Michael Covel speaks with Dr. Michael Lardon on today’s podcast. Lardon is one of the premier mental performance coaches in the world, with clients in more than a dozen professional and Olympic sports. His athletes have won major golf championships, Olympic gold medals, Super Bowls and World Series titles, among other achievements. He is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Diego and a Consulting Psychiatrist to the United States Olympic Teams at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, CA. However, Lardon and Covel's conversation is applicable to everyone, not just certain athletes. They talk about Lardon’s early experiences playing professional table tennis; the “slowing down of time” and how it affects performance; the importance of mental performance in sports; Phil Mickelson’s loss at the 2013 Open and his win at the British Open a month later, and how Lardon was assisting him during this period; “the yips”, and what is going on in the mind when someone can no longer perform a simple activity they used to accomplish easily; neurological vs. psychological “yips”; Lardon’s opinion on what’s happening with Tiger Woods currently; narrow, intense focus vs. dropping the intense expenditure of energy when you don’t need it (ie. what do you do with your downtime?); the process of desensitization; the deliberate plan for improvement and the importance of writing things down. For more information on Dr. Michael Lardon, visit drlardon.com. Want a free trend following DVD? Go to trendfollowing.com/win.