Episode 208: Level Up, Performance Mindset Coaching for Young Athletes

No need to whine, it's whiny palooza. Have some wine and join us on the whiny palooza podcast with Rebecca Green.

Welcome to the whiny palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Green. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family.

Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Green for the Whiny Palooza podcast, and I am so excited to have Allison Cooper here with us today. Allison, thank you so much for doing this with me today.

Oh, I'm so happy to be here.

I'm so happy to have you. She is, um, she's doing great work. You're all going to love hearing from her. I want to tell you a little bit about Allison. Um, she is founder of Level Up Performance Mindset Coaching for young female athletes. She is a passionate advocate for keeping girls in sports through high school years to build resilience, confidence, and coping skills. Allison runs a 6-week one-on-one program designed to help young athletes develop individualized tools to manage pressure and anxiety, overcome mistakes, deal with perfectionism tendencies, improve self-talk, find intrinsic motivation, set goals, build routines, and treat yourself with compassion. That sounds amazing, Allison. Allison has over 15 years experience as a team and personal coach facilitator, small business owner, and parent of 3 active kids. She is dedicated to leading a healthy life through fitness, food, and positive psychology. She loves to read, ski, and hike in the mountains. Allison is currently head coach of a girls' 15U Phoenix volleyball team. You can learn more about her work at levelupwithallison.com. Well, you know that I think that sounds amazing, which is why I contacted you. And I am so excited to talk to you about this topic. It is so needed. I told Allison selfishly, having 3 kids, I wanted to talk to her. So let's start with what inspired you to become a performance mindset coach. I would love to hear.

So my drive to become a mindset coach comes from wanting to influence more girls than I could as a volleyball coach. So when I coach volleyball, I have access to 12 athletes on the courts, when I do my mindset coaching, I can now reach, um, girls all over the world because we're now doing them all online one-on-one.

Well, that's amazing. And a lot of our kids are doing sports. A lot of our kids need you. Um, for the parents listening who may not know, what are the benefits to playing sports?

Well, the obvious ones are when you be— when you exercise or participate in a sport, you become a healthy adult as a result. You perform better at school, those sorts of things. But what I really love about sports is it gives kids an opportunity to try new things, to take risks, and in And as they continue to perform, they develop a growth mindset. And a growth mindset is applicable in all areas of life. So learning that I can struggle at something, I can get better, I can perfect it. Sports also teaches kids communication skills. They need to deal with disappointment when their team loses, 'cause that happens half the time. To each team, and they learn, they learn how to be a good teammate. Yeah, responsibility, respect for authority. I mean, the list goes on and on. But what I'd like to say is that they have to be in a space that they have psychological safety. So if there's ever an environment where the coach does not have good character, then it can be detrimental. It can have detrimental effects to a child.

So that is so true. And my son just finished his first year of football yesterday and just went on and on about how amazing his coach is, which, you know, The— I feel like the coach is so important to the experience that the kids have, but I can't believe as a parent you sign your kid up for a sport and you think, oh, this is going to be so good for them, but you don't realize the extent of everything they learn being part of the team. I mean, you touched on so many things, but it is so good for our kids to join sports. Just amazing.

Absolutely.

Well, and then, you know, on the other side of the coin, you know, I think some kids really struggle with confidence, you know. So how can— how do you help kids to gain more confidence? Because I think that's hard for so many of them.

So I think the most important thing is you need to push yourself into an uncomfortable situation. I believe that confidence comes from Success after struggle. So I wish I knew this as, as a youth, that I had to go into that uncomfortable space, take risks, make mistakes, look silly in your sport in order to learn and grow. And so if we can, with the athletes one-on-one, if we can find places where they have struggled and they have seen success, then we can look for new places that just put them in a safe, uncomfortable space. So I'll give you an example that I use with the girls. You go to a diving, you go to a diving class and you show up to the pool and there's a 1-meter board, there's a 3-meter board, and there's a 10-meter board. And your heart starts to panic thinking about that 10-meter board. But of course, that's like, that's in your, I call it your red zone. That's a place where you're not going to perform well. Where we need to start is the 1 meter. Okay, you've, you've done a dive at other pools. So we're going to start with the 1-meter board. And once you get comfortable with that, we're going to work to the 3 meter. And that's in your yellow zone. That's where you're challenging yourself. And then as you become comfortable with that, you can move. It becomes part of your comfort zone and you can move to something like the 10-meter board or platform, I guess it's called.

That, that makes total sense. And teaching them the steps because the kids don't know to start at X, they're ready to jump to Z. Yeah.

Well, see the younger ones, they're ready to go off the 10-meter board because they haven't they don't have that fear of being embarrassed or being judged. Um, I think it's around age 11 when kids start to be more influenced by external forces than what they've just had at home. So if you get them before that, they're much more willing to try things. And that's why I love working with girls in the middle school age, because they at that time they're willing to still try new things and learn. Once they get to high school, there's so much other pressures and there's, there's so much more visibility that they feel is happening on them that it's harder to, to take those risks and to find safe places to grow.

For sure. I know, and I have also had parents say to me, well, once they get to high school they can't try new things. And I said, absolutely not. They, you know, because they're worried that the baseball team is all baseball players who've been playing since they were 5. Well, they still welcome new players. I mean, I know at my son's school— I shouldn't talk for all schools.

Yeah, and I think there's definitely certain sports that start at a higher age, um, and I love that your son is going to try wrestling. So I listen to that.

And so, oh my gosh.

Well, yeah, he's pushing that. Yeah, go ahead. No, that's fine. My son, though I do coach volleyball when we lived in Colorado for a while, it's not really a boys' sport. So my boys had no interest in it. And then coming back and now we live in Toronto, he's actually tried out for the volleyball team for the first time and he's also in grade 10 and He's loving it.

See, I know. I love that. I love that they're trying new things, and I'm hoping that the fact that we're putting that out there, that our sons both tried new sports as sophomores, maybe the parents can encourage their kids to do that because I've had so many parents say they can't try a new sport. Well, my son just proved you wrong.

Yeah, well, they can't probably try out for a travel team, but—

Right, right.

A school team, yes, is different.

Oh my gosh. And you know, and I was the mean mom who was like, well, you would be playing goalie the whole time if you were on the soccer team, since he's been playing soccer since he was tiny. And I was like, if you switch to football and you sit the bench, I'm going to be so upset. Aren't I such a nice mom?

Yeah. But sitting on the bench is a place for all kids at some point in their life, right? Yes. You can't be good at everything.

So true. So, so true. And I love that the head coach said, if you're not getting enough playing time and you want more playing time, come have a conversation with me and ask me what you need to do to get more playing time. I love that he said that.

Wow. Yeah. That's amazing, right?

Very good advice. So our kids have lots of uncomfortable feelings. I think middle school especially is like the awkward, uncomfortable years. And you— and I'm fascinated because you have a strategy called RULER to help work through uncomfortable feelings. I don't know if you can sum it up for us, but can you tell us what that is?

Oh yeah, for sure. So it comes from a book, and I'll just show you. It's called Permission to Feel by Mark Brackett. And so the RULER is an acronym, and it starts with recognizing the feeling in your body. So I'm feeling, you know, something in my stomach, my heart is racing, I'm getting clammy and sweaty, or whatever it is, or I'm feeling it, you know, I'm feeling those angry emotions in my body. And then you try to— the U is for understand. So what just happened before this? What was the trigger? How do I— I want to understand how this process is happening. And then you label it. And so not that I am angry, but I feel angry. So I feel worried or upset. And then the E is for express. And this takes— if you actually live through an emotion, it takes 90 seconds to happen, 90 seconds to work through it. So I talk about the girls visualizing a snow globe. A snow globe you shake up, the snow is flying, and you just, you have to wait until it falls. To the bottom of the bowl. And that maybe is the 90 seconds that you live with that emotion. Because too many times we're told to not show our emotions and not feel them. And if we bottle them up, they come out at the wrong moment later. And then finally, the R is for regulate. So that's how you, you learn from what happened. You move on. And you're better prepared for next time.

Wow. I think every single one of us needs to read this book. Can you tell us the book again?

Yeah, it's called Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive. Yeah, it has this amazing, um, list of— I'm showing you, and I know your audience can't see.

You know what, if they go to YouTube, they can see.

Okay, um, so it has all these 4 quadrants of emotions, and they're labeled in a red, yellow, green, and blue depending on the level of energy and the level of pleasantness that they have. So it's just It broadens a kid's vocabulary for different emotions and, and understanding what's going on in their body. And sometimes we know that you don't always know why it's happening, but you got to live with it. You got to work through that 90 seconds so that you can move on.

That's really good advice. I'm trying to teach my children that emotions and feelings and all of the gamut through the whole scale of feelings is normal. I mean, we all have all the feelings. And I, you know, I've even talked to my husband about the fact that, you know, it's not just about the happy feelings and the good feelings. Like, we're going to have all the feelings, and we need to get good at having feelings, right? It sounds like a very good tool. And I think in life in general, we all need to be more mindful to be successful. And I know that you help the girls to be more mindful. Can you talk about how, like, how you do that and how they can bring that to be more successful at the sport?

Yeah, so mindfulness is all about being in the present. So I make sure that they are not thinking that we have to meditate. Um, so we're just, we're just trying to bring them into the present so they're not ruminating about something that happened in the past or worrying about something that might happen in the future. So we go through about a dozen different activities from journaling to breathing exercises to concentration things, and they find ones that work for them. So I thought what I'd do is just share one that a lot of them gravitate towards, which is— so when you breathe or when you pay attention to anything in your body, you have to be in the present moment to do that properly. So breathing is one of those things that they seem to gravitate to. So I ask them to put a hand on their chest and a hand on their belly and just breathe normally and feel and try and get some belly breathing. So try and feel that their hand on their stomach moving in and out. And we do something called box breathing. So you may have heard of this before. It's visualizing the 4 sides of a square while you're breathing in for 4 seconds, holding for 4 seconds, out for 4 seconds, and then holding for 4 seconds. And you do that 3 or more times until you feel like you've become a little more grounded and you're ready to tackle whatever's in the present moment.

It's interesting, there's so much training that coaches could have. I mean, I know that coaches are needed so much, so first it's finding people to fill the roles, but then I feel like there's so much training. Like, you have so much training to be a successful coach. Coaches then need the trainings to be able to help their kids with all of this stuff that you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah, right. Being a good parent kind of allows you to be a good coach. I mean, all the people that are listening to this podcast want to better themselves, and if you see the person before the athlete, um, you can be a good coach. And I would encourage anyone with, uh, younger kids to go out and do that. I mean, obviously when they get to the higher levels, you need a different skill set, but when they're young, I think you can do it. I would encourage everyone to do it. So rewarding.

I agree. I totally agree. I tried being a softball coach for a year and then my daughter quit and my husband coached soccer for years and years and years and loved it. But my son, you know, they age out of the parent coaches.

Oh yeah, for sure. Right.

So he was sad, but he couldn't coach anymore. Um, so what I see with kids in general, athletes, is, you know, you talk about those perfectionistic tendencies and they're so hard on themselves. And I'm trying to teach my children to have more self-compassion, to not expect the perfectionism. How can we help our kids be more self-compassionate?

It's a good question. I think understanding that rest is an active state. It's what our bodies need. So I— we go through a tool where it's called a debrief. So after you have a big game or a tournament, you have to take some time to do 3 things, and it's rest, reflect, and recharge. So there's a moment of rest be right at the end. You need that to recover. Reflect is about what you learned, what you want to try differently next time. Just my volleyball girls have a journal that they keep. They can write some notes in after, after a game or a tournament. And then, and we talk. We talk about what went well, what, what we want to change, and then there's a time to recharge. So I give the girls that I work with one-on-one lots of different activities and find ones that resonate with them. So it may be watching a movie with a friend, it may be doing something on your own if you're more of an introvert and that's where you need to get your energy from. If you're more of an extrovert, you need to be around other people. So finding what works for you, but really, um, understanding that that is needed. And our North American culture definitely has a bias towards being busy, um, and being productive. And I know I have that bias as well. Um, so self-compassion means you're treating yourself as you would someone else, one of your friends.

That's a really good explanation. And I'm thinking about the 6-day-a-week practice, and I'm thinking about how it will be a day off and I will see my son go work out, and I'm like, oh my gosh, like, you're making me think about self-compassion differently because how about some rest?

Yeah, but I think knowing that your body needs exercise in order to I don't know, focus at school or focus on your homework is also showing self-compassion. Like for you and me, taking time to exercise is showing ourselves self-compassion. So it's not all negative. Being busy is not all negative.

I like that. I like that spin. That's a much better way of me to look at it. Because I see him working out and I'm like, do I say something? Doesn't he need to rest?

Yeah, I think teenagers know how to, yeah, lay in their bed and be on their phone.

Oh, there's lots of laying in the bed. That's another good point. I think they do spend lots— teenagers like to spend time laying in their beds. Um, I really want to talk to you about body image. Um, boys and girls need, you know, everybody needs a healthy body image, and I know Athletes— I shouldn't generalize to athletes. Teenagers struggle with body image. Can you give us some pointers to help our kids have a healthier body image?

Well, I guess the, the first thing, as kids grow and learn, they need to have good role models around them. So it's reflective of how you treat your body.

Yes.

It's recognizing that our body does so many things for us, and it's not— it wasn't designed to be on display or objectified. It was designed to achieve things for us. And talk about how strong you are and how your body does these certain things for you, I think, is a good way to start. And not talking about body weight, of course, and just talking about healthy things that you're doing that are healthy for your body. So it's more about having a healthy body, and it will look different. Um, everybody has different shapes and sizes, and that comes from heredity. So I don't— we can't control it. So focusing on the things we can control, like the foods that we eat and the exercise and the hydration and the sleep that our body needs, um, creates a healthy one. Yes.

And I love that you said that it starts with us because I realize they see what I reach for in the kitchen and they're going to reach for the same things. Right. So if they see me make a protein shake, they want to make a protein shake.

Yeah. Which is great. You've taught them that.

So if it's a good, if it's a good thing, the Halloween candy, not a good, not the greatest. Thing.

Yeah, everything in moderation.

It was— I was literally just gonna say that. My girls went to a trick-or-treating event and brought home all this candy, and it's not even— it's not even Halloween yet. I'm like, can I throw these bags out? Um, so I would love to hear about your teenage years, like stuff that you went through that like inspired you to help other teenagers? Did anything from your teenage years impact you in what you're doing today?

Oh, for sure. Everything that I teach the girls is not what I learned as a teen, but what I wish I knew as a teen. Um, so understanding how the brain works, understanding how to get outside your comfort zone. I was like one of those kids who was happy to sit on the bench. I was the best cheerleader ever because I didn't want to make a mistake and ruin it for my I was just happy to be on the team. Um, so yeah, different skill set for sure, but I wish that I knew that it was okay to, to look silly as you're, um, as you're growing and learning and, and, um, performing in your sport.

I love that. That's awesome. So you're teaching the teenagers what you wish you had known as a teenager.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think there's a lot more pressures on kids today than we had, so, um, so that part's a little different. And so anything I can do to help them overcome that, that stress and stay in their sport, I just think there's so many advantages for life. I agree.

I, I 100% agree. I, I think sports are So good for our kids. I tell my kids they have to join things, and my daughter is an actress, and she's like, theater counts, and I'm like, theater absolutely counts 100%.

Yeah, of course.

So can you tell us what parents can start doing today? Like, what can we tell parents to start doing to help their kids be more successful with sports?

So I think What it, what it is, is comes down to is making sure your child understands how much you love and accept them for who they are and not how they perform in their sports. So it's, it's recognizing them, valuing them, understanding them, and appreciating all the efforts they put into their sport and not necessarily the goals that they achieved or the score that was the result. And I think kids can be a little more comfortable in that, in that space.

Yeah, I hope that everybody hears you because I do see, I do see parents completely focused on the achievement and not the effort. So totally agree.

Yeah, so you can recognize a kid for cheering for a teammate. You can recognize a kid for making a pass rather than taking a shot that probably wouldn't go in the net if we're talking about soccer. Um, recognizing a kid for being on the bench but not having that sulky looking face. So if we can encourage our kids in that there's lots of things that they can't control, um, when it comes to the score.

Yeah, so you've kind of already answered the what do parents need to stop doing. You've kind of answered that already.

Yeah, I guess, um, that's— yeah, and, and I think when my son was younger, he played soccer and There was a family on the team that would pay their child $5 for every goal.

Oh yeah, oh, I have seen this.

Okay, so what happens is when the kids are younger, sure, you're motivating them to perform, but I think what we want from the younger ages is for them to find a love for the sport and find that intrinsic motivation that's going to carry them through high school because it's going to get a lot harder they're going to have to work really hard to make the team in high school. So why not help them find the joy when they're younger so that they are able to do the hard work when they get older? And that's, that's kind of how I see kids staying in sport for longer. And if we incentivize them, like, I mean, I'm pretty sure that boy probably isn't playing anymore.

Wow, this is really interesting because I'm taking this to heart and trying to think about my daughter. My daughter has a beautiful voice and hides it, and I'm trying to get her to— you know, she's part of chorus and she wants to audition for things, and I'm trying to get her to like share her voice. And I'm trying to figure out how to motivate her. And yeah, I think I'm going about it all wrong from what you're saying.

Oh, I don't know. I guess we— I mean, we do incentivize our kids to do their jobs in the house and things like that. But I feel like if you can find something they love, I think eventually they're they're gonna, they're gonna use the gifts that they've been given.

I know I keep telling her, you've been given this gift that you're hiding. I'm like, if I had this gift, I would not be hiding it. So hopefully with age and confidence, she will, um, show the world that she can sing. I'm hoping that that's coming because at this point she is hiding. But I want you to share with everybody that anyone— can you talk about, like, your coaching and that everybody could hire you from any location?

Yeah, so my website levelupwithalison.com, Alison with one L, uh, there's a page where you can read about the program, but there's a page where you can set up a 15-minute free call with me. So we just talk about what, what your child is struggling with, and is there an opportunity for me to support that and to help that. And then the 6-week program runs once a week, generally for 6 weeks straight, but I'm pretty flexible on, you know, I know that kids are busy and schedules change each week. So what I hope though is that They're practicing their sports about 2 times a week so that each week when I teach a tool, they have a space to practice that tool. And then we, we, we connect by text just to make sure they remember to practice. And then we revisit that to see what worked, what didn't work, do we need to revise it, and then we move on to a new topic. So it's, it's It's been very well received so far, so I, I hope just to keep reaching out to kids. And if there's anyone who wants to do this for the child but they can't afford it, we can talk about that too.

Well, I, as you know, I did a lot of research and learned all about you and your program, and I think any child can benefit from it. So I hope that all the parents listening will come and find you. And I think, I think it would help all of our kids be more successful. And I can't thank you enough for sharing what you do with us today.

Well, it's been a pleasure. I love talking to you. I feel like we could talk for longer. So this is— I really appreciate you advocating for my program.

Well, thank you so much. I love this. I love learning about you. And I hope lots of families benefit from this. This is Rebecca Greene reminding everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving. Thank you, Allison.

Thanks.

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