Sports therapy · Mental performance coaching · Mental health therapy
From contender
to champion
The journey to your ultimate winner’s circle is a long and difficult road, full of obstacles, twists and turns. Julie helps athletes, from beginners to professionals, find the sure footing to reach their dreams.
20+ years of experience · Individuals and teams · Chicago, IL and online
Three ways to work with Julie
Choose your lane
Work with Julie one-on-one, or bring her in for your whole team. The sport changes from client to client, but the mental game — and the margins that decide who wins — stay the same.
Every moment counts
Making change is often a matter of that extra moment of composure, the ability to reset after a mistake, and building the confidence to stay with your training. Julie works alongside your physical training to build these skills naturally, starting with specific goals and a clear plan to reach them.
How Julie works
Turn potential into results
Julie works with individual athletes and with whole teams to build the mental skills that hold up when it counts — the difference-maker that turns potential into results.
Athletes learn to
A steady, safe place to do the real work
Julie works with children, teens and adults, building a nurturing relationship where you can discover your own highest and best self. Drawing on psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral practice, she keeps the work practical: real goals, and a clear path toward them.
Areas of focus
Who Julie works with
Beginners to pros, in every sport
The approach
Rarely about
talent alone
In every sport, athletes need to stay focused on the journey to reach their best outcome — because focusing on the outcome itself rarely brings good results in the moment. It takes real work to build the skills to act on your values instead of being defined by your thoughts and feelings. Once athletes get better at this, they inevitably achieve bigger things.
Julie combines relational work as a coach with teaching cognitive behavioral tools, helping athletes make the subtle shifts that lead to real growth and change.
The goal is bigger than peak performance: helping every athlete find their own Inner Athlete and become their strongest, most courageous and grounded self in the process.
The four values of the Inner Athlete
“Let go of the outcome and passionately attack the path ahead.”
Meet Julie
Sports therapist
Mental performance coach
Julie Learner has more than 20 years of experience, working one-on-one with athletes from beginners to professionals. As a licensed clinical social worker with a master’s in education, she combines teaching and therapy to help athletes perform at their highest level.
She began working with figure skaters during her own competitive years and now works across baseball, tennis, soccer, lacrosse, swimming, diving, dance and track and field. She sees this work as her calling: helping athletes reach peak performance and become their strongest, most grounded selves along the way.
Away from her practice, Julie has been married for 36 years, and her children are now in their 30s.
Get started
Your next season starts here
Looking for the extra edge that turns potential into results? Julie welcomes the chance to work with your team or individual athletes, in person in Chicago or online.