Christian Straka.

i.Four decades on court.

Christian Straka has been in competitive sport for four decades. He competed at the professional level before injury ended his playing career and moved him into coaching. He served as head coach at the Hofsaëss Tennis Academy in Spain for six years before devoting his work to mental performance at the professional level.

The athletes he has worked with have won at the highest levels. Victoria Azarenka reached world number one in the juniors and took her junior Grand Slam titles, the Australian Open singles and doubles and the French Open doubles, during their time together. Mike Bryan won the 2018 ATP Finals alongside Jack Sock with Christian as his mindfulness coach. Tatjana Maria’s ITF $100K Bratislava title, the breakthrough that launched her WTA career, came during their work together.

ii.The framework, validated at scale.

The three-skill system that underpins the MindSize Sports curriculum has been deployed beyond tennis. Christian served as Global Mindset Coach for adidas Runners for six years. He created the framework, defined the skills to be trained, and designed how they were trained. The system was implemented across all adidas Runners territories worldwide, deployed by mindset coaches in approximately 80 cities, and reached over 200,000 runners globally. As part of that work, he was the mindset coach for the adidas Runners TSP team that broke the world record running from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

The work has extended into team sport as well. He hosted a mental performance workshop for the women’s first team of FC Bayern Munich, bringing the same attentional training framework into an elite football environment. He created a 16-week mindful running program for Ultrahuman.

He has also served as on-air expert and commentator for Amazon’s Laver Cup broadcast, speaking to the mental and performance dimensions of match play at the highest level.

iii.Today.

At the University of Southern California, Christian created the first course of its kind on mindfulness and athletic performance — and continues to teach it. He is co-authoring a book on mindfulness and tennis with Mike Bryan. He is co-founder of MindSize Sports alongside Julianna Raye, developed in collaboration with Unified Mindfulness.

His practice is informed by over fifteen years of daily mindfulness practice, ongoing study, and twice-yearly silent retreats, including one conducted in collaboration with the SEMA Lab at the University of Arizona as part of a study on transcranial focused ultrasound and its effects on mindfulness practice and contemplative states. He is a certified Unified Mindfulness Teacher and teaches the teacher trainings, including the yearlong program for those becoming mindfulness teachers. He is also a member of the International Mindfulness Teachers Association.