Welcome to
the Certification
Six weeks to build the craft of mental performance coaching. Here's what you're committing to — and why it matters.
Fourteen seasons of professional baseball. Seven in the majors. A master's degree in performance psychology. Years coaching alongside Joe Maddon with the Cubs, then building performance systems with the Pirates.
I'm not saying that to impress you. I'm saying it because I want you to understand what this certification is built from: hard-won experience at the intersection of elite performance and rigorous science.
What you're about to learn isn't theory dressed up as coaching. It's the actual system I use with professional athletes and organizations — the same frameworks, the same exercises, the same questions I ask in every session. Packaged so you can do the same.
"Do Simple Better."
What You're Committing To
This is a 6-week program, and the pacing is intentional. The most important work you'll do here isn't learning the content — it's living it. You'll complete the full 4-week MBAT program yourself before teaching it to anyone else. You'll practice Motivational Interviewing. You'll build your own Prime/Perform/Learn ritual.
You cannot shortcut this. Not because I put up artificial gates, but because the research is clear: embodied experience is what separates coaches who understand mental performance theory from coaches who can actually change someone's relationship with pressure.
Foundations: your coaching identity, ACT framework, Motivational Interviewing, Self-Determination Theory. MBAT personal practice begins — Focused Attention (Week 1), Body Scan (Week 2).
Mental Skills Suite: attention training, self-talk & defusion, arousal regulation, PETLEP imagery, Nideffer attention model, Wulf OPTIMAL Theory, Prime/Perform/Learn, and ritual construction. MBAT continues — Open Monitoring (Week 3), Connection Practice (Week 4).
Expanding the Frame: team dynamics & cohesion, coaching coaches through the 3Cs framework, parents as secondary clients, developmental stage calibration, and systems-level conceptualization.
Certification: ethics & scope of practice, 25-question examination, written case conceptualization, recorded session self-evaluation, full program design, and your Intentional Performance Certified Coach credential.
Each week contains 4–5 lessons, 1 reflection exercise, and 1 practical assignment. Lessons take 20–40 minutes. Assignments — like MI role-plays and your MBAT daily practice — happen between lessons, in your actual life and work.
Every written exercise in this course saves automatically in your browser. At the end of each week, you'll find a Download Week X Reflections button — use it every time. By Week 6, you'll have six documents capturing your thinking as it evolved across the program: case analyses, values work, self-talk audits, PPL rituals, client maps, your MBAT experience. That document is yours, independent of this platform, available whenever you need it. Treat it the same way you'd want your clients to treat their coaching journal.
A Note on Pacing
New weeks unlock on Mondays. This isn't bureaucracy — it's the mechanism that protects the learning. The MBAT program requires 4 consecutive weeks of daily 15-minute practice. Compressing that defeats the purpose. Your nervous system needs the time.
Use the extra time within each week to sit with the material. Re-read a lesson. Do the reflection again with a new client in mind. Revisit the OARS scenarios until they feel fluent. Fluency is the goal, not completion.
Your Coaching Identity
Before you can help a client clarify their values, you need to know your own. This isn't a warmup exercise — it's the foundation of everything.
ACT — Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, the framework at the core of this program — begins with values. Not goals. Not outcomes. Values: the directions you want to move in, regardless of what obstacles appear.
The first time I sat down and seriously worked through my own values inventory, I was still playing. I thought I knew what mattered to me. I was wrong — or more precisely, I was right about the surface values and blind to the deeper ones. That gap cost me. It costs most athletes and coaches I work with until they do this work seriously.
As a coach, your values shape everything: how you structure sessions, how you respond when clients resist, what you're willing to challenge, what you let slide. If you don't know your values, you're running someone else's program without realizing it.
In ACT, values are defined as freely chosen, intrinsically motivated life directions. They're not rules or obligations — they're qualities of action you want to embody. The question isn't "what do you want to achieve?" but "how do you want to engage with the pursuit?"
Values Identification Exercise
Below is a selection of values drawn from the empirically validated domains used in ACT work. Your task has three steps: (1) select all that resonate, (2) narrow to your top 10, then (3) identify your core 5. These become your coaching north star.
Step 1: Select All That Resonate
Tap any value that feels genuine and important to you. Don't overthink — first instinct is usually right. You can always adjust.
Your Top 10 Selected
Click a selected value a second time to mark it as a Top 5 core value (turns gold).
Step 2: Define Your Core 5
For each of your top 5 values, write a brief sentence: what does this value look like in action when you're coaching?
Step 3: The Values Gap Reflection
This is the important one. Knowing your values is easy. Noticing where you're not living them is where change happens.
The ACT Framework
Psychological flexibility is the target. The Hexaflex is the map. Here's how to read it — and why it's the most practical model in performance psychology.
ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) was developed by Steven Hayes and colleagues at the University of Nevada. The core premise: psychological inflexibility — not negative thoughts or anxiety — is the primary predictor of poor performance under pressure.
In sports and high performance contexts, this means the problem isn't that athletes have doubts, nerves, or bad thoughts. The problem is what they do with those experiences. When athletes fuse with their thoughts ("I can't do this"), avoid uncomfortable feelings, or lose contact with the present moment — that's when performance collapses.
ACT trains psychological flexibility: the ability to be present, open to your inner experience, and committed to your values-guided actions — even when it's uncomfortable.
The Six Processes (Hexaflex)
The ACT Hexaflex maps six interconnected psychological processes. Coaching clients toward psychological flexibility means working with all six — you'll often enter through whichever one the client's current situation calls for.
Connecting to what genuinely matters. The engine of action. "What kind of competitor do you want to be?"
Willingness to have inner experiences without fighting them. Not resignation — active openness to what shows up.
Creating distance from thoughts. Seeing thoughts as thoughts, not facts. "I'm having the thought that I'm going to fail."
Full contact with the now. Not mindless presence — deliberate, flexible attention to what's relevant in this moment.
The observing self. The "I" who notices thoughts, feelings, and sensations — and is not defined by them.
Values-guided behavior, even when uncomfortable. Not motivation-dependent — commitment-dependent.
When a pitcher melts down in the 7th inning, which Hexaflex process broke down? Usually it's a combination: fusion with "I'm blowing this game" (defusion), loss of present moment (ruminating on the last pitch), and behavior that's fear-driven rather than process-driven (committed action). Your job as a coach is to identify the break point and work there — not deliver a generic pep talk.
The Inflexibility Hexaflex
ACT is equally clear about what psychological inflexibility looks like. Understanding the pathological patterns helps you recognize them in clients before they do:
Avoiding, escaping, or suppressing uncomfortable thoughts and feelings — at the cost of valued living.
Getting "hooked" by thoughts. Treating thoughts as reality and letting them dictate behavior.
Pulled away from the present by rumination (past) or worry (future). The competitive moment is lost.
"I'm the kind of person who chokes" — fused with a conceptualized self rather than an observing self.
Acting from rules, approval-seeking, or external pressure rather than authentic values.
Either reacting impulsively to internal discomfort, or stuck in rigid patterns that no longer serve the athlete.
Hexaflex Case Mapping
Think of a current client (or athlete you've worked with, or yourself in competition). Describe a specific situation where performance broke down — then map it to the Hexaflex.
Motivational Interviewing: The Spirit
OARS is the technique. The Spirit is the foundation. Miss the Spirit and the technique becomes manipulation. Learn both — in that order.
Motivational Interviewing (MI) was developed by William Miller and Stephen Rollnick, initially for addiction counseling. It's since become one of the most rigorously studied change facilitation approaches in behavioral science — with substantial application in sports and performance contexts.
The core finding: people change when they hear themselves articulate the reasons for change. The coach's job is to create the conditions for that articulation — not to provide the reasons, not to argue for change, not to motivate through logic or inspiration.
This runs counter to everything most coaches are taught.
"Confrontation of denial is a relic of the past. The new paradigm is evoking the client's own motivation and wisdom."
The Spirit of MI
Before the OARS technique comes the Spirit — four relational conditions that must be present for MI to work:
Coaching is done with the person, not to them. You're a collaborative partner exploring their experience — not an expert delivering solutions.
Absolute worth of the person. Accurate empathy. Autonomy support. Affirmation of strengths. These four are non-negotiable even when you disagree with the client's choices.
The client already has the resources and motivation they need. Your job is to draw them out — not install new ones. The answer is already in the room.
Actively promoting the client's wellbeing and interests. Not serving your agenda as a coach. Not building dependence. Their flourishing, full stop.
OARS: The Four Core Skills
OARS is both an acronym and a useful metaphor — these four skills are how you steer the conversation toward meaningful change talk without pushing or confronting.
Invite elaboration. Can't be answered yes/no. "What matters most to you about your performance this season?" opens space. "Are you motivated?" closes it.
Genuine recognition of strengths. Not compliments or flattery. "The fact that you kept working on your mechanics after the trade — that tells me a lot about your character."
Reflect what you hear — simple and complex. Simple: echo the content. Complex: guess the meaning beneath it. Complex reflections are where the real work happens.
Bouquets of reflections. Collect the most important things the client has said, especially change talk, and give them back as a coherent picture. "Here's what I've heard you say..."
Practice Scenario: Identify the Best OARS Response
Read the client statement below, then select the response that best demonstrates the OARS framework. After each scenario, you'll get immediate feedback.
Which coach response best exemplifies the Spirit and OARS of Motivational Interviewing?
MI Self-Assessment
Reflect on your current coaching practice. This is for you — no one is grading it.
MBAT: Your Personal Practice Begins
Mindfulness-Based Attention Training. Four weeks, 15 minutes a day. You do the program before you teach it. Starting today.
MBAT is the applied mindfulness program at the center of Intentional Performance. It was developed by neuroscientist Amishi Jha and mindfulness researcher Scott Rogers at the University of Miami's Jha Neuroscience Lab — grounded in Jha's decades of research on attention, working memory, and cognitive performance under high-demand conditions. Her book Peak Mind is the definitive lay account of the science behind it.
The program runs 4 weeks. Each week introduces new practices that build on the previous ones, progressively training four attention capacities: focused attention, open monitoring, body scan, and integrative practice.
You go through the program before you teach it. This is non-negotiable, and it's not about suffering through a prerequisite. It's about having the embodied knowledge that makes you a credible, effective guide. When an athlete tells you their mind won't stop during meditation, you need to know what that actually feels like — not just what the research says about it.
Week 1 MBAT Practice: Breath Anchor
Week 1 focuses on developing a basic breath anchor practice — the foundation of all mindfulness training. The goal is not to achieve a quiet mind. The goal is to notice when your attention has wandered and return to the breath anchor. That noticing-and-returning is the rep. That's the training.
Find a consistent time each day (morning is recommended — before the day's demands pull your attention). Sit comfortably, spine relatively upright. Set a timer for 15 minutes.
Direct your attention to the physical sensations of breathing — the rise and fall of your chest or belly, the temperature of air at your nostrils. When your mind wanders (it will — constantly at first), simply notice that it's wandered, then gently redirect attention to the breath. No judgment, no frustration. The noticing IS the practice.
There is no score to chase. Each session is simply practice — noticing when attention wanders, returning, noticing again. The consistency of showing up is the only metric that matters this week.
Track Your Week 1 Practice
Log each session after you complete it. Click a day to mark it complete.
completed this week
Week 1 Assignment Checklist
Complete the following before Week 2 unlocks. Check off items as you finish them — your progress saves automatically.
Week 1 Closing Reflection
Before you close out Week 1, spend 5 minutes with these questions. They're not for the course — they're for you.