to start researching mental techniques in sport and especially the area of Neuro-linguistic Programming. Initially the research was for my own benefit to help me achieve better results on the golf course. As I learnt more and more I discovered that I was beginning to implement the strategies into my coaching with amazing results.

A few years later, as I was preparing to turn pro and enter tour school, I was to truly find out how powerful mental conditioning could be. In 1999, I woke one morning in excruciating pain and unable to get out of bed. Two discs had prolapsed in my vertebrae and I spent the next fifteen months spending the majority of my time on the ground. I could not even sit in a chair to eat a meal. After exhausting avenues of chiropractic work, visiting physios, undergoing acupuncture, and having manipulative surgery I saw a couple of Victoria’s leading back surgeons. The diagnosis was disappointing to say the least. I was told that my chronic back problem could only be rectified by under going back surgery to have steel rods implanted in my back, but that I would never play golf again, or be capable of coaching tennis in a physical role.

It was then that I decided to use the mental techniques that I had been implementing into my golf and coaching. I told myself that success was the only option and that there was no negotiation on the type of active life I was going to lead. Everyday I woke up with positive affirmations and dragged myself out of bed. I spent hours at the local swimming pool not only conditioning my body to be in the best health it could possibly be in for surgery, but also conditioning my mind to be powerfully positive.

Three months after undergoing back surgery I was back swinging a golf club and coaching tennis in an active role. My recovery regime was painful and strict, yet I never faltered. My future dreams and goals were too important to me to relapse back to a life of lying on the floor. It was not long before I had worked my golf handicap back down to 4.

After I recovered from surgery I continued to study Peak Performance and implement the techniques into my coaching business. The response and results surpassed even my own expectations. I started to conduct Peak Performance seminars and Goal Setting clinics. Initially the clients at the seminars and clinics came from the tennis coaching program, then the seminars grew to include people from career professionals wanting to motivate staff members to elite sportspeople, from a range of different sporting backgrounds, wanting improved results, to people just wanting a more fulfilling life on a personal level.

In 2004, I started my own Peak Performance business called ‘Dare2Dream Peak Performance’ as the demand for this information made it necessary for me to set up the mental conditioning as a separate business. I have now conducted Peak Performance Clinics at junior Golf Tournaments and also held seminars at some of Australia’s best golf academies.