Professor Jennifer Etnier is a former athlete, a sports psychologist and a former coach whose research focuses on the cognitive benefits of physical activity.

She is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine and the National Academy of Kinesiology and has received the School of Health and Human Sciences Senior Research Excellence Award and Health and Human Performance Teaching Award amongst others.

She was formerly the President of the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity and Editor of the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity.

She is also the author of Bring Your A game, a book that teaches mental skills to athletes who want to develop their mental toughness. Her new book Coaching For The Love Of The Game explores how to be the best coach you can be with countless mindset tools and technique.

This was an very enjoyable conversation around topics that I’m personally very interested in. I also haven’t previously covered on them on the podcast so I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed recording it.

Here are some of the things we talked about in today’s episode.

Building mental toughness and what the research says
Goal setting and the importance of the correct tracking metric
Sleep deprivation and its impact on your day to day or physical performance
The thing that distinguishes top athletes –process vs outcome focused mindsets
Exercise and its ability to improve memory retention
The research behind mental health benefits of exercise
How to effectively coach kids, yourself of others by using the current sports psychology