Adele White - 'The Performance Mindset'

Adele White

Registered Psychologist

Session Overview

Performance can change quickly when athletes experience pressure, make mistakes, become frustrated, or lose focus. For coaches, the challenge is often knowing what to say and do in the moment without adding more pressure or complexity.

This 60-minute education session introduces key psychological processes that influence performance and gives coaches practical, evidence-informed strategies they can use in training and competition. The aim is not to make coaches psychologists, but to increase their understanding and expand the tools available when an athlete needs to reset and reconnect with the task at hand.

Learning Outcomes

• Understand performance under pressure - how pressure can change thinking, attention, decision-making, and behaviour.
• Recognise disrupted attention - identify when an athlete's attention has shifted from useful performance cues to mistakes, outcomes, or internal distractions.
• Reset and refocus - use practical strategies to interrupt unhelpful performance patterns and reconnect with the next effective action.
• Work effectively with thoughts and emotions - understand that effective performance does not require the elimination of nerves, doubt, or frustration.
• Communicate effectively under pressure - consider how timing, language and the amount of information provided can help an athlete regulate and refocus.

A Simple Coaching Framework

RECOGNISE → RESET → REFOCUS → RE-ENGAGE

A practical sequence for recognising when performance has become disrupted, creating a reset, directing attention towards relevant performance cues, and reconnecting the athlete with purposeful action.

Profile

Adele is a registered psychologist with extensive experience across elite and development sport, high-performance environments, school-based sporting academies, and private practice. Her work focuses on performance under pressure and translating psychological principles into practical strategies athletes and coaches can use in real- world performance environments.

Her approach draws predominantly on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), mindfulness, self-compassion, and solution-focused practice.

Selected Experiences

Brad Jones Racing | Sports Performance Manager / Psychologist | 2003-Current

• Long-standing work within elite motorsport supporting athletes, team personnel and executive management across performance psychology, wellbeing, conflict resolution, and high-pressure performance environments.

AFL Talent Pathways | 2016-Current

• Wellbeing and performance roles across Vic Metro, Vic Country, Oakleigh Chargers, Dandenong Stingrays and Eastern Ranges, working directly with emerging elite athletes, coaches, and support staff.

Rowville Sports Academy | 2016-2024

• Sports Performance & Mindset Coach and later Provisional Psychologist. Delivered applied performance psychology and worked collaboratively with coaches to integrate psychological skills into athlete development and everyday coaching practice.

Victorian Institute of Sport | Sports Scientist | 2003-2010

• Worked within multidisciplinary high-performance environments across individual and team sports, contributing to athlete performance, research, and evidence-based performance practices.

AFL Players' Association | Endorsed Psychologist

Provides psychological support to professional AFL players and families.

*This event will qualify for one hour CPD with Football Australia.