Biography

Dr.Stephen D. Ross is a licensed Performance and Clinical Psychologist with over 12 years of experience working with professional, college and elite athletes, coaches and teams.

He is the principal of OPTIM, based out of Fort Collins, Colorado. His areas of expertise include:

Mental skills/toughness training

Achieving, optimizing and sustaining optimal performance states;

Mindfulness;

Team chemistry;

Recruiting assessments;

Designing and maintaining mental training rooms.

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Dr. Ross also specializes in working with players/athletes, coaches and support staff to foster environments that maximize motivation and trust, while decreasing fear-based learning and anxiety.

Dr. Ross utilizes a research based approach to creating and nurturing optimal team chemistry and individual mastery and confidence.

As a licensed Performance and Clinical Psychologist with over a decade of emergency training and experience, Dr. Ross is an expert in dealing with substance abuse issues, anxiety, depression, season/career ending injuries, and other major career and life transitions.

"Whatever you do or dream you can do - do it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it." ~ Johann Goethe


"Make no small plans. ... they have no magic to stir men's blood." - Daniel Burnham


David Pauley

David Pauley

Friday

Stick and Carrot

 
For me, I never cease to be amazed...but more than that bothered by the sheer number of coaches who have not read the literature on positive reinforcement (carrot) versus negative reinforcement (stick). When I find myself helping athletes block out their coaches' game time critiques, I always wince inside. Not only are stick coaches less than helpful to elite athletes, they get in the way of optimal performance. A field goal kicker does not need to hear what he did wrong after a missed attempt. Research shows that, based on that missed attempt, he is already perceiving the posts to be narrower than they actually are. He needs to be reminded of the last successful kick, and he needs to visualize a perfect kick. Reminding him of the missed one is training his mind to fear missing again. The mind is pretty simple in this way. What we think about expands.
And for the record, just to be clear, carrot coaches, are not soft or mushy. They help athletes build on their strengths and develop the muscle memory to achieve greatness. Then, during the game, they focus on the positives, however small or however few.
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