Nike Football Pro Genius is the world’s first mental training service for footballers - a suite of football-specific, mobile-centric brain training tools and techniques.

It replicates the kinds of mental training elite footballers use, optimised for iOS and Android, making them available to the masses.

Working with leading sports psychologists, six interactive tools were developed that train different parts of the brain to benefit your game.

These were:

1. Counter Attack (Improve decision making)

2. Priming (Mental warm-up)

3. Visualisation (Mental rehearsal)

4. Cross Anticipation (Read the game better)

5. Rule of Three (Simplify your game)

6. Self-Talk (Boost confidence)

Pro Genius was hosted exclusively in the Nike Football App and optimized for iOS and Android, in 19 languages across 50 countries.

It took 10 months to complete from concept to delivery and complemented an extensive training library in the Nike Football App. Scoring and progression plugged into Nike’s existing athlete Profile, so that users could see stats alongside Running and Training data.

The six tools themselves helped young footballers finesse and fine tune vital brain functions that contribute to good performance - decision making, reactions, confidence and the ability to perform under pressure.

They were:

1. Counter Attack (Improve decision making)

2. Priming (Mental warm-up)

3. Visualisation (Mental rehearsal)

4. Cross Anticipation (Read the game better)

5. Rule of Three (Simplify your game)

6. Self-Talk (Boost confidence)

Each tool was specifically associated with and promoted by a world class athlete, and Nike’s whole football athlete roster got behind the service, pushing it to their collective 500m+ social media followers during Euro 2016 and COPA 2016.

• 150m impressions via athlete channels

• 120K Global downloads on launch day

• 10K hours of training logged in first week

• 16% user increase month on month

“The focus on the mental side of the game is largely untapped outside of the more progressive professional clubs – so to bring this level of cognitive training insight to the masses is truly revolutionary. It’s something that I would have definitely benefitted from in my playing days”.

Robbie Elliot, Nike Innovation Manager and ex-Premier League footballer.