Mário Ihring – I’ve conquered fear

At the beginning of our cooperation with Mário, he did not have a specific goal. For him as a player, it was more about the need to include mindset in his preparation and functioning in sport. We consider mental preparation to be a normal part of an athlete’s preparation for performance, so we built our collaboration with Mário around achieving the best possible performance.

For Mário, the transfer to Inter Bratislava meant looking around at opportunities that professional basketball can offer him. During his time at the club, we focused mainly on Mário’s game presence, self-talk and body language. After a year at Inter Bratislava, he managed to transfer abroad (AVIS UTILITAS Rapla) during the pandemic. Strong personal dissatisfaction led him to a difficult decision to return to Slovakia and play for the team Spišskí Rytieri or Spiš Knights (Spišská Nová Ves). During his short time with the team, he managed to win the title and the Most Valuable Player award in the playoffs. After a successful end of the season, he accepted an offer to join the OSE Lions club in Hungary, where he is currently based.

With Mário, it was necessary to define his strengths on which we built the whole cooperation. We set up areas of development that we gradually worked on and incorporated them into the mental preparation process. Our conversations were built around defining our goals for the season and their progressive fulfilment. We worked on the needs that arose during the season on an ad-hoc basis. We worked together to prepare for games and evaluate his performance and satisfaction with his performance.