The Fortitude Chronicle: A Weekly Digest of Athletic Determination

Monday Momentum

For the Relentless Mind

I Told My Athlete to Think About the Worst Case. Here's What Happened.

The worst outcome is always a possibility. It's just unlikely.

Most coaches will tell you not to think about it. Redirect your mind. Visualize success. Stay positive.

I said the opposite.

I worked with an athlete who was paralyzed by worst-case thinking. Every competition, every rep, every high-stakes moment — his mind went straight to catastrophe. And the more he tried to suppress it, the louder it got.

So I stopped fighting it.

"You're right," I told him. "The worst absolutely could happen."

The look on his face said everything. Nobody had ever validated it before. But validation wasn't the point — what came next was.

Step one: Play it all the way out. To zero.

Not halfway. Not the sanitized version where things are just bad. I mean all the way to the floor.

Career over. Dream gone. Everything you worked for — didn't happen.

Now what?

Would you stop living? Would the people who love you stop loving you? Would the sun stop rising?

He sat with it. Really sat with it.

And then something shifted.

"This isn't as bad as I thought."

That's the moment. Not because the worst became acceptable — but because it became survivable. The monster under the bed lost its power the second he actually looked at it. The fear wasn't of the outcome. It was of the unknown. Once it became known — once it had a shape, a size, a name — it stopped controlling him.

This is what the Stoics called premeditatio malorum — the premeditation of adversity. Not pessimism. Not negativity. Mental rehearsal for the worst so you can perform freely in the present.

Step two: Build the adversity plan.

Once the fear had a face, we went to work.

We simulated competing when everything was going wrong. Bad calls. A slump that wouldn't break. Physical adversity. Mental noise at its loudest.

Detail after detail — what do you do? What's your first move? What's your protocol when it starts unraveling?

Because here's what most athletes don't train: recovery. They train performance. They don't train what happens when performance breaks down mid-competition.

The best do both.

They compete freely not because nothing goes wrong — but because they've already mapped out exactly what to do when it does. They have a plan for the chaos. And when chaos shows up, it doesn't feel like chaos. It feels like something they've already survived.

The worst isn't what breaks you. Uncertainty is.

Fear lives in the gap between where you are and what you don't know. Shrink that gap — even in simulation, even in your mind — and the fear shrinks with it.

Look directly at the worst.
Build the plan for it.
Then compete like someone who already survived it.

That's not pessimism.

That's the most liberating thing you'll ever do.

Two Quotes

1. “I always say you’ve got to be the same person when things are going great and when things aren’t going great. You can’t switch up, that’s the character of a good man” - Jayson Tatum

2. "The best way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." – Walt Disney

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To Building Fortitude.

 Best Regards,

Colin Jonov, Founder & CEO Athletic Fortitude