Enhancing Athletic Performance and Mental Health With Dr. Kacey Oiness and Dr. Brett Haskell

Welcome back to the show everybody. Before I announce my special guest here today, I do have to give a shout out to my sponsor, All Black Everything Performance Energy Drink, the official energy drink of the Athletic Fortitude Podcast available in Walmart, Meijer and select GNC franchise locations. I'm not exaggerating when I say I do love this drink. It's been a heck of a road trip and it's the only thing that's keeping me rolling here. Highly suggest the Blue Lagoon favorite is my favorite. With that being said, let me take a quick sip. I want to introduce my guest today. Dr. Casey Oyness is a licensed counseling psychologist who specializes in sport and performance psychology through her private practice, oyness Psychology Services, Dr. Ornis currently serves as a consulting team counselor and sport psychologist for the Vegas Gold Knights, Las Vegas Aces, Raiderettes and UNLV basketball. Dr. Ornis also serves as the Chief Experience Officer and a principal owner of Momentum Labs LLC. Dr. Brett Haskell currently serves as a consulting team Psychologist for a Major League Baseball club. In this role, she supports the psychological health, well being and performance of MLB players through mental health education, mental health policies and procedures and individual services. Additionally, Dr. Haskell is the Director of Clinical Mental Health and Performance for the National Women's Soccer League where she provides clinical mental health advocacy and consult consultative Support to all 14 professional football clubs and overseas legal or league policies and procedures regarding player mental health and mental performance. She is also the Chief Performance Officer and a principal owner of Momentum Labs llc. With that being said, welcome both of you. Thank you guys for coming on.

Thank you for having us. We appreciate it.

Excited to be here.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you both coming on and I do know you both played collegiate sports for my research for the episode and one thing I think is very unique being a former athlete is you want to feel related to when you're working with someone in this space. Do you think that that has helped you in your own practices with athletes.

You want to start?

Sure, absolutely. I mean I think the biggest thing in terms of the relatability piece is just understanding their experience to an extent.

Right.

And nobody's going to have the exact same experience. And it's obviously we work with athletes of different sports and different backgrounds, but just understanding the of performing at a high level under pressure while also balancing life and all the other responsibilities they have. So I think that them understanding that we've experienced that to an extent and can come at it from that lens has led to just strong connections and ability to work with those folks pretty.

Well, yeah, I think the thing I would add is just that, like understanding the nature of how strong that athlete identity is when you do something for a really, really long time, and it's a huge part, sort of, I would say it's in some ways your first career. Right. And then when you play, the higher levels you go up and play, I think the more demanding it becomes, the more expectations are placed on you, the more balls you have to juggle. So, you know, having played at a higher level and having had to navigate some of those demands, it gives you a greater degree of empathy maybe for what they're coping with every day, which can be challenging because I think we see athletes as sort of privileged in some ways, but there's a lot of challenges and stressors that come with that role.

I want to talk a little bit about the identity piece because that is, as my listeners and followers know, that is everything that I like to focus on is like the identity piece. How do you help athletes separate identity from sport, identity from outcome, identity from failure? I think that's really tough for an athlete.

Yeah, it's incredibly hard. I think it's incredibly hard for all of us because we tend to measure our worth and value by what we accomplish and what's visible to others. And so we get really tied to those outcome based perceptions of how good and worthy of a person I am. So I think that's the starting place, a lot of times is separating your sense of worth as a human being from what you accomplish as a performer and what your outcomes are, and understanding that your worth and value is inherent just because you are. And then anything you do on top of that is just sort of icing on the cake and then also just diversifying your identity. Because none of us have a singular identity. We're all, you know, I'm a mother and I'm a friend and I enjoy, you know, music and I have a spirituality and a faith that I identify with. So there's lots of different ways that we identify, but how we give our attention in purposeful ways to the various parts of our identity shapes how healthy and balanced our identity is. So really starting to help athletes find ways to give time and attention to those other parts of their identity.

Yeah, I think another thing that is helpful in walking them through, being able to identify with other parts of them is talking them through. Okay, yes, you're a great athlete, but what made you a good athlete? So tapping into the traits that they possess, their traits and their abilities, as opposed to just the outcomes and the Achievements and the success. So I'll talk with athletes and I'll say, okay, like, what makes you good? And then they're able to identify, well, I'm hardworking and I'm dedicated and I'm passionate. And so all of those things still exist within them, whether they're injured, whether they're transitioning out of sport. And so it allows them to know that those stable traits and characteristics are with them no matter what. And so it's a little easier to step back and separate from that full, like, grasp on the identity piece. Being an athlete.

How do you get athletes to buy in to that? Because I think about myself and, you know, all I know is what I know it took my sport being taken away from me to actually be like, oh, shoot, like, I should have been paying attention to this for the last five to 10 years. So do you guys take a proactive approach, a reactive approach, or like, how do you get that buy in?

Yeah, I mean, I certainly think the more proactive we can be and talking to athletes about it earlier rather than later is good. And so I think just helping them understand that, but also helping them understand that by having that balance that doesn't take away from your ability to continue to succeed as an athlete, we're not asking you to go, okay, this isn't important to me anymore. But almost helping them understand that the more balance you have, actually you might thrive even more in your sport as well.

Yeah, yeah, I would. That's what I was going to say is that I think taking a proactive approach and helping them. I focus a lot on like, kind of the brain science behind high performance and how we hack sort of what we know about the brain in order to get there. And what we know is that when we make something, our sole source of value and worth, make that all of our identity, is that it creates a lot of fear around the potential of losing that. And so then any kind of failure or embarrassment or disappointment we go through has a much more profound impact because it's magnified because we only are paying attention to that part of ourselves. And it teaches our brain that we've got to hold on really, really tight to that. And when our brain thinks that it has to hold on really, really tight to something, it actually is super vigilant and gets tight and tense. It causes our body to get tight and tense, which isn't ideal for performing well. So one thing I'll teach athletes is that when you diversify your identity, and that's one important thing, but you know, you have all these other things to fall back on. It reduces the fear response in your. Around failure, around disappointment, around embarrassment, which is something you have to learn to cope with effectively as a high performing athlete. So your brain is just going to work a lot better and you're going to play more fearless and more free because you know that you've got all this balance in your life. And if today doesn't go well in this particular game, I still have all these other parts of myself to fall back on. And doesn't mean you don't care as much about it, but you can care about a lot of things at a really high level. So it's not caring less about your sport, it's just learning to care more about all these other parts of yourself that are important.

I have like six questions based off of what you guys just said. So I'm going to try and do it. I'm not going to get to them all. The coping acceptance piece, I found that really, really hard with loss to accept and move on at the highest level. And not just like, oh, yeah, you lost. But you know, I think of like professional golfers. It's like, I missed that putt. I just lost $500,000.

Yeah.

So it's. How do you teach acceptance? I think I still struggle with acceptance. That's probably the biggest thing is acceptance of my own failures.

Okay, she's like, you brought this. Up you go, you stepped us in this landmine. Now it's your turn to take care of it. So I think acceptance is incredibly, incredibly hard. But I think when you do a lot of work around understanding the nature of sport, what you can control, what you can't control, and that failure is a piece of sport. And generally, if you can approach failure with a growth mindset, that something good can come of this and there's something important to be learned here decreases the amount of attention you pay to the disappointing parts. And it helps turn your brain towards looking at, what am I supposed to learn here? And it's really about just shifting attention. Those other thoughts are still there, but if you can put them in the background and give your attention and put the foreground on, what am I supposed to learn? How is this gonna help me be better tomorrow than I was today? It can be easier to cope with those moments. I also think, and maybe Casey's great at talking about routines, so I'm gonna let her talk about it. But having a routine post failure that you're really good at to shift sort of your internal emotional state from one of Discouragement, disappointment, being upset into focus, fire. Feeling propelled forward to figure it out for the next time. I don't know if you want to talk about routines.

Yeah, I can. Before that, I was also going to say acceptance doesn't mean you like it. Right. And so accepting it doesn't mean that it's still not going to feel crummy and you're going to be disappointed. But it's acknowledging those feelings, but then able to move on from them and not be consumed by them. So that is part of where the post routines come into play is okay, maybe you give yourself a little bit of time to let yourself feel crappy about it, but then we've got to identify, like, a transition point and so that you're not holding it and holding it and holding it. So maybe by the time that you leave the locker room or maybe by the time that you drive home and get into your house, and then what I add in there is that then we're gonna do that kind of reframing piece of it. Acknowledgement that, yes, I don't like that this loss occurred or this perceived failure. And yet how do I shift that into a constructive goal? So building off what Brett said of, like, this is an opportunity for growth. So I'm gonna reframe it into a goal, something constructive that I'm gonna work on how I'm gonna get better next time. And now it's useful, Right? So once you can reframe it into it being something useful, it is a little bit easier to accept and move forward.

Yeah. So am I allowed to say bad words?

I was wondering that too, because I was like, crappy, crummy. But I really wanted to say shitty.

Nah. I have a large adult.

Thank you for asking.

If there are any children out there. Earmuffs.

They probably say it themselves.

When I was in grad school, I think what Casey's saying about not having to like it and knowing that it's not gonna feel good. Acceptance doesn't always mean I feel zen about this. It just means, like, I know I cannot change it. It has already happened, and I can learn from it. But when I was in grad school, they put us in all kinds of terrible, difficult situations. Cause they want. It's kind of like being in Red Z residency. They want you to work on the hardest things clinically and have supervision and support when you're doing those the first time to get better at them. But those are not fun experiences. And so we developed a little saying in grad school. We called them a fogs another fucking opportunity for growth. Because we knew we were supposed to embrace it and we knew it would make us better. But in the moment, it does. It's so, like, upsetting, and it's overwhelming, and you feel all of these emotions. But if you can shift your attention to how I'm gonna get better from this, it's just like doing a really hard workout. None of us love a terrible workout. We all feel better afterwards, but in the midst of it, it's pretty terrible. But we're doing it for a purpose and a reason.

How do you, like, know if you're mentally tough? Like, how do you measure that? Because you look at athletes stories, like, for whatever reason, Malcolm Butler, if you don't know him, he was a cornerback for the New England Patriots. He was a rookie at, like, 29 and got cut over and over and over again. Never had a pro day, never had anything, but just like, kept going. To me, that's like a perfect example of, like, mental resilience. But then I think about it, like, I wouldn't say I'm mentally weak for stopping after I was 23 and I was in a camp. So it's like, how do you measure it? And, like, how do you get athletes to feel comfortable in building that resilience?

I mean, first and foremost, I think that terminology is used a lot, and I feel like it's not always well defined for an athlete either. And so kind of even thinking through, like, what's their definition of that and understanding that with them. Because then you said mental resilience. Right. And so I think a big piece of it is, again, kind of understanding what that means to them. I think to me, though, it's a lot of different components of how do you handle adversity, essentially.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking about. It's just, do I have skills and strategies in the moments that matter that help me concentrate better, remain composed and in control, execute similarly to how I do in practice? Right. Like, when there aren't these sort of varying degrees to which I perform mentally and emotionally, then an athlete is more consistent. And when I can do those in a way that produces repeatable results over and over, and I can cope with failure and disappointment, and I can manage difficult feedback and be able to take that in. I think those are all components of mental toughness. And sometimes mental toughness is sometimes the hardest thing to do, is to know that I don't love this the way that I loved it before, and it's actually time for me to move on. To something else that can be really, really difficult. And I think toughness ultimately is can I do hard things? And hard things aren't just physically hard things. Sometimes they're emotionally hard things. Sometimes not doing what everyone else thinks we should because we know it's not in our best interest is the hard thing.

Yeah. And I think a lot of times athletes get this idea that being mentally tough means I can't be anxious, I can't be sad, I can't be disappointed, whatever it is, fill in the blank. And yet I think it's more about I can feel and experience all of those things, but I have the tools to cope and I can cope with those things. And so I think retraining athletes to realize those are normal things to feel and think it's just what do you do with them?

Yeah, I think our most elite athletes often are very anxious because they care so much, and that promotes anxiety. When we care a whole lot, the brain responds with anxiety because it's afraid of losing that thing. And I think that what they do is they've developed really incredible mechanisms and tools that they can pull from their toolbox to stay calm and composed and keep their attention on the right things so that they can perform anyway.

What are some of those tools and mechanisms that can allow you to thrive with anxiety?

I think Brett kind of referenced some of them. I think it's mental tools of how do I maintain my compos. So when I'm feeling anxious, what are the things that I can do to manage that physiological feeling that comes along with it? So I would say composure techniques and composure can also be related to our self talk. So how am I talking to myself in those moments and is that helpful self talk, helpful internal dialogue, or is it critical? Is it distracting? Those sorts of things. Additionally, I would say focus techniques. Brett has mentioned that a couple times of it's shifting focus.

Right.

We can feel a certain way. We don't have to focus on it. So when they can learn to have more control over their focus, that usually leads to improvements in performance in those moments. I would say the routines come into play a lot here too. Whether it's pre performance routines, what routines they do during their performance after.

Yeah, yeah, I focus a lot on, similar to Casey, the body brain continuum. Because the reality is you can become dysregulated on both ends of that continuum, brain or body, and they actually feed each other. So if I'm disregarded, if my heart rate is elevated and my blood pressure is getting higher and higher and I'm getting hotter. It's going to send signals to my brain that I'm in a risky situation, there's danger around, and you should be worrying and looking for all of the catastrophes that are going to happen, which then promotes sort of that negative thinking spiral that we ended up end up in. So you can regulate your heart rate simply through some breathing techniques like belly breathing or box breathing or 4, 7 breathing. And when you can regulate your heart rate, it sends a message that everything is okay. And then it becomes easier to use self talk or like mindfulness based techniques to lock into the present moment because you regain control over those cognitive processes and you're not being dysregulated by the signaling coming from your body up to your brain.

What a UFC fighter who I had on here on the spot with a question of how do you separate your mental and physical training with that question about breathing? Yeah, how do you separate breathing from mindfulness techniques? Because a lot of things in this part of the good and bad of social media, they seem to be blurred lines. And I would love to hear the separation of mindfulness and breathing.

Well, mindfulness is not just a meditative practice. It's a way of being in the world as well. You can be mindful when you're eating, you can be mindful when you're driving. Mindfulness is just the ability to control where your attention is at. It's actually not about breathing. We use breath sometimes as the anchor for attention and that's why people attach mindfulness meditation with breath work. But breath work is a separate thing in and of itself. A tool that's unique and different that you can use in the middle of a game. Often you're not going to do a meditation technique in the middle of game. In fact, I would not recommend that.

Not advice, not advice.

You're going to downregulate to the point that you can't perform the way you need to. But using a couple of belly breaths after a moment of failure and then having a cue word and a visual cue maybe helps you reset and get locked back in. So breath work is practice that teaches you how to control your autonomic nervous system so that you can reduce your fight or flight response and increase your rest and digest response and find that balance. And ultimately as a performer, you don't want to be in all one or all the other. It's really about finding this unique balance in your zone where you are then performing your best. Mindfulness is attention control. It's really focused on what am I giving my Attention to at this moment and how do I have more control over what I get do end up giving my attention to. Specifically, how can I get my attention back to the here and now? Our brains are built as prediction machines. They review the past to try to control and predict the future. And we spend an enormous amount of our time there. In fact, there's a network called the default mode network and that when we're in the time machine doing that, we're in the default mode network and it takes us really internal and we're up here spinning, spinning, spinning, which we know isn't so great if you're on a field or on a court. It's kind of actually problematic, right? We talk about paralysis by analysis and overthinkers and that's what that is. And so mindfulness teaches you how to notice when you're in that time machine. And really critically, without judgment. Because judgment actually promotes more mind travel without judgment. Coming back to the here and now where my feet are. And so we use our breath as an energy, an anchor, because I can and pay attention to my breath in that moment and I've immediately brought myself back here and now. But you can use lots of things. You can use your feet feeling anchored on the ground or you know, feeling the wind on your face or noticing the color of the field. Any of those could be mindful cues to come back to here and now.

Anything to add on that?

I mean, that was very thorough and well said. So I'm, I'm good, I'm good. We're just gonna end it on that one.

Because when I look at my own life and even today, I would say I'm. I have a high sense of self awareness or what I claim to be self aware in terms of effort I put in on a daily basis, how hard I'm working, how much pain I feel, you know, going through. As I was telling you guys off air, my, my multiple knee surgeries, I'm acutely aware of like everything I'm feeling. And sometimes it's very hard for me to channel where my energy goes. Like, how do I give my energy to this and still be able to give my energy to my wife and kids and become a master of that. What can I do? Or anyone, any athlete, because I'm not the only person that deals with things like this. They can start to learn where to direct and how to channel their energy and have enough without feeling totally drained.

I mean, I think one thing is also reminding ourselves that we can't give all our energy to everything at once, right? And so I think sometimes we're trying to do everything really, really well all at one time and give all this energy. And so just because in one moment you might be focusing on something and not giving energy to. To something else, that doesn't mean that you're not giving it adequate energy. You just are gonna give that in a different moment. So I think that's one way that I try to think about it. Of I'm still giving great energy as a mom, even though right in this moment, I'm giving great energy and work. So I think that's one way to think about it. I would also say you said something about the way I frame it is like recharging, right? So when we give energy, even if it's to things we enjoy, even if it's to positive things, it drains our mental emotional batteries. And so it's really important to go before those get all the way on empty. I'm gonna recharge them so that maybe when I'm driving home from work, when I do get home, how do I have more energy in store for my home stuff? And so finding ways to recharge, some are bigger ways, like, okay, I'm gonna go take a vacation, or I'm gonna go to a concert or whatever it might be. Some of those are smaller recharges. So throughout my day when I'm driving, do I listen to music? Do I put on a podcast that I really do, I need to drive in silence? Whatever it is for you, figuring out those things that allow you to recharge that mental emotional battery so that you can continue to put that energy towards those different areas of your life.

Real quick, I want to ask a question on recharging activities. How much of. I think of the athletic lifestyle, like going to a bar, going to a club, and doing those things that most health people will tell you that's not healthy. But I've heard people say, listen, even despiteing that, sometimes that helps people recharge. So it's like, where do you balance what is scientifically healthy versus what actually makes me feel more energized? Where do you draw that line?

Yeah, I think it's important to think about that balance and know yourself personally. Right. And what your needs are. This is maybe a less extreme example, but for me, sometimes if I work all day and then I know sleep's important, but if I go to sleep, sleep immediately, then I wake up and I'm not recharged at all. Cause I just feel like I'm like, running this Loop of work, sleep work. So I might stay up 20 minutes later to be able to watch a show that makes me laugh or do something to recharge that part of my battery, even though I know the sleep is also gonna help in different ways. Britt loves sleep, so hopefully she doesn't hate this comment.

No, I don't, I don't. I think worrying too much about sleep also is prohibitive to sleep too. So I think when you get obsessional about any, it often leads to draining your mental cognitive battery and then not having those resources that you otherwise should. So if you worry too much about sleep, you should care about it. But if you worry too much about sleep and obsess over, it actually becomes more draining than it is helpful. Yeah, yeah.

And to go back to that question of, I think it's all about balance, moderation. Right. And so if I want to take a night to go out and hang out with my friends and have fun, knowing that that's gonna help recharge me, I definitely think we should make space for those things. Just nothing in excess that then is gonna limit our ability to keep engaging in those healthy behaviors that help us be an elite athlete.

Yeah, I think a lot about like habit formation and as long as it's not becoming a habitual thing that then is prohibitive to the, the goals that you have, then probably you're just listening to what you need at that moment. And maybe it's social connection. And maybe right now we know social connection is incredibly important, as important as eating, sleeping, and drinking water for us as human beings. And so maybe your need right now, your body is telling you, is social connection, and you gotta meet that need. And that's where self awareness and priorities become so, so important. Because you likely aren't going to have all of the energy to be great at all of the things you care about. So you have to recognize at this very moment what is the thing that I need to prioritize the most that I care about. And it might change throughout a day. Like when you come home, are you still thinking about work and draining your energy battery by spinning about what happened earlier in the day. And that's prohibiting you from being the best parent that you want to be when you're there with your children as opposed to locking in on them and using that as a moment to give your attention exclusively to that thing. I think in addition to that, like, there's a lot of really cool techniques related to how we manage our cognitive bandwidth because we actually drain a tremendous amount of a Lot of people don't know this, but your brain consumes about 25% of your body's energy in a day, and it's about 2% of your body's weight. It's the most energy consuming organ that you have. And we do a lot of things that are actually counterproductive to managing our brain energy the best that we can. So, like, for example, there's things related to decision fatigue. And if you just lay your clothes out the night before and make simple decisions the night before, it actually reduces the amount of energy you waste early in your day on some of those kinds of simple decisions. If you have things organized so getting out of the house with your children earlier in the day is less stressful, then you protect more energy that then you have later. If you take a mental break around lunchtime and you eat and fuel, you'll actually make better decisions and have better mental energy at the end of the day. I also would say with high performers, I don't think balance is super achievable. And I think that's aspirational at best.

That was gonna be my next question. Yeah.

So let's just get into it.

I think it's aspirational, and I think it's unrealistic. What I do think is that periodization is a much more applicable way to manage your health and wellness and your energy as a high performer. High performers don't have balance inherently, and that's why they're exceptional. If they did, they wouldn't be exceptional. Prob. And there's nothing to say that not being exceptional is not fine. That's fine. Most of us are average. That's what it means. But I think that we have to periodize periods of really intense strain and load. So if you think about it from a strength and conditioning model, you do the same thing with your brain. We're going to have periods of really intense load on our brain and our body. And then we got to be mindful and self aware of when our battery is really starting to dip after a couple weeks of that. And we got to intensely recover and be attentive to our recovery needs. So it's really about periodizing load and recovery as opposed to finding balance.

I'm gonna go on a rant here in just a second.

Did I say something wrong?

No, you didn't. It was just gonna be. I have a lot of questions, but there's something you said that I want to acknowledge because it was directly related to who I am, and it was about the, like, extra 20 minutes because you're talking about long work day. You come home, you know if you go to bed right, right away that you're gonna be messing with a. That's like my Description to a TIA football camp all the time. You wake up at 5, 6am and then it's right to the facility. And then you come home and it's nine, ten o' clock at night. It's been nothing but football. And all I can think about is the second I close my eyes, I'm going to wake up and it's going to be the same thing over and over. So that's. At least I did something right.

I've heard that so many times.

It's brutal.

It is. Yes, it is. That is the number one thing with football camp. Like, and I love football, but like, that would just drain you because you'd finally be like, oh, yes, meetings are finally over. And I look at the clock and I'm like, I'm gonna be exhausted tomorrow.

Yeah. When I think people think about the physical part of that and how exhausting it is physically, I don't think people always register quite how mentally and. And emotionally. Right.

Yes.

And so I think with athletes, even just helping them recognize that, yes, your body's fatigued, but your brain is fatigued as well, and both of those need to be recharged.

That was the biggest thing for me too. Cause it's like just my own experiences. So I came in as a freshman and was essentially, I became the starter right away. And so I remember distinctly laying there, it was probably like after the first or second week of camp and we finally got like a break. And I'm laying there in bed just like looking at the wall, thinking, how am I going to do three more years? So I'm thinking, you know, haven't seen my girlfriend in three weeks. She became my wife. And haven't seen my family. I've been family oriented forever. Haven't seen them in two weeks, haven't talked to them in two weeks. I have all this pressure as a freshman. I gotta come in, I gotta learn the playbook, I gotta make my teammates like me. I gotta try and be a leader at, you know, 18 years old and I gotta perform. So like, the mental emotional toll, that's something I never spoke about. Cause I didn't wanna be weak until like, pretty much when I started the podcast. So, you know, that's the big thing that people don't see. And I still don't understand why I'm gonna pick on men in particular. Don't Talk about it more because they'll talk about it behind the scenes later in their career, but they never talk about it during their career. I'm going to transition because the high performance thing and the balance is. I'm really fascinated with that. You said something earlier about obsessive. And you talk to high level athletes, sports psychologists, and things that come up with people who do become the Michael Jordans of the world, the LeBron James of the world. They're obsessive. So it's like, where does obsessive come in? Where does identity balance come in? And then being able to orchestrate these different parts of your mind that still allow you to become that good, but then also give you that, you know, that I've heard the House analogy with the identity, right? You know, being a father, being a son, or, you know, being a daughter, whatever it is, but then also being like, I'm gonna do this every single day, regardless of how I'm feeling, because I want to be the best. So it's like, where is that, that delicate, delicate balance? Like, how do you. If you can find it?

I mean, it's certainly threading the needle. And there's a. There is a tightrope that you are sort of walking at all times, and sometimes you, you know, fall off, and you don't always realize it until you're all on your behind for a while. And then it's like, what's going on? And you have to get back on that tight road and try to figure it out. And I would say that's more the norm than not. I mean, I mean, the reality is, like, some degree of obsessionality is what makes people exceptional. It's what gives them the willpower to do things much more than anyone else that helps them cultivate mastery, right? That being said, if we look at clinical obsessionality, right, if we were to think about it from that side, Part of why obsessive compulsive disorder is problematic for people is because it invades all these other parts of their life that they care about. So if I, you know, if I'm obsessed with concerns about illness, right? And I worry about it all the time, and I'm constantly doing checking behaviors to see if I'm ill or I'm sick and I'm doing all these extra things, it invades these other parts of my life that are probably really important to me, like my relationship with my children or my relationship with my partner or other hobbies that I enjoy because I don't have time for them now because I'm spending all this extra time checking to make sure I'm okay. I think that level of obsessionality can happen in sport. Interestingly, when that happens, not only does it affect often our personal lives, and I think we've seen that over and over with a lot of elite athletes.

Absolutely.

We won't name any, but I've heard it happens. But you know, I think that they put, they prioritize things maybe intentionally or unintentionally, I think often unintentionally they prioritize things in such a way that their sport is up here in everything else in their life, including their spirituality, spouse and their children and whatever else falls down here and they aren't even aware of it. And so it's really about having that self awareness to know and do those kind of self checks. And like maybe every month or every, you know, couple of months, where am I at in terms of these are what I say I value. These are my core values. How does my behavior and the time I spend in my day actually align with those core values? It's very likely that you can be a really exceptional athlete and still maybe close the gap on how much differentiation there is in terms of your time and attention to those things that you would say are all valuable to you. So I think that's one way is like identifying your core values and then really examining how you spend your time. And is that breakdown is the pie chart of how you spend your time, what you want it to look like relative to your values. But I think that the other piece of that is, is really starting to understand what of what I'm doing is actually making me better and what of what I'm doing is just reassuring me of certainty that I cannot have. Because I think a lot of over functioning in sport and doing extra, extra, extra, which also actually can hurt your body. And we're seeing a lot of that with kind of over functioning injuries. But if I'm spending a bunch of time doing these extra things that are actually not really getting me anywhere, they're just making me feel better because I don't know what's gonna happen when I show up on game day and I feel like, well, I did something to control that. You didn't. You didn't, but you felt better about it. The funny thing is that by doing those things you actually make the fear of the uncertainty more profound because your brain believes I just did something to actually control that. But it didn't. And so it makes it feel like that's a valid fear. I should be Very afraid of the possibility of losing that game. I should be irrationally afraid. A fear is normal, but I should be irrationally afraid to the point where I'm going to do all of these things that really don't control that at all. So it's really examining. And sometimes you need other people to help you think about what are you doing that's actually helping your performance and what are you doing that's really about coping with the uncertainty of what will happen in the future.

Yeah, I mean, I think that efficiency piece, right. Of what you're doing is important because, yeah, I mean, even youth athletes, right, like, what are all the things I need to do and all the extra lessons and all of the extra steps I need to take. Whereas I think as athletes have gotten to the professional level, there is a little bit more knowledge of, like, which things actually impact the most. How do I make the most out of my time and be efficient in it so that I'm maximizing the effort and the things I'm putting into it as opposed to just doing excess stuff to feel better about it? So I would say efficiency in that would be like a really key piece. And yes, maybe sometimes you have the professionals on staff there to help you figure out, okay, how do we maximize your time in the weight room? How do we maximize the effort you're putting on the court, on the ice, wherever that may be. But I think that piece can give a little bit more room to then, like Brett was saying, close that gap with the things you've decided are your values. Right. I would also say there's gonna be ebbs and flows sometimes. So, okay, we're in season or we've got. We're in off season. Like those times when it does ebb and flow a little bit to go. Now I really, really focus in on these other areas of my values, my family or my friends, because this is the time that I have a little bit more bandwidth to do that as opposed to understanding, like, yeah, when I'm grinding through season, that time is much more limited. So being intentional, I think, is another huge piece of it, which is why.

I think that idea of having balance every day is so unrealistic. But you can periodize being very thoughtful about your recovery when you have that time.

When you are trying to figure out. I like the term maximize because I think that comes up a lot. Self maximization. How do you measure what is fluff and not actually controlling the uncertainty and what is actually working for you from mental, physiological, psychological, whatever you want to say, how do you actually measure what works and what doesn't? I think it's different for everyone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everybody's unique.

Yeah. I mean, I think depending on the space. I mean, I think within athletics and where we're at with technology, I do think some of that stuff is being better measured of, like, how are we monitoring our progress in the weight room, injury recovery? Like, we've got more things to kind of measure and monitor. So I do think in some of those spaces, some of that helps. I think that's where you also lean on your experts of, okay, trusting what my strength and conditioning coach, what my dietitian, whatever space we're in, trusting what they're saying and not second guessing, it's. I think those are ways to kind of lock in and go, okay, if I trust my people and this is what's being recommended, I'm gonna kind of follow that and feel good about it, not second guess it and try to just keep doing more and more and more.

I would say also just paying attention to your body and kind of knowing like, so weight gain, weight loss is a good indicator. Things are getting out of balance in your life. And you know, with what Casey said, we can measure a lot of physiological things and most athletes are getting measured on a number of things depending on their sport, force played, productivity and how that's declining or increasing. In baseball, you know, we look at pitch velocity and things like that and we can see how maybe psycho emotional components of your life might actually be impacting those things. If we can rule out all other, like, I'm not over training or maybe I am over training. And I think also it's really important if you're an elite athlete who really wants to be great, that you have an interdisciplinary team that works really collaboratively. Because I'm not an expert on, on if his force plate looks like it should or not, but if you tell me, like, I can't explain it, but man, this is really going down fast. And then the dietitian is like, well, he's not eating and he's lost five or six pounds. Okay, that's going to affect your force plate. How is our, you know, how is our pitch velocity? Does that look the same or does that look different? So you're taking account of all of this information and then hopefully as an athlete, you have a team you can trust that's giving you feedback to indicate if your body is responding the way it should to your training and what you're doing mentally and emotionally.

You guys both said trust a lot. How do we get athletes to trust what we're doing or what you're doing?

So trusting their team, you mean? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it's relationship building and consistency on the part of the team too.

Right.

I don't think you just walk in and have someone trust you. I think you have to show that you're going to be consistent over time. I think you have to show that you're invested in them, that you care about them, care about them as human beings. So I think that piece of it, I also think they respond to seeing how the team functions as a team too. So when Brett said working really well as a multidisciplinary team, they're going to pay attention, right? How is my team interacting? Are they second guessing each other? Are they trusting one another? And I think that's gonna feed and foster trust as well. If they can see that you all trust one another and working well together.

Collaboration with them, they're part of the team. Right. Like you aren't just being told what to do by a team, you are part of that process. And we need you to explain what your body is telling you that maybe we can't measure and what behaviors you're engaging in and what's changed and what's the same. So I think making our athletes feel like their voice matters on those teams fosters a lot of trust and that you listen and you hear. It's not just we hear you, but we're not really listening to you. So I think that's really important. Bottom line, as Casey said, like our brain is a predictive machine. The more that it can anticipate what's going to happen, the more trust, trusting the brain will be. And so when your team is really consistent and they're giving you feedback in really consistent ways and they're very transparent about what they're observing and how they work together and you are a, you're informed about that process. Then there's a lot of, there's a high degree of consistency plus really good relationships and that's what's going to make you trust.

How much do coaches and organizations actually focus on this? Because I think the collaboration piece is really important. I feel like when you look at successful organizations, they have a very good flow of building that trust, building a culture of caring and relationships. So it's, you probably don't even know the answer. But like do organizations or have they gotten better with the full collaboration piece with their athletes and do coaches actually participate in any of the psychological training of it? All because I think coaches need it too. I think that's very, very under discussed topic.

Yeah, I actually think coaches are best positioned potentially to teach mental skills, to implement mental skills, to make mental skills part of the culture of how they operate on the field or on the court. I think coaches are in such an incredible position of leverage to shape the behavior of their athletes and shape the tools that their athletes use to cope with moments that matter, moments with consequences. So I think there are more and more coaches who are really interested in sports psychology and really invested in it. I mean, to the point where I think there are more coaches who want our services than there probably are people to provide those services right now. But it varies. I think that it depends on what their experience has been and how curious they are about the newest and latest science and what we're learning about the brain and the body. And some are just more interested in growing in that way than others.

Yeah, I mean, I do think it's getting better in terms of organizations prioritizing that and building out that multidisciplinary team. I think there's still room for growth, as always. And I think it's gonna sometimes just be very dependent on who's in certain roles. But I do think it's something that is getting focused on. And I think even with universities or the pro leagues, like prioritizing the need to have all of these key people on staff, recognizing that that that's important, that they're on staff and can collaborate with the rest of the team.

I also think that those folks, those experts, understanding that they are a team within the team and that they have to have high degree of cohesion and trust and they demonstrate trust by their behavior and their actions with each other. And so, you know, I think that's something that isn't always acknowledged. We get all the right people, but we don't work on their communication patterns, their information sharing patterns. And that's always a challenge for us because we get put in positions sometime where we can't share certain things because of confidentiality. But if we've got a high degree of trust in that unit and the athlete has a high degree of trust in that unit, often we can get a release to be able to share the things that that team needs to know. But we have to, as a team, have to work on our relationships and our communication in order to get to that higher level of integrated performance work.

That'S a big thing. The trust of being willing to share because of, of having to keep it confidential. Something that you Said behaviors, actions. How do we influence behaviors and actions? Because you think about the people who ultimately are outliers, how much of that is they're born with that, versus how much do you develop and influence their actions? Because, like, I think if someone like Dan Hurley just came out. Not just came out, probably a couple months ago, they were asking him about his comparison with his dad and his brother, and he said something along the lines of, I just won two national championships. I rival anything that they've ever done. He goes, however, I was still like a shit player. And the interviewer was like, even despite all that, you're still bringing up the fact that you weren't a good player. And his response was, I'm different than everybody else. So it's like, is that natural that he got to that point? Is it. I'm not even saying that's healthy, but, like, in general, are you born with it to be that determined, obsessive athlete person who's going to achieve great things, or is it something you learn along the way?

Got it.

You do talk really well about behavioral change. That's why. Then I'll add.

So what we're talking about is like personality temperament, right? And how personality temperament is then shaped by environmental experiences. And it's always both and, sorry, biggest cop out ever. Yes and yes. So our temperament is sort of our innate, like, kind of nervous system's way of being in the world. And actually in utero, we can start to identify people's temperaments. So really active children in their mother's womb versus more like chill, laid back, didn't kick a whole lot, slept most of the time.

Children talking about my daughters right now because one was crazy, one is very 100%.

And they were raised in the same environment, came from the same parents, but they both have different temperaments. And we can identify temperaments then in infants. And there's four or five temperaments, right? Yeah, yeah, there's four or five basic temperaments. And then temperament is shaped by your family environment, your lived experiences up until adolescence, mid to late adolescence, when we really start to see that temperament be shaped by environment in a way that solidifies into what we would call personality. Personality has five core constructs, and we all vary in different ways on a continuum of each of those five constructs. We call that the ocean model. So openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. And everybody is in varying places on that. And that's what makes your unique temperament. I mean, your unique personality so temperament turns into personality shaped by environment. And then as you go through life, your personality is pretty set and stable. But different developmental periods can intensify your personality or maybe soften your personality style. I call it like talk about a volume dial where it'll turn the volume way up on that, or it might turn the volume down on that. So an athlete who's in the peak of their training, they are not married, they, they don't have anything else. They're just fixated on their sport life, their conscientiousness, that intense, kind of focused part of their personality. The volume might go way up on that because it can at that point in life. And what they care about is, probably facilitates that happening. But then they have children and they get a spouse and those, those human beings have demands and that part of the volume of on that might go down a little bit and soften because of the demands of their life at that point. So yes, you are born with a temperament and a personality that might facilitate being more of a workaholic or an over functioner or being really intense by nature, or being really laid back by nature, which works for some athletes, actually. And then you have all of these lived experiences that intersect with that personality. And often, really importantly, people who really poured into you at certain points that were critical developmental stages and you wanted to model your behavior after, and that really starts to solidify the things that you then value and care about and shapes how your personality volume dial kind of goes up and down in the future. What do you want to add?

Well, I think the piece to add is can we make changes? And behavioral change is hard, but it's doable 100%. And so certainly I think we're going to drive how much we commit to behavioral change based off our values and based off our goals and what we're trying to accomplish or achieve. And so how important it is to us is going to determine how much we invest in making changes to our behavior. Right. There's other things that shape and mold that as well. So reinforcement that comes from other people or our environment, consequences that can be present. We were just chatting about this the other day. Sustained behavior change is going to be most likely to occur if it's being shaped more by reinforcement than punishment. So we both like to talk about our kiddos in this instance where we're going, okay, how are we shaping our child's behavior? Okay, we're gonna incentivize them. If you have good behavior, then we're gonna reward you for that. We're Gonna take you to the museum or get you a new toy or things along those lines versus only consequent them for poor behavior.

Essentially, behavior change is habit change. Behavior change, it's difficult. But if there's something you value enough to make a change, you can 100% do it. And there are very targeted strategies that will increase your likelihood. So if you're trying to stop drinking caffeine, get rid of all the caffeine in your house. Delete your Starbucks app, Delete your Starbucks app from your, from your phone. You know, reduce the likelihood that you're gonna be triggered by a reminder of that thing that you like, right? And then set up an accountability system. Who are you gonna tell and how are you gonna ask them to hold you accountable for that goal that you have? Cause social support is really critical to sustaining behavior change and letting people know. Are you setting goals and are you stratifying change check marks that are realistic? Right. So I might want to start exercising five days a week, but I haven't exercised in a year. So if I, it's much more realistic for me to say I want to move my body twice a week for the next month. That's probably a realistic time period where I could really commit and see success. Because the other thing is we're motivated by our own feeling of internal achievement, right? Intrinsic reward. And so if I set a goal that's challenging but doable, all of a sudden I've inherently produced some motivation to keep doing that and make a little more change. We also increase our confidence then that we can keep changing too. So there's a lot of different strategies that we use to help people. And a big part of what we do is holding people accountable for change. You do your home, here's your homework, now here's how we're gonna do it. How were your reminders? How are you gonna reward yourself for having done it? Who are you gonna tell about it? Who are you going to tell once you did it?

Right?

They give you encouragement and then come back next week and tell me and then we'll set some new goals.

I think about it too with my daughters, everything you guys are talking about, with the incentivized versus discipline. And my oldest daughter is very similar to me. And so I think about the self sabotaging behaviors. I had the temper, anger, I had the I want something, I want it now. And honestly, a lot of these things end up being why I was so good at sports and why I have success in a lot of areas in my life is what I label it as like passion or intensity. But I also know the less seen effects, like the poor internal dialogue that I had, the unable to wrap my emotions when I need to. And I see those things in her. And so I'm trying to find that line between incentivizing to do good in disciplining.

Yeah.

Because I think about my own athletic career, like how would I coach myself at the time? Because now I'm significantly different than what I was even three, four years ago. Just learning how to cope my own emotions and control and channel my energy. And I certainly haven't mastered it. But so without obviously knowing all the details, like given the description I just gave you, where do you find the. That balance of discipline versus reward?

I don't know. But when you figure it out, will you tell us that we compare our children?

I know I'm talking about my daughter, but I do think about it. No, but we both are just going.

To our difficult children thinking of our children. This isn't quite answering that question yet. We will go back to that. But I also think there's a piece of figuring out when and how to channel it. Because you said I was a successful athlete because of a lot of these things. And so they're not necessarily negative. Right. There are positive aspects to a lot of these traits, characteristics, temperaments, personality styles. How do you channel it? Right. Where do you channel it? So that's one thing because then we're not just squashing something that is innate to somebody, but we're helping direct it in a way that's going to produce success or healthy, healthy results. So that was one thing that came to my mind as you were talking and maybe with our kiddos, I think.

Naming those parts of ourselves and helping our children name those parts of themselves both for when it's positive and when it kind of turns south and it's not so, like, my daughter is very determined, which sometimes looks like really intense stubbornness. So, you know, so labeling that for her and then helping her as she ages, understand, like you're being really determined right now when it's channeled positively or you know what, at this very moment, your determination looks a lot like stubbornness. So I do think naming and labeling those parts of ourselves and seeing them both for what's good and bad. Yeah, I like that a lot. Kees.

Yeah, I think. Is it like similar to. This is a concept I really like. I actually talked about it with Alex when I interviewed him. The creating identities for yourself, like a separate identity, like the Deion Sanders, the Beyonce Knowles. Like, is that kind of similar to what you're talking about? Like, if I label different parts of my personality very similar to creating an identity for, like, a performance stage. Is that similar concept there?

Yeah, I talk about game face Persona a lot with athletes, especially when I have, like, really, really nice, nice athletes. And I'm like, get a little angrier, but, like, helping them kind of create a game face Persona and, like, naming that and then figuring out how do I feel when I'm in that Persona, how do I think? And it also can give them permission to maybe behave in a way that outside of the field, of the court, they wouldn't be comfortable with or they would, you know, feel badly about. But it's then learning how to flip the switch on. You know, I have a youth athlete right now who has a alter ego. He's so sweet, and he has this alter ego that he calls gay when he's on the pitching mound. And it's awesome. And we've talked a lot about how to flip the switch, and he's gotten really comfortable with being gator on the field.

That's awesome.

But, yeah, I think that that's a really, really helpful strategy for overcoming maybe personality traits or behaviors that maybe prohibit us on the field.

Yeah. And I think it helps redefine that again, that we don't have to label them as this is good or this is bad. This is positive or negative. It's all about how we utilize it, what space we're utilizing it in. And then, yes, being able to turn off the switch when appropriate. And so then it almost allows them to see strengths in areas that probably sometimes come with a negative connotation, and they don't have to be so critical of that part of their personality. It's like, this is useful sometimes. And in some ways, I just have to figure out how to strike that balance.

Athletes get into wanting to think about things in very black and white ways all the time, and we're always trying to help them see more gray. What I find is that athletes want to identify things as good and bad, good and bad, good and bad. And so one of the. I think a more helpful question for an athlete to ask rather than, is this good or is this bad? Is this helping or is this hurting relative to the goal that I have at this moment, is this helping or is this hurting? And it's less about something being good and bad, and it's more about, does it facilitate me accomplishing what I want and being in line with my values, or does it prohibit me from doing so.

So it's funny because I was a very black and white athlete, but when I started to notice the gray, I did start to better change my behavior. So that's funny that you kind of just described me there. Kind of the last question here, and I don't know if this is answerable, but like, for example, like when organizations do psyche vows on players they're about to draft, is there a specific type of personality trait or temperament that drives people to success? Is there something that you look for and you're like, that's a guy we want. And I think, like, particularly quarterbacks or like people that in the NBA you draft first or second overall baseball players, I think is the hardest eval.

It is.

But in general, is there something you look for where it's like, you gotta take this guy or girl.

Brett's done a lot in this space and well, you do. And you work closely with one of the testing companies. Yeah.

So yeah. What the research is showing in that area is that both our cognitive abilities and our personality matter. There are differences in terms of even positions, like within football, where one matters more than the other sometimes, but you can also compensate. That's the cool thing, is that it's not about like, oh, you're really high on this one score. So, like, we measure something called preparedness, and we also measure something called dependability. Dependability is more the inherent, like, conscientiousness that we were talking about earlier, which is like, I can't make a mistake, I can't make a mistake. And it drives you to be 10 minutes early for everything. I'm much lower on that score than Casey. And then there's something called preparedness, which is more the skills about being organized and deliberate. And you learn those in childhood from your family or in school. And then there's like your cognitive horsepower. And people who have pretty high cognitive horsepower and are also have good skills, they can compensate for being less internally anxious and needing to do everything right because it feels bad to me if I don't. They can just figure out, like, if I want to be successful, I kind of got to do it that way. So it's more about the balance of traits than it is about any one trait. Although I will say that you have to be able to be deliberate in your behavior to be highly successful for a long period of time. I think you can be a flash in the pan without a certain degree of. Of discipline. But I would say if I were looking for one thing in particular, and I'm Taking out the physical talent. And we've already accounted for that because that always counts for more of the pie. Like, you can't go find a psychologically, like, exceptional person who's going to be better than Patrick Mahomes because of Patrick Mahomes physical gifts. And so it doesn't compensate like that. I talk about it being more of a competence interval or like a band around your physical abilities. And are you going to operate at the top of your band? Are you going to operate at the bottom of your band? But if my physical talent is a 78 and somebody else's is a 38, their band at the top will still never be as high as my band at the bottom from a physical talent standpoint. But how do we take ourselves from that, from that 78 up to maybe an 82, 83, 84. With mental skills like discipline and preparedness and being able to do the things that are necessary to put yourself in the very best position to be. And then I think there's a certain amount of grit and persistence and competitiveness, frankly, at those really high levels, you have to sort of want to dominate other people because you probably are successful enough. You go achieve in a lot of different places. To stay in something that's as violent as, like, football or as physically taxing as baseball. Repetition, you have to just have this desire to dominate others. And that's a trait, like a motivational trait that we. We would. We would call competitiveness, as opposed to achievement, which is more. I like to, like, do things well, but I could do a lot of things well. Competitiveness as I need to dominate in this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. I could ask a million more questions. We'll leave it there. Thank you both so much for coming on. If there. If people want to reach out to you, they want to find you, or if there's anything you want to promote or things that you're working on, please, you know, take the time now to shout that stuff. Stuff out.

Yeah, I think just check out our website.

Momentum Labs. Coach.

Yep. Alex is gonna kill us. Put it on the bottom of the screen.

Right.

So we have a. I think our company that Casey and I and Alex Auerbach and Abigail Eiler have started together, is really focused on trying to. To make these kinds of skills and strategies and professionals more readily available to people outside of, like, an organization that has one. Because if you try to go look for one in the. Like in the community, because maybe you're a retired athlete who wants to, like, work on being the best dad, you can be, then it's really hard to find those people. And so we've created a digital clinic that we call the Momentum Lab where we have, I think 15 high performance training mental coaches that can work with you on whatever goals you have to make those behavior change that are difficult to make you more successful, experience more well being and have a happier, healthier life.

Incredible. Well, thank you both so much. Thank you. Love these conversations. It's been a blast having you on listeners. Thank you for listening. Like Rate Subscribe. Tune in next week. Thank you guys.

Thank you.

Thank you. This is fun.

Yeah.