Looking Back: The Mental Advantage Podcast's Greatest Hits Part 1 - Episode 33 w/ Coach Bryn

If you're good, they will find you. It doesn't matter. So like, for those of you that might be playing somewhere where you feel like, I don't know if the scouts know me, I don't know if the college coaches are aware of me— well, the good news is you do have digital gifts at your exposure: email, DMs, um, obviously making highlight videos and sending them out, and these recruiting platforms that actually help you and all of that, right? But outside of that, just focus on being good. Just focus on being a good athlete, being excellent at what you do, and it will come. I'm excited for you to see this week's episode, but before we get to that, I have a message for you. If you're a parent of an elite athlete or a coach of a high-performing team and you want— you're looking for some help or assistance with making them more mentally resilient, perform with more confidence, be more consistent, anything like that, then this is for you. I have an 8-week program all designed to address exactly that, to help your athlete be at their best on a more consistent basis and not get tripped up by those little voices in their head and getting down on themselves for mistakes, but performing like we know they can. So what I want you to do is don't delay, schedule a— just grab a time on my calendar through this link and let's set up a time to talk about your specific situation and how what I'm offering in my 8-week program can help. Okay, so it's brindresher.com/freeconsultation. So click this link, grab a time on my calendar. I look forward to talking to you. And now on to this week's episode. Hello, hello, hello everyone! Welcome back to another episode of the Mental Advantage Podcast. We are going to do some review today. That's right, review. I started this podcast somewhere back in March, okay, March, April, something like that, okay. Of course, I could have gotten that more technical, but sometime in the first quarter or the beginning of the second quarter of the year. And man, what a ride it has been. We are on our 34th episode. 34 episodes, I think. Wait, oh my gosh, I'm just thinking, like, is it 34 or 35? Let me check because now I'm wondering, but I feel like it's 35, but I don't remember. Now I don't remember. I'm gonna check. Okay, so anyway, nonetheless, it's been a ton of episodes. Okay, I'm confirming right now by going on YouTube. What number are we at? 32. So 33. Yeah, so 30 Sorry, 33 episodes. Wow. All that hype for nothing. Maybe I'll edit that out. The point is, is that it's been a crazy ride and I want to do some review of some of my favorites as we come to the close of 2021. It's December at the time of recording this, it's December 26th. So rather you're listening to this like this week, or you're listening to this years in the future, that is the date, December 26th, 2021. And I want to review some some of the greatest things that we've heard this year from all of our amazing guests, as well as some lessons that I've taken along the way. Okay? So I hope you'll enjoy this, and I do encourage you to go watch these episodes if you missed any of them. Okay? So I'm only going to be doing 10 today because I— or 9. I can't possibly get through them all. So I'm just going to do a few today, and then we'll do a part 2 the next time I do a solo episode, which will be 2 weeks from now. Okay? So definitely come back and check, but we're gonna go through a review for the next couple of solo episodes, and then we're gonna get right back to coming up with a topic every week as we go into the new year. So I'm so excited for that. So I hope you guys will enjoy this. And of course, I want you to know, I started this podcast because I love athletes. I love the, you know, just the things they go through as far as physically, mentally to pursue excellence in their chosen field of sport, right? Because there's not many multi-sport athletes at the top level. I mean, the days of having a Bo Jackson who plays both professional football and professional baseball— not saying they're done, but they're rare. There's just not many. Once you specialize, most people are just excellent at that thing because of the amount of time and energy and dedication it takes to be at the top of your field as far as professional athletics. So these amazing superheroes, as I called them in the trailer of my podcast when I started this, was all about how, you know, they have so many lessons that we can glean from them in their pursuit of excellence. And so I'm just so excited to be able to even review them because as I was going through and like, you know, like, what do I want to remember? It's like all these things were popping into my mind of these highlights and these moments that I really enjoyed with these folks. So we're gonna get right to it. So episode number 1, number 1 was with Nick Swisher, and I, you know, A lot of people, like, when I first started the podcast, what I remember is I would always be like, yeah, so Nick Swisher's my first guest, and he was, uh, you know, he was on the, you know, with the Yankees and won a World Series. And people would be like, I know who Nick Swisher is. I am— I will admit I didn't know who he was. I just had the good fortune of meeting him on Clubhouse, an amazing guy. And for someone who's always identified by their energy, One thing that always sticks with you about Nick is his energy. I mean, he's just like, let's go! Like, he's that guy, right? He's just got all this energy. He's a great guy. He was, uh, so big on getting everyone's voice into the conversation on Clubhouse, and he carried that through on my podcast of just, you know, he brought so much energy, so much love, such just a good guy to even do my podcast, you know, because I— my podcast is brand new, no one was listening to it at the time. And so I'm just gonna be forever grateful for Nick for saying yes to me at the beginning. And my biggest takeaway from him was two. And I remember him telling the story of when he played for Chicago and just being so down in the dumps after that season because it just wasn't a pleasant experience. And then when the Yankees gave him a chance, the general manager of the Yankees, and, uh, just said, you know, we know that what you did that, that particular season that wasn't highlighting the best of your talents isn't who you are. And so we still want you to come to New York and do what you do best for us. And he ended up winning a World Series with them, right? And this is— he's playing alongside the greats of like the Alex Rodriguezes and the Derek Jeters. And so just how great it is for someone to give you a chance when they know what you're capable of, even if your last performance wasn't the great. And I wrote down, happy athletes produce better performances. And so I did a whole episode about love languages You know, largely in part because of this and other conversations that are happening in the world of sports. But I think it's really important if anyone's listening and you happen to be a coach or you happen to be a general manager of an organization like the Yankees or anybody, right, to like really pour into the athlete and remind them that you believe in them. Because more— you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, right? And so you're gonna get a better performance when that athlete's happy. And so And I asked Nick about that. And the other thing I remember was Nick talking about big fish, little pond, and how, like, you know, he had to go through those moments of coming out of high school, being so great, a 3-sport athlete, and having to go into baseball and dealing with the adversity of different coaching personalities and just being this young, super confident dude, but having humbling moments and really having to learn to work on the things that you didn't necessarily think you had to work on because you were good at one thing and just being a well-rounded person as well as an athlete. And all the growth moments that come with that process. So just really want to thank Nick Swisher for that. And that was episode 1 of the podcast. So that's how we started off. We started off coming in with heat and just had this, you know, and Nick telling the story about what it was like to win the World Series. I mean, there's so many moments and like even how the game ended. He remembers every moment of that play-by-play. So definitely go listen to that episode because it's just great. It was just, you know, it was just watching him relive that moment of like the last moment of the World Series before they knew they had won, you know, just in those last couple seconds, that last inning. It's just really cool to see. And, uh, he really— he, he recounts that for a way that you almost feel like you're there. So definitely check that out. And then we went off to the world of football with our second episode, number 2, okay, with Greg Camarillo. And Greg, uh, how I came across Greg was that Greg wrote an article um, and became— and it went viral. I think it was a tweet or something, but basically a, a young man, unfortunately from the NFL, who was a teammate of Greg Camarillo's— in fact, perhaps a roommate in training camp or something to that effect, uh, was found, you know, deceased. And, you know, possibly a self-inflicted situation. But the thing was, Greg was saying was he wrote about mental health in the football and how like you don't really understand it all until you play and all that. And so I reached out to Greg and again, I'm— he didn't know me, but to his credit, he was willing to do the podcast and we had a fantastic conversation. And Greg was a walk-on in the NFL. And in fact, many moments throughout his career, he had all these full circle moments. And we did talk about the mental health aspect, and I'm definitely not underscoring how important it is. And absolutely, please watch episode 2 to get to that part. Um, and my biggest takeaways from his episode was just, uh, Greg was indispensable. Like, he knew how to use that idea of just being a hard worker and like becoming indispensable to his teammates when he wasn't the most talented, he wasn't the most gifted, he wasn't the most highly recruited, sought-after, on-display type of guy, but he had this knack for just knowing how to, you know, help his teammates with what they, where their weaknesses were. So he highlighted his strengths of being an intelligent learner and being able to help those that maybe were struggling in areas that he was more gifted. And those afforded him opportunities in other ways. And so he has this whiteboard story, and I don't want to ruin it for you 'cause I want you to watch it, but basically he was asked to draw up a play and that moment actually afforded him being able to go to a team and have his best moment and pinnacle moment of his NFL career because of a relationship that was developed from that whiteboard moment. So definitely want you to watch that, but you just never know when those type of things, and it's just about how hard work pays off, but knowing how to employ your gifts. So if you're an athlete that doesn't feel like you're shining on your team, rather than play the game of those that are shining in the ways that you quote unquote think you're supposed to shine, think about where you can bring your gifts and your talents in other ways. Maybe you're going to be the person that pumps up the starters. Maybe you're going to be the person that keeps them on their toes, helps them recover from drills. Like, there's lots of ways to see how you can become indispensable to your team. So definitely check that out, episode 2, Greg Camarillo. Excellent, excellent conversation. Then we went to the world of basketball. So in the beginning, I did baseball, football, and basketball, so I was covering it. And we also have our first female guest which is Val Whiting, retired WNBA player. And I met Val also on Clubhouse. I had the ability to get to know her. And Val was, you know, one of the original WNBA players because initially there was no women's professional basketball league. And she'll kind of joke in the beginning of the episode about how it, you know, is code for old. But I was really giving her her respect because, you know, to be a pioneer of women's basketball is amazing. And what I loved about Val's conversation, she was very transparent about her whole journey. Like she tells the story about how she wanted to be a cheerleader and she was being bullied because of it, because she wasn't necessarily gifted as someone that was going to be a cheerleader, but her whole experience of how a conversation with a math teacher got her into basketball and then going to the court with her dad and, you know, him making her play with the boys and doing a bunch of stuff. Actually, she found out she really liked it, gained a lot of confidence, went on to go to Stanford Stanford and wasn't recruited by Pat Summitt. But once Pat Summitt found out about her— Pat Summitt's a woman of royalty from basketball— but once she found out about her, she was upset, like, how did I not know about her? I wasn't even recruiting her. But ultimately, she went on and won several national championships with Stanford and then went on to play overseas. And then ultimately, when the, uh, I think the, uh, original— there was two leagues for the women's basketball and then ultimately played for the WNBA and was doing really well, but then had some mental health challenges. And I remember Val saying that there would be moments where the coach would look down the bench to put her in and she would shake her head and say, no, I don't want to go in, I can't. And this was because she was dealing with, you know, mental health challenges. And what I— that really woke up to me is that Going back to the Simone Biles situation that we know about, right, that happened this year with the Olympics. A lot of times you just don't understand that even if you love your sport, things that you may be dealing with off the court or even physically, emotionally, right, or mentally can keep you from playing it and doing the thing that you love, even though that game brings you so much joy. And so really not to underscore or undervalue what, you know, mental health and its effects on athletes and people and how important it is to address that. So thank you, Val, for bringing that by being so transparent and vulnerable with your story. And definitely check out her episode, a lot of good stuff in there about all the, how you handle the various pivot points of your career. So thank you, Val, for that. Then we went to back to the world of baseball with Shea Hillenbrand. So Shea Hillenbrand was an All-Star. He played for a few MLB professional teams. But the bigger, the biggest thing that I took away from Shea's conversation was Shea told the story of being on a private jet and he was in on his way to an All-Star Game. Okay, on his way to an All-Star Game. Oh, I forgot to put the 4 up. I know some of you guys are like, where's the 4? For those of you watching on YouTube. But anyway, so, but he was on his way to an All-Star Game in a private jet. You know, like life seems great. You got fans, women wanting you to sign their breasts, like all kinds of crazy stuff that comes with being a professional athlete on a high stage, right? Crazy stuff. And he's like, I hated my life. Like I was not excited. I did not want to be there. And so, and Shea was also very transparent about a brush he had with almost taking his own life or thinking about taking his own life and things like that. But his message is all about like, you know, it's not about the glitz and glamor of professional sports. It's not like you think that just because they have all the money and they have all of the fame that many of us who pursued athletics would want, we would think we would want, it doesn't actually all add up to much if you don't love it, if you don't love yourself, if you don't actually recognize that there's a greater gift than just being a professional athlete. Like he said, he began to hate it. It was just like he didn't want to be in the— he was a cancer in the clubhouse, right? He just didn't want to be there. He didn't love the, the thing, and he just wanted to go out, play baseball, but not really loving anything about it for a while there. And he ended up leaving professional baseball on his own. So really, really powerful conversation, but definitely recommend you check out Shea Hillenbrand because he really taught us that it isn't so much about just loving your sport and all the money and all the things that come with it. It's more about loving yourself and really being lit from the inside out and understanding your value and how to really love yourself and how he went through this process of discovering himself again and getting into a happy place. And now he helps teach that to others and that's fantastic. So thank you, Shea, for doing that. And definitely check out episode 4. So then we went to episode 5, 5, and we had another young lady because I'm committed to diversity on this podcast, on diversity of sport, diversity of, uh, gender, diversity of race, and of course diversity of abilities, right? And so I have not yet had my first adaptive athletes, like, you know, we had the Paralympics this year, so that is a goal of mine. So if anybody out there that's listening has connections to a differently abled athlete Um, I would love that. Okay, so with that, uh, we went to Natalie Allport, who was an amazing, you know, professional snowboarder. Okay, and my— I mean, there's so much good from, of course, Natalie's, um, uh, episode. And the thing about Natalie, her last name's Allport, and I made a joke like it's like all in because she's like good at all sports. Like Natalie played a ton of sports, she was good at a lot of them. But what I remember, and this was also present in Mackenzie Saint-Ange's episode in episode 9, but that it isn't necessarily that you are going to pursue the sport that you are the most gifted in. So like sometimes you can be gifted, you could be talented, you could be really good at a sport. But what lit up Natalie about snowboarding was it was new for her. It was a more difficult process. And so even though she was good at soccer and even though she was good at other sports, it was like, yeah, this is really cool and had a stint with soccer, I think, for a little while as well. And that's where Mackenzie ended up going in episode 9, was that she ended up playing hockey because of the challenge that it gave her. And I felt that with Natalie as well, that she really was about being all in and tackling the difficulty and the adversity that comes with like developing your talent and your gifts and your skill, even better said, in a different sport than what you may be accustomed to or, you know, naturally drawn to. So I really love that for athletes as a takeaway is that it's not always gonna be the sport that you're good at. It may be the sport that you have the most fire or the one that challenges you the most because it pulls something out of you. And so I love that in Natalie's episode. And Natalie talked a lot about the transition outta sports and how, you know, she was on her way to be an Olympic hopeful, but eventually, you know, because of some, you know, the mental strain of pursuing high-level competition and everything that comes with that, She ultimately decided to leave the sport of snowboarding because of injury and certain things. And now she's a CrossFit athlete. But the thing you know about Natalie is whatever she does, she does it 100%. I know people say 110%, 1,000%, but whatever it is, she is definitely all in. And that's what I titled the episode. So definitely check out Natalie Alport. There's a lot of lessons you can learn from her. And she has her own podcast that the name escapes me right now., but definitely check it out because Natalie is just an amazing person and I'm just so happy that I had her. So thank you, Natalie, for being on the podcast and everything you brought for that. Next, we went back to the world of basketball and we found— we met Josh Young. And Josh Young, I came across also on Clubhouse. I'll be honest, y'all, like the Clubhouse gift that kept on giving was all of the ways that I could connect to people. That I would have probably never met anywhere else in life. But Josh, I met on Clubhouse, and we had a conversation, and I said, hey dude, I need to have you on podcast once I heard more about his story. And he's just a really solid guy. He was the one— he was the only athlete, for those of you that have been watching all of the episodes, I think— well, he was the first that was really not really caring how the toilet paper was on the roll. Like, he didn't care if it was over the top or under the bottom. He's just like, as long as there's toilet paper. So I will always remember him for that. But of course, I have a better takeaway than just the toilet paper. For those of you that are like, really, that's what you're giving Josh? Toilet paper takeaway? Yeah, no. So my main takeaway from Josh was the story of him playing in a smaller market against not maybe lesser competition, or feeling like he wasn't in a big enough market or school or conference to be seen. And he had this concern, would anyone recruit him? Would he end up anywhere? And so I remember his dad telling him the story was like, if you're good, they will find you, right? If you're good, they will find you. It doesn't matter. So like, for those of you that might be playing somewhere where you feel like, I don't know if the scouts know me, I don't know if the college coaches are aware of me, well, the good news is you do have digital gifts at your exposure— email, DMs, um, obviously making highlight videos and sending them out in these recruiting platforms that actually help you and all of that, right? But outside of that, just focus on being good. Just focus on being a good athlete, being excellent at what you do, and it will come. It kind of reminds me of the Field of Dreams movie, which it says, if you build it, they will come. So if you build the skill and the talent and the gifts and really hone in on that, I promise you they will come. Whoever you're waiting for is coming. If you take the time to really just focus on being good. Don't focus so much on who's watching me. Focus on what you're doing in the game and what's bringing you the gifts, whether whatever sport it is, and they will come. So that's what I remember from Josh. Josh plays overseas professionally and did have a, you know, an opportunity to play professionally here in the United States. And he has a great story about how that panned out, but all of the success that came with that and just his mentality. And he's doing some great things and creating some platforms for athletes. So definitely check out Josh Young. That was episode 6. So please do not sleep on Josh Young. He's a super powerful dude, and I think you will benefit from listening to that whole episode if you get a chance. So if you didn't, go back, watch it. Okay, all right, so episode 7. Okay, 7. I can put up a 7. There you go, 7. Okay, is going to be with the fabulous Taiba Hanif Park. Okay, Taiba Henif Park. So Taiba was, um, an amazing, uh, volleyball player who's a 3-time Olympian. That's right, 3 times, right? Most people— most of us don't even attend. As I said on the podcast, most people don't attend an Olympics, um, as a, as a spectator, as a fan, let alone, you know, perform in an Olympics games. To do it 3 times and to medal 2 of those times, um, you know, anyway, so that's the amazing thing about Taiba Henif Park. But What I remember that sticks out to me, I mean, there's so much about her episode, but I think what, what really is poignant to me is her story about the first time they pursued a gold medal and how they were singularly focused on gold. Like, that was what it was. It was all about the gold medal, all about the gold medal, all about the gold medal. And then ultimately they did fall short and they won a— I think they may have gone home medalless in that game, if I'm not mistaken. So, uh, they may have gone home medalless in that game. Um, they may have gotten a silver, so you'll have to fact-check me. Unfortunately, I didn't rewatch the episode before I shot this, but the point is they didn't get the gold. So no matter what happened, what outcome they got, which is fantastic, right, because you're still one of the top teams in the nation to even be at the Olympic Games, but what they ended up feeling was just sense of depression and loss because it was like they didn't win. They didn't win, and it felt like it didn't matter. They had let their whole goal down. And she remembers— I remember her recounting leaving that Games, and while everyone was like, this is amazing, you guys are at the Olympics, she was just kind of like, yeah, whatever, we didn't get the gold, right? And not that way, she didn't say it that way, but just that feeling of like, I didn't— it didn't work out the way we thought it would, so it doesn't feel quite the same as it would if we had accomplished our goal. And so the team, uh, adjusted their expectations— and they're not expectations because obviously the expectation is always to do your best and go for the gold, right? But their objective was just to play good volleyball and do that every set, every game, and then ultimately that's going to bring us the, the yield of, you know, the, the fruits of our, you know, our, our our labor, right? So in the second time they did, they ended up getting a silver medal, but it was so happy because they had no real expectation that they were going to win gold, but other than they were just going to go out and play their best every game and give it their all. So they focus more on the process than the outcome, and it changed the gratefulness and the bond of the team and everything around that goal., of just being, you know, playing good volleyball and doing their best. And so this is a great message for a lot of athletes that need to hear that on a regular basis. Okay, so I really hope that that landed for everybody, um, on that episode, because I'll tell you about enough— Haneef Park, her whole journey was awesome. And then her recounting what it's like to be at the Olympic ceremonies, you gotta— if you missed it, you gotta go back and watch it because it's really good. Because, you know, what we think it's like to be at the World— I keep saying the World Series, which would be the same, I'm sure— but what we think it's like to be at the opening ceremonies is different than what it's like for an athlete. Okay, and then my last— okay, my last episode that I want to talk about is episode 8. Episode 8. Okay, and that's with Jatia Isaac, who was a 7-time— so episode 8, sorry, let me put up the 8. I'm putting up hands of eights, for those of you listening. Um, uh, Jatia Isaac from the world of wrestling. Okay, so, uh, Jatia Isaac is a 7-time All-American. Okay, 7-time All-American woman wrestler, lady wrestler. Okay, and, uh, it was news to me because I didn't even know that like women's wrestling was a college sport like to that degree, because my brother wrestled in high school and I'm nothing against them, but I didn't know how long it had been around and how amazing it is. And so Jatia took me inside that world, and that was a fun journey because no matter whether you're into these sports or not, no matter how many of these episodes I've done, right, we went to the world of wrestling. So we did volleyball, we did basketball, we did baseball, we did football, and now we're doing wrestling, right? And Jatia really, um, gave us a lot of great stuff about the mental game. Now, all of my guests gave stuff about the mental game because obviously it's called The Mental Advantage. That's where— that's what we're about. But what I loved about what Jatia talked about was the injury recovery and how she used the things that she had met and heard from motivational speakers and YouTube and really went deep. Because a lot of coaches don't give you a lot of game when it comes to the mental game. It's sort of like a figure it out yourself. Maybe you got introduced to it in college or whatever, but she was injured and, and also very bored in the small town where she went to college. And she was, uh, this is before she was injured, but she was using a lot of this stuff to motivate her. And then it came in handy when she ended up getting an injury of her shoulder and having to recover from this injury. And she was doing basically running through the mental reps of what it was like to do takedowns and certain things in wrestling while she was recovering to keep her mind sharp, but also her muscles sharp. Because there's a lot of science that suggests that, you know, what you do mentally keeps your— you know, can have the same effects at what you do physically. Now, not to the same degree, you know, it may be like a slight difference, but it's not so much that you, you'd say, ah, that's whack science. So definitely check that out. And, uh, learn from that lesson of any of you athletes going through injury recovery, because that's what I do with my athletes is I'm focusing a lot on their mental game and what they're doing when they're injured, because they can do reps. And getting those mental reps in— most people will tell you they don't believe in this stuff. They don't, they don't, um, you know, they're not sure if it works. But here's the thing I always want to put to people that say that, especially obviously athletes But it's like, well, how's what you're doing working for you? Because a lot of times injury brings a lot of sadness, sometimes a little, you know, depression, loss of identity, um, fear of whether I'm ever going to recover. And all of that is definitely energetically bringing you in a different direction of where you want to go, which is back on your feet, back on the sport you love, and back in action. So what if I could tell you, like, if you knew that you would be back better than ever if you did these mental reps you would do them, right? So let's pretend you know and do the reps, right? And learn from Jatia Isaac. And Jatia has lots of other lessons and messages from hers. I really loved my conversation with all of my guests. Like I said, I've enjoyed all of this journey. So that's up to episode 8. We'll cover some more in our next time. We'll do another recap soon. But definitely, if you haven't checked out the other episodes, there's so much more. Episode 9 obviously was Mackenzie St. Ange, which we You know, she's a college hockey player that went on to do some other things. So we need more and more and more of these conversations, and we've got some more coming for you soon. So thank you for checking out the Mental Advantage Podcast this far. If you haven't subscribed, what are you waiting for? Let's get in this game because you don't want to miss any more. I've got some— I've got fencing coming up. Okay, that's going to be our next episode from the world of fencing, and we're going to be visiting some other places as well. 'cause like I said, I'm committed to going all around the world because no matter what, no matter what sport they're playing, no matter what level, the mental game is definitely involved. Love you guys. Thanks for watching. Let me know what was your favorite episode of the Mental Advantage Podcast so far, and I'll see you in the next awesome episode that we're bringing to you soon. See you next time.