At Kaifas Athlete Development, I spend plenty of time on speed mechanics, stability, strength, and nutrition. But the mental and emotional side of becoming elite is just as much a part of my program as anything that happens in the gym or in the game. Training the body without training the mind leaves an athlete half prepared.
Already this season, athletes have been reaching out to me in large numbers. Some are struggling to move past mistakes. Some had a bad game. Others were scratched, and others are not getting the playing time they are used to. None of this surprises me, because it is part of every elite athlete’s journey. The goal is not to avoid these moments, because they are coming either way. The real question is whether you have a protocol ready when they arrive, so that they do not knock your development off its path.
Confidence Is Not Enough: Build Self-Assurance
Many athletes rely on confidence alone, and confidence is an emotion. Emotions come and go. After a great game, confidence is high. After one bad shift, one missed assignment, or one angry word from a coach, it can disappear. An athlete whose foundation is a feeling will always be at the mercy of the last result.
I teach athletes to build self-assurance instead. Self-assurance is an identity built on facts, earned over time. It does not rise and fall with a single performance, because it is not built on a single performance. It is built on evidence.
For an athlete, that evidence is everything you have done to prepare. It is the months of training you have put in, the strength you have built, and the speed you have gained. It is the habits you keep when nobody is watching, like showing up on time, eating well, and sleeping well. It is the times you were benched, injured, or struggling and found a way back. It is also the skills you can see on film and in your testing. A bad game cannot erase any of that, because it was earned long before the game and it is still true after it.
When a hard moment comes, a self-assured athlete does not ask, “How do I feel right now?” They ask, “What do I know to be true about myself?” Feelings are unreliable in the middle of a bad day. Facts are not.
Resetting After a Mistake
How an athlete handles a mistake often matters more than the mistake itself. When a mistake is not handled well, it tends to lead to another one. The athlete is still replaying the last play while the next one is happening. Sports psychologists often describe the solution as having a short memory, and they point out that an athlete whose mind is stuck in the past is exactly the one who makes more errors.
Our most recent guest speaker in the Virtus Athlete Mentorship series, Maxim Štrbák, gave a clear example of a healthy reset. Maxim played at a high level in Slovakia, Finland, and the USHL, and was a standout at Michigan State. The Buffalo Sabres drafted him in the second round of the 2023 NHL Draft, and he is now with the Rochester Americans of the AHL.
Maxim explained to our Virtus Athletes that when he makes a mistake, he goes back to the fundamentals. He skates hard and fast. He closes on pucks quickly. He competes at a high level. Then on the very next play, he makes the simple play. He does not try to do something spectacular to make up for what just happened.
That last part is the key. The urge to erase a mistake with a big play is strong, and it usually makes things worse. Forcing a risky play, chasing the puck, or trying to be the hero turns one error into two. The way back is through effort and simplicity, which are things you control completely.
Here is how to build your own reset:
Choose a physical cue. A deep breath, a tap of the stick or glove, or a squirt of water that you spit out. Use the same one every time so your body learns it means “next play.”
Add a reset word. One or two words that pull your attention back to the present.
Decide your first action in advance. Hard skating, winning a puck battle, or a simple pass. Make it automatic.
Save the review for later. The film room and the car ride home are for reflecting and learning, and the game is for playing.
Kobe Bryant was famous for the belief that a miss never changes the importance of the next shot. The point is not to force the next play, it is to stay fully committed to it. The same applies in every sport. The most important play is the next one.
Overcoming Adversity
Every athlete eventually faces some version of the same problem. You get injured. You get scratched. You get cut. Or you move up to a higher level and go from being the best player on your team to being the new person at the bottom of the lineup, starting again from the beginning.
This is the stage Maxim is in right now. He is working to crack the lineup in Rochester, and he described how he keeps his approach in front of him every day. He stays positive and treats practice as an opportunity to show that he can play at the next level. He refines his routine. He eats well, trains hard in the gym, and does everything he can to keep his body as healthy as possible. His thinking is that when his name is called, he wants to be at his best.
Notice what he focuses on. He is not focused on the coach’s decision, the depth chart, or who is ahead of him. He is focused on the basics and the things he can control: attitude, preparation, effort, and recovery. This is the principle I give every athlete facing a setback.
Control the controllables, which means effort, attitude, preparation, nutrition, sleep, and routine. Let go of the uncontrollables, such as the coach’s choices, other players’ performance, and the timing of your opportunity. Treat every practice as an audition, because playing time is earned in the days nobody sees. And stay ready, because opportunity tends to show up suddenly, often because someone else got injured or struggled.
Here is what controlling the controllables looks like on a real Tuesday. An athlete who was scratched over the weekend cannot change the lineup, but they can be first on the ice, win every drill in practice, ask the coach one specific question about what to improve, and watch the film with a purpose. Every one of those actions is up to them.
This is also where the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation matters. Extrinsically driven athletes are fueled by outside rewards: playing time, praise, stats, a scholarship, a contract. Those things are real, but they are controlled by other people, so the athlete’s mood and effort swing with every decision made about them. Intrinsically driven athletes are fueled by the work itself, by getting better, and by who they are becoming. Nobody can scratch that from the lineup.
Daniel Pink explores this in his book Drive. He argues that the deepest, most lasting motivation comes from three things: autonomy, which is having a say in how you work; mastery, which is the urge to keep improving at something that matters; and purpose, which is connecting the work to something bigger than yourself. All three can be practiced when the lights are off and the playing time is gone. An athlete who has them can use a benching as proof of how much they want it. An athlete who depends on rewards can start to question whether they belong.
Michael Jordan is a well-known example. He was left off the varsity team as a sophomore and sent to junior varsity, and he has often spoken about how that experience fueled his work ethic. Being cut from the top squad did not define him. What he did next did.
Becoming Anti-Fragile
The guiding philosophy behind athlete development in my program is to be anti-fragile, a concept popularized by author Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book Antifragile. Fragile things break under stress. Resilient things absorb the shock and return to where they were. Anti-fragile things get stronger because of the stress.
When an athlete faces adversity such as an injury, a cut, or reduced playing time, being resilient is good. Weathering the storm and absorbing the shock is a valuable skill. But I want athletes to go further and use the setback as an opportunity to grow. The question is not just “How do I get through this?” It is “What can I build because of this?”
Here is what that can look like. Injured athletes can sharpen their sport IQ by watching film, studying their position, and learning how the game is played at the next level. They can build better nutrition habits that carry forward for their entire career. They can train the parts of the body that are not injured and address weak areas that were neglected during the busy season, including mobility, stability, and movement quality that never got enough attention. They can also strengthen their mental game with visualization, breathing practice, and goal setting.
An athlete who comes back from an injury with a better understanding of the game, better habits, and a stronger body is not just recovered. They are better than they were before. The setback became fuel.
Connor McDavid shows what this can look like at the highest level. He arrived in Edmonton in 2015 as the first overall pick, already regarded as a generational talent. Thirteen games into his rookie season, he went hard into the end boards in Philadelphia and broke his left collarbone. He needed surgery, and a season that had started brilliantly was suddenly in doubt. He came back in early February 2016 and produced 36 points in the last 32 games, finishing as a Calder Trophy finalist despite missing roughly half the year.
Years later, in the final game of the 2018-19 regular season, he went leg first into a goalpost in Calgary. It was first reported as a minor PCL tear, but the full damage was a fully torn PCL, torn meniscus, and a cracked tibia, a major knee injury that could have altered his career. Doctors recommended surgery. McDavid chose a rigorous rehab program instead, and he was in the lineup on opening night. He has since added more Hart and Art Ross Trophies and become the best player in the world.
What stands out is that these setbacks were not the end of his rise. They were part of it. He had to rebuild, rehab, and return, and each time he came back and kept climbing. A setback that looks like the worst thing to happen to a career can become the thing that proves how durable that career is.
The same is true of being scratched or cut. An athlete who uses that time to tighten up their routine, address their weaknesses, and compete harder in practice will come out the other side stronger than an athlete who never faced it.
Conclusion
Mistakes, bad games, injuries, and lost playing time are not signs that something has gone wrong in your development. They are part of it. Every elite athlete goes through them, and the ones who last are the ones who prepare for them in advance.
Build self-assurance from facts you have earned rather than confidence that comes from feelings. Have a reset ready for the moment a mistake happens. Focus on what you control when adversity hits. And approach every setback with an anti-fragile mindset, asking what you can gain from it.
That is the work I do with athletes every day at Kaifas Athlete Development. The physical training makes you capable. The mental training makes sure that capability shows up on the hardest days.
