John Wooden's Cornerstone Plan

The purpose of his plan is to instill a goal, achievement mindset aligned with his strengths. No doubt, Jason knows how to achieve a worthy goal since he achieved his dream goal of making it to the pros; however, he did not have professional goals established once he made it to that dream goal. Since he was at the top of his mountain, his only path was downward which is reflected by his injury and lack of joy in the pros. He know that if he never sets a new destination in a timely manner to continue the journey with a plan of action containing detailed processes and performance milestones, then he going nowhere with every breath, thought, or image. Instead, he will continue wandering aimlessly. One of Coach John Wooden’s cornerstone blocks

Jason is fit, but he has not been working out on a consistent basis. The neat thing about my wall is it is based on the growth mindset for both physical and mental development (i.e., it can build mental skills along with physical strength, power, and endurance), plus it has the seasons of the year (periodization) along with mountain tops (success) and valleys (setbacks, obstacles, and failure) intertwined in the design to teach experientially. Breathing, imagery, and self-talk can be indirectly learned along with other mental skills during each climbing session. Jason will experientially learn sport and performance psychology by actually living it out on the wall as practice runs for real life situations. I provided him with an overview of the draft design of my recommended program which starts with a routine, called RAIN (an acronym), and he was fine with it. Jason’s homework prior to our next session is to complete a set of my goal setting planning sheets printed on cardstock

Using my rock climbing wall that is painted to reflect all of the mental training tools as well as the growth mindset, Jason will use problem solving and decision making skills combined with physical movement on the wall using process, performance, and outcome goals. Regulation of self or arousal control will be experientially conducted to achieve the ideal performance state or IPS. Imagery will be used in two ways. First, he can visually see the outcome and the path to get there along with visualizing the proper movements and seeing himself successful from either an internal or external view point. Self-Talk will hopefully come naturally through both positive affirmations, motivational, and instructional self-talk. He will learn to confidently make decisions in the moment to achieve challenging goals and grow while having to physically and mentally persevere and adapt after failure as well. Rock climbing is a self-critiquing sport and the sport itself can teach athletes valuable lessons that cannot be expressed with words. He is currently afraid of heights; therefore, bouldering is an excellent way for him to learn without excessive heights. I admitted that I had the same issue when I started climbing and that is how I discovered the effectiveness of sport psychology in climbing. Jason has been invited to climb in my gym every week based on his schedule. He informed me several times that he loved my gym set up and