Every athlete has experienced it. The missed shot that replays on a loop. The pre-game anxiety that tightens your chest. The voice in your head saying “don’t mess this up” right before the moment that matters.
These internal experiences aren’t the problem. The problem is what you do with them.
The Mental Fitness pillar of the Mental Performance Model (MPM) teaches athletes and performers a structured framework for working with difficult thoughts, feelings, and sensations, without fighting them, hiding from them, or pretending they’re not there. That framework is the ACT Matrix.
Pull Quote 1: “The ACT Matrix doesn’t ask you to think positively or control your emotions. It asks you to notice, clarify what matters, and take action, even when it’s uncomfortable.”
What Is the ACT Matrix?
The ACT Matrix comes from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a psychological approach with decades of research supporting its effectiveness across performance, clinical, and educational settings (Hayes et al., 2006). ACT doesn’t ask you to think positively or control your emotions. It asks you to notice your internal experiences, clarify what matters to you, and take action aligned with those values, even when it’s uncomfortable.
The Matrix organises your experience into four zones:
- Zone 1: Notice Inner Experience. What thoughts, feelings, and body sensations are showing up right now? Not judging them. Just noticing.
- Zone 2: Toward Moves. Actions that move you toward what matters. Values-aligned behaviour under pressure.
- Zone 3: Notice Context. What’s actually happening in the external situation? The facts, not the stories your mind adds.
- Zone 4: Away Moves. Actions driven by avoidance, escape, or fusion with unhelpful thoughts. Not “bad” actions, just ones that pull you away from your values.
This isn’t a hierarchy. It’s a map. Once you can see where you are on the map, you can choose where to go next.
Why Athletes and Performers Need This Framework
Traditional approaches to mental fitness often focus on thought control: stopping negative thoughts, replacing them with positive ones, or suppressing anxiety. The research tells a different story. Attempts to suppress unwanted thoughts tend to increase their frequency and intensity. The more you try not to think about missing the free throw, the louder that thought becomes.
ACT takes the opposite approach. Instead of changing what you think, it changes your relationship with what you think. This is called cognitive defusion: the ability to notice a thought without being controlled by it. You can have the thought “I’m going to miss” and still step up to the line, set your routine, and shoot.
Recent research on internet-delivered ACT for athletes found that participants reported enhanced psychological flexibility that translated directly to competitive performance (Reinebo et al., 2024). The skills are teachable, transferable, and durable.
Pull Quote 2: “Suppressing unwanted thoughts tends to increase them. ACT doesn’t change what you think; it changes your relationship with what you think.”
Free resource: The RAW Edge Self-Check gives you a baseline read on your current mental fitness across the MPM. [Download free at rawedge.au/self-check]
How the Mental Fitness Course Teaches It
The Mental Fitness pillar walks athletes and performers through the ACT Matrix across six modules and thirty lessons, each around four to five minutes long. It starts with understanding the four zones, then builds specific skills:
- Cognitive defusion: unhooking from thoughts that pull you away from performance
- Present moment awareness: staying anchored in what’s happening now, not before or after
- Values clarification: getting clear on what kind of athlete, performer, and teammate you want to be
- Committed action: translating values into specific, repeatable behaviours under pressure
Each lesson includes a practice activity. Skills build on each other. By the end, you’ve got a personal mental fitness plan you can use in training, competition, and life outside sport.
Try This: The Choice Point Exercise
Draw two columns on a piece of paper. Label the left “Away Moves” and the right “Toward Moves.”
Before your next competition or important training session, list three actions in each column.
Toward moves are values-aligned actions: behaviours that reflect the athlete or performer you want to be:
- “Stay present after an error”
- “Communicate with teammates between plays”
- “Maintain my pre-performance routine regardless of the score”
Away moves are avoidance-driven actions: behaviours that show up when you’re hooked by difficult thoughts or feelings:
- “Go quiet when frustrated”
- “Avoid eye contact after a mistake”
- “Rush through my routine when anxious”
You’re not trying to eliminate the away moves. You’re building awareness of the pattern. When you can see the pattern, you can make a choice. That awareness (the ability to notice the pull toward an away move and choose a toward move instead) is the foundation of psychological flexibility.
Pull Quote 3: “You’re not trying to eliminate away moves. You’re building awareness of the pattern. When you can see it, you can choose.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the ACT Matrix the same as mindfulness?
Mindfulness is one component of the matrix, but the framework is broader. Zone 1 (noticing inner experience) involves present-moment awareness. Zones 2 and 4 (toward and away moves) add the values and action components that make awareness practically useful under pressure.
Do I need to use all four zones every time?
Not explicitly. The goal is fluency with the framework so it becomes automatic. Most experienced practitioners find they move through the zones quickly and intuitively during competition. The structured exercise is for building that fluency in training.
Is this covered in the MPM courses?
Yes. The ACT Matrix is the core framework of the Mental Fitness pillar. The course covers all four zones, the cognitive defusion skills, and how to build a committed action plan across 30 structured microlessons.
References
Hayes, S. C., Luoma, J. B., Bond, F. W., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Model, processes and outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(1), 1-25. Full reference at rawedge.au/research
Reinebo, G. et al. (2024). Internet-based acceptance and commitment training in ice hockey players. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 6, 1297631. Full reference at rawedge.au/research
Explore courses at rawedge.au/courses
Aaron Williams is an AHPRA-registered psychologist (PSY0002297677) and the founder of RAW Edge Performance. He works with athletes and performers across sport, performing arts, and high-performance environments. This content is educational and does not constitute clinical advice.