The next On The Bench is Tuesday 6th October at 6.30am Brisbane time

On the Bench

Once a month, the door opens… and there is a seat beside me.

For more than 20 years, I have had conversations with athletes about the part of their performance the rest of the world rarely gets to see. What they are thinking before the event, what changes when the pressure rises, why something that feels completely natural in training suddenly feels different in competition and the questions that begin appearing when an athlete becomes curious about just how much more might be possible.

On the Bench is my opportunity to open that conversation to you.

Once a month, I take a seat for an hour and invite athletes at every level, along with parents and coaches, to sit beside me. You can bring a question, listen to someone else’s, hear about athletes I have worked with and explore what was happening underneath the results that eventually became visible.

For that hour, you are sitting beside more than 20 years of experience… and I think there is something pretty special about what can happen when we simply start talking.

Take a Seat… You Are Already Awesome

I also understand that taking that first seat may feel bigger than it sounds.

For a long time, working on the mind in sport has carried an association that something needs to be wrong before you seek help. I have spent much of my career experiencing almost the opposite. Some of the most extraordinary athletes I have worked with came to me already knowing they were good. They had trained, sacrificed, achieved results and built an enormous amount of ability. Their curiosity was around how much more of that ability they might be able to access.

That is a very different conversation because we are starting from possibility rather than a problem.

You can take a seat beside me knowing you are already awesome at what you do. Perhaps there is simply another level you want to explore, something you want to understand or a question you have never had the opportunity to ask someone who has spent a career inside this world.

You also do not need to know exactly how to ask it.

Tell me what is happening. Tell me what you have noticed. Tell me what has you curious. We can start there and see where the conversation takes us.

You have already taken the hardest step by sitting down… from there, I have got you.

The Questions Athletes Ask

One of the things more than 20 years of this work has taught me is how often athletes believe the question in their head belongs only to them.

Then somebody else asks it.

Different athlete. Different sport. Different level. Almost the same internal experience.

That is one of the reasons I want On the Bench to remain a genuine Q and A rather than turning it into another presentation. Your question may take us into confidence, nerves, expectations, motivation, pressure or something that happened at training yesterday. A parent may describe something they have been noticing at home. A coach might see a pattern appearing in competition and wonder what could be sitting underneath it.

We follow the conversation.

There is a fair chance that somewhere across thousands of athletes, I have explored something similar before. That gives me the opportunity to share what I noticed then, what we explored, what changed and perhaps what that athlete taught me in return.

Then somebody sitting beside you may ask the next question and suddenly we are somewhere neither of us expected to go.

That is the bench I want to create.

Let Me Take You Behind the Result

I will also bring some of my athletes onto the bench with us through their stories and results.

The world usually gets the finished version. They see the medal, the time, the selection, the contract, the championship or the performance. My view has often been very different because I was there while something underneath it was changing.

Those are the stories I want to share with you.

We can talk about where an athlete was when we first connected, what they were experiencing and what caught my attention. I can explain why that led me in a particular direction, how we approached the change and what happened when they took it back into their sport.

The interesting part for me has never been simply saying, “Look at this result.”

I want to understand why it happened.

That curiosity has driven my work for more than 20 years because every result gives me another opportunity to learn about the mind that created it. When something works, I want to know why. When an athlete responds differently than expected, I want to understand that too. Then the next athlete arrives and everything I have learned comes into the room with me.

On the Bench allows some of that experience to come into the room with you.

What Is Actually Happening Inside Your Head?

This is where our conversations can get really interesting.

An athlete may tell me they are nervous. That is useful because now we have somewhere to begin. What interests me is what their mind is actually responding to and why.

Their conscious mind may know they are prepared. Their body may be ready. Their coach may know they can perform. Somewhere underneath all of that, their brain has created a response for a reason.

I want to find the reason.

My work has grown through hypnosis, NLP concepts and more than 20 years of taking those foundations into real sporting environments, then continually refining them through what athletes actually experience. That has taken my understanding well beyond simply talking about what happened or how somebody feels about it. I want to keep pulling on the thread underneath the visible response until we begin understanding what is creating it.

That is something I can share with you On the Bench without turning our hour into a psychology lecture.

We can use real athletes, real questions and real experiences to make the mind easier to understand. You may hear me talking about someone else and suddenly realise why something has been happening in your own performance for years.

That moment of recognition is powerful because understanding yourself changes the way you can work with yourself.

The View From My Side of the Bench

After more than 20 years, I have been fortunate to see performance from a position very few people ever experience.

I have sat beside developing athletes who were still discovering what they were capable of and athletes preparing to perform on the biggest stages in the world. I have worked alongside thousands of athletes, including 50 World and Olympic Champions, with every one of those people adding something to my understanding of what happens inside the mind when the result really matters.

The work has travelled onto tracks, into pools, across fields, courts and stadiums around the world. It has been tested through training, competition, professional careers, World Championships and Olympic Games, which means when you ask me a question I am able to answer from what I have actually seen and experienced rather than what I think might happen.

That experience also gives me the freedom to be open with you.

If I know something, I will share it. If your question reminds me of an athlete or an experience that may help you understand it, we can explore that. If I think there is another question sitting underneath the one you have asked, I may become curious about that with you too.

That is what sitting On the Bench with me should feel like.

Open. Comfortable. Curious. Experienced.

A conversation where you feel supported enough to ask what you really want to ask and confident that the answer comes from someone who has spent a career testing his work where performance actually counts.

Where Could This Take You?

You may also be sitting there because you have been looking through The Athlete’s Secret Weapon and wondering what all of this means for you.

Ask me.

We can talk about Head Start, the online processes, the Competitive Edge Intensive or what working directly with me looks like. More importantly, tell me what you are trying to achieve because that gives our conversation somewhere meaningful to go.

You may discover there is a process that fits exactly where you are. You may hear something during the hour that gives you plenty to work with yourself. You may simply understand your performance differently when you leave.

All of those are good outcomes.

The purpose of taking a seat is to become more informed about yourself and what might be possible from here.

Sometimes the Best View Is From the Bench

Most of your sporting life is spent inside the action. You train, compete, recover, prepare then step back into it again.

Once a month, On the Bench gives you an hour to move slightly outside that action and look back in.

You get to listen. You get to question. You get to explore someone else’s experience and compare it quietly with your own. You get to understand a little more about what may be happening underneath your performance without needing anything to be wrong before that conversation becomes worthwhile.

Perhaps that is the real value of the bench.

You are close enough to understand the game while having enough space to see something you could not see while you were playing it.

For that hour, I am sitting there with you.

Come and Take Your Seat

We meet on the first Tuesday of every month at 6.30am Brisbane time for an hour together on Zoom.

I have looked across the time zones in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Europe and the USA knowing there will never be one time that perfectly suits everyone. If your training, competition, work, family or part of the world makes joining live difficult, reserve your seat anyway and the replay will be waiting for you inside our private On the Bench community.

There is no charge to join us.

I want the first step to be easy because I know that for some people simply entering this conversation is already a meaningful step. Once you are inside, you will find the Zoom details, the replays and a place where the connection can continue between our monthly conversations.

Then, on the first Tuesday of the month, I will take my seat, I will bring more than 20 years of questions, experiences, processes, results and everything the athletes who came before you have taught me.

You bring whatever has you curious, there is a seat beside me… grab it … let’s talk.

Reserve Your Seat On the Bench

The next On The Bench is Tuesday 6th October at 6.30am Brisbane time