Othon Kesend, PhD

Othon Kesend, PhD (pronounced "ATONE") is a sport psychology consultant practicing in Boulder, Colorado. He was formerly associated with the Sport Psychology Department of the United States Olympic Training Center.

He works with athletes of all ages from recreational to world class.

Othon takes a whole-person approach which emphasizes developing and integrating the physical, emotional, mental and spiritualattributes and skills necessary for enhancing performance and improving well-being. His primary form of recreation is ultra-distance running. He has competed in the Leadville Trail 100 mile race twice.

Says Othon:
The role of a sport psychologist is to help athletes perform consistently in a peak performance state. The ultimate experience of this state is well known as the "zone".

Through Othon's personal experience, his work with clients and his research, it is apparent to him that athletes cannot consistently access the zone at will, and in most cases it is a state that happens to them outside their own control.

Othon continues:
Sport Psychologists and mental training consultants, no matter what their claims can not guarantee their methodswill enable athletes to achieve the zone by choice. The most that they truly can claim is the ability to increase an athlete's possibilities of achieving this state.

This understanding all changed for Othon in the fall of 2000 when he read about and subsequently met Scott Ford who had some twenty years before, while playing tennis, discovered a way to enter the zone at will using a simple, yet revolutionary technique that he found he could repeatedly reproduce.

Othon was able to enter the zone within five to ten minutes the first time he took a tennis lesson with Scott.

The next day Othon figured out how to use the technique to enter the zone while running. In subsequent tennis lessons with Scott, Othon was always able to access the zone.

It was apparent to Othon that Scott had indeed discovered how to enter the zone at will. To this date he has taught the zone to professional mountain bike racers, golf teaching pros and collegiate golfers, national age group ranked fencers, high school basketball players, wrestlers and volleyball players, baseball players, collegiate and high school tennis teams, collegiate soccer players, and nationally recognized ultra-distance runners.

Read Othon Kesend's Article:
Parallel Mode: Playing in the Zone
A Sport Psychologist's Experience and Perspective


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