Table 1.

Mental Skills Training Activities Adapted for Youth Sport Teams

PST Topic	Mid Childhood (6–11 years)	Early Adolescence (11–14 years)	Mid-Adolescence (15–17 years)	Suggested Reading
Imagery	Provide team with an object associated with their sport (e.g. a baseball, soccer ball, puck) to hold in their hand; practice recreating an image of that object incorporating its shape, color, and other tactile senses associated.	Tie a washer to a string and have athletes close their eyes, imaging the washer moving from side to side or in circles; open eyes after to see imaged movement of washer; next, practice imaging completion of one basic physical sport-specific skill.	Write a polysensory imagery script that involves coping with a challenge associated with the sport or position; place focus on creating vivid images and controlling images to see themselves successfully performing.	Munroe-Chandler et al., (2007)
Self-Talk	Have team brainstorm thoughts they have while performing well and poorly. Then, have the team associate each thought with the immediate feeling associated with it using varied smiley-type faces that depict the different range of emotions.	Utilize role playing to demonstrate their response to various activating events that they are challenged by; be sure they role play their typical response as well as more adaptive coping responses that would result in more positive outcomes.	Use white board to brain storm activating events and write-out typical thoughts and responses associated with each; then, take the same activating events and discuss alternative ways to respond to each using thought-stopping techniques.	Gonzalez et al., (2004); Roush (1984)
Relaxation	Use cooked vs. raw spaghetti to describe relaxed vs. tense muscles. Next, use bubble blowing to demonstrate tension and relaxation using short, shallow breathing vs. deep breathing.	Use a sponge or stress ball to show tension and relaxation; sponge/ball also provides a visual representation contrasting tension versus relaxation.	Teach deep breathing; follow by use of more advanced relaxation skills such as progressive muscle relaxation, autogenic training, or biofeedback.	Lang & Stinson (1991); Orlick (2001)
Concentration	Have athletes gather as a whole team or break into smaller working groups based on playing position. Introduce a relevant sport object, like a ball that gets tossed across the circle from player to player; keeping the same pattern, introduce another ball, making sure to keep all ball in the air, focusing on relevant cues from players when passing and receiving.	Using a deck of cards, create a “memory” game where two people compete against each other to find all the pairs of cards with only one card allowed to be turned over at a time while searching for pairs; aside from competing against each other, athletes can be timed for speed so that they are introduced to multiple relevant and irrelevant cues during the activity.	Using a concentration grid, time athletes as they complete the grid one athlete at a time while the others are creating a variety of external distractions to slow them down; can process regarding identifying relevant and irrelevant cues and strategies used to shift focus on only the relevant cues associated with the task.	Grossbard et al. (2009); Holland et al. (2010)

Note. These activities are merely a select sample of suggested activities that can be successfully used with teams at each stage. Suggested readings include references that are notable, providing scientific evidence and/or practical suggestions for PST topics.