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

Athletes Are People Too

We seem to have certain mythical, magical, even supernatural ideas about elite athletes.  It is a mythology that survives in spite of almost weekly reminders of their humanity. We want them to be more than human perhaps.  Role models even.  In truth, athletes are people too.  They suffer from eating disorders, depresssion, anxiety, addictions, self doubt and a world that seems singularly focused on their most recent performance. Sport and performance is most often reduced to stats; ERA, RBI, GAA, Handicap, PB...you fill in the next ones...the list is endless.  The numbers might reference wind speed, temperature and altitude, but I guarantee that you won't find information on what a particular athlete was dealing with on a particular day.  Fans don't want to hear excuses.  That's our language for denying that anything an athlete is dealing with on a personal level could possibly be blamed for failure.  They have it made after all.  The truth is that professional athletes and elite athletes do have some privilege.  The lie is that they don't also suffer.    
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