Psychotherapist | Mental Performance Coach | Co-founder of Mental Training Room | Podcast Host | Former DI Athlete
Meet the face behind the hoop
About Haley Herdman + Mental Training Room
Haley Herdman, MS, AMFT, MPC, is a mental health and performance professional and Co-Founder of Mental Training Room. She specializes in helping athletes elevate the quality of their performance while strengthening their overall well-being. Her work is grounded in the belief that the two are inseparable.
Haley's approach is rooted in a holistic, systems-informed lens: she sees athletes not as performers to be optimized in isolation, but as whole people shaped by the relationships, environments, and pressures that surround them like coaches, teammates, family, culture, and the sport itself. Rather than treating mental skills as a fix for performance issues, she works to understand how an athlete's inner world and outer system interact, building sustainable tools for pressure, identity, and connection alike.
Her path began on the basketball court as a Division I athlete and team captain at Loyola Marymount University. That experience — including her own struggles with mental health in sport — became the foundation for her work today: expanding access to mental health education and support for young athletes, and helping normalize conversations that are too often left out of the locker room.
Haley now draws on both her lived experience as an athlete and her clinical training to help athletes, coaches, and parents build the mental skills to navigate high-pressure environments, while fostering healthier relationships with themselves and the systems they're part of. Her work bridges performance and wellness, treating mental health not as separate from athletic success, but as fundamental to it.
Mission & Services
While athletes dedicate countless hours to physical training, true excellence also demands mental flexibility.
The mission of Mental Training Room, is to help athletes develop the necessary mental skills to support both performance and well-being. By strengthening focus, confidence, resilience, and emotional regulation, athletes will learn to stay composed under pressure, recover from setbacks, and navigate the demands of sport
and life with intention.
At the heart of Mental Training Room is a commitment to creating a safe, inclusive space that honors the diverse cultural identities of every athlete. We aim to provide culturally responsive care that recognizes and integrates each individual’s unique values, beliefs, and lived experiences. All services are rooted in inclusivity, ensuring that every athlete feels seen, heard, and genuinely understood.
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Individual Sessions
Being an athlete comes with pressure, expectations, and constant evaluation. Individual Sessions combine therapeutic insight with practical coaching tools to help athletes build confidence, manage stress, and show up as their best self in sport and in life.
4
Parent Consultations
Conducted without the student-athlete present, this service is designed to help parents effectively support their student-athlete’s mindset, confidence, and overall well-being. Parents will learn evidence-based tools to reinforce resilience, emotional regulation, and a growth mindset at home without increasing pressure.
2
Team Sessions
Team Sessions focus on how teams think, communicate, and perform when it matters most. Athletes learn practical mental tools to stay composed, support one another, and execute under pressure. Together, we can turn moments of stress into opportunities for growth and performance.
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Athletic Department Consultations
Designed to help school administrations implement best practices in student-athlete mental health, mental performance, and overall well-being. Through these consultations, we partner with athletic directors, coaches, and leadership teams to develop evidence-based systems that prioritize athlete mental health and performance psychology.
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Workshops
Mental Training Room workshops equip athletes with practical mental skills to perform under pressure, build confidence, and regulate emotions. Through evidence-based strategies and interactive exercises, athletes will learn how to strengthen their minds intentionally, consistently, and with purpose.
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Family Sessions
These sessions are designed to strengthen healthy family dynamics, create a structured space for open communication, boundary-setting, and alignment around shared goals to support the student-athlete’s mental performance. Mental Training Room uses an approach rooted in sport psychology and family systems theory to address performance pressure, role expectations, and communication patterns.