In this 3 Point's, we'll take a closer look at holistic player development in action, how coaches are using it to their advantage, and how you can too.

1. First, a story:

Lauren Betts, a former McDonalds All-American and no. 1 recruit in the country, found herself at a crossroads this past offseason. After struggling to live up to the potential as a freshman at Stanford, she found herself in the transfer portal and struggling to find her confidence. During her recruitment process, crosstown rival, UCLA knew the potential of Betts, but also saw her confidence lacking, “I knew that her potential was a 10,” Head Coach Cori Close said, “but I knew that her confidence was not a 10 yet.”

So what did they do? They pitched her on their Mind Gym, UCLA's very own 9-month proactive and comprehensive mental training program aimed at helping players develop confidence, learn to refocus after mistakes, and enhance their mental toughness. Head coach Cori Close, sees mental skills and abilities as a critical part of a players’ development. They embrace holistic player development that includes teaching and training mental skills and abilities just like they do with weight training and on-court skill development.

“Like the repetition needed to hone the perfect jump shot, mental training is a daily necessity for the Bruins.”

Betts decided on UCLA and, as a sophomore, enjoyed an All-Conference season en route to UCLA making the Sweet 16. The program’s comprehensive mental conditioning regimen has been credited as a key to the sophomore center’s full potential after a disappointing freshman season crushed her confidence.

You can learn more here:

2. The case for holistic player development

I am not naïve enough to believe that the Mind Gym made Lauren Betts. She has had a track record of success; after all, she was the number one recruit in the country for a reason. And yet, I believe it does make a difference.

Think of it this way: What percentage of your sport is mental? The answer probably depends on the sport, but chances are, a chunk of it is.

Now, what percentage of your team’s training is currently allotted to training the mental aspect of performance?

If these two answers sync up, well done! In my experience, they rarely do. When they don’t, there is an opportunity. Often, as renown mental performance coach Aaron Walsh puts it, coaches and athletes over-index the mental side and under-train it. This can lead athletes to feel like they are on a hamster wheel waiting for the mental skills they need to come find them. We wouldn’t take this approach with any other aspect of player development, yet the mental side often gets left to chance.

3. What we’re doing about it!

We have built Fortitude Mental Performance under two core beliefs and heavily influenced by Team Denmark’s holistic approach to sport psychology:

First, difficult situations and experiencing pressure, doubt, worry, and adversity are natural and unavoidable parts of sport. These challenges should be accepted and create growth opportunities.

We also believe there are no shortcuts. Effective mental performance demands consistent training that is a natural part of an athlete’s daily routine.

Rather than waiting for athletes to struggle, we believe in a proactive approach to player development that is accessible to teams and athletes of all levels.

Here's how we do it:

Assess

Each athlete is assessed using highly validated psychology assessments (OMSAT-3 and ASCI-28) that measure an athlete’s psychological coping skills. These assessments generate individualized feedback with specific advice and action steps to improve. This helps increase athlete’s self-awareness and understanding of their strengths and potential areas for improvement. They can also help coaches understand the psychological coping skills of their athletes and teams.

Coach

We believe there are the fundamental skills at the intersection of performance and well-being. We also believe these skills can and should be coached proactively, instead waiting for athletes to struggle.

“Direction, feedback, and support. Performance excellence is impossible without these things.” - Dr. Sean McCann.

The role of the mental performance coach (and any coach, really) is to do just that: provide direction, feedback, and support in the teaching, training, and utilization of these critical skills in pursuit of athletes being at their best!

Customized Training Program

Our proactive approach focuses on equipping athletes and teams with the mental skills and tools they need to enhance their athletic performance and well-being. Utilizing the MindBuilder software system, every team is given weekly customized mental training workouts built around their schedule, engineered for your athletes to perform at their best when it matters most.

If you want to learn more about how your teams and athletes may benefit from proactive mental performance training, reach out!

Schedule a 15-Minute Strategy Call

1. Environments influence behaviors.

I believe we know this, but if you are skeptical, walk into a casino. You will notice a few things. There will not be any windows, there will be bright lighting and energizing music, there may even be pure oxygen being pumped into the room, and sometimes even free alcohol. Why is this? Because they know (and profit enormously) that behaviors are shaped by the person’s environment. Casinos influence risk-taking behaviors, not by changing individuals, but by creating an environment that helps ignore cues of fatigue which impairs decision-making. They have created an environment that facilitates risk-taking.

2. Back to coaching…

If casinos have become experts at creating environments that facilitate risk, how can coaches create environments that set their athletes up to be their best? I give you Brentford FC.

Brentford FC was just promoted to the English Premier League and is severely underfunded compared to the rest. They aim to be the best at everything, and one of the areas they see an advantage is in their environment. Brentford FC doesn’t have an unlimited number of coaches, and one of the advantages is that everyone knows each other. So among other things, Brentford FC has set out to be the happiest club in the league and the world, and they are quick to note that this, “Doesn’t mean we’re happy to lose. We’d be very unhappy if we’re not in the Premier League." Instead, they see happiness as a valuable element that ensures everyone, coaches included, can reach their optimal performance as often as possible.

So how does Brentford seek to create a happy club in the high stakes of the premier league? One way is to create an environment that makes happiness easy. Their smaller budget means that Brentford has a relatively small staff. In fact, they have only five members on their coaching staff and Brentford sees this as an advantage.

“If we get to a point where we don’t know everyone in that building by name and what they’re doing then we’re going away from what we want. You look at other clubs, the amount of people when there is a warmup … you just see these huge entourages. I’m like: ‘Please, Brentford, we can’t.’ I never want it to be like that.” - Ben Ryan

Brentford's Performance Director, Ben Ryan, has gone as far as meeting with people who have created scents for hotels in Las Vegas and introducing them to Brentford's performance center. As Ryan puts it, “You want to be in an environment that you want to stay in.”

3. Reflect

I realize not every team has access to those resources, but I believe it’s a powerful example, as Brentford didn’t seek out greater happiness at an individual level, they created a welcoming and tight-knit environment with familiar faces to facilitate happiness.

Environments are most successful when they have a strong and coherent culture, characterized by espoused and enacted values being aligned, which creates stability and clarity for coaches, managers, and athletes. - Dr. Kristofer Henriksen

What does your team/program value?

How does your environment currently facilitate those value? (Like casinos facilitate risk-taking)

What is one thing you can change about the environment to move everyone closer to the things you value?

Coaches are performers.

In this week’s 3 points, I’ll discuss the future of coaching, what it looks like in action, and how you can take the next steps as a coach.

1. The future:

This newsletter was started under the premise that coaches are performers, and to provide resources and ideas to help coaches in their performance pursuit. I believe the future of coaching looks like coaches taking ownership of their performance as well as athletic departments and organizations supporting coaches in the same way they support athletes.

What does taking ownership of their performance look like? To me, it means coaches treating themselves as performers and approaching their performance like any elite athlete would. While not an exhaustive list, this looks like coaches prioritizing recovery, training attention and self-regulation, and reflecting on their performances to be at their best when their teams need them.

2. Coach as performer in action:

Where are we now? Thanks to a few subscribers sharing podcasts, we can take a closer look at what this looks like (NBA fans will appreciate these especially) in action. The two youngest coaches in the NBA have both recently discussed their approach to working with specialists to be at their best in high-stress environments and balancing work and family life.

Utah Jazz head coach, Will Hardy discusses his work with a mental performance coach, and understanding how his “temperature” impacts the whole organization.

In this interview, Joe Mazzulla discusses the work he has done with performance psychologist, Dr. Leah Lagos. One of the topics Mazzulla discusses is his post-game routine to maximize recovery so that he can be at his best.

3. Mental Wellness and the Modern Coach (FREE virtual conference):

First, I realize that organizations and athletic departments are not providing these services for coaches… yet. I also realize that not every coach has the means for these services. So if you are looking to get started, here is a FREE opportunity for coaches to hear some of the leading sport psychologists and mental performance consultants discuss how coaches can take care of themselves to be at their best.

Register here: https://truesport.org/join-us/truesport-talks-mental-wellness/

In this month’s 3 Points, I’ll discuss a strengths-based approach, and how it could help your team soar with their strengths.

1. A strengths-based approach:

Simmons et al., (2013) defined a strengths-based approach as one that “focuses on using an individual’s strengths to improve their overall functioning, rather than solely addressing weaknesses” (*Note: this doesn’t mean completely ignoring weaknesses).

Strengths-based approaches to leadership have been more heavily researched in the business and management space, and across contexts have been found to lead to benefits such as well-being, engagement, productivity, goal progress and attainment, and confidence.

While the research is limited in sport settings, research has suggested that focusing on strengths can help develop and maintain robust sports confidence. Further, in one study which utilized a strength-based approach, athletes reported benefits, including increases in self-belief, motivation, and the ability to cope under pressure, along with clarity of focus for training and goal-direction.

2. Strengths-Based Coaching in Action:

Stevens credits his former boss, Todd Lickliter, for this mindset:

“Don’t focus on what somebody can’t do, and don’t complain about it. Focus on what they can do and help them get the most out of it.”

Stevens held this belief so firmly that, during the time of 40-minute individual workouts, he committed 32 minutes to maximizing strengths, and 8 minutes for what they referred to as “Dream Time”. Stevens explains their focus was to use that 8 minutes to diversify each player’s game to expand their skill set.

3. Using the SOAR model

(S)trengths:

• What can we build on?

• What does this athlete do better than most?

• What is this athlete doing that already works?

(O)pportunities:

• How can we leverage those strengths to create improvement?

• What new skills can complement and leverage strengths?

(A)spirations:

• Who is the athlete now?

• Using the athlete’s strengths and opportunities, who can this athlete become (aspiration)?

• What can we do to help the athlete get closer to their aspiration?

(R)esults:

• How will we know if we are succeeding?

• How do we measure success?

“When the mental health of coaches thrives, so does the mental health of their student-athletes, staff, and athletic departments as a whole.” - Tess M. Kilwein PhD, ABPP

I don’t believe the burden falls completely on the coaches, like any performer, when the challenge is great, support needs to meet that. So, what can coaches do to move in a direction toward health and high performance?

In this month’s 3 Point’s I’ll discuss psychological rest, why it matters, and some practical tips for attaining it.

1. Why is rest important?

Coaches are expected to perform at high levels within demanding and pressurized environments. To do this effectively and sustainably, coach performance is likely dependent on their psychological readiness. Without rest, research points to coaches experiencing burnout, fatigue, and hindered well-being.

So what is psychological rest for NCAA coaches? Sport Psychology researcher, Dr. David Eccles, sought to answer this exact question.

His team of researchers found two primary types of rest. The first is predictable: sleep. I won’t labor on about the importance of sleep - you can read more here.

2. Wakeful Resting Experiences

In addition to sleep, Eccles found that wakeful resting experiences provided coaches with the psychological rest they needed.

Wakeful resting is comprised of 3 primary experiences:

A break from thinking about work:

What can capture your focus outside of work? A hobby, TV show, and spending time with friends and family could be ways to "switch off". Try to avoid work-related cues like (being at the office, texting staff, etc.)

A break from effortful thinking:

Taking a break from coaching to do your taxes is unlikely to lead to psychological rest. Time alone and listening to music are examples of low-cognitive demand activities.

Engaging in life outside of coaching:

Coaches are "on" a lot and often feel they miss out on life. Finding ways to reduce missing out and feeling like yourself outside of coaching can be beneficial.

3. Tips for Attaining Psychological Rest

Importantly, Eccles et al. point out that there are barriers to coaches getting the rest they need to be at their best:

• Psychologically demanding

• Long hours

• Unpredictable

• Has few natural boundaries

• Values constant productivity and improvement

So what are some strategies for attaining psychological rest?

• Deliberately plan for time to rest

• Aim to reduce workload outside of work hours

  • Make the most out of your time in the office

  • Recruit self-reliant athletes

  • Be proactive in setting communication standards

• Develop a philosophy of self-care

• Lean on coaching community and resources

Interested in mental performance coaching?

Schedule a free 15-minute consultation

We have already looked at what resilience is and how coaches are able to demonstrate resilience. So how can coaches help foster resilience in the athletes they work with?

In this month’s 3 Points, I’ll introduce strategies coaches can implement to foster resilience in their athletes.

1. Research suggests there are 3 main buckets coaches can fill in order to effectively foster resilience in their athletes. The first is proactive strategies because we know resilience is more than simply bouncing back from setbacks, it is also protecting athletes from the potential negative effects of stressors.

Proactive Strategies for Foster Resilience:

Foster Motivation

• Set and emphasize process and task-oriented goals, this leads to a mastery climate.

• Promote individual development and give athletes a voice in the decision-making process around their development.

Mental Preparation

• Prepare for potential future setbacks. What adversity is likely to hit during the season? Doing so can strengthen an athlete’s relationship with adversity and improve their decision-making under stress.

• Deliberately practice under competition pressure. What are the sources of pressure that competition provides? And how you can simulate them to help your athletes be prepared for them in practice?

• Train mental skills.

Promote Life Balance

• Promote the importance of life outside of sport, sport is often stressful and it is key that athletes feel encouraged to invest in relationships, and support systems that allow them to detach from sport.

• Facilitate life outside sport: Simple things like giving athletes the practice schedule in advance and giving off days allow athletes to plan and build time for their lives outside of sport.

2. Reactive Strategies for Foster Resilience:

Evaluate Setbacks

• Evaluate setbacks critically and constructively. The focus should be on the future and what can be taken away versus getting stuck in negativity. Additionally, coaches should evaluate their own roles and not be afraid to take a sense of responsibility.

• Encourage athletes to self-reflect on the setbacks.

Implement Lessons

• A key part of resilience is facilitative responses to stressors and setbacks. Model this as a team and use the lessons learned from the evaluation!

Promote a Positive Mindset

• Normalize setbacks. Coaches can focus on the long-term development of athletes and emphasize that one setback does not make or break a career.

• Challenge negative perceptions. Athletes can often get stuck in negative thinking patterns following setbacks. How can you find and highlight strengths that can aid in their ability to bounce back?

3. And perhaps most importantly, Interpersonal Skills:

The researchers found consensus among participants that a coach’s ability to foster resilience did not only depend on specific behaviors before or after stressful events. The effective use of the strategies listed above also depends on a coach’s interpersonal skills, that is, their ability to appropriately connect and interact with an athlete. The keys to doing so? Use an individualized approach with each athlete to build quality coach-athlete relationships.

Interested in mental performance coaching for yourself or your athletes?

Schedule a free 15-minute consultation

You can learn more about it sullivanmpc.com!

So, in this week’s 3 Point’s, I’ll introduce mental performance consulting, what consumers should know, and what it looks like in action.

1. What exactly is mental performance consulting?

Mental performance consulting applies psychological principles of human performance to help individuals perform in the upper range of their capabilities and more thoroughly enjoy the performance process. Mental performance consultants are trained to help athletes and performers in a broad range of practices including the identification, development, and execution of mental and emotional knowledge, skills, and abilities required for excellence in performance domains.

Often mistaken with sport psychologists, (psychologist is a legally protected term only for licensed psychologists), mental performance consultants are not licensed mental health providers, instead their focus is to enhance performance and well-being. This graphic from the Association of Applied Sport Psychology does a great job displaying who may benefit from mental performance consulting:

2. Who is mental performance consulting for?

Anyone who performs. I believe mental performance consulting is a great fit for any performer wanting to improve their performance and well-being. And if there is one message I hope this newsletter has delivered, it’s that athletes aren’t the only performers on a team; coaches are performers too. And my practice will aim to serve both coaches and athletes.

Some ideas for what can be worked on:

• Performing under pressure

• Performance routines

• Managing stress

• Team values and culture

• Focus and concentration

• Resilience

• Motivation and commitment

3. What does working with a mental performance consultant typically look like?

Largely, it depends. Mental performance consulting can be done on a 1 on 1 basis, or with teams and groups:

Individual consulting services are tailored to each client's specific needs and goals. Every consulting relationship will begin with an intake session to establish the client's goals and expectations as well as assess current mental performance. Individual performance consulting will typically begin with weekly sessions, and can quickly be adjusted to meet client's needs and goals. 

Similarly, team consultations are tailored to meet each team's unique needs. The consulting process typically begins with an initial meeting with the coach to discuss goals and expectations. Team consultations can include on-site consultations that include field observation, when possible. In addition, team consulting can include workshops and/or season-long mental performance services. 

If you, your athletes, or your teams are interested in services, directly reply here or reach out to brian@sullivanmpc.com to schedule a free 15-minute consultation!

Continuing our series on resilience, this week is focused on how coaches utilize mental processes and resources to protect themselves from stressors in order to display resilience. Coaches are performers, and while it is important coaches are able to cultivate resilience in their athletes and teams, resilience is essential for their own performance. 

In this week’s 3 Point’s, I’ll discuss resilience in elite-level coaching, and what protective factors they rely on to enhance their resilience.

1. As a refresher from last week, resilience is defined as “the role of mental processes and behavior in promoting personal assets and protecting an individual from the potential negative effect of stressors.”

As we look at resilience in coaching, it is important to build awareness around the stressors the coaches face and their impact before understanding how to protect against them. Research conducted by Dr. Sarkar, aimed to answer this question by conducting a series of interviews with five Olympic medal-winning coaches over the course of a year. And while this isn’t the most representative of the readers here, I believe there are meaningful insights to gain. I have chosen a few of the findings along with quotes from coaches that I believe are most applicable.

2. What were the stressors that these coaches faced?

Managing the Olympic Environment:

One theme coaches referred to is the pressure that comes with operating in a high-stakes environment. Further, coaches noted not just the pressure they face but how their response can impact their athletes.

“But certainly it’s a bit more stressful going to trials then going to the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games I felt relaxed, I felt I was at ease. I felt I belonged there and loved it. And I think my swimmers got that from me as well.”

Coach personal well-being:

Coaches described the challenge they face with managing their own well-being, and in particular, juggling the demands of their personal life with the demands of their coaching career.

“I think my greatest challenge has been and still is—my greatest challenge is confusing my life and my work life as the two being completely one… my mood was very much related to how my work was going, which wasn’t healthy. It was okay. It was livable. It was just not—It was just not a sustainable way to live, you know.”

Directing an organization:

The coaches in the study described, facing challenges leading an organization. Looking after their athletes, and coaching staff’s as well as learning to work with administration proved to be a stressor for the coaches interview.

“There were big decisions to make, there were big calls to make, but I don’t find that any more stressful than some of the decisions you make that affect people’s jobs and livelihoods. I have to make some hard calls not just with athletes, but with—with staff. So, there’s—there’s lots of difficult decisions to make day in and day out. But I think you—you know it takes certain mindset to handle and deal with that.”

3. Now to the good stuff. What were the resources and protective factors that coaches relied on to show resilience in the face of stressors?

“Progressive coaching”

Coaches embodied a “progressive coaching” style, described by the authors as a wide range of coaching behaviors and personality traits, such as openness to learning, conscientiousness, optimism, and proactivity. This approach allowed coaches to view setbacks and adversity in a more productive light.

“Yeah, just trying to make progress and listen and evaluate things and just, I think it’s all about progress to me, resilience, how quickly you can turn around disappointment, how quickly you can succeed any better through this challenging situation and who you become amidst the challenge and that’s what I try to do is, every challenge that we do, I either try to become better, a better operator or get a better result.”

Coaching support network

Coaches outlined the importance of social support in protecting them against the potential negative effects of stress. Coaches described importance of receiving social support from a variety of sources. One source that was highlighted as a protective factor was coaches having their own mentor or coach themselves to turn to. 

“You need somebody to be able to sound off to. The support mechanism is usually somebody listening to you, somebody giving you advice, and the mentor situation is so important. You say, “well, look, I did this, and it didn’t work?” Then your mentor says, “at what degrees didn’t it work?” You might be on the right track, just not doing enough of it. So, everybody needs somebody to sound off to, because coaches live in isolation, and it’s the coach’s responsibility, in my opinion, to actually find somebody that will listen to him, can sound off to, and not make a value judgment, but help in judgment.”

Maintaining work-life balance

Or as I prefer, work-life harmony. Balance sets an unrealistic precedent that work and life need to be evenly split. Coaches reported finding work-life balance in two primary ways, the first being to have an outside interest or hobby that takes them away from work, and the other centered on controlling the process around their work life, the example, given below highlights the importance or routines to help get ready for work as well as to help let go of work at the end of the day. 

“My key psychological factor or trick or tool is my daily routine. The daily routine is fool proof. It should, if done correctly, leave you in a good place every day. Look after yourself, healthily, be healthy I should say, do the right thing. Every morning’s the same deal with me. I get up, I drink water, I stretch, I write a list. On that list is the things I have to do that day, the things that I would like to do that day and my goal, what am I doing. All those things on a piece of paper and I have things that I will not do that day, for me that’s really important . . . and at night I review my day, religiously. I go through my list and if I’ve not done anything that will carry over to tomorrow but I can throw that list away. By doing that I keep everything in the day. I try never to have any carry over.”

Effective decision making

The last theme found in the article that I am highlighting is effective decision making, or self regulated learning. Coaches highlighted the ability to self-reflect, analyze and adjust accordingly to make more effective decisions under pressure. 

“I think you learn from it. You know, how that I used to coach when I was 35 and then how I coach now. Totally different. I think that again that’s a trait of more resilient coaches. Because some coaches—coached 30 years. But coached one year thirty times. Whereas, the more resilient coaches from any sport. Learn from the mistakes, and I’ve made thousands of mistakes don’t worry about that, but I’ve tried not to make them twice. Certainly not the three times.”

Questions for reflection:

• What are your stressors?

• What protective factors can you connect to?

Resilience is a term that lacks conceptual clarity, in my opinion. I believe that we’d all like our teams to grow in resilience, but what is resilience? What does it look like in action? How do we model it? And how can we help our athletes and teams increase their capacity for resilience?

These are the questions I am to answer over the next few weeks, but first, let’s get clear on what resilience is…

In this week’s 3 Points, I’ll introduce resilience, what it is and is not, and bust some myths that exist around resilience in sport.

1. What is resilience?

Dr. David Fletcher and Dr. Mustafa Sarkar, leading experts in resilience in high-performance domains define resilience as “the role of mental processes and behavior in promoting personal assets and protecting an individual from the potential negative effect of stressors”

Further, Fletcher and Sarkar explain, resilience encapsulates both robust and rebound resilience:

• Robust resilience (proactive) refers to its protective quality reflected in a person maintaining their well-being and performance when under pressure.

• Rebound resilience (reactive) refers to its bounce-back quality reflected in minor or temporary disruptions to a person’s well-being and performance when under pressure and the quick return to normal functioning.

Let’s break it down:

2. What resilience is and is not:

3. Some common myths and misconceptions of resilience in elite sport from Dr. Sarkar:

Resilience is a stable personality trait:

Resilience is not something that one either has or does not have. It is contextual, people may display resilience in one area of their life and not another. Similarly, an athlete may display resilience at one point in their career, and that does not guarantee they will display the same level of resilience at a later point. Lastly, and as I have written about previously, environments matter. The coach-athlete relationship, social support, and motivational climate all impact an athlete’s resilience.

Resilience is always characterized by continued optimal functioning and a lack of (negative) emotions:

Resilience doesn’t mean that people are cool, calm, and collected at all times and unaffected by adversity and the stressors they are experiencing. In fact, resilience is often accompanied and sometimes enhanced by psychological distress:

Resilience is only relevant at the individual level

While we often focus on the resilience of an individual and all of the factors that impact it. Team resilience has recently received greater attention. Team resilience is more than just a group of resilient individuals, but cultivated within a team structure.

Resilience cannot be developed

It can. For individuals, coaches and teams. Stay tuned!

In this week’s 3 Points, I’ll introduce Mental Fitness and how this framework and its’ principles can help you perform at your best.

1. What is Mental Fitness?

Mental fitness, as defined by a group of Australian researchers, is “the modifiable capacity to utilize resources and skills to flexibly adapt to challenges or advantages, enabling thriving.”

Your mental fitness isn’t static, it’s changeable. Resources and skills are learnable. The ability to adapt and respond productively to challenges or advantages is trainable. Mental fitness is within your control.

2. Key principles of Mental Fitness:

The mental fitness model suggests there are 4 key principles of mental fitness:

Fitness is a positive term without connotations of illness implied by mental health or mental illness.

We can grasp the idea of physical health without stigma. Reducing the stigma around mental illness and leaning on mental fitness leads to a healthier and more flexible understanding of how our minds work.

Mental fitness could be understood by the wider community in a similar way to physical fitness.

This framework views mental and physical fitness as equal parts of a holistic approach to well-being and optimal performance. Mental fitness can be understood as a proactive, preventative, and important step in allowing us to perform optimally, instead of an approach to get us out of a slump.

Mental fitness is measurable.

There are research, theory, and evidence-based practices that can be used to develop preventative and proactive mental fitness.

Mental fitness can be improved in a way similar to physical fitness.

We can train and improve our mental fitness. The authors of the study highlighted, “Evidence in positive psychology and the neural plasticity literature suggests the brain has the ability to change and adapt as a result of experience and learning new behaviors throughout life.”

3. Mental Fitness Training

So what can mental fitness training look like in action? I particularly like the example provided by the authors to understand the different components of mental fitness:

Just like physical fitness, we can run, practice yoga, lift, and do CrossFit and end up physically fit. The most important decision you can make is to simply start. Not sure where to start? Take it from the University of Arizona Sport Psychologist, Dr. Mike Clark:

In this week’s 3 Points, I’ll introduce three simple frameworks for sustainable success, and reflections to begin implementing the.

1. Looking back to move forward:

We often spend our time and energy thinking about the next promotion, job, championship, etc. Sometimes we can get so fixated on the progress to come, we forget about the progress we have already made. Reflecting on the past and more specifically, the strengths and resources you have relied on, can lay the blueprint for future progress.

• What strengths have you relied on to get to where you are now?

• What resources and people have you relied on to get to where you are now?

• How can you leverage these strengths and resources going forward?

2. Proactive Preparation

Ideally, you want to have the skills built before you need to draw on them. Just like in coaching, you don’t want to put in your press attack, while you are getting pressed. The same goes for the mental side of performance, don’t wait until it’s too late.

• How are you performing currently?

• What are the mental obstacles you have struggled with in the past? Or anticipate in the future?

• How can you begin preparing to meet those challenges?

3. Away or Towards?

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” - Viktor E. Frankl

Think of these choices as choice points. When we strengthen our skill of self-awareness, we can consciously make these choices, and respond to situations, thoughts, and emotions instead of impulsively reacting. When we are able to respond, we can take mindful action…

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” - James Clear

• Am I able to recognize choice points?

• Did my response bring me toward the person I want to be? Or away?

• Can I enhance this skill of awareness with curiosity instead of critique?

Have you ever seen a player look great on a driving range or not miss a shot shooting stand-still jumpers and wonder to yourself, why doesn’t that translate to games?

In this week’s 3 points, I’ll introduce representative learning design, and why understanding this framework can help your players transfer their skills from training to performance.

1. What is representative learning design?

Representative learning design (RLD), introduced by Dr. Ross Pinder (2011) is a framework that assesses the degree a practice or drills accurately ‘represent’ the performance environment they are meant to be preparing athletes for. RLD suggests that the more training accurately simulates competition demands, the more likely skill developed in training is to transfer to competition. Makes sense to me.

According to Pinder, there are two key elements used to accurately simulate the performance environment:

• Action fidelity (movement)- the extent to which an athlete's movements during training mimic the required movement behavior during competition.

• Functionality (information) - the degree to which a practice task or drill contains the same informational cues present during competition, ensuring that actions are based on realistic learning contexts.

2. The importance of coupling:

The key here is providing athletes with drills and practice tasks that incorporate both movement and information that are representative of the performance environment.

• What are the movements your athletes are making during a performance

• What information is being presented to the athletes during a performance?

• How can we create tasks in training that require athletes to process both?

A quick anecdote as a case study:

My role as a basketball player was to shoot. I spent most of my time practicing by myself on a shooting machine. I would shoot near-perfect passes and essentially Tee up each shot in a quiet gym. From an RLD perspective, this was not very representative. Most of the shots I would take during a performance were running off screens, catching passes from all angles, and using different footwork, all while reading the defense to assess if they could disrupt my shot and doing this in front of thousands of screaming fans. My point is not to say that repetition is not important; I believe it is. But there were a lot of elements that represented my performance environment that were not showing up in training.

So, how can we create representative practice environments to enhance skill transfer?

3. Dr. Keith Davids, Professor of Motor Learning in Sport & Human Performance, provides a framework to do just that:

In this week’s 3 points, I’ll discuss a holistic ecological approach to talent development, and why this approach may enhance the performance and well-being of your athletes.

1. What is a holistic ecological approach?

Based on the work of Danish Sport Psychologist, Dr. Kristoffer Henriksen, the holistic ecological approach to talent development shifts the focus away from only the individual athletes to the environments in which they develop.

Henriksen explains:

“an ecological approach to talent development is more than discovering talent and developing their skill in practice, it sees the individual situated in an environment and the environment playing a significant role in how consistently organizations can develop talent.”

2. The holistic ecological approach is comprised of two separate frameworks. First, is the Athlete Talent Development Environment (ATDE), which provides a framework to describe the environment:

As you can see, the ATDE model is ecological in the sense that it:

• Regards the development of an athlete is influenced by the context surrounding the athlete.

• It includes both the athletic and the non-athletic domains and sees athletes as whole people.

• Is concerned with psychosocial development on and off the field of performance.

Henriksen’s research suggests, “environments are most successful in supporting athletes when the efforts of different parts of the environment (e.g., school, club coaches, national team coaches, parents, and others) are integrated rather than fragmented or in opposition.”

The second framework that the Holistic Ecological Approach sits on is the Environment Success Factors (ESF), which summarizes factors influencing the effectiveness of the environment:

From this model, we can see how resources (preconditions) and the daily routines (process) lead to three outcomes: athletes' individual development and achievements, team achievements, and organizational development and culture.

3. So how can you create an environment that promotes talent development, performance, and well-being?

• Treat athletes are people first and recognize the context around them influences their development. Who and what around the athlete is influencing their development? Can you help get the athletes’ parents, club coach, trainer, etc., and your staff on the same page? Doing so will promote an integrated environment that will allow for development.

• Within your own environment, how can you create stability and clarity amongst the athletes and coaches? According to Henriksen, “environments are most successful when they have a strong and coherent culture, characterized by espoused and enacted values being aligned.”

Curious as to what this can look like more specifically? A recent meta-analysis looked at talent development environments and identified practices that were associated with a holistic approach and those that are not:

In this week’s 3 Points, I’ll share an article, a podcast, and a Twitter thread and why I believe each can help you become a better coach and leader.

1. An article: How to be a better loser and grow from your mistakes

Why I am sharing: We are not as good at learning from failure as we think we are. Research suggests that people tend to ignore failure as a way to protect their egos and that learning from failure can be difficult because the information is not as direct. With success, we can say “do that again” yet with failure, we have to tease out the information. Once teased out, it is high-quality information. This article creates a process or how-to on how we can embrace and move through barriers to learning from losses.

2. A podcast:

Why I am sharing: Mindfulness has become a very popular tool for performance enhancement. And for good reason, research suggests that mindfulness interventions have a very large impact on performance. Dr. Haberl is a pioneer of utilizing and this interview deep dives into how this practice can be utilized to enhance performance.

3. A twitter thread: “You haven’t taught them until they’ve learned…”

Why I am sharing: Coaching is teaching, and understanding the science of remembering and forgetting can help us be more effective. This thread is a quick read to understand and apply teaching to help your athletes remember. Your scouting reports will thank you!

In this week’s 3 Points, I’ll discuss stress management and why it’s important, and tips for implementing stress management into your schedule.

1. A study published in the Journal of Sport Sciences sought to better understand coach stress in elite sport environments. After analyzing interviews with 13 different elite athletes across 5 sports, the researchers came upon some interesting findings:

• Athletes perceived coaches to be performers in their own right and believe stress impacts their performance as well.

• In line with previous studies, athletes were able to clearly identify when their coaches were experiencing stress.

• Athletes who perceived their coach to be experiencing stress viewed their coach as less effective and less competent.

2. Avoiding stress is not only impossible, it would stunt growth and development. However, awareness of one’s stress and skills and practices to manage stress may go a long way in enhancing coaching performance.

The researchers concluded, “coaches should be aware of the signals that they transmit when stressed, how they perceive athletes to be affected when they are stressed, and how effective they perceive themselves to be when experiencing stress.”

3. Some highlighted evidence-based practices to help manage stress from the American Psychological Association:

• Problem-solve: If you can find ways to remove unwanted stress, don’t overthink it!

• Sleep, fuel, and exercise: The foundation of performance and helpful at managing stress.

• Practice mindful breathing - One of the easiest and most effective ways to reduce stress

• Social Support - Can increase improve resilience to stress.

This list is not exhaustive, and I’d encourage you to click the link from APA to learn more. I often end the newsletter with a list of actionable items. My hope is that you try different practices and skills and find what works for you. I also know that implementing new habits and practices can be difficult. So while this feels long overdue, I’d like to periodically introduce ideas for implementation. This week’s implementation strategy is called habit stacking and has been popularized by NYT best-selling author of Atomic Habits, James Clear.

Habit stacking is the practice of using our existing habits to build new habits. Clear explains, “your brain builds a strong network of neurons to support your current behaviors. The more you do something, the stronger and more efficient the connection becomes.” By connecting new habits to our existing habits, we can tap into these strong neural connections to create habits more efficiently. So if you want to practice mindful breathing daily, it would make sense to add it to a habit you may already have in place, like morning coffee or after exercise.

In this week’s 3 Points, I’ll discuss peak performance and how coaches may be able to help their athletes prepare for peak performance more effectively.

1. What is peak performance?

There are a number of definitions for peak performance, however, today we will focus on peak performance as “the upper limits of performance, where athletes are able to perform at their optimum levels of functioning and produce outstanding performance outcomes.”

Further, researchers suggest that the difference between peak performance, also referred to as an athlete being in the zone versus normal performance state, is associated with psychological functioning. This makes sense, as an athlete’s physical skill likely has not changed drastically from one performance to the next.

2. A group of researchers sought to investigate the psychological elements of peak performance by interviewing 17 World Championship and Olympic athletes and 6 coaches who had coached Olympians. After analyzing the interviews, the researchers proposed, “three processes as factors that may have enabled athletes to act on the psychological experience and positively influence the performance outcome: self-regulation, taking control, and trust in ability.

• Self-regulation looked like athletes understanding their pre-performance anxiety, being able to acknowledge it, and knowing how to handle it.

• Taking control was embodied by athletes feeling like they were in control from moment to moment.

• Trust was mentioned by athletes as trusting their preparation and being able to “go for it.”

3. How can coaches help their athletes prepare for peak performance?

The most interesting finding, and why I chose to highlight this study was the difference in how coaches and athletes perceived factors that lead to peak performance:

Admittedly, the sample size is very small but it is interesting to note the difference between athletes and coaches. For example, 9 of the athletes and none of the coaches thought that psychological preparation was a key factor contributing to peak performance. That looks like opportunity.

I think an advantage exists for coaches who can understand what they believe contributes to an athlete’s peak performance, and what the athletes believe contributes to their own peak performance and blend the two together in preparation.

In this week’s 3 Points, I’ll discuss play and how its surprising benefits could enhance coaches’ well-being and performance.

1. Of all of the data, this may be a weird place to start when it comes to coach well-being and performance. To me, it is pretty astounding that roughly 50% of all coaches are spending less time than they were pre-pandemic doing something they enjoy away from work. This is reasonable when you consider what coaches have faced since the pandemic, navigating bubbles and keeping their teams and family safe, and on top of that, the landscape of college athletics has changed significantly. One logical sacrifice at a time can lead to habits that no longer prioritize or incorporate hobbies, vacations, etc.

When I see this chart, I see low-hanging fruit. There is an opportunity here. What if I told you that taking a small time away from work to do things you enjoy, purely for enjoyment's sake, could have significant benefits to your well-being and performance?

We’re all striving to be productive and effective—as individuals, as teams, and through our organizations—and while productivity can seem like the holy grail, perhaps it’s as easy as injecting a bit more play into our work. Game on! - Dr. Tracy Brower

2. I am talking about play. Yes, play, and play for adults. What exactly is play?

According to Dr. Stuart Brown, researcher and the founder of The National Institute for Play,

“Play is state of mind that one has when absorbed in an activity that provides enjoyment and a suspension of sense of time. And play is self-motivated so you want to do it again and again.”

Essentially, anything you do for the sake of joy and excitement, is play. It could be sports, a hobby, puzzles, video games, or an activity with your kids; whatever style of play works for you, know that making time for it can have substantial benefits for your mental and physical well-being.

3. About those benefits, play helps:

• Relieve stress.

• Stimulate the mind and boost creativity and innovation.

• Improve social skills and your connection to others.

• Keep you feeling engaged and energetic.

Don’t take it from just me. Dr. Alex Auerbach is the Director of Wellness and Development for the Toronto Raptors:

So, my advice to you: go play. Carve out 30 minutes of play this week.

In this week’s 3 Points, I’ll introduce coaching as a complex system, and how we may be able to shift our preparation to enhance performance.

1. Research suggests that expert coaching is composed of three core components:

Professional knowledge: This is typically what we think of when we think of coaching. Think tactical knowledge, X’s and O’s, and knowledge around skill development and recruiting. The authors of this study (and me) argue, “that professional knowledge alone is insufficient to become an effective coach.”

So what else is needed?

Interpersonal knowledge: Coaches don’t exist in a vacuum. They are a part of organizations and teams and their effectiveness relies on their interactions with players, coaches, administration, and parents. An effective coach is able to develop their interpersonal knowledge and utilize it so that they can communicate effectively with different people at different times. They know when individuals need challenge vs support.

Intrapersonal knowledge: How well do you understand yourself? Are you able to introspect and reflect? The authors of the study argue this is a critical competency for effective coaching. By honestly and courageously reflecting on one’s self, coaches are able to review and revise their coaching practice toward expertise.

2. High-performance coaching is a complex system:

I believe coaching is changing rapidly, particularly in NCAA athletics. Between the transfer portal, NIL, pressure to win, and concerns over student-athlete mental health, there is more now than ever on the plates of college coaches.

Traditionally, and I am simplifying, the role of the coach was primarily to practice plan, game plan, and motivate. Whether you agree with the conclusions of the research or not, I think we can all agree that there are multiple components outside of tactical acumen that go into effective coaching. If we begin to understand high-performance coaching as a system, then I believe we can prepare more effectively to coach our best.

3. A framework for coaching preparation:

What are the 3-5 inputs required for you to be a great coach? Meaning what are 3-5 most important things that you can invest your preparation time to be a great coach?

What you need to be at your best may be different, but after some thought here are the areas I would want to invest in to be at my best on game-day:

• Tactical preparation (game planning, scouting, film review, etc.; Professional knowledge)

• Recovery (sleep, exercise, fuel, etc.)

• Mental fitness (More to come - think well-being and having a positive sense of how we feel, think, and act; Intrapersonal knowledge)

• Relationships with players & staff (communicating and understanding the team around me; Interpersonal knowledge)

• Work-life harmony (More to come - the ability to integrate work and non-work demands in a way that works for you)

When we understand performance as a complex system, we can begin to invest our time and energy into each input in the system. . This idea was introduced by Stuart McMillan, who suggests striving for a 7-8 out of 10 on each component. By building in flexibility, we can quiet the voice of insecurity that constantly tells us we need to prepare more, do more and be more. Further, if we are a 10/10 in one component then we are most likely lacking in another key component of coaching performance…

What makes up your system of high-performance coaching?

The goal here is to share insightful resources, highlight examples of performance psychology in action, and refresh topics of previous newsletters to help make them “stick”.

In this week’s 3 points, I will share a podcast, an article, and a video that I believe you, as leaders and performers will benefit from.

1. A Podcast:

Track and Field coach Stuart McMillan has coached over 70 Olympians at 9 different Olympic games. In this podcast he outlines his coaching philosophy, including practical approaches to helping athletes understand and develop identity, insecurity and perfectionism, and individual zones of optimal functioning.

2. An Article

https://medium.com/@JustinAndersonSportPsych/the-five-most-important-things-ive-learned-as-a-sport-psychologist-707ffc2910d1

Dr. Justin Anderson is one of the premier performance psychologist’s in America. He has worked with teams and athletes spanning across NFL, NBA, MLB, WNBA, NHL, PGA, and MLS. Here he writes the top 5 lessons he has learned over his 20 year career, which include the elusiveness of confidence, pressure, and leadership development for coaches.

3. A Short Video:

Landry Fields, GM of the Atlanta Hawks discusses how he uses the framework of Facilitative Environments to define and diagnose team and organizational culture.

+ A favor to ask!

What is something you have listened to, read or watched that you think other coaches and leaders would benefit from? Drop a reply or comment!

I believe I would have been a better coach had I understood this quote earlier. I often viewed my role as a coach as the expert. If I brought the expertise and answers and the players brought a 100% commitment to listen to and apply my answers, we’d be good to go. I am exaggerating, and yet, I think that idea underlies much of coaching.

I also want to be sure to not discount the expertise of coaches, it is significant. But what if we reconsidered our relationship with that expertise? What if we considered coaching as a meeting of experts? It sounds crazy, but when I look back, I coached plenty of players who were better at basketball than I ever was. What if we recognized that expertise and utilized it in relation to ours?

In this week’s 3 points, I’ll discuss how motivational interviewing can provide…

1. A different approach to coaching

Developed by professor and clinical psychologist, Dr. Stephen Rollnick, motivation interviewing was originally developed to help create behavior change for people struggling with addiction. Dr. Rollnick has always had a passion for coaching, and since retiring he has shifted his attention to how motivational interviewing can be utilized by coaches. Today, I will share the guiding philosophies (not the details and skills) of motivational interviewing for coaches.

Fixing

When fixing, you take the lead and tell an athlete why, what, or how they should perform. It’s useful for solving simple and obvious problems, when asked for advice, or when you are organizing activities for individuals or a group. In this mindset you are less likely to try to understand the athlete’s thoughts or perspectives about the situation or change; this is all about you getting your point across.

Following

Following is called for when it’s time for you to observe, or if in conversation, to listen and allow the athlete to take the lead, such as when they are upset, angry, or wanting to get a message across to you. It can also be the biggest challenge for coaches, because while you are listening, truly listening, for a short time you are not in control.

Guiding

Guiding is best for learning new skills and for solving more complex problems. It involves trust and working together, and talking about change and improvement, each taking a leading role. You point the conversation in the right direction and create an opportunity for athletes to motivate themselves and provide solutions. You will also step forward and offer advice here and there, and then help athletes to choose the ideas that make the most sense. This style is the foundation for MI because the energy, bright ideas, and motivation for change come from the player. This approach is best captured by “I guide, you decide.”

2. So what?

The key here is that every style is useful and has a time and a place. I think we often think of coaching as black and white. A coach is either a player’s coach (following) or an old-school coach (fixing). Rollnick is offering a third way, guiding, that gives space for both following and fixing when appropriate.

So how do you know what style to use and when? Think two feet planted in Guiding your athletes, you can always pivot to Fixing or pivot to Following when needed. Rollnick describes,

"Most coaches need to fix sometimes, but when they do so after following and guiding, the fixing is more powerful and long-lasting."

3. Some tips for Guiding athletes from Dr. Rollnick:

Inquire about the best way forward. Curiosity is the starting point. The most powerful questions are the ones we don’t know the answer to about the athletes’ experience. What is the athlete’s perspective on the thing to be improved? Don’t be afraid to trust the judgment of the athlete.

Offer expert advice with choices. Provide advice in the form of choices wherever possible; this helps athletes to make choices that suit them best while being more open to your perspective as an expert.

Develop action plans. Ask questions about the athletes’ readiness and how much interest in and commitment to the plan they have. Coming up with a plan that the athlete isn’t bought into doesn’t help anyone. Jointly produce a flexible plan that is open to adjustment as progress unfolds.