The Future of Mental Performance is Holistic

Something important is happening in the mental performance world.

Last week, the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) informed its members that approximately 150 Certified Mental Performance Consultants CMPCs lost their positions as the U.S. Army restructures its human performance programs. According to AASP, the Ready and Resilient (R2) program is being integrated into the Army's Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F) system at the brigade level.

That word matters to me:

Holistic.

For years, I have said that the next iteration of what we call "mental performance" would be mind-body based and need to include mind-body healing. That way the nervous system is considered. Without a regulated nervous system, the athlete will never reach his or her best performances.

I believed it strongly enough that I created Holistic Mental Performance™ (HMP) in 2016.

Why?

Because nobody performs with a mind floating separately from a body.

Performance involves the brain, nervous system, physiology, emotions, identity, attention, recovery, environment and the body itself. Under pressure, all of those systems are interacting at once.

The Army's H2F model is interesting for exactly this reason. It organizes readiness across interconnected domains and uses multidisciplinary performance teams. Mental performance isn't disappearing. It is being delivered within a larger human-performance ecosystem.

That raises a question I think the entire mental performance profession should be willing to ask:

Is "mental performance" too narrow a description of what high performers actually need?

I believe the answer is yes.

The CMPC credential grew from the field of applied sport psychology. There is valuable knowledge in that discipline, and psychological science absolutely belongs in the performance conversation. People pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars to acquire the CMPC credential. Is it still worth it?

...because does the profession of performance coaching belong entirely underneath sport psychology?

I don't think it does.

I believe we are moving toward something more integrated, because in order to actually help athletes...we must be sure they have people trained holistically and beyond talk therapy. It's simply not enough anymore.

Because of that, thankfully, we are moving toward a model that makes more sense in which psychology is simply one contributor alongside neuroscience, physiology, nervous-system regulation, coaching science, movement, recovery, nutrition, sleep, identity, embodied awareness and actual experience inside performance environments.

In other words:

The whole human performs.

That has been the foundation of Holistic Mental Performance™ from the beginning.

150 mental performance positions of people who were certified by AASP disappearing should get our attention. But perhaps the bigger story isn't what the Army eliminated. It's what the Army is moving toward: Holistic Health and Fitness. Yay!

I've been saying for years that the next iteration of mental performance has to include mind-body healing and be holistic.

Maybe we're watching that shift begin in real time.

But it is a moment to pay attention.

Because while Hillary Cauthen (San Antonio Spurs mental coach for a year and the current president of the AASP) is understandably asking what these changes mean for CMPC employment and the future of its credential, I think there is an even bigger question sitting underneath the disruption:

What should the next generation of performance professionals actually be trained to do? I can see a clear path for the H-CMPC - holistic certified mental performance coaching certificate.

Maybe Mental Performance Coaching never belonged under the umbrella of sport psychology in the first place.

 Psychology still belongs at the table.

But it is NOT the table. 

Maybe it's time to recognize mental performance for what it is: an interdisciplinary performance profession that can stand on its own feet. 

Maybe it's about finally recognizing that performance was integrated all along.

The mind was never performing by itself.