S6 Ep7 Coach, Don't Profess: Theory-to-Practice Transfer in Mental Performance

About this episode

Ceci Craft discusses the challenges of transferring mental performance skills from military to athletic contexts.

Ceci Craft has worked inside two of the most demanding performance cultures in the world — Army Special Operations and Major League Baseball. She's currently the Philadelphia Phillies' Director of Mental Performance, Life Skills, and Education, leading a staff of seven coaches across their MLB affiliates and the organization's academy in the Dominican Republic. When she made the move from working with Operators to working in baseball, she thought she had her bearings -- "No one's being shot at, and no one's died, so I'm fine. " -- It took her a while to recalibrate her perspective from the special ops world and to recognize that losses in the athletic world are different kinds of losses, but still real ones. Preston and Ceci dig into the gap between how mental performance practitioners are trained and what the job actually requires — the ethical conundrums no ethics course prepares you for, the difference between a clinical model built on client readiness and a performance context that operates on its own timeline, and why "coach, don't profess" is harder to practice than it sounds. They use imagery as a case study — exploring habituation, audience fit, and how to teach live…

People in this episode

Host: Preston

Guest: Ceci Craft

Topics covered

• mental performance
• athletic culture
• coaching techniques
• identity transition
• confidence
• performance ethics

Keywords

• mental performance
• coaching
• athletics
• confidence
• performance culture
• identity
• transition

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Philadelphia Phillies, Army Special Operations, Major League Baseball

Places: Dominican Republic

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