Building Confidence through Athletics with Jason Gordon

Imagine for a moment, you are playing baseball in the American League Division Series. The stadium falls silent as you shift your weight from one foot to the other. With one white sneaker on a dusty third base, you watch eagle-eyed for the pitcher to make a move from where he is standing in the center of the diamond-shaped field. It’s the bottom of the ninth inning, and the bases are loaded with two strikes on the board. With adrenaline coursing through your veins, you wait until the ball is in the air before you launch yourself face first into the dirt, tripped by a rogue shoelace that will now cost your team their place at the American League Championship Series, blowing the game. How can you ever show your face in public again?
Luckily for Jason Gordon, former professional golfer and owner of Full Salvo Athlete, decades spent learning and training under the best in sports psychology and coaching has provided him with the skills to prepare the next generation of athletes for these types of scenarios. As a ex-professional golf player and an ex-police officer, Jason always gravitated towards athleticism. Having spent the majority of his life playing golf around the nation with the biggest and best professional athletes in the sport, Jason experienced challenges and used them to better his playing skills. And even after his pro golf career, while working as an officer for over a decade, he readily admits he missed the adrenaline and competition that came with professional sports. When his seven-year old son began playing baseball, Jason saw that his skills could be used to help all sorts of athletes, not just the professionals. All the experiences he had collected could be used to teach the next generation.
In recent years, athletes like Simone Biles have become more vocal about the negative consequences to their mental health which comes with constant peak athletic performance. The amount of stress professional athletes are under is unmatched, and Jason Gordon offers a combination of sports psychology and mindset coaching through Full Salvo to give his clients the tools for success. Instead of quitting the sport you love because of one rogue shoelace, Jason preaches mindset awareness and regulation starting with arguably the most powerful muscle in the body; the brain. After a crushing defeat or soul-shattering loss, it can be easy to throw in the towel and give up on your dreams. But when we allow ourselves to foster this kind of defeatist attitude, we cause more harm than good to ourselves in the long run. While trying to protect against future pain, this mindset does nothing to facilitate actual growth. If anything, it’s like building a mental wall between your goals, creating even more barriers you must face before healing can take place. Instead of crawling into pit of despair and telling ourselves that we aren’t worthy of reaching our dreams, a healthy mindset is crucial to understanding our limitations while fostering an atmosphere of learning and healing.
Jason believes emotional maturity and regulation, like all other skills, can be learned and mastered at any age and Full Salvo offers the tools for youth to cope with their emotions in healthy ways. For modern teenagers and athletes, feelings of insecurity, anxiety, and embarrassment are confronted daily. And while Covid-19 might have felt like a few bad years to all the adults who had to work remotely, our youth have missed significant aspects of what we consider to be a normal childhood. Isolation and loneliness are on the rise; and without proper guidance or the skills to manage their emotions, teens can easily spiral down paths of self destruction, developing substance abuse issues or mental disorders which will follow them for life.
While we can’t turn back time and give kids the years Covid-19 stole from them, Jason is doing his best to build up the emotional confidence of his athletes bit by bit. He regularly spends his time mentoring teenagers and college-aged students; helping them to make and set realistic goals, to measure success, and to control their emotions in healthy ways. Instead of spiraling into depression or hopelessness; Jason preaches teamwork, success, growth, healthy living, competition, and positive attitudes. He hopes to soon be able to take his program on the road, providing talks at local high schools in order to teach youth the confidence-building, real-world, life skills they will need for adulthood. As well as teens, Jason’s clients come from all walks of life; learning holistic tools to become the strongest versions of themselves they can be, with the guidance for success. With all the strengths of a personal trainer mixed with a mental health counselor, Jason Gordon has been applying his talents with Full Salvo Athlete and guiding athletes and students in the Santa Clarita Valley down a healthier path for their future.

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