Coaching practices for Adrian Wells Mct

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Adrian Wells Mct, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I only think about water mid-workout when I’m already gasping, and the afternoon after a hard session I’m wiped out for hours
• My attention feels welded to the inside of my own head
• I jump in the ice bath after every session because it makes the soreness vanish, but I’ve started wondering if I’m shooting myself in the foot
• The day after a hard session I’m sore and wiped out and I panic that I’ve hurt myself or overdone it, so I back right off and rest for days
• There’s a big thing coming up

Practices that may help

1. Metacognitive Therapy, Made Practical
   Metacognitive therapy (MCT), developed by Adrian Wells, targets not the content of negative thoughts but the beliefs people hold about thinking itself — particularly the beliefs that worry and rumination are useful or uncontrollable. By changing these meta-level beliefs, MCT aims to stop the prolonged self-focused thinking styles that maintain anxiety and depression. A growing body of randomized controlled trials supports MCT as effective for GAD, PTSD, depression, and social anxiety, with some studies showing superiority to CBT.
2. Attention Training Technique (ATT), Made Practical
   The Attention Training Technique (ATT), developed by Adrian Wells, is a structured auditory exercise that rebuilds voluntary control over where attention goes — directly countering the self-focused, threat-locked attention that sustains anxiety and health anxiety. Randomised trials support its effectiveness as a standalone and as part of Metacognitive Therapy.
3. Detached Mindfulness, Made Practical
   Detached mindfulness, developed by Adrian Wells in Metacognitive Therapy, is a mental stance of observing thoughts without engaging, analysing, or believing them — like watching clouds drift past without chasing any of them. It directly targets the extended rumination and worry that drive anxiety and depression, with growing clinical trial evidence supporting MCT overall.
4. Hydrate before and after exercise — not just during
   Exercise-induced sweat creates deficits that begin before you feel thirsty and persist for hours; proactive framing beats reactive drinking.
   Mindful Hydration: Water, Cognition, and Mood
5. The Oxygen Advantage, Made Practical
   The Oxygen Advantage is Patrick McKeown’s framework for improving athletic and cognitive performance by increasing CO2 tolerance and optimizing breathing mechanics through nasal breathing, breath holds, and simulated altitude training. The underlying physiology (Bohr effect, CO2 chemosensitivity) is well established; specific protocol outcomes in trained athletes have promising but limited RCT support.
6. Attention training technique (ATT)
   Practice deliberately shifting attention across sounds — a drill that builds attention flexibility and reduces self-focus.
   Metacognitive Therapy, Made Practical
7. Use cold water immersion strategically, not habitually
   Cold water immersion reduces acute soreness and speeds subjective recovery — but may blunt long-term adaptation if overused.
   Deliberate Recovery: Making Rest a Performance Practice
8. Manage the alarm phase — don’t abort the adaptation by resting too long
   The discomfort and fatigue after a hard session is the alarm phase of GAS — it means adaptation has been triggered, not damaged.
   Supercompensation
9. Mental Rehearsal and Imagery, Made Practical
   Mental rehearsal — systematically imagining yourself performing a skill — produces measurable performance improvements across athletic and other domains. Meta-analyses find moderate effect sizes, strongest when imagery is vivid, process-focused (rather than outcome-focused), and combined with physical practice. Alan Richardson’s early basketball research helped establish the empirical basis; the effect is well replicated.
10. Apply EFT to specific performance anxiety triggers
    EFT has the strongest self-guided evidence for test anxiety, public speaking, and sports performance stress.
    EFT Tapping: What It Is, How to Do It, and What the Evidence Shows

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