The Story of My Research

As a young athlete, my best performances always came when I felt calm and confident, but far too often, stress and anxiety have held me back. My performance in games felt volatile—like I had no control over how I played. Over time, I began to notice that my results fluctuated significantly depending on my pre-game mindset. This got me wondering—if mindset training is as crucial as physical training, why had my coaches never mentioned it? And was this the missing piece capping my performance?

Around the same time, I developed an interest in data science and decided to explore the impact of stress on athletic performance through a sports analytics project. I wanted to understand how professional athletes handled playing at a high level while dealing with psychological challenges.

Core Principles of the Project

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Resilience Matters

Building the mental skills to overcome stress is as important as physical training.

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Performance Under Pressure

Data shows athletes can use stress as a performance enhancer rather than a performance inhibitor.

A young man with medium-length black hair, wearing a light blue collared shirt, standing against a plain beige wall, smiling softly at the camera.

Hi, I’m Brady Kim

This is my research project! As a young athlete, I often struggled to perform with the consistency I craved. That frustration pushed me to dig deeper into the mental side of sports, leading me to launch this project to explore the connection between mental and physical performance. Ultimately, my research showed that stress has a statistically significant impact on player performance. I discovered that the stress generated from extenuating life events motivated most NBA players to perform at a higher level than normal, contradicting my initial belief that stress causes players to perform worse. This insight led me to prioritize my stress-management skills as a student-athlete, and motivated me to share this insight with other student-athletes to help them perform at their best even when facing adversity in their lives.