Your Athlete Knows the Mental Game. The Block Is Still There.
A resource for CMPCs, sport psychologists, and mental performance professionals working with athletes whose progress has stalled.
You have athletes who understand the work. They know the techniques. They can articulate their process, name their triggers, and execute the strategies you have built with them.
And in practice, it holds. Then the stakes rise and something takes over that the techniques do not reach.
That gap between knowing and doing is often not a cognitive gap. It is a physiological one. The block is held below the level where insight, reframing, and skill rehearsal operate.
That is the layer this work is built for.
Recognize Any of These Cases?
Athletes who understand their performance issue completely and still cannot move it
Athletes who execute your strategies well in practice and lose access to them under real pressure
Yips, freeze responses, or sudden mechanical breakdowns that resist cognitive intervention
Athletes who have plateaued or regressed despite consistent, well-delivered mental performance work
Athletes carrying a specific performance event, injury, or failure that keeps resurfacing in the body
High performers who present as regulated and describe a very different internal experience
If you are working with an athlete who fits more than one of these, the block may be sitting at the nervous system level.
What This Work Actually Is
The Precision Performance Lab provides nervous system-based performance coaching using Brainspotting, Somatic Experiencing principles, and polyvagal-informed regulation.
Mental performance training operates primarily at the cortical level. Focus, strategy, self-talk, imagery, arousal regulation through cognitive means. Those interventions are effective and they are not what this work replaces.
Brainspotting accesses subcortical processing directly. It does not require the athlete to cognitively engage with the block, talk through it, or build a new skill on top of it. It works at the level where freeze responses, somatic holding patterns, and performance trauma are actually stored.
Brainspotting was developed as an adjunct modality. It is designed to run alongside existing work, not in place of it.
Where This Fits Alongside What You Already Have
Many of the athletes we work with are already receiving mental performance support. This work operates at a different layer and is designed to run alongside it.
Different Layer, Not a Different Philosophy
This work does not ask an athlete to reconsider their mental performance training or replace the framework you have built with them. It addresses a physiological layer underneath it.
No Interruption to Your Work
Athletes continue with you throughout. Most see meaningful movement in a focused series of sessions rather than an open-ended engagement.
Clear Scope
This is performance coaching, not therapy. When something clinical surfaces that falls outside performance scope, it gets named directly and referred appropriately.
Working Together
Athlete Referral
The most common arrangement. You identify an athlete whose block is not moving through cognitive work, and they schedule directly. With appropriate consent, coordination on performance goals is available so both efforts stay aligned.
Case Consultation
If you want to think through whether a specific athlete is a fit before referring, that conversation is available at no cost. Sometimes the answer is that the athlete does not need this. That is a useful answer too.
Professional Education
Presentations and trainings for practices, group settings, or professional organizations covering the subcortical layer of performance blocks and where somatic and Brainspotting methods fit in a performance context. Format and pricing are program-specific.
WHY PROFESSIONALS REFER TO THIS WORK
Dan VerBout is a Brainspotting Consultant, one of the highest designations in Brainspotting training worldwide, which means he trains and consults to other Brainspotting practitioners. He is an advanced Somatic Experiencing Practitioner in his advanced year of training with graduate-level clinical education in counseling and psychological services and a Masters in Business Administration.
The work is grounded in Porges' polyvagal framework and applied to sport through advanced training in performance-specific applications.
Professionals refer here because the methodology is credible, the scope is clearly defined, and the work is designed to complement what they are already doing rather than compete with it.
Simple. Straightforward. Low Barrier.
Step 1 — You identify an athlete: The block is not moving through cognitive work. Something is holding at a level your interventions are not reaching.
Step 2 — You reach out or refer directly: Either schedule a case consultation to think it through, or share this page with the athlete or their family.
Step 3 — Fit gets assessed honestly: A free Discovery Call determines whether this work is right for the athlete. If it is not, you will hear that directly.
Step 4 — You stay in the loop: With appropriate consent, coordination on performance goals keeps both efforts aligned throughout.
Have a Case in Mind?
If you are working with an athlete who understands the mental game and still cannot access it under pressure, that conversation is worth having. Case consultations are free and there is no expectation of a referral.
Questions first? Reach Dan directly at dan@precisionperformancelab.org or (612) 242-8310.