Clean Run - August 2014 - 65

Being aware is being proactive. People
are not victims, but rather have a relationship
with their mindset gremlins. That means they can do
something about it. That is very empowering.

ﬁnancial and time constraints of life as
a full-time student, she was only able
to compete "once in a blue moon." She
says, "I really savored and appreciated
it." Liberated by her own anonymity in
this country, she was also able to "bash
a ton of gremlins," those issues that kept
her from running her best back home in
Northern Ireland.
When she returned to the United Kingdom after ﬁnishing a clinical internship,
she almost retired Ferdy. But when she
learned she had a chance to try out for the
WAO, she did it and earned a spot on the
squad. "I felt like I had put my mindset
gremlins to bed, on home turf, which was
the most difﬁcult for me. Then Ferdy got
ill and put the kibosh on that." She did,
however, travel with the competitors as
"Team Psycho" to help the competitors
with their own mindsets. In recent years,
she adds, she has added individuals from
numerous other countries as clients.
She turned to her work. "I had a weird
accent. I was already kind of 'go-get
'em-ish,' and had all the positivity of my
American experience." If she was going
to make a difference in people's lives,
she realized that she was going to have
to make a cultural shift and ﬁnd a positive way for people to access the help she
could offer positively. In 2008 she started Mind To Win, a program of coaching
for success in competitive sports. The
business grew out of the dog agility that
Kathrine knows so well.

Head Games
It was easy for a trained observer like
Kathrine to see what was going wrong
in the agility ring. "I watched things
like people walking the course, talking about where they would be eliminated, and sure enough they would do
it. Or something would happen and they
wouldn't Q. They would ignore all of
the sublime stuff and focus on the one
or two mistakes." This was a culture she
understood, populated by people that
she already cared about. "I was watching people who I know and seeing how
their personalities were translating into
what goes on in the ring." People, she
came to realize, may not be comfortable
talking about their problems, or even
admitting that they have problems, but
they understand the idea of sports psychology. "I wondered if I could give
people a safe space to come in and work
things through in their competitive life."
About the same time she started Mind to
Win, she started to run A Real Change,
a women's group using the same set of
psychotherapy principles shifted from a
clinical to a coaching setting.

How It Works
While Kathrine is qualiﬁed to do clinical work, she wants to make it clear that
what she does in Mind to Win is different.
"Clinical settings," she explains, "focus
on what is in the past or what might happen." In Mind to Win, she is watching
dogs and handlers in action, running

agility courses. "I actually get to see
what happens and tweak and change it in
the moment." That, she wants to emphasize, is key. "We are actually pouncing
on the mindset gremlins as they happen."
This approach offers her clients a different
experience so that they are leaving a session feeling that it was not just like every
other day. "People come very ramped up
and feel like it is equal to competition pressure. The program simulates competition
so that when a handler has success in one
of my conﬁdence clinics, they have the
experience of a truly positive experience."

Recurring Issues
A classic example of what Kathrine observes, and how she is able to help, is
the start-line stay. "The person will have
no neck, be red in the face, and looking
like they are going to burst a blood vessel. They are not like that in training, so
the dog is saying, 'What is happening?'
Everything about the handler is communicating stress and the dog breaks
the stay." So she instructs the handler to
breath. She says she would like to see
some neck. "Suddenly the dog is sitting
there for several minutes, chilling, as relaxed as can be. The dog is telling tales
on the handler, so I work on the handler."
Another example is the one dropped bar.
She recalls walking the course with a
handler who told Kathrine where the one
dropped bar would occur. "It's like the
gremlin gets hold and can predict which

In person services: Mind to Win camps combine a fun-packed seminar to cover theory before getting participants out on
agility courses where they can immediately put into practice what they've learned and get personalized tips and strategies
to beat their own mindset gremlins.
For teachers: In Trainer Training, Katherine observes classes and then helps the teacher to proactively encourage a
Mind to Win attitude in students.
Online: Year-round courses including: Start Line Confidence, Goal-Setting for Success, and soon The Q-gremlin.
Info-fest: Katherine publishes an online newsletter, tweets regularly, and posts daily on www.facebook.com/MindtoWin.
August 14

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http://www.facebook.com/MindtoWin

Clean Run - August 2014

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