Stop overthinking, calm your body, and compete free under pressure.
Colorado Springs · Virtual sessions nationwide.
Stop overthinking, calm your body, and compete free under pressure.
Colorado Springs · Virtual sessions nationwide.
You've put in the work. The fitness is there. Your coaches see the potential. But in the moments that matter most — the race, the game, the qualifying heat — competition anxiety kicks in and something shifts.
Your heart rate spikes before you're ready. Your thoughts spiral. The voice that was quiet all week gets loud right when you need silence. And the version of you that shows up isn't the one who trained for this.
You dominate in practice. You've had glimpses of what you're capable of under pressure. But you can't make it consistent, and you don't fully understand why.
It's not a talent problem. It's not a toughness problem. And performance anxiety isn't going to get better by training more or trying harder to calm down.
You've read the books. Maybe you've tried meditation apps — the kind that work on your couch and fall apart on the starting line. You've had therapy that helped you feel better but didn't give you anything to use mid-race. You've white-knuckled through the nerves and told yourself next time would be different.
None of that failed because you weren't trying hard enough. It failed because it wasn't designed for what actually happens when you're standing in front of a crowd with everything on the line and your prefrontal cortex — the part of your brain that runs your best thinking — starts going offline.
What athletes dealing with competition anxiety actually need is sport-specific work that targets the autonomic nervous system directly. Not more mental effort. A fundamentally different approach.
We start by mapping what's actually driving your performance barriers. For some athletes it's autonomic nervous system dysregulation — a body that fires too hot under pressure. For others it's avoidance, past experiences, perfectionism, or competing for reasons that generate pressure instead of fuel. The intake process identifies your specific profile so we're never working on the wrong thing.
You leave every session with tools you can use — not theory to think about, but skills to practice. Drawing from HeartMath biofeedback, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), EMDR, and evidence-based sport psychology, we build a personalized system around how your autonomic nervous system specifically responds to pressure.
The goal isn't a perfect mental state on race day. It's a set of tools practiced enough to be automatic — so you can perform well regardless of what state you're in. Nervous, doubtful, distracted, imperfect. Competition anxiety can show up and you perform anyway. That's trainable. That's what we build toward.
I'm a licensed sport psychologist with 15 years of experience helping athletes move from anxious and overwhelmed to calm, confident, and competing free. Based in Colorado Springs, I work with athletes in person across the Pikes Peak region and virtually with athletes and teams nationwide.
I've worked alongside hundreds of athletes — from high school competitors to NCAA programs to professional performers — through the process of transforming competition anxiety and performance anxiety from something they fight to something they can work with.
I know this from the inside, too. I was a competitive swimmer before becoming an endurance athlete, and I've stood at starting lines with everything I'm describing running through my own head. That shapes how I work — not with the assumption that anxiety is a weakness to eliminate, but with the understanding that it's a signal to work with.
My approach integrates clinical rigor with practical sport psychology tools. I'm trained in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), EMDR, and HeartMath biofeedback — not because they're trendy, but because they reach where generic mental skills training doesn't. For athletes dealing with perfectionism, trauma, or deeper performance barriers, that clinical depth matters.
Physiological tools to regulate your nervous system in real time: breathwork, biofeedback-trained coherence states, and pre-competition protocols that hold when your heart rate is already climbing. Athletes who've managed competition anxiety for years consistently describe this as the most significant shift.
Sport psychology mental routines that transfer from practice to competition. When the distractions and "what-ifs" arrive, you have a system to return to instead of fighting yourself for attention at the worst possible moment.
A shift from outcome-based confidence ("I'm good because I won") to process-based confidence ("I trust my tools and my training"). This is where perfectionism loses its grip — and where competing starts feeling sustainable instead of exhausting.
For athletes dealing with deeper patterns — perfectionism, past failures that left a mark, trauma, or a performance environment doing lasting damage — clinical sport psychology in Colorado Springs goes further than surface-level mental skills work. Both performance coaching and clinical services are available here.
You're capable. The question is whether your mental performance reflects that — consistently, under pressure, when it counts. Whether you're dealing with competition anxiety, performance anxiety, perfectionism, fear of failure, or burnout, there's a path that doesn't require you to simply push through.
Mental performance coaching is available nationally via virtual sessions. Clinical sport psychology — including therapy for anxiety, trauma, and eating concerns — is available to Colorado residents, in person in Colorado Springs and virtually statewide.
Culture drives performance more than most coaches have tools to address. Team consulting builds the psychological safety, trust, and collective resilience that shows up as late-game composure, post-mistake recovery, and an environment where athletes give their best.
Available in Colorado Springs and nationally.
Parents have a huge influence on Parents have more influence on athlete confidence than almost any other factor — and almost no guidance on how to use it well. Parent coaching helps families support without pressuring and keep joy at the center of sport even when stakes are high.
Most athletes spend months working on the wrong thing because no one has identified what's actually driving their barriers. This assessment reveals your specific pattern and explains why generic advice about competition anxiety hasn't worked.
Performance anxiety that goes unaddressed doesn't stay the same — it trains itself deeper into competition. Your autonomic nervous system learns to fire that way. The avoidance patterns become more habitual. The gap between practice performance and competition performance becomes the story you tell yourself about who you are as an athlete.
You don't have to stay in that cycle. The sport psychology tools that let athletes compete free are trainable, measurable, and — unlike physical fitness — they don't take years to develop. Athletes dealing with competition anxiety routinely notice meaningful shifts within the first few weeks of the right work.
This could be that season.
Please reach us at trentclaypool@proton.me if you cannot find an answer to your question.
A sport psychologist helps athletes understand what's actually driving their anxiety — whether that's nervous system dysregulation, avoidance patterns, perfectionism, or something deeper — and builds a personalized set of tools to address it. Unlike generic mental wellness advice, sport psychology is designed specifically for the conditions of competition: physiological activation, high stakes, performance on demand. Sessions combine mental skills training, nervous system regulation, and — when needed — clinical approaches like ACT or EMDR.
Most athletes notice meaningful shifts in autonomic nervous system regulation — less physiological hijacking, faster recovery from mistakes — within the first three to five sessions. Building a robust, automatic system that holds up consistently under pressure typically takes three to six months of regular work. The timeline depends on what we're addressing and how consistently you practice between sessions.
Yes — youth athletes often see some of the fastest changes because their patterns aren't as deeply established yet. I work with athletes as young as 10. Parent involvement is encouraged for athletes under 18, and parent coaching is available separately for families who want to support the work at home.
For therapy clients in Colorado, Dr. Claypool in-network with Aetna and Select Health Colorado. Many clients use Thrizer to manage out-of-network reimbursement. Mental performance coaching — available to athletes nationally — is not covered by insurance. Full fee information is shared on the free discovery call.
Our fees vary depending on the type of therapy and the duration of the session. Dr. Claypool's fees are $250 for the intake session and $200 for each follow up session. In addition, we feel passionate about keeping our services available and reserve a limited number of spots at a sliding scale fee (income dependent). If you feel you may qualify for our sliding scale please inquire about availibility.
No. I work with athletes from every level — recreational to professional. Competition anxiety and performance anxiety affect athletes at all levels, and the tools that help are the same regardless of whether you're competing in a local 5K or an NCAA championship.
Not at all. Many athletes I work with have no clinical diagnosis — they're high-functioning competitors who simply haven't had access to sport-specific mental tools. Sport psychology spans clinical work (therapy for anxiety, trauma, eating concerns) and performance work (mental skills, nervous system training, pre-competition systems). You don't need to be struggling to benefit.
Absolutely! We have found that when the athlete's support system is onboard and engaged outcomes improve, especially for our younger athletes. We love seeing parents and coaches involved and the value they bring to their athlete's life!
While We specialize in the clinical and performance needs of athletes, we also have an extensive history in treating many mental health concerns - most notably, the impacts of stress, eating disorders, depression, and anxiety. One of the benefits of working with a clinical sport psychologist is the ability to not only help you get back to your baseline, but to truly thrive! We recommend taking your free discovery call to see how our services could be of benefit to you!
Yes, we do! We really enjoy working with teams. Typically, we start the process with discussing goals with the coach and developing a program for the team from there. We also support teams with both online and in-person learning and experiences.
The athletes who compete free aren't the ones without anxiety. They're the ones who built a different relationship to it — tools that work, a system they trust, and the practiced ability to act from their best self regardless of how their nervous system is behaving.
That's what sport psychology builds. That's what we work toward here, in Colorado Springs and with athletes across the country.
Contact: 719-428-1200 trentclaypool@proton.me Colorado Springs, CO — serving athletes in Monument, Colorado Springs, Castle Rock, Denver, and virtually nationwide.
Copyright © 2026 Dr. Trent Claypool - All Rights Reserved. Online sport psychology coaching programs are not a substitute for therapy.
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