Behavioral-Motor-Technical (BMT)-based intervention attempts to help support an athlete’s mental game using exposure, confrontation, threshold, and learning principles to improve attention, motor control, and self-confidence, as well as reduce nervousness associated with pressure moments of competition. BMT-based intervention is a direct approach to mental training (MT). Conceptually, BMT MT’s utility and potential to enhance psychological performance is based on motor learning, technical repetition, and exposure/habituation principles. The central nervous system mechanisms that are thought to be associated with BMT-MT-induced habituation or inoculation to competitive stress are discussed under brain-based interventions of the athlete’s profile (AP) brain-heart-mind-body conceptual model and construct bases. The goal of BTM-MT is to consolidate optimum technical and motor patterns in long-term procedural memory as well as repetitively attempt to demonstrate peak technical performance under greatest situational pressure, first in training and then during official competition.

Heart rate deceleration biofeedback (HRD BF) is a relatively unknown intervention whose origin can be traced to an extensive body of research on pre-stimulus or pre-action cardiac activity. HRD BF is a very mechanistic approach, whose effects can be immediately documented independent of speculative interpretive components associated with more cognitively based interventions. BF attempts to induce or shape mind-body responses by first showing baseline autonomic and/or central nervous system activity as reflected in waveform oscillations or other representations that are observable on a computer screen, and then reinforcing prescribed performance or wellness-related target psychophysiological responses. In multi-modal HRD BF, video and visualization components are integrated into the mental training process. In terms of intervention efficacy, the tested player won more and lost fewer games in the HRD BF compared to the no-intervention condition. Conceptually consistent intervention efficiency and efficacy findings support its utility as an athlete assessment and intervention approach.