Frequently Asked
Questions

Built to Rise is a structured 8-session private coaching program designed to help female athletes develop confidence, mental toughness, and consistency under pressure. It's not a drop-in service — it's a complete program with a beginning, middle, and end, built around your athlete's specific mental barriers.

Sessions are 60 minutes each, held virtually, and completely private. Between sessions, your athlete has access to support messaging, custom visualization recordings, and mindset workbooks. Parents receive their own set of resources — including before and after game scripts, and language to use after a tough loss.

The program focuses on: managing pressure and expectations, building confident and effective self-talk, developing reset routines for mistakes, and strengthening mental resilience and emotional control.

Every session is different because every athlete is different — but here's a general rhythm:

• Check-in— How did the past week go? What came up in games or practice? What did she notice about her mindset?

• Focused work— We dig into the specific mental skill we're building that session (self-talk, pressure reframes, reset routines, identity work, visualization, etc.)

• Application— We connect it directly to her sport and the situations she actually faces

• Takeaway— She leaves with one clear thing to practice before the next session

Sessions are conversational, not clinical. Your athlete won't be lying on a couch — she'll be doing real, practical work that connects directly to what happens on the court or field.

This is the question every parent asks — and I'll be honest with you.

Most athletes start noticing subtle internal shifts within the first few sessions — how they talk to themselves after a mistake, how they respond to pressure, their ability to reset mid-game instead of spiraling. These internal changes often happen before parents or coaches notice anything external.

Visible performance changes — the kind a coach or parent sees on the court — typically start showing up consistently around sessions 4–6, as the tools become automatic rather than something she has to consciously think about.

What I always tell parents: the goal isn't a single standout game. The goal is a more consistent athlete who handles adversity differently than she did before. That change is durable — it sticks after the program ends.

Parents are a real part of this — not just bystanders. Here's how it works:

• The coaching sessions themselves are private between Coach Heidi and the athlete. That privacy is essential — athletes need a space where they can be fully honest without worrying about how it lands with their parent.

• Parents receive their own resources: Before & After Game Scripts(what to say to set your athlete up before competition) and Phrases to Use After a Tough Game(language that helps instead of unintentionally adding pressure).

• There are periodic parent check-in conversations built into the program so you stay informed on the overall direction without compromising the athlete's private space.

Parents consistently tell me the resources alone — specifically learning what not to say after a tough game — were worth it. Sometimes the most powerful thing a parent can do is change the car ride home.

The free discovery call exists specifically to prevent this. By the time we've had that first conversation, we'll both know whether the fit is right.

That said, coaching is a relationship — and it takes a few sessions to fully find your rhythm. If something isn't working, I want to know. I'd much rather adjust my approach than have an athlete sitting through sessions that aren't landing.

I take the trust families place in me seriously, and I'll always be honest if I think a different approach or resource would serve your athlete better.

This is a fair question — and I won't give you a sales pitch here. Let me just tell you what's different about how I work:

• It's built from lived experience, not just theory.I battled the same pressure, perfectionism, and self-doubt that your athlete is dealing with — at the D1 level and professionally. I didn't just study this; I lived it.

• It's practical, not motivational.Motivation fades. Systems don't. Every tool I teach has a name, a process, and a way to use it in the middle of a game — not just after it.

• It's personalized.I'm not running your athlete through a generic curriculum. Every session is built around what's actually showing up for her specifically.

• It addresses identity, not just symptoms.A lot of mental performance work treats the symptoms (overthinking, nerves, slumps). I go to the root: who your athlete believes she is apart from her performance. When that changes, everything else shifts.

I work with athletes from age 11 through the college level — the approach just looks different depending on where your athlete is developmentally.

For athletes ages 11–13, sessions are shorter and the work is more hands-on and visual. We use activities, drawings, stories, and tangible tools rather than the kind of deep reflective conversation that older athletes can sustain. The mental skills are the same — self-talk, reset routines, handling pressure — they're just taught in a way that fits how younger brains actually engage and learn.

For high school and college athletes, sessions run the full 60 minutes and go deeper. Athletes at this stage have enough self-awareness to reflect on how their thinking is affecting their performance and to apply the tools in real time under pressure.

If you're unsure whether your athlete is ready, the free discovery call is a good place to find out. I'll be honest with you about whether the timing is right and what format would serve her best.

No specific sport required. The mental skills we work on — managing pressure, resetting after mistakes, building identity-based confidence, controlling self-talk — apply across every sport and every position.

My personal background is in basketball (D1 and professional), so I draw on a lot of examples from that world. But I've successfully coached athletes in soccer, volleyball, softball, swimming, gymnastics, track, and more. The mental game is the mental game.

The tools get customized to your athlete's sport — the specific scenarios, the timing of pressure moments, the reset routine between plays or innings or points — but the foundation is universal.

Yes — custom visualization recordings are included in the Built to Rise program. This isn't just calming music with vague affirmations. These are sport-specific, personalized audio recordings that walk your athlete through mentally rehearsing performance scenarios — the big game, the pressure moment, the comeback after a mistake.

Visualization is one of the most research-supported tools in sports psychology. Studies consistently show that mental rehearsal activates the same neural pathways as physical practice — meaning your brain can't fully distinguish between a vividly imagined performance and a real one. Elite athletes have used it for decades.

Most athletes listen to their visualization recording 3–5 times per week, typically before bed or before a game. The results athletes describe — more calm, more focus, more confidence in pressure moments — are among the most consistent feedback I receive.