Born out of a frustration with a lack of accessible mental skills solutions on the market outside of the traditional face-to-face offering, Jack Preddey, a former professional cricketer in Australia and the UK set out to build a product that would provide athletes and organizations with a high quality, trusted and credible mental skills solution.
Optimize Mind Performance (OMP) links athletes with some of the most renowned mental skills coaches from around the world through the content they create. The materials available in the app cover all the foundations of sports psychology and sports-specific mental skills. Some of the OMP coaches include Dr. Ross Flowers, who has prior stints with the Lakers, Rams and San Francisco Giants, Dr. Sam Maniar, who has worked extensively in the NFL and Dr. Andrea Wieland, a former Olympian who has worked with some of America’s biggest names in sport and was the Head of Mental Conditioning at IMG Academy.
For the baseball content, OMP has turned to Geoff Miller, a highly regarded expert in baseball psychology who has spent 17 years working in the MLB for the Pirates, Nationals, Braves, Angels, and Phillies. Miller is creating an ongoing series of mental skills training and commentary meant to reach a wide range of ballplayers at different stages of development. “I wanted to produce lessons that would help a high school ballplayer who was a beginner at mental skills training, but also deliver quality information that was good enough for a big leaguer to use,” says Miller.
Baseball lessons in the app follow this thinking, with foundational content meant to help players who are looking for starting points for mental training, and mixes that with practical teaching points for being focused and ready-in-the-box or separating one pitch at a time on the mound. There are lessons for helping catchers with the yips, blending mechanics and the mental game, how to process and move on from a bad game, and new perspectives on slumps.
Each lesson is paired with its own one-minute review, meant to allow players and coaches to listen to the key points on a daily basis. Future baseball content will include daily pre-practice scans meant for mental warm-ups, a series on routines, and healthy perspectives on identity in sport.
ABCA Hall of Fame coach John Casey stated that “the OMP app is an easily accessible and outstanding resource for players and coaches. It’s like having the top mental game experts like Geoff Miller on call 24/7.”
Casey, who led the baseball program at Tufts University for nearly four decades, added that “the mental game is a separator in baseball, and the OMP app makes that happen. It is the perfect mental skills solution for coaches to provide to their athletes.”
In addition to the lessons and tools offered by the aforementioned coaches, the app also delivers mental skills content in an engaging and interactive manner, which is important for younger generations.
The OMP app can be downloaded on both the Apple or Google Play store, and there are also team options available. It is a cost-effective, straightforward way for programs to help their players (and coaches, for that matter) both on and off the field. For more information, visit www.optimizemindperformance.com