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Lenny Wiersma

Lenny Wiersma

Sport and performance psychologist; Senior Mental Performance Consultant at Cal Athletics (UC Berkeley) and Professor Emeritus of Kinesiology at Cal State Fullerton.

Apr 15, 2026

16:47
Just a little bit of context on that story.
16:49
2008, Michael Phelps is slated to swim eight events.
16:54
The previous gold medal record was seven, set by Mark Spitz in 1972.
16:58
And the big question of could...
17:01
Michael Phelps break that record.
17:03
His final event was the 200 butterfly and he dove in the water and his goggles had come off of his face and they filled with the water when they kind of reset themselves.
17:15
And so he swam seven out of eight laps blind.

15 MINS LATER

32:47
When you talked earlier about thinking about what can go wrong, how do you balance that with putting yourself in too much negative self-talk, right? So if I'm always sitting there thinking about all the things that go wrong, am I actually just harming my own confidence? Am I walking in and anticipating failure? How do I know if I'm there and what does that process look like?

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