In between sessions with golfers and actors, author and Mental Management Trainer Troy Bassham sits with West Fort Worth Lifestyle to discuss his incredible career and the training protocol that took his dad from uncoordinated try-hard to Olympic gold medalist.
An Olympic hopeful himself, Bassham followed in his father's footsteps competitively shooting, something he highly advises against, but the family could have turned out very differently if you hear them tell the story.
Bassham's father, Lanny, was the last kid to be picked for teams in gym class, even as he dreamed of sports glory. But one day, he learned about the JRCC rifle team.
"For the first time in his life, he wasn't bad at a sport. He wasn't great at it, either, but he was average," explains Bassham.
But still, Lanny became a junior national champion in the sport, attending college on an ROTC scholarship related to shooting, and eventually competed on the biggest stage in the world.
By 1972, Lanny made the Olympic team and the title of number-one shooter in the world.
"But my dad had a problem," explains Bassham. "He thought talent was important. It's irrelevant."
Bassham explains that the general rule of thumb for practice says that to be good at something, a person should practice 5,000 hours. If you want to be great, put in 10,000. So, at the Olympic level, where everyone has spent a lifetime training, and the competitors are all at the same level, how does an athlete get an edge?
Lanny developed Mental Management to fill the void, a training protocol that eliminates doubt and creates consistency in winning through proven cognitive strategies. He taught the principles to his children.
"I expect to win," says Bassham. "Everyone else hopes to win."
After realizing his sports dreams, Bassham has settled into a life training athletes, specifically golfers, and has written several books on the system, hopefully carrying the message on for generations to come. The books range from a narrative style to more textbook-like, but all delve deeper into a component of Mental Management.
"With Winning in Mind" was Lanny's first book, outlining the basic principles of Mental Management.
"It gives you an individual athlete's perspective on what you need to do to manage the mind and take advantage of your skill level," says Bassham. "So, it's performance-based, not necessarily psychology-based, even though both involve mental aspects."
Lanny wrote the book from an athlete's perspective rather than a psychologist's, and Bassham says it's still a best-seller for the family.
Then, after eight years working with his father, Bassham wrote a book called "Attainment: The Twelve Elements of Performance."
"Ninety-five percent of winning is done by 5% of participants," he says. "What do those 5% do? What separates them?"
In the book, Bassham explores what winners have in common and outlines what the best athletes and top performers do to keep winning.
"The second book I wrote is a golf book called 'Fore the Mind,' he continues. "This was about an athlete's thoughts. Golfer's thoughts go way out of there. You're looking at the fairway, but that's not what golfers look at. They're looking at the trees, the water. Where do I not want to go? Okay. Thinking inappropriately."
Bassham says that athletes are much more successful when they look where they want to hit.
'Fore' is told in a narrative style from the perspective of a golfer receiving helpful advice anonymously in his golf bag.
"It's about a tour player struggling to win," says Bassham. "He doesn't have a strong mental game. Later, you find out who it is. But there's a little bit of a Yoda and Luke Skywalker thing."
Bassham's novels are available at mentalmanagement.com and Amazon.