Why Don’t Athletes Take Mindset Seriously? - Dr Alex Auerbach

It never ceases to amaze me that nearly 100% of sports people will tell you that mindset matters for performance, and yet only a tiny fraction of those people are actually doing anything to train it.

I don't even know where you want me to begin with this one. I mean, I think about this often, but I still believe mindset training in all of its forms, right? Whether we're talking about psychological skills or things that sort of blend into the mind, body connection, like neurofeedback and biofeedback are this untapped frontier of potential that actually, at the highest levels of sport, most people are not tapping into. I mean, even really basic stuff. I was just telling someone the other day, like, when the NBA had the bubble, they gave every player an org ring, right, to track things like heart rate and sleep, because it was in the middle of the pandemic, and Aura was doing a great job tracking Covid symptoms through, seeing biomarker changes. And by the end of the bubble, none of these guys had a ring on any, right? Because they're really just not, most of them not invested or not acting on the information that they have. And then, of course, this trickles down to everywhere else in sport. And so we've got this potential to really get the most out of people by teaching them the skills they need to actually perform well. Because especially at the highest level, as you know, failures in performance are not because someone lacks a skill. It's usually because there's some breakdown between the brain and body or some breakdown in mindset that people end up underperforming under delivering. And so for people who sort of espouse wanting to consistently be great, to not actually do everything that it takes to be great, I still think is a little bit doubt that.

But then I don't find it a coincidence when you see, like, the goats, I think there's only a few that I would probably put in the bucket that don't class this. But when you start to dive into maybe a LeBron James, Novak Djokovic, right, Cristiano Ronaldo, you dive into what they're doing and where they're investing. I think LeBron James was. I think he was quoted that he invests something like 1.2 million into his recovery every year, and it's like he's leaving a clue, he's leaving clues. And then Djokovic talking about his investment into the understanding of conscious breathing, mindfulness, and. And Ronaldo just, I mean, peak physical condition continuously season after season, and where they're investing, I'M I, I think that's just where the, there is a huge opportunity for everyone to recognize. Like you see these guys are hugely investing in these areas and I find we'll probably get more and more autobiographies come out and people will start to talk about who had an influence in their life. The people that were working really behind the scenes. Because these people are not only just working with the trainers that are in the team, but then guys that are outside of that and privately and, and yeah, it's, it's those guys that are, it's so obvious. It's right there to see. But for some reason, 99% of athletes will not take it seriously.

I have a hypothesis that most athletes don't actually want to become the all time greatest. You know, it takes like a different level of motivation and commitment to reach that point. And I think like any job really, you know, most, most people I think will be quite comfortable being average. Now of course you don't make it to a place like the NBA or Major League Soccer, EPL or whatever, like as an average athlete. Right? But your average in your class appears and a lot of people are satisfied with that and sometimes rightfully so, right. You're making good money. And maybe what you really want to do is like right off into the sunset after a couple contracts and you don't care about winning or whatever it might be, but you do to your point, have this small group of athletes that consistently stick around, perform well and insert themselves into the go conversation. And I would venture an educated guess that each of those guys is doing a significant bit of mindset training and they talk about it in their own way. So you mentioned LeBron James and recovery. Kobe Bryant had his Mamba mentality. Steph Curry talks about float tanks, which is like a part of being present. Roger Federer talks about working with a sports psychologist. Djokovic talks about breathing and self talk. Lewis Hamilton talks about taking care of his body to take care of his body. Like the list does not end. Tom Brady talks about working with the sports psychologist at Michigan. But to your point, a lot of people don't pick that up. And I think there might be a few reasons aside from people being quite comfortable being in the middle. The other would be complacency. The other would be it's hard. This is not something people are exposed to early. And I do think that plays a big part in it. Where when you're a kid, you kind of go out to the playground, you run around and no one really talks to you about the experience you're having internally, if you fall, someone will ask you, is your knee okay? No one will ask you, like, are you feeling okay? Right? Are you sad? Are you happy? Whatever. And that's just sort of the nature of, like, watching kids play, letting them go do their thing. But the same thing is true in esports and in that ecosystem. It's starting to get better, I think, in places where they have, like, an academy psychologist and academy teams, where you can see the influence of thinking from people like Christopher Henriksen or other practitioners who are talking about surrounding younger talent with a better environment, you're starting to see psychological influences there. But here, at least in the States, like that broadly does not exist. And so then athletes get to. I mean, the number of players that got to me in Toronto who had never even met a sports psychologist when I first got there was pretty alarming, for the fact that the NCAA is supposed to have one at every institution. Right. Some of these guys had never even heard of who their sports psychologist was. And this is their first introduction into mindset or the first introduction into their own psychology. And that can be scary just like anything else. So it may be another barrier, another reason people don't pick it up. But, you know, to your point, if you're watching the best of all time and that's where you want to be, you can consistently find some basic things going on that they're doing that most people are just not picking up.

I wonder if one of the reasons why people don't take it on is because of the ego protection of the self that you have created by the time you get to that level, or the idea of the self that you want to create, and therefore the image of that person that you're creating is this rugged character. Go it alone. I can do it. And is. And is building your own journey. I wonder if that's a reason why athletes might find it tougher to go and seek out that. That mental coaching from whoever's available to them.

I certainly think that can be a part of it. And it is scary to go kind of open up a little bit and talk more about what you're thinking or what you're feeling and impacting you. But, you know, in my work, one of the parallels I often point to is the coach on the court. Right. You know, it's. It's. You are never going it alone, even in an individualized sport like tennis. Right? You've got a coach, you've got a trainer, you've got a strength coach. And each of these People has an incredible set of experiences to bring to bear to help you become better. And a sports psychologist is no different. But I think in large part because of the way we've talked about mental health or the way people think about being vulnerable. To your point, it can be a little bit more scary to talk to those people. But the parallel to draw is like for most skills coaches, for example, they talk about mindset. I know plenty of golf coaches who are talking about developing your swing and developing the right mentality, or basketball coaches who are out there talking to you about your girlfriend and the fight you had last night, because you don't seem very focused. So it's not like you can't have the conversation. You don't have the conversation. It's just really about making that leap to understanding. There may be other people here who could help you. And this is not an indictment on who you are or anything about you. This is really about leveraging the resources and the tools around you to become the best you can be. And so I've got to. You know, I agree with you that that's an issue. And I think part of that is positioning right. And, you know, people thinking of mental health or seeking sports psych as sort of like a weakness or a limitation, or you only go and there's a problem. And part of that is helping, you know, athletes understand that, that this is just one other piece of the puzzle. This is not going to make or break you. This is not designed to uncover all of your deepest, darkest secrets and expose you to the world. This is designed to help you reach your full potential. And that's the same as any other coach you're working with in the system.

Yeah, I think there's maybe also a slight hesitation around how it actually works. I know with if I'm getting a physical trainer, I know roughly I'm going to see some weights, I'm going to see a track, I'm going to see a swimming pool, I'm going to see an ice bath. I'm going to see all these things that are a part of what I know are involved there. I wonder if a part of it is. I actually don't know what the work entails. And I even think about people I work with. They're kind of surprised at some of the sessions you have with them, and they either is either in its simplicity or its complexity. And I think it's just down to the fact that there is. There is an unknown. It's just not been around. And that's another thing I would wonder whether we're in an era where. Because we're at an era where I think it's an inflection point. It's now become such a talking point. But there's not been examples before the those that have gone before other than people who have sort of dived into the literature. But the actual applied the actual on the ground or what is it? What is actually a day or what is an hour with a sports psych, a mental performance coach actually look like? And how the hell is that going to help me right now? So there's nothing for people to tangibly go. I can understand what it might look like.

I think that's true too. And unfortunately, the field hasn't helped itself much. Right. We kind of extrad what we do in mysticism a little bit. And like anything, you know, it takes a bit of investment to see progress. And so I think that's part of this sort of mysticism you're alluding to too, is like often when people come to a mindset coach, and I think this is different than say a skills coach or a strength coach. You know, there's an expectation like, I have something wrong and you will fix me like any other kind of medical professional. Right. Most people don't go to the strength coach for the first time, like, hey, I'm really weak. I need you to bulk me up. It's like, I'm going to the strength coach and I know you're going to make me strong and get me fit to perform. And there's not really like a question there. To your point, there's kind of demonstrable results and with a mindset coach, there can be. But just like strength training, it takes some time and you've got to buy into it. It's not just going to be, you know, come for one session and we'll, we'll kind of get it all together. But I do think we are at that inflection point where you're starting to, of course, hear athletes, feel more comfortable talking about it. And even in my own experience, I was just telling someone yesterday, my first year in Toronto, when I did the NBA draft, you know, I would ask players like, oh, did you ever, you know, meet with the sports psychologist there purely as like an icebreaker and get to know you like, does it. I'm not scoring you for that. You know, I'm just like, hey, do we have a mutual friend? You know, like, establish a point of connection, right. And the number of players who are like, no, I don't even know who that would be in 2020 was, you know, quite, quite high. And by the time I left in 2020, forks before I had even asked, players are volunteering, like, yeah, and I work with the sports psychologist twice a week. And here are the things that we're working on. And so you're definitely starting to see a change. And there's still a lot more work to do, I think, in our field to more clearly illustrate how does this actually work and what are people getting if they're coming and how do we help them see their progress more quickly so that they can stay bought in and stay committed. And really, we need to flip, I think broadly the perspective on this to be more like physical training. Right. You really never stop working on your physical health not because something is wrong with you or because there's some kind of deficit, but because you know that you can consistently get better. And the same thing is true with mental health and mindset. And I think we're still a little bit too much in that place where we think of it as like a solution to a problem versus a thing to optimize to be the best that we can be. And those are just slightly different.

That's a really good point and something I actually probably have not considered enough that people constantly think of, okay, I need to be thinking of, I have this maladaptive behavior. I'm struggling here and I need to fix it through whatever you're going to give me, come, come help me out. And it being less like, yeah, physiotherapist, who would fix an injury, help you rehabilitate an injury, get you back from some form of moment where your body has broken and it's, it's, it's been damaged, that actually this field is far different. It's almost thinking of, okay, there may be something that we need to make a, a big move in. It might be a lot of negative thinking. Self talk's not where you want it to be. And even you could say the performance is not where it wants to be. Not through lack of skill, but actually because you can't deal with pressure or you expectations too high. But actually the, the actual approach that you should look at it is maintenance in the gym. It's looking at, I'm going to the gym not to constantly PB all the time, but to know that if I don't lift some weights, I, I lose muscle, I, I, it goes, it goes away. So thinking of it more like that, that maintenance side of your mental skills, of your mental game rather than solution to a problem that is just straight away, because I think the biggest problem I see, and this is definitely something I've experienced, is an athlete comes to you, they ask for some help, you help them, and then they have a win, and then you don't see them again for. For months until shock, horror, things are bad again. And help me out, like, what. What's gone wrong? It's like, well, where have you been for the last few months?

Yeah, you don't fix a roof when it's raining. You fix a roof when it's sunny out, right? But unfortunately, most of the athletes come when it's like total downpour, the roof's collapsed. You know, it's like, I can't focus, I'm not performing well, I'm really anxious. And then as soon as they start to see some progress, right, I'm a little less nervous when I'm at the free throw liner. I'm a little bit more focused. It's like, okay, cool, I got this. And you know, to your point, they may actually have it for one or two games or, you know, even a month. But to really develop these skills requires consistent practice and consistent training. And importantly, I don't believe that that means you always have to work with the same cadence, with the same sports side forever, right? Like, just like strength training, you can go have a session on your own, you can do things less frequently, you can change or periodize what you're working on based on where you're at in the season. But I don't think you can really maximize your mindset if you look at only as a place you come or a thing you do when you've got a real problem, right? You need to look at it like a set of skills that you're constantly training. And I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone who is always as present as they would like to be. I don't know anyone who is always as resilient as they would like to be, who's never as stressed as they want to be. Right? And these are all things that have to do with the way your brain works, the way that you cope, the way that you process. It doesn't mean anything's wrong with you. It just means you can get better just like anything else. And so the more we can shift that kind of dialogue and the thinking to, like, these are just a set of skills, and you train these skills just like anything else in sport or any performance, the better I think we're.

Going to be like you've said you spend a lot of time in the NBA and I'm curious to know, when you look at the NBA and the players, they are physical man mountains, they're, they're giants in the world. And that comes with probably a, especially from a male perspective, probably a, a figure that they might be self imposing, that they have to be masculine, macho, really top of the pile. Were there any surprising challenges that you found within the NBA that that might surprise people?

Well, it's hard to think of surprising challenges. I think I certainly hit all the challenges you might expect. People being kind of closed off or not interested or not sure what sports psychology would be or how it would help, you know, needing to build relationships, to build, buy in. And I think those are honestly typical challenges of a sports psychologist in any space. I think, you know, I was surprised all this is not a challenge. Like, you know, once you kind of crack that hard exterior, I found, you know, most of the guys I worked with are like very lovely people, which is often not what we assume to be the case with that level of athlete. But you know, the NBA is full of really nice guys, which is pretty awesome. But to get to that point and sort of know them like that is a bit challenging. I guess if I were to pick sort of one, and again, maybe not a surprise, but kind of, I think it would be the fact that, you know, the team was very obviously committed to the work that I did, otherwise they wouldn't have invested in the role and brought me in and integrated me in the way that they did. And yet there was still so much work to do to sort of get people to understand the value of what it is a sports psychologist can offer. And not just to an individual, but to a team and to an organization. And that's for me, philosophically very heavy. Where Eileen, like I come from the view that to the extent you can, you should try to solve problems at the organizational preventive level, right? You should try to just not let bad stuff happen to everybody versus waiting for, oh man, player X has a problem, let's come in and do some one on one work. And like one on one work is useful, but it's probably not encompassing everything that's actually impacting this person. Right. If the organization or, you know, culture is toxic or hostile or whatever language you want to use, right? That's going to impact the way people show up. And so you can do some work one on one, but you also need to address that larger systems issue. And so I found that there is this sort of like, yes, we're committed to, but we're not fully bought in yet. And we of course got there, which is part of why I've stayed for as long as I did and loved the organization. But I think that was a bit of a eye opening, sort of like, oh, okay, it's not enough to just commit, right. You've got to still do some work to get people to fully grasp the range of what a good sports psychologist can do.

Kind of maybe a bad analogy, but like them calling you to put out a fire in their, their house and you equipping you with a water pistol and you feel like I'm doing something, but I don't know if I'm doing everything that I possibly could. What, what would be some of those organizational structures that you think would really help with implementing this, this role into. And we're talking about professional sport, we're talking really at an organizational level that can afford to do it, that that will would be open to having that role. And so this is probably niching towards a very elite athlete. But yeah, how does a, how does an organization make that role really accessible and flourish really?

I'm going to give you two answers if that's okay because I think there are some parts that are kind of niche but some parts that are actually quite translatable across level that people just ignore. And so, you know, broadly, like a few simple organizational things I did or change our travel schedule right now of course the NBA can do that because you've got money to stay overnight an extra night. But if you're getting everyone home at 3am and then bringing them into the gym at 10, no one is sleeping well. And this is like the single most important thing we can do to enhance both coaches performance and player performance. So it's just little things like thinking about, hey, you know, these are the places where we might consider staying an extra night. These are the places where we might consider moving practice around to give people an opportunity to rest. And you just need someone in the organization who's thinking about it not from a physical recovery standpoint, but from an overall health wellness standpoint and the great kind of vice president to player performance. On the physical health side, they will think of that stuff, but it's still not kind of baked into the way that people think. Other things you would think, think about that are again kind of simple. That a lot of teams overlook is like team building. You're just getting players more comfortable with each other, helping them understand who they are, what they value. Talking about how we were an Incredibly diverse team. One of the things we did that was awesome was we hung the national flag of every player in our building. And we at one point had like 13 different flags in there. Well, like everyone's understanding of what it means to be respectful or what it means to be kind or what it means to be honest is going to be different. Because we've all been socialized differently. We've all been brought up in different, different cultures and the simplest thing to do is just talk about it, right? But most people like, no, we're all NBA players, we all wear the same jersey. Everyone's bought in and that's just not how it works, Right. I've never been around any team where they all put on the same jersey and everyone transforms and now we're all dialed into the exact same thing. You have to build a shared mental model of each other. And these are things you can do at any age of sports. Right. If you're a parent, you can be thinking about when's the best time to travel for my kids so they get a good night's sleep. If you're running a high school team, you can be thinking about, gee, like, how do these kids understand each other and what could they do to connect better? So I think those are some examples of really simple, kind of broader things you could do. And then when you're thinking about kind of niche or high level sport, I think there are a few things that sort of make it best practice. So one is bring your sports psychologist everywhere, essentially, right? Assuming they're respectful, professional, competent, right? Like to the degree that the organization and the people in the organization see this person as part of the equation to success, I think the more impactful the role will be. And still in professional sports here in North America, there's sort of this idea that this is like a check the box role. And this person will come in and they'll see players in some second floor, like closet sized office and no one will know who they're working with. And there's merit obviously to protecting the confidentiality of players, but there's also merit to players seeing this person as part of the system. And if their sports psychologist is treated as this sort of like siloed special sacred place that's not subject to the same rules, it makes it harder for them to work with coaches. It actually makes it harder for them to work with players and I think ultimately limits the effectiveness. So if you have the opportunity to have a sports psychologist on your staff, bring them with you everywhere. And I'm using Everywhere, loosely. Right. But put them in the spaces and places that they should be in to make an impact. The second thing you can do is think about what those places are from a more holistic behavior perspective. Right. So sports psychologists are first experts in human behavior. Mental health and mental performance is part of that expertise. But human behavior shows up everywhere. It shows up in the draft room, it shows up on trade deadline, it shows up when we're cutting players, it shows up and we're signing players. It shows up when we're bringing new staff in, shows up when we're letting staff go. Right. All of these things are potentially places where a sports psychologist could help you. It doesn't mean that they're making the decision, but a sports psychologist might be able to give you a good sense of, hey, you know, the culture is kind of going sideways right now because Johnny over here is saying one thing to the players and the head coach is saying another thing to the players. Right. Like that's something that a good expert in human behavior is going to observe and have some ideas about how to fix that. Don't just involve yelling at Johnny to get in line. That might be part of the solution, but probably not the whole solution. Right. Or when you're thinking about bringing talent into your system, most players are not failing because they don't have the physical ability. Most players are failing because they haven't made the psychological transition from high school to college or college to pro or first year pro player to seventh year pro player.

Right.

Whatever it might be. And again, a sports psychologist can help you think about what are the skills that this person needs at this stage of their career, what are the gaps and how do we teach them and help them. And that doesn't mean that they again are going to be the total solution. Right. It may turn out that one of the gaps is like this first year player has no idea how to actively engage in recovery for himself. Well, like that's a sports medicine, sports performance quote, unquote problem to solve. But it might be best identified by someone who understands whether or not they're even doing that recovery in the first place. And of course there are other people in the system that can help with all this stuff. It's not to say that a sports psychologist has the God particle by any stretch. It's just to say that these are all places where if you have the resources to bring someone in, you could totally maximize the value. Assuming they've built trust and have that kind of competent skill set to help you.

Yeah, there's there's so much you're talking about there, which is something, it's kind of on tracks with something I've been thinking about a lot, which is, and this doesn't really just silo out athletes, I think this silos, it encompasses everyone sort of in the sporting ecosystem. Because what you're talking about there is making some decisions that are for the benefit of the players, but it's thinking about it from a different perspective, different angle to what's currently being done. And that change that you're trying to create is where you're met with the resistance. And you find that on a macro scale, but you'll find that on a micro scale when you're working with an individual, anyone that's trying to change something that you're always going to be met with some resistance. And it is what I've been thinking about is how much, how much athletes are talking about doing the hard things and then when it actually comes to it, not willing to do the hard things and then that being a massive opportunity grab that is staring them in the face. Because if you think about, we go back to where we started this conversation on the amount of goats that are out there in, in insert sport, those are doing those hard things they're doing, making those changes that literally on the face of it are really simple but have this huge compound effect down the line. And I think that's where also organizations can do that, they can be brave in doing that and the individuals can.

Be brave as well, 100%. And you touch on something that's really important to me, which is this idea that honestly a lot of excellent performance is pretty simple. That doesn't mean it's easy, but you don't need crazy bells and whistles or some magic secret sauce. You do need persistence. You do need to be willing to. And you know this as a pro athlete, like to fall in love with boredom. Michael Phelps talked about embracing monotony, like, and just training until he didn't feel like he could literally lift his arms anymore. Now I'm not suggesting everyone do that, but I do think there's just this element of like, if you can just practice longer than everybody else because you're comfortable being bored in the pool, if you can just stay and shoot a little bit extra like Steph Curry, because you're comfortable doing the same thing every single day for 13 or 14 or 15 years, you can have some incredible results that have just compounded over time. And yes, is Steph Curry like an incredible shooter for sure. Was Steph Curry, the world's best shooter ever in the history of the game when he left Davidson. No, he just worked really hard for a really long time on the same fundamental things. And as he got better, he kept elevating the challenge. He kept pushing himself a little bit more. And now you get the crazy shots from out the tunnel or on the second floor of the arena. Right. But all that is a function of, honestly, like I said, some basic stuff. Right. Being comfortable with going through the monotonous stuff, putting in the time, putting in the practice, not getting discouraged, sticking with it. These things all ultimately lead to excellence.

Yeah. For me, it's those athletes, when they're met with those moments when you're about to leave the gym, you think you've had enough, or that has been your regular time slot that you would allocate for training. You have done the amount of shots you want to do on the court. You have been in the pool for X amount of minutes and done X amount of repetitions. And when you're saying, I'm done, that is where there is a gap that can be created of just doing that little bit more to change you from being elite to super elite, really. And that's the difference between the good and the great, in my opinion. But there's also something else that comes with it, in my experience, and it was something that I wrote about recently in a newsletter, which was, if you do that little bit of work, that extra gap, that extra bit of work, it's not even just about the physical gain that you get, it's about the mental gain that you get, because you know deep down you've put in the work, therefore you're willing to fight for it that little bit more when it matters. And I call it this white flag moment, where you're willing to wave the white flag and concede to the person next to you or the opposition in front of you, when you kind of deep down know that you haven't done everything that you could, you haven't done all that you could, but you inside think, well, maybe they have done more than me. They might have trained a few more hours than me. They have earned the right to for this. And therefore I feel that burn a little bit more, or I feel like I'm going to concede that little bit more. This game has. Has lost. And if you work, have that work, that extra bit of work, you. You go and do those extra repetitions, there's a chance that you will fight that little bit longer. And in that fighting little bit longer, as we know with sport, anything can happen and you can suddenly shift momentum. Doesn't guarantee you're going to get a success or a win or an outcome. But if you stay and fight that little bit more, then you give yourself the opportunity to be in it that little bit longer to get that performance, to get maybe the outcome that you're actually seeking, rather than waving the white flag, conceding, and then never knowing. And then if on the chance, you're met with someone who fights for their work as well, well, then we got a game 100%.

I love that. I think that's a really, like, apt metaphor. And, you know, what you're describing to me is this concept of conditioning, right? Again, if you want to draw physical or mental parallels there. But like, when you're trying to get faster, when you're trying to get Stronger, build your VO2 Max or be able to run a little bit harder, play, you know, go from playing 30 minutes to 35 minutes, what do you. Do you, like, spend a few extra minutes on the treadmill? Because you spend a few extra minutes after practice running around, right? And that's useful. And the same thing is true with mental conditioning, right? When you feel like you're done assuming no physical limitation, getting into the habit of pushing yourself a little bit farther will help you realize just what's possible for you. And the next time, your capacity will be just a little bit bigger, right? And it'll be a little bit better. And those moments that come up that are sort of like, do I want to persist or do I want to quit? Your ability to reach that threshold will be delayed. First of all, right, you'll go longer before you feel like you want to give up because you put in some extra time. And to your point, you'll have more confidence, you'll feel more commitment because you'll have seen yourself do the work, and you won't want to give it up.

I wonder if there's. How many exercise physiologists might be just screaming at us, saying, don't overwork them, don't over train them. And then there is. Honestly, there is that balance, right, that has to be had. You want to know that you can put in the extra work, but you don't want to over train. You don't want to lead someone to burnout. But there is so much. I honestly think back to some of the training that I did, and one of the. One of the parts of my role that I was going to have to do if I wanted to turn professional. So I was a, a bowler in cricket and to give an American analogy would be a pitcher in baseball. Right. But I would argue it's a little bit more taxing on our body sometimes anyway. And part of that role is that crickets played over six hours and one of the roles for a fast bowler can be that at the end of the day, at 5 o' clock in the evening, you're asked to put in your final spell of the day. But at that moment there's a new ball that comes onto the, into the game and it's a great opportunity for a, for a bowler to have some success and get wickets because a new ball swings in the air. It's really, it can be more challenging for the batters and, and it's a, it's, it's something that you, you want to be able to do, but it's at 5 in the afternoon and you started at 11 in the morning and you will be tired, you will be sore, your joints will be inflamed, you'll have cramps, you'll feel like your muscles are being torn, your joints are just screaming at you, and yet you're asked to put in a performance, put in a high level performance. So I knew that, I knew that was a role, but I also knew that it was going to be mentally challenging to drag yourself from that place to be able to go out and perform. So I knew that was going to be challenging. And in a part of my training and I, I used to do this a lot in Australia. I was at an academy and we would train from 9 in the morning and then we would finish in the afternoon and they would run us ragged throughout the day and you come home and you're absolutely gone. And then I would go home, have some food and then I would go to our team's training in the evening, my club training in the evening, and I would have to bowl another spell, but I knew that I needed to prepare for potentially this idea of being mentally ready to feel my body in such pain and then go again. And so I would turn up to training and then I'd run a BLEEP test and I'd run a bleed test with fatigued legs and I'd had a full day's training and then I would bowl. And the reason I did it was nothing to do with physiological training and conditioning myself. And a part of that obviously is in there, but it was actually. Can I mentally focus on the target when I, when everything is screaming at me? No, when everything is telling me, what are you Doing like just packing, give up, legs will fold and can I stay on task? Can I do it? So can I be aggressive? Can I be confident? Can I play against the opponent that's in front of me and actually overcome them and be in a battle with them? And that for me is a big part of how I think when we talk about doing that extra bit, that's the gain that we're talking about. That's some of the gains that you get. Yes, you get the physical conditioning. Now, did I do that every session?

No.

So it's not. I'm going into every session doing that. But it was, I, I knew that there was a moment and another session might be, I'll go work on another part of my game for a few extra minutes. And it still comes down to not only having that extra bit of work to fight for, having the understanding of, of what is the job that I'm trying to do, what's going to be required of me physically, mentally, emotionally, tactically, but also walking away and going, I'm proud of myself. I'm proud of that work that I've put in. And I now feel more confident in myself because I have a few receipts to show people when they say, why should I give you this role? Why should I go? Well, because I do all this work over here.

Man, that's so cool. What a good, good story. And I like how you emphasize, I mean, there's lots here. But to me, what was so cool was you're really talking about knowing what you need to be the best that you can be. And I think that's such a key part of becoming great at something that unfortunately most athletes, you know, again, talking about like what separates the best from the rest. I think a lot of athletes outsource that thinking to the people around them. Sometimes that's good, right? Like as a sports psychologist, I might have an insight or two to lend you on what you might need to do for method training or you know, your strength coach might have one or two ideas about better exercises you could do to help yourself get a little bit stronger. But man, to know like, hey, I just need this extra time to build my confidence or I need this extra time because I want to know in advance what it's going to feel like to be in this much pain to perform. So I'm not dealing with it for the first time when I go out there is shows an incredible level of self awareness and I think is part of what helps some of these grades do that. Right. And so you go back to like LeBron James, where he spends all this money on recovery because he knows he needs it, not because he's like trying to do bells and whistles, fancy recovery stuff, but he's like, this is what I need to play until I'm 40 or Tom Brady until I'm 45. Right. Like, it just requires knowing that. So I think it's. That's a really illustrative, cool lesson to have shared. So thank you for that.

Well, I think you. It's the difference that I see a lot of people having is knowing what you need as an athlete. So I agree with that. I think there was an element of what I, I sort of dissected the job that I wanted to do and went, what does it require of me? There's, there is, especially in our sport, there's so many different things that you can aim for and go for and train in, but actually there is a limit to what you will do. So I was a, I was a left arm swing bowler. So if you think of it in like a baseball pitching term, you're just trying to bowl curveballs all the time. But I was never going to be a fast, fast bowler, like the, like a Paul scheme. I was never going to be like someone like him. And you're never going to be the fastest bowler out there. So me trying to train to get that takes me away from what I can make the most out of myself. And maybe there's an element where you can go in that direction to maximize what you personally have. But there is a limitation to some extent for biomechanics, physiology, all sorts of things. And where I see people making a mistake now is they don't focus on what they need, they focus on what they want. And they go, I want to be like LeBron James and I want to be like Steph Curry. I want what they've got. Rather than thinking about, well, what is that what you need in your role? Is that what you can be working on? And then from there your plan of where you go is off.

I mean, to bring it sort of full circle, right? I mean, what you're talking about with LeBron or Steph, there's no blueprint for that. So they had nobody they could look to. Like, when Steph's like, okay, I'm going to become the best shooter of all time. Like, okay, well who do you look for for that? Like, there is no role model to shoot like step shoots. You just have to figure it out on your own, right? And there's nothing wrong with looking at a model and trying to learn. But really what these guys have done is take what they are good at and focus on maximizing their strengths instead of looking around them, seeing what other people have, deciding that that's better and trying to become that. And I think the goats are consistently focused on, this is how I get the most out of myself. This is how I reach my full potential. When you read autobiographies of Michael Jordan or Roger Federer or Tom Brady, of course they all wanted to win. Like, no one's saying they didn't want to win. Winning is obviously very important. But when you actually listen to what they're focused on every day, they all talk about becoming the best version of themselves. None of them talk about becoming the next Michael Jordan or the next Steph Curry. Right. It's just about getting the most out of themselves and the wins and the championships follow as a function of that. It doesn't mean you can't have a great mentor. Right. Michael mentored Kobe and that worked out pretty well. But Kobe wasn't trying to become Michael. Kobe was trying to become the best version of Kobe Bryant.

Did you ever get any insight into what they were like those, those people like LeBron James, Steph Curry? Again, insert some of the top 10 players wherever. But just being on the circuit, do you get sort of glimpses of maybe even being courtside going, oh, okay, I can see what they're doing differently, or is it kind of encapsulating what you've just said?

I think a lot of it's encapsulated in what I said, but I do think there are a couple of other things. And so, I mean, my first year, year and a half really was Covid, right? And so in Covid, team moved to Tampa and we watched every game from the sideline. And it was this very unique NBA experience because you've got no fans and you can kind of sit really wherever you want. And you're like five feet from the court, right? These are not seats I would otherwise have had. And so I got to watch LeBron from five feet away or Giannis from five feet away, or Dame Lillard for five, five feet away, right? Like these guys who are at the top of the game right now. And I think, you know, the one moment that jumps out most to me was watching actually Jamal Murray kind of before the Nuggets were making their run. But this was just like a regular season game against a non conference opponent and you know, the sixth game of their eight game road trip or whatever. And this guy's intensity was just like 5 degrees higher than everybody else. And it was like, you know, the gym was kind of eerily quiet in the case of COVID right. Like you're playing music and stuff, but it's like you could still feel that it's empty and you can hear every single thing this guy is yelling and like how he's commanding his teammates and the way that he show up and it was like, this is not just another game to him, but I think that's how he approaches every game. Like every game is, is a new chance to show what he is made of. Every game is an opportunity to become the best version of himself. And I think he takes it up even another notch in the playoffs. And then, you know, of course they got Jokic and that, that helps a lot too. But that level of intensity I think is consistent with like LeBron or Giannis. And I can remember those, those guys too. Or even my first year we had Kyle Lowry. Like, Kyle was like that. Whereas just another level of competitiveness and inner drive that does, I think, separate these really, really top level guys.

I struggle with this to understand or figure out where I lie on it, or whether this is a nature or nurture conversation and whether these players are just fundamentally built different in nature or whether at some stage it's. It's a, an amalgamation of all the different experiences they've had growing up that have brought them to this place and how they think right now. I, I honestly don't know where I lie with it. Sometimes you just hear of these people, you go, oh my God, they have to be built different, right? Or. But then you, then you go into stories of what, what they've had as their upbringing. And there's a book by Matt Syed, Bounce, that was. Did really great job in sort of deconstructing these, the myth of talent in players and so bringing out these elements and the real stories behind these people who we genuinely thought were just gifted and talented. And so then I leaned to that side and you think, well, actually no, there are components of it. So I know, I never really know when you see guys like that. And, and also is there just an element of the environment that you get put into a very, very elite level that can be far too easy for people to slip into comfortability and think that you've made it? And sort of the famous quote of, it's really hard to get out of bed when your sheets are made of silt. So, yeah, I don't know where I lie with it.

I wish I Had an answer for you, too. I think I'm in the both category. Right. It's a little bit of nature and genetics, but it's a lot of nurture and a lot of the environment.

Yeah. There was one other podcast that I heard you speak on about. You had this model of being involved in the draft and using psychology to play a part of it. And you had three parts of your, I think your pillars that you.

You used.

The one that I found really interesting was the idea of intelligence and players IQ playing a role in them being not only selected in the draft, but as well as a part of that being an indicator of a high performer. Can you talk around. Where does. Where does intelligence play a role for athletes?

It all just plays a role for everybody. So athletes. Athletes included. But, you know, I think what's interesting with, for athletes in particular is that, you know, you hear, again, kind of the same thing I talked about mindset. Like, you hear people talk about football IQ or basketball iq, and so people kind of know that it's there. But oftentimes people don't want to, like, peek under the hood and understand how a player does what they does. Excuse me, how a player does what they do. Right. And so what I was thinking out and trying to figure out is like, how do they actually process the game? How do they see the floor? How quickly can they react? How do they learn? Because what you see on film is a representation of intelligence, but it's also a representation of what we call knowledge. Right. Just like, do you know the system? Can you run the play? And so sometimes a broken play is a guy doesn't know what to do. Sometimes a broken play is a guy can't do that. And those are very different things. And you kind of want to understand that. And so that's where intelligence comes in. And it's not about identifying, like, who's the brightest basketball player and who can tell me, the fourth President of the United States. It's about, how does this guy go out there and perform cognitively? And so it would measure things like, how well do they see the floor? Can they manipulate space in their mind? We'd measure things like how quickly do they react with and without distractors present, how quickly do they process the game to make decisions, and again, how efficiently do they learn? And we use this tool called the AIQ to help us capture that. And it's basically a sequence of 10 puzzles, all kind of objective metrics of how a player is doing each of these kinds of tasks. And I think it's important for a few reasons. One is it provides an objective metric of cognitive performance, right. So what we think about in terms of personality or culture, the kind of other two pillars of my program to a degree is subjective, right. It's based on a lot of experience and a lot of learning. But it's still my interpretation of what someone else is saying or my interpretation of what they've said about themselves. And sometimes it's just what they've said about themselves. Right. But this is something like you can't game it, you're not faking it, it's your own performance. And so I think that's really important. But the other thing is it allows me to understand how do I put you in the best position to be successful, right? So if you are a player who, let's say you struggle to process the game visually in the moment, but you've got an incredible ability to learn, well, we should probably spend some extra time in game film with you, really helping you crystallize what's going to go on on the court. So then when you get out there for the mostly non novel situations you're going to be in, you know what to do and you can execute and you're really relying on your memory more than your in the moment visual processing to deliver. In contrast, you might have a guy who learns really poorly, right. Or struggles to maintain new information, but they see the floor really well. That might be a guy that you want to just let improvise, like just go play basketball for a little bit. And so it informs a bit of how you interact with the players and the way that you set them up to be successful, both in their training, but also in, in games. And I think it's just an important, often uncaptured piece of the puzzle. And like I said, I mean intelligence predicts success across careers, right? Pilots, surgeons, athletes, it's all, no, it's no different. This is just a part of it. It doesn't mean that high intelligence guarantees you're going to be successful, doesn't mean this is the only way a player can do what they do. But it is part of the equation whether you capture it or not. And I'm of the philosophy that we should capture it, we should understand what it is and we should use it to help these players reach the full potential.

That game intelligence that you're talking about, how does an athlete improve their game intelligence in whatever sport they're playing?

Well, now we're going to get real technical for a minute, but hopefully that's okay. Right. This is my.

Go for it, mate.

Get into it. Okay, cool. So, I mean, there's a few things going on, right? You're really combining intelligence and knowledge and at its core, what's happening anytime you're doing anything, your brain is constantly predicting what it thinks you will need to do next based on how you feel now and your past history and what the demands of the current environment are. Right now in sport, the demands of the environment are constantly changing. So your brain, like always, is constantly predicting and to improve that game intelligence, then what you really need to do is figure out how to improve those predictions. Right? Now the way that we improve those predictions is by building a richer mental model, a richer set of prior experiences that you could draw on to make your predictions more accurate. It's like basic statistical modeling, right? It's Bayesian reasoning. It's this idea that we have a giant data set before and this data set probably informs what should come next. Well, if you make this data set really robust, really rich, with great practice, and that means like yes, high levels of repetition, but also high levels of what we call variation and representativeness, right? So variation, like can you do the task under different conditions? I often use the metaphor, like maybe you've been to an NBA practice, like at the end of practice guys are just shooting open threes and like that's fine, but you're basically maybe going to get an open 3A game if that, right? Most of the time someone's going to be right up on you, hand in your face, pulling at you, trying to run under you, whatever it's going to be, right? So variation helps this little previous set of experiences and practice by introducing some of these other things, right? Maybe you do it with hand in your face a few times or you do it with someone behind you tugging on your jersey, right? To give you just a different set of experiences that you can draw on. And that's why sometimes you see players hit these ridiculous one arm shots or do something kind of that we would have never anticipated. Sure, some of it is superhuman, but some of it is like they've probably practiced a little bit of like what would it look like to take a shot from behind the backboard and again to go back to Steph Curry's kind of pregame warm up. Like that's what Steph's doing. He's introduced a ton of variation. I'm going to shoot it from half care and shoot it from the tunnel. I'm going to shoot it from the opposite three point line, right? And all These things help him build a richer set of experiences that say, this is what's required to perform. And again, we can like break it down to a simple part. Right. So every time he shoots from the opposite free throw line, that mental model now says, okay, this is how fast I have to throw, this is how hard I have to push. And if I don't push this hard, it'll airball. If I push too hard, I'm going to throw it over the backboard. And through that practice, he just calibrates and calibrates and calibrates. The third way that we make this mental model rich is through representativeness. All that means is that your practice should look as close to games as possible. And this is what we know gives us the best chance of what's called transfer going for practice to the game. And again, if you think about most pro sports teams practices, training camp is actually like typically the most representative practice that you get. Right. It's high intensity. Players are going at each other, they're really competing because they're fighting for something. And then the season starts and you play like five on zero. Right. Or you do a walkthrough and of course like there's time and space and use for all that stuff too. But if practice does not come close to representing what the game is, that mental model is not going to have that experience for you to draw on when you actually get there. So that's sort of in its most fundamental form how I think you improve game intelligence or game iq. Happy to unpack any of that further, but that's my philosophy.

Yeah. How do you, if you are say a young person, a young athlete that might be thinking of this? Because this we're talking about. Yes. You're Steph Curry. You're really guys at the top that would have had a base level of understanding of their game. I think there's going to be within that variance that you talked about, there's going to be a, a sort of sweet spot that you have. Knowing these are where my fundamentals of a three pointer shot is going to sit. Right. And then like I said, you increase that data set of all the variants and you're just introducing playful ways of training and difference there. But I think the interesting bit would be how do we find that.

Almost.

Like fundamental intelligence for yourself? And almost a part of this is linked in with finding your own intelligence, which sounds strange to say that, but it's finding your own intelligent way of playing the game rather than using someone else's model and intelligence for Playing the game. Do you understand what I'm saying is trying to. You're not stealing from someone else. You're trying to build your own understanding of what's my game intelligence, rather than taking someone else's and realizing that's theirs and understanding that, yeah, I mean, you.

Could borrow from someone else, but you really can't take it. Right? Like someone else's mental model of how they do what they do is going to be different than yours. And that's part of how you can learn from other people, right? Like, you know, again, we'll take a simple example. If I watch you touch a hot stove and you say, ouch, I don't have to touch a hot stove to know not to do that. But I also might have chosen to touch the hot stove differently. Maybe I would have used an elbow or a shoe to figure out if it was hot, right? So it's like different ways to do, do what we do. But to answer your question, you know, as a, as a younger person or a non pro athlete, a lot of the same things hold true. So I'll give you kind of two answers, right? One is to engage in what I would call purposeful practice. And that purposeful practice has those three features, right? There's a lot of repetition, there's a lot of variation, and there's a lot of representativeness. Well, how do you do that? You do that with things like small sided games. If you're a soccer guy, you play 5 on 5 instead of 11 on 11. Or in tennis, you play doubles against 1. Something that just introduces a new constraint and allows you to see other ways that the ball might move on the court, right? Or if you're a young golfer, you might try hitting it from different parts of the, you know, tee box. You might try hitting different shots, you know, or different clubs from different points on the green or the fairway, right? It's just about experimenting a little bit and sort of pushing yourself to see how it all actually works. And all that stuff you can do without needing to be staff or LeBron, really anybody, you know, it's just about you introducing enough of these constraints, creativity, representativeness to make yourself successful, right? So then again, if you want to think about like, you know, the young athlete, like, how do you represent a high intensity, high pressure situation? Like, let's take soccer, for example, like practice a bunch of penalty kicks against somebody older than you and put something meaningful in the line, right? Do it in front of your coach, who's going to judge you. That's a Great way to introduce a sense of pressure. So there's lots you can do, no matter who you are as an athlete, to introduce these kind of pillars of purposeful practice. The second element is what I'd call deliberate practice, which I'm sure you've heard of. But it's just this idea that you're very intentionally working on addressing a specific skill. And again, this is something that people often leave out, but it's not something you have to leave out regardless of what phase you are. Right. Most people show up to practice and it's like, okay, coach has the drills today. Let's get after it. And that helps to a degree. But if you show up to practice and you say, okay, well, I know that to make more three pointers, I really have to work on my footwork. So every moment that I'm out there, that's really what I'm going to be focused on. Yeah, I'm going to listen to coach. I'm going to do the things I'm asked to do, but I'm really going to focus on my footwork. And then after practice, instead of just shooting 2003s, I'm going to shoot 2003s only thinking about my footwork. I'm going to ask coach to give me feedback only about my footwork. Right. And that kind of dialing in allows you to really build that skill from a tiny level, that kind of foundational level you're talking about, and then you kind of adjust and adjust and adjust. And so if you pair these two things together, you start to get a framework for really, really rich practice that ultimately builds that rich mental model that allows you to perform well in the game. And underpinning all of that is the intelligence you asked about. Right. Like, how quickly will that mental model develop? How much practice will it take? How will it unfold? But it doesn't mean anyone can or can't do it. It just requires being intentional.

My mind instantly goes to what is it that gets in the way of people training in that way? Because exactly what you have articulated there is how I went about a lot of my training is I would structure almost a week by thinking, when I turn up to this training session, I want to focus on my alignment as I'm releasing the ball. And if my coach is going to give me any pointers for that day, while they may want to shower me with bunch of that, they're just saying I want them to give me just what is my side alignment looking like for that, for that training session? Because that's the thing that I'm focusing on. I want to know that it looks, I want to get the acknowledgment from them that it looks good, that it's actually then having the effect that I want it to have, then the next training session might be something different. And one of the things I say to my athletes and anyone is that that asks about how you kind of get to that stage is that you kind of have to turn up to training with almost this kind of selfish mentality that there's. That regardless of what, especially in a team sport as well. If you're in a team sport, there's sometimes an agenda set for fee for what you are to get out of it as a team. And that's where I think if you can have both the team agenda, but your own personal agenda to go, and I don't mean that to detract from the team, but your own personal development and go, okay, can I work on my foot alignment or whatever skill that you want to set in this session with the team? If I can't, then that's where I'm going to have to stay for a little bit of extra practice after to get it done then. Or I turn up early and get it done so that I can then go into the team practice. That for me is the way I used to structure it. But I'd be interested to know what your thoughts on what might be a distraction or a, a hurdle for athletes to not train like that to, to, to stop them from building this game intelligence.

I think the simplest one is probably time and effort, right? Like, you know, to go train the way you're describing does take some work, right. It requires a bit of extra forethought. It requires a bit more self awareness, it requires getting more feedback and doing a few things that are a little bit more uncomfortable than most people really prefer. Right. Like to subject yourself to criticism about something willingly, you know, to, to get better is still hard. And so I think that's probably part of it. I think a second element would be. I think people just don't know, right. A lot of coaches and it's, it's starting to change. But a lot of coaches that I've been around, they coach the way that they were coached. Well, the way we coached in like 1970 or 1980 was like very, very different than what we know actually helps people learn how to perform the skills that they need. And then I think oftentimes coaches, and sometimes rightfully so, but sometimes not, are conditioned to really focus on what isn't working. And that leads to a sort of pressure to repeat and repeat and repeat until you don't see a mistake in practice. But that is not going to account for not seeing a mistake in a game. Unfortunately, athletes in those situations often don't give feedback to the coach about what they think they need to work on and coaches don't often ask for it. And so you've got this interesting problem where some of it might be lack of self awareness, some of it might be lack of time and effort, and some of it might be lack of space to actually implement it. Even if you did do those first.

Two things, I think there's probably a social element that happens as well where they potentially look at everyone else and their development and compare and then think, I need to be doing what they're doing. And then that detracts from the plan. There's, there's probably a willingness to want to do the advanced stuff early, to want to be, to bring it in a basketball terms, to be a LeBron James at 18 years old, to be doing those things then. And you always remind them like, what, what do you think they were doing when they were your age or when they were 13 years old? They weren't slamming dunks then. Right. They were probably doing some really boring, monotonous stuff and just repetition over, over again. But yeah, I, I see that as a huge land grab opportunity for athletes to be really thinking about how they're, they're structuring their training to think about what is it that I need rather than what I want. And can I, can I be really specific in that? And I'm curious about it because I, I just see it in, in some of the athletes I work with and I, I, no matter how much you, you, you want to get them to, to go towards that, obviously it requires that inner motivation and their desire. Desire to do it.

Yeah, I think the other social element, you know, it's kind of a coach, right? Like it's, you know, some of his social comparison, but some of it is the sports systems, at least most elite sports systems are really not set up to give feedback to a coach unless the coach has asked specifically for feedback from someone. Right. And one of the things I, I often work with my athletes on is like learning to speak up to the coach, help the coach coach you well and you guys have the same goals, you know, so oftentimes players get worried because it's like, oh, if I tell the coach what to do, he's gonna like hate me or he's gonna think I'm, you know, undermining it. It's like, no, if you frame it right, if you position it well, you guys want the same thing, which is for you to become the best that you could be and for you to deliver when it matters. You need to tell coach how to help you do that and what information you need to be successful if they're not giving that to you. But again, to your point around social pressure, like often doesn't happen because coaches don't typically invite it. I do think the best coaches will invite that. They will ask openly and honestly at one on one meetings, like, how can I coach? You better help me help you. Not from a place of like, I'm a total idiot and tell me all the things I'm doing wrong. But, you know, give me just like I'm trying to give you a few pointers. Give me a few pointers on what I can do well so I can deliver for you. Yeah.

All of this stuff we're talking about, I still think revolves around this being courageous and brave to do something different to what other people are doing and accept that in order to get those different results, we're going to need to start doing things differently. And with that is there's always resistance from internally and externally. And I don't know if you've seen Chasing the Sun, a series called Chasing the Sun. It's about the South African Springboks. I highly recommend it. It is on my number one recommendation list for anyone who likes it. It's quite possibly one of my favorite sporting documentaries ever out there right now. And it's about the South African Springboks in rugby winning the World cup in 2019. They've got Chasing the Sun 2 for when they won in France in 2023. And it's in Chasing the Sun 2 where there's. So Rassie Erasmus is the director of rugby for the Springboks and there's a training session that he. They're talking about because they've got an upcoming. I think it was, it was the quarterfinal against France. And France have got Anton Dupont, who's one of rugby's best players in the world right now. He's just a, an insanely good player and he's a genuine threat to, to any team that comes up against him. So they knew he was going to be in the team. They also knew they were going to be playing at the Stadt de France in Paris in front of tens of thousands of screaming Frenchmen just at them. And Rassie Erasmus knows that this truck, this game is going to be big for them. It is this, literally a knockout game. And he then it pans to this next training session that they are having and he has got this huge giant speaker like you would see in. In, like a nightclub that he's put on a. Like a wheelie, a wheelie trolley. And he is playing the French national anthem as full volume whilst they're all doing their normal training session. And it then goes to, like, these interviews with the players and they're going, yeah, this got really boring with the players. And we're like, what are you doing, Rassie? Turn it off, turn it off. Like, we've heard this over and over and over again. And Rassie Erasmus, and it turns to his interview and he's saying, I wanted to expose them to what they were going to get on that night, which was 80,000 Frenchmen screaming the national anthem. And so it goes to the players and back and forth and they're all going, just turn it off. It doesn't make sense. And then it goes to the game on the quarterfinal and sure enough, 80,000 Frenchmen screaming the French national anthem. And the players then just say, we didn't even hear it. We didn't even hear it wasn't a thing. It didn't even get into us. And you look at it and go, what an impact. And they win that quarterfinal, they go, until then, win the World Cup. But it's in that moment where you think that took a bit of bravery from Rassie Erasmus to be different, to do something that he kind of knew was going to be an extra factor for the players, to not impact them straight away on that day, to actually annoy them on the day, for him to then get jibes and probably banter from the players and call him all sorts of names under the sun, that he just went, no, I know this is good for us and I'm going to try, and I think this will work. And it did.

That's really cool. And now I'm going to watch the documentary because. What a good story. Yeah, I mean, there's lots of instructive points in there, but I think the other thing that's noteworthy about that is often when one person does it, everybody else will follow suit. Because I think a lot of these things are things we sort of know we should do while we're waiting for somebody else to be the first one to be brave. To your point, it would be courageous. And so, you know, him doing this that, like, one player reckon's like, ah, we don't even hear it anymore. And then all of a sudden everyone's like, that guy's genius. You know, Even though that was really annoying. And I think the same thing is true for players. Right. If you step up and you share a little bit of what you need, other players will feel compelled to do the same.

One thing you mentioned about the Toronto was you were mentioning about the players had their flags placed around for themselves and. But you're all trying to play under one franchise team shirt, right? There's something in Chasing the Sun that's brilliant, which is what they do, which is they galvanize the players to play for South Africa. Now I would argue it's in that sense sometimes it's easier to play for your nation. The All Blacks in rugby were notably been well documented for how well they've done that. And South Africa are now the team to be in rugby because of almost how they've done it. One thing they did within it is they, they really galvanized the players and brought out this, this purpose behind why they play because of their own personal stories of. Because of diving into. All of them had come from vastly different backgrounds. You have guys that have come from fairly affluent parts of South Africa, but also people who have come from townships in South Africa and they're all playing together and they all play for each other. Yes, they do under South Africa. So I'm really curious that. And I see it as a more of a challenge because I've been in a professional sports team where we tried to do it. We used teams like the All Blacks as examples and I feel like we came up against more barriers than not. Right. Because it sometimes can be harder to galvanize an organization than it can be to galvanize a nation. And a group of players that are all at haste have one common goal, which is that they play for their own country. So my question is, how do we get players and athletes to find that motivation to play for something bigger than themselves?

Going to give you a boring answer, but I think it's just about aligning incentives. Right. And I think one of the things that often happens, and this happens a lot in basketball, is players receive their incentive to be in conflict with whatever someone else is asking of them. Right. So if you are playing to get your next max contract and you believe the way to get the max contract is by scoring the most points every night, you're going to end up taking the most shots, even if that's not really what the team wants. There's kind of A misaligned incentive. And so you have to figure out how to bring those two things, you know, those. Those things into alignment to get each individual goal to ladder up into a larger team goal. I think there are a few ways you can do that. The first is sort of what you're talking about with the Springboks. This idea of, like, understanding who everyone is individually, helping them feel a sense of belonging and feel like they're part of something creates this foundation where, like, my voice, my goal matters here. And a lot of times that might be all that people really need. But it really doesn't happen much in pro sport, right? It doesn't happen much in a lot of sport. You kind of focus on, like, basketball. There's 16 guys on the roster, but you focus on the first seven, you know, so those other nine guys, whether you think they make an impact or not, those are the nine guys in the locker room saying, man, it sucks to be here. I hate coming into work. I can't believe I have to do that. All that stuff is impacting the first seven guys that you have. You're just not thinking it's a big deal. You're kind of like, oh, they're just whiners. Like, no, it is a big deal, right? No one wants to work in an environment where they hear nine people complain all the time. That's not fun, right? And so you have to understand, like, what are the goals of those nine? Just the same way you understand the goals of those seven, you might play different roles, right? And we can find ways to get everyone's role aligned and feel valued. But if you're not going to take the time to invest in understanding what those players want, you know, it's going to. It's going to be hard. So I think giving people a voice, helping them feel heard, helping them feel understood, helping them understand each other, writing, buy into, like, what each individual person has to offer, I think is a really good point. And then you can layer in, okay, player one, your goal is to get your max contract. Like, how can we do that together in a way that doesn't damage the team? Let's talk about that, right? And it may be that you don't score the most points every night, but maybe we need to find a way to feature you a little bit more, or we're going to make a commitment to draw specific plays for you every night so that you have your opportunity. And player two, we can do the same. Player three, right? But player two's goal might be, oh, I'm Just trying to get to all NBA or I'm trying to get to the All Star game so I can get a maximum contract. Okay, well, let's talk about what that's going to entail, right? And let's figure out how that fits with what we're trying to do as a team so they don't have to be in conflict. But because they're often not talked about or people are perceived as selfish or having their own individual goal, then we end up sort of missing the boat on getting people to buy in to that larger superordinate goal. And the reality is like, and there's some good data to back this up, people always have individual goals. You're not, you're not going to get rid of them. So the best thing that you could do is figure out how to connect that individual goal to a team goal. And my hypothesis is that there is always a way. But that part of where it falls apart is most people don't want to explore that. What really they prefer is for the head coach often prefers to say, this is what we're trying to do, get down or lay down, basically. And that's sort of the way that people approach it. And that's fine, but it's not going to work. And so I think, you know, that's part of, like to, to use an NBA example, I think part of why you've seen the success with the Celtics, right. Like, one of the things I think Joe Missoula has done a great job of is figuring out how to get all the players to buy into his system. And for years people have talked about can Jaylen Brown and Jason Tatum play with each other? You know, can you really have two alphas on one team? Like, yeah, they just won, but the way that they did it was by getting everyone to understand how they individually were going to contribute to that championship versus pretending like they shouldn't have an individual goal, they shouldn't be working at. At for something themselves. We're all wired to do that, but that's okay. We can also just figure out how that connects to the team.

Joe Missoula has a very human, human centric approach to his, his team. You can see it in his interviews, talks about not just being an NBA player, there being much more than that. I think he's also driven by his faith, I think a fair bit as well. But I'm interested to see what you think around an individual, so an individual athlete. Because what you're talking about is there being these different types of motivations. We're trying to find that intrinsic motivation for an athlete that we know the extrinsic motivations are largely going to be there. I want to get the outcome, I want to get the result, I want to get the contract, I want to win the tournament, I want to have status, fame, power, money, insert everywhere. But those are not guaranteed though. You can try as hard as you want, but they're never really guaranteed. So it's when the chips are down, it's when things are really against you. Where do we find that motivation for an individual athlete? So more individualized sports, not in a team setting.

Yeah, I think intrinsic motivation we know boils down really to three key factors. These same extrinsic motivators will be there. And it's fine for extrinsic motivators to be there too. Right. We need, we need those also. But the pillars of this kind of intrinsic motivation are these ideas of autonomy, mastery and belonging or autonomy, competence, relatedness. If you want to use like the technical science terms, right. But the first is this idea that you want to give over some control. So if you're an individual athlete, like we've been talking about, you should coach your coach about how to help you get better. Right. And like if you want to take, you know, one of the, the all time greats in Roger Federer, for example, like as his career progressed, this was one of the places where he really took command over his own career. Like he would fire a coach if he didn't feel like his coach was giving him enough. Say he wanted to help design his practices sometimes and he wanted other people to do it for him other times. And like having that level of control allows someone really to buy in to whatever it is that they're, they're trying to do. So that's factor one. The second is mastery. It's this idea that people need to feel a sense of progress to be motivated. And there's lots of science to support this idea. Right. Whether you think about growth, mindset, or you think about building successes and self efficacy or even look at the data that shows that one of the best predictors of well being is just consistently making progress toward a goal. Seeing yourself get better increases your commitment to that thing because you start to feel like there's something here for me. And so great coaching in these one on one environments is going to emphasize that skill progression is going to emphasize that development is going to emphasize someone improving over time and can also talk about outcomes, but is really going to be probably 9010 focused on progress, progress, progress and then, oh, by the way, this match that we just played in one is a marker of this or shows, you know, how much more we have to go or how far we've come or whatever. Let's get back focused on the progress. And then the third element is relatedness or belonging. Right. And even in an individual sport, you still have that team around you, right. So you want to feel connected to your training, you want to feel connected to your coach, you want to feel connected to the people around you who are supporting you. And I am a person who believes team kind of extends off the training ground. Right. It's like your family, it's your friends, it's the people in your corner who are willing to be honest with you and tell you what they really think versus tell you what you want to hear. You know, these people, like, if you feel connected to them, that is going to help you stay engaged, stay motivated, and sort of like feel like you want to do it for them as much as you want to do it for yourself. And if you have these three elements, whether it's individual sport, team sport, you're going to have more of that intrinsic motivation to keep going, to be persistent.

Yeah, that autonomy, for me is a big one. I think. Being able to take control of your own destiny in some way, I think separates the difference between those who really knuckle down in their work and then others that probably seek excuses that it, it was maybe some other reason why I didn't have that success. Because you've always had it given to you. So therefore you go, well, the instructions were wrong, the instructions were wrong. Whereas it's like, no, create your, your own instructions. It's is kind of like the IKEA effect. So the concept of people find value in IKEA furniture because they have to build it themselves. And actually on its face value, it's cheaper furniture. So it's kind of like that. You need to build your own program, you build your own story, build everything around it and go from there, because.

Then you'll value it more 100%. Yeah. I think it's also the one that people kind of miss the most. Coaches are reluctant to give over control. Players sometimes are reluctant to take control, but it is the one that I think can be most leveraged to sort of drive toward greatness in a way that is not happening to other people.

Did you take a look at the Olympics this year? Did you get much to. To watch some, some Olympics going on?

I wouldn't say I got to watch a lot, but I got to Watch some.

I thought it was a really interesting Olympics this year. Not only because of, I mean probably one of the real first Olympics where there was a, a lot more so online athlete noise in what I would say is, is athletes are brands now, really are brands. And so there was far more going on in terms of build up for it. I select Noah Lyles right there a lot around Noah Lyles in 100 meters. But the Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebritzen rivalry that was going on in the 1500, it was. There's so many stories that came from it, but I thought it was a real insight this year into how much psychological training was going on actually at the Olympics. The US Gymnastics team, there were so many examples from athletes that you could visually see doing visualization and sort of moving through their patterns before and self talk where you can see athletes talking to themselves, saying phrases. So I think we have no doubt that what we've been talking about here is on the up because those at the very top are actually implementing it and you're seeing it now on show.

Yeah, I mean I think that's one of the cool parts of the Olympics is seeing the world's best all in one place and seeing what's common because you don't often get a look quite like that, right. And I think you're exactly right. And I know the US Olympic Committee has done a great job of sending sports psychologists with athletes to the game, sending them alongside with training and trying their best for each team to bake it into everything that, that goes on. And you know, the, the USOPC has been honestly well ahead most pro sports, at least here at the States, as far as integrating mental skills into the work they do because it, it's also quite unique, right? Like, you know, last time we saw Simone Biles, she was withdrawing from a competition because of the twisties and she was not feeling comfortable performing. And you know, so we got a first glimpse into mental health there and kind of how that impacts performance. And now she's got another opportunity. But it's not until four years later that she has to show up and try to sort of demonstrate like I have or I have not overcome this, right. And then for athletes who have not gone through something like that, it's still, you know, you might get one shot, you might train your whole life to get one opportunity to show that you are even remotely close to the best in the world. Right. And you know, you well, you know as well as I do, right, that like, you know, five seconds in a 100 meter dash is a long time. Right. Like the, the difference between the very top and the gold in the bottom is, is still pretty significant even if it's measured in milliseconds. And so you know, to be as mentally on point as you can during that time is absolutely critical because the pressure is higher than it's ever going to be for you and the meaning on the other side is often more than it's ever been.

I'm curious to see what's going to happen now post Olympics. I mean there's a lot like diamond leagues that go on. We've just had the Mondo v Carlsten 100 meter race for Red Bull that they've just done where they compete in 100 meters. But there's, there's so much that's always spoken around how athletes struggle post Olympics with their mental health, which is this Olympic blues that that happens. I have, I have this with this mental skills and sort of the theme of what we're talking about here is why people run from some mental skills training, seeing doing psychology within their sport. The reason I am big on it and, and really tuning into mindset within sport is because I believe that there is such a strong link between understanding yourself as being equipped, being mentally strong to deal with challenges in these very harsh environments and then knowing that because you've got the skills, because you've built the repetition, because you've got all of that, and acknowledging it, being consciously aware of it, being knowing that I have these tools in my toolbox, knowing I have these weapons by my side sort of thing gives you that confidence, makes you build your mental health because you feel good about yourself, you feel capable to take on challenges. And then having that conscious awareness of it means that, okay, post Olympics I'm gonna, I'm gonna dial up my resiliency because this is going to be a moment when it's going to be really challenging for me. I'm going to have to utilize that part of my skill set. Rather than it being just a mechanism to get a performance, it actually eking into your mental health as a human being.

Yeah. I often think of mindset skills as, as life skills. And you know, I think you and I both know like mental health and mental performance exists on one big continuum. Right. So anything you do to improve your mental performance theoretically can help your mental health and vice versa. Right. And so I think that's what you're describing is, is right and important. You know, the more you train these skills in the context of your sport, they're going to bleed over and carry into the other things you do. You know, if you help someone learn to focus better, it's going to show up in sports, going to show up in school, it's going to show up in your family life, it's going to show up wherever you need focus. And so I think the same thing is true in things like resilience, right. If you help someone be more resilient in sport, they're also going to sort of reason by analogy and understand how they can apply that in other places. And I think, you know, to the post Olympic blues comment, like, what I think is interesting about that one in particular to go on a little bit of a rabbit hole here, but bear with me is, you know, I think we ascribe that to like, mental health and I think there's a reality to that. It's sort of an emotional experience. But what I often think about is like the massive metabolic cost of being at the Olympics, right. And. And we know there's an intimate link between metabolic cost and mental health. This is why poor sleep is a predictor of a depressive episode or why working and not recovering is a predictor of burnout. And so you've had this giant spending of energy. It's pretty adaptive to come home and be subdued so you could recover. It just also feels crappy. Right? And so I think there's, to your point, like having that resilience skill, being able to talk to yourself about that, being able to frame that correctly, being able to understand that this is not a sign that something's wrong with you. This is a sign that you've just done something like really, really hard and it's going to take you a little while to get back. It's going to allow you to be a little bit more resilient in that space. And there's lots of ways to understand it. I'm not, certainly not suggesting byway is the right way, but I think we kind of. I've certainly read a lot about it and heard a lot of people talk about it as like, it's almost this sort of gloomy mood. And I think that gloomy mood is actually a function of the sort of physical, metabolic, physiological cost of being an Olympian as much as it is sadness, the game's ending.

Think there's also an element of a drop in status because I have you come across Will Stor's book, the Status Game. It's real interesting. If you ever get a chance to listen to him talk about it, do. Because he wrote this book about how life is just this game of status where we as human beings, we seek first to fit into a tribe, to find a tribe, and then once we're in that tribe, we seek status within that tribe. And sort of going further into it, that there are actual links between anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation in. When we have these huge drops in status where we have had. We've been at the top of something and then suddenly had a massive instantaneous drop. And that kind of is what the Olympics is like. You are in front of the world, right? You've got this huge state that's built upon you.

The.

And the other thing is the build up. Like I mentioned, they're socially marketable athletes now. The brand is just building them up. The marketing is massive. And then I would love to have been a fly on the wall for Noah lars in the 200, because that was his race, right? That was his. That's his race. Yes, he had Covid, but, like, that's what he was being built up for. The 100 was kind of like a. It was an extra. But what was he like with that? That when you're in the locker room going, I didn't win the race that I had built myself up to. To win, to be mine. I was telling you it was my race. And you see it. I see it in athletes that retire. I see it. I felt it when I retired through injury instantly. No longer was a pro. And so I find that a real interesting concept. I almost really want to get Will onto the podcast to. To talk to him about that because I think it is a huge factor that plays for athletes.

Yeah, I agree. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I'm sure that I can think of you in my own life, leaving specific jobs or whatever, the perceived drop in status impacting my motivation. And so imagining being kind of at the top of my game and being the center of attention for whatever, six weeks and then, you know, it goes away, right? For some athletes, it never goes away. But for 90 of them, like, you know, you were just the best thing happening to your country, and now no one's talking about you. It's pretty hard.

Well, the one I. The actual perspective I find really interesting on this is what. What happens in America is that I think there's a bit of a disservice done with college athletes that get built up almost as if they are goats of a sport. They've been around and done it, and then they have to go into the draft and get selected to actually become A pro, and then their journey begins, right? And then it's, you're in here with the rest of us, and we've been doing this a lot longer than you, and you haven't even made a career yet. And I think that's. That's really insightful. Caitlin Clark's a really great example. Caitlin Clark, like, just lauded as this huge talent and then goes into the wnba, and then it's right, right now, find your feet and it's. You don't. Your status shifts. You instantly. You're no longer just the number one. You're just one of everyone. So I'd love to know how that affects athletes like that. And we. Because we don't have that here. We don't have that this side of the pond.

We.

We don't have a college system where we have the next best athlete being built up in the media, almost endorsed by every brand that you possibly can think of before they've even set foot into a professional environment and started to build credibility on a professional stage.

Yeah, I mean, it even happens for us in high school, coming into college. Right. Like, to get to these next levels, you know, you're sort of the best of your group and then you show up. And by and large, you know, even if you're like the fifth overall pick in the NBA, let's say you might still be like the third or fourth best player on the team for the first few years, and you've been the best player on your team forever. You know, like, since you were a kid, this was what you did and who you were. And so it's a big shock, I think, and often something, you know, players struggle with because it is. It's a drop in status, but it's also learning a new role. Like you. You lose being the big dog, and you also have to learn how to be like a fish in the pond, you know, very, very different mentality. And I. The players I've seen do it best are those who kind of hold on to both. Like, they don't forget of them, forget themselves as the big dog. They don't stop thinking of themselves that way. But they also know they have to, like, you know, respect to the people who have been there, put in the work, demonstrate that they have something to offer, and then they can kind of like live into that original status versus those who try to, like, hold onto it. But it is. It is challenging. And I can think of a number of athletes who are, you know, touted as, like, the Heisman potential and then drafted and don't play. You know, that that is a tough thing to navigate. And I think that was unfortunately, probably hurt our athletes here more than we care to have been.

Alex, we've been going a while. What's on the horizon for you at the moment you were mentioning you have got a book that is coming out in the future. Talk us a little bit through what's going on from your side there.

So thank you for giving me the opportunity first. And yeah, I wrote a book on peak performance because I'm a performance psychologist. But at its core, what I really set out to do was sort of flush out my model for peak performance. And this came from a place of like, I was sharing kind of offline, I think, a little bit of frustration and disillusionment with what's been written before. I think, you know, you. You see these books come out on being your best and a lot of it is like, you know, be. Be more resilient or, you know, manage your time better or become more productive. And like, those things are all useful. You know, there's nothing wrong with any of that. But it's not sufficient, in my view, to actually understand how great people do what they do. And so I sort of set out to describe that. And the way I think of it is sort of two dimensions of performance. So you've got this first dimension, what I'd call typical performance is sort of like how you show up day to day. And here the goal is to just constantly raise your baseline of what you're capable of through putting yourself in stressful situations and recovering through developing a sense of optimism about your future through developing skills like psychological flexibility so you can make meaning of the life experience that you're having in a more adaptive way. And then you've got a separate set of skills for what I'd call maximal performance, like these peak moments of pressure where you really need to deliver something special. And this is where this side of the sort of performance equations where a lot of the peak performance books are written so far and in my view, again, like, leave out some of the fundamental things that we've actually talked about today. Things like practice. Right. You know, we talk about it like, oh, you can just show up to the game and if you've meditated for 100 minutes, you're like, ready to go. It's like, no, you have to really practice well in a specific type of way to actually get that kind of performance. And you have to do it consistently. You've got to learn to do things like manage your psychological states and your energy. You've got to learn how to manage your decision making. Often something you don't hear about at all in the context of peak performance. But to go back to the intelligence comment, and I'm sure you appreciate this as a pro athlete, a lot of really great performances, essentially automatically making the right decision. Um, and it's sometimes a function of how you feel, but sometimes it's a function of great training. It's a function of that rich mental model we talked about. It's a function of experience and a lot of things. So how do those decisions get made? So the book is really about these two elements. This, maximal and performance, and what you can do as a person to build up each of those sets of skills. And ultimately, the way I think about it, like we talked about at the beginning, is that these are all things that you can train. These are all things that you can do well and get better at, but they require consistent practice. Starting from things that are super basic, like sleep or good nutrition or hydration or having some fun, all the way to actually mapping out the way to practice or actually figuring out how you manage your own energy and get into your kind of individual zone of optimal functioning so that you can be your best when it matters most. And so that's what the book is about. It's called the Greatness. It'll be out sometime in the next month and a half or so. We're still going through the final edits here, but it's. I'm looking forward to getting it out there.

What's the process been like of writing it?

Falling in love with boredom. I mean, that's really what it is. You know, you have to get to this point where it's like. I think Tim Ferriss talks about writing two crappy pages a day. For me, it was like, okay, I'm going to try to write 500 words, and they may or may not be good, but I'm going to force myself to sort of sit. Sit down and do them. You know, it was an interesting process to go through, but I. For me, writing is kind of like my version of, like, painting or music. You know, I'm not a very musical person. I certainly can't draw, but I think I can string a couple words together. And so I'm trying to kind of constantly refine that part of my craft. But that's something that I think is really important. And so I ultimately ended sort of leaning into it as this, like, giant exercise for me to get better at writing and to learn a little bit more about what I think and to figure out how I can put it together in a linear way that people can understand. And if I felt like I could do that, then I thought I'd produce a decent book. And so it took a lot of work to get to that point. And I'm still finding things, even in the galley copy, that I wish I would have sent differently. But that's part of the process too, and makes me better for the next one.

Where's the best place for us to direct people to follow what you're doing and obviously look out for the release of this.

Yeah, you can find me on social, all the socials, Instagram X LinkedIn, I guess threads now too. I've got all that Lexauerbeck PhD or my website alexauerback.com or if you're interested in mindset coaching here in the States, I run a business called Momentum Labs. You can find us at momentumlabs Coach it's just mindset coaching for young athletes where we're going to teach many of the same principles that we talked about today, because I think these things can help kids both on the field and up.

Alex Auerbach, thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me, Louis.

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