🧠 If Athletic Performance Had a Job Description…
Would this change how we view what is essential?
Quote
“If coaches actually wrote out athletic performance like a job description, I think it would fundamentally change how we look at what is essential for training.”
— Russ Flaten, Ed.D, CMPC
🎯 Observation
Coaches often approach training by organizing it into categories: physical, technical, tactical, and sometimes mental. Then we try to balance or integrate them. But what if we’re starting from the wrong end?
Instead of asking how do we balance training, we should be asking:
What exactly are we preparing athletes to do when it matters most?
If we treated performance like a job — with defined responsibilities, conditions, and required capabilities — we’d stop designing training in silos. We’d start designing for the actual demands of performance.
Performance isn't separated into mental, physical, or technical buckets in real time. Neither should our training be.
🔧 Actionable Idea
Write a job description for performance.
Pick a specific sport and position/role (e.g., midfielder, pitcher, point guard) or performance moment (e.g., closing out a game, responding after an error, resetting post-whistle) and answer these prompts:
What decisions must the athlete make?
Under what time constraints or environmental stressors?
What must they execute under fatigue, distraction, or pressure?
What habits or mindsets support success in these conditions?
Once you map the job demands, build training to reflect them — not categories.
This shifts your role from managing training types to preparing for real situations.
See how this can help you navigate the conversations you are having with coaches about the value of mental performance!
LOOKING FOR MORE SUPPORT
The Mental Performance Institute offers on-going support options via membership, provides tools and frameworks, and CMPC mentorship. Flexible, and focused on developing real-world skillsets to consult with confidence.
Thank you for continuing to enjoy The CMPC Playbook blog!
Russ
To write a great job description, it helps to first look at the résumés of those who’ve done the job well.
Carleton University’s men’s basketball team won 17 Canadian national championships in 20 years under head coach Dave Smart. He had a reputation for being intense — even unhinged — yelling at players for minor missteps during blowouts. But after four years working with their crosstown rival, I came to see something deeper: he wasn’t just demanding perfection. He was normalizing pressure.
By treating every play like the most important one, he trained athletes to stay composed when the external stakes finally matched the internal ones. His teams didn’t just execute under pressure — they looked looser in big games than they did mid-season.
Was it the only way? No. Carleton had a high attrition rate among top recruits. But mental performance wasn’t a separate category in their program. It was embedded.
If you were writing a job description for a coach with championship ambitions, would “ALWAYS demanding perfection” be in the requirements?
If not — how would you prepare athletes for the biggest moments?