Executive Coaching (English)
Specializations
- Peak Performance Coaching
- HRV Coaching
- High mental and physical resilience
- Personal development
Clientele
- Executives
- Senior organizational leaders
Setting
- One-on-one individual sessions
Objectives
For organizational leaders and top-performing athletes alike, two things are essential:
- to deliver the optimal performance at the key moment
- to quickly recover from stress
Following an approach used by the US Olympic Team, I am utilizing specific interventions to make optimal performance more probable and recovering from stress more efficient.
Peak Performance Coaching
It has been shown that consistent superior performance (e.g., in sports) is the result of a highly self-regulated mental and physical state. I am partnering with clients to make optimal performance more probable.
Individuals perform their best under different arousal and affective states. Much effort has been given to designing tools where athletes can identify their own zones of optimal functioning (Hanin, 2000). However, subjective assessments of variations in state often show no relationship with performance outcomes (Egner, Strawson & Gruzelier, 2002). I am using objective tools – devices that are used to train Olympic athletes – to create awareness and teach regulation of internal processes that one does not typically exert conscious control over (Zaichkowsky & Fuchs, 1988).
The basis of my coaching is performance psychology, which seeks to understand why performance varies and aims to design interventions making optimal performance more probable. Taking this perspective, the main key to performance variation is changing mental states (Perrault et al., 1998).
Many of these ideas and of the methods used in my coaching I have learned from Dr. Lindsay Thornton (US Olympic Committee).
The window of optimal performance
Already in 1908 the psychologists Yerkes and Dodson found an empirical relationship between arousal and performance. The Yerkes–Dodson law describes that performance increases with arousal (effort) – however, only up to a certain point. Interstingly, when the level of arousal gets too high, performance decreases.
While this curve may looks different for different tasks and is highly individual in its shape, it nicely illustrates that we have to be inside a specific window of arousal for optimal performance. Especially, if the task at hand requires not only brute physical force, but also mental skills. One of the main objectives of optimal performance coaching is to get into this zone of optimal performance – in situation where this might not be that easy (when we are in high stress or under severe pressure).
Video: HRV Feedback
Richard Gevirtz, one of the founding fathers of HRV feedback, introduces the fundamentals of HRV feedback in this video. I have completed a major part of my HRV specialization with him.
About me
- Oxford University: Associate Member of the Oxford-Man Institute
- Doctorate in Psychotherapy Science (PhD, Faculty of Psychology, Sigmund Freud University Vienna) – completed
- Doctorate in Applied Medical Science (PhD, Clinical Neuroscience, Medical University of Vienna ) – ongoing (dissertation submitted)
- Applied Work with Athletes in Olympic Sport Workshop Certificate (Dr. Lindsay Thornton, US Olympic Committee)
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Lecturer (Medical University of Vienna)
- Lecturer (WU Vienna: Strategy & Innovation, SIMC)
- Former Head of RnD of a medical tech company specialising in neurophysiology
- Publications in neuroscience
Schedule a first visit
Use this online contact form or send me an email at coaching@fruehwirt.wien to arrange a first consultation. If you choose to reach me by phone, I will not be able to answer your call most of the time – but if you leave message, I will return your call as promptly as possible.