Positive Psychology & Mindfulness in Sport Ep 25

Hey guys, I have a couple of quick announcements before we get started. First, our audio is not the greatest today, but hang tight as there's some seriously awesome information and tips from John in here today. Secondly, we enjoyed this episode so much that we're going to have him back for some exclusive mental training classes with our brand new team training program we just launched this month. If you're looking to improve your performance, meet some new friends and training partners, even if they are virtual, Learn some new skills and get support from expert coaches and wellness professionals just like John, please join us. There are both virtual and in-person options that include everything from virtual mobility classes, weekly coaching calls, and more. Check it out at theenduranceedge.com. Welcome to the Find Your Edge podcast. Get ready to dive into all things training, nutrition, recovery, and more. Whether you're a new or experienced endurance athlete, a weekend warrior, or someone who just wants to improve your health and fitness, this podcast is for you. I'm Kris Newport, founder, head coach, registered dietitian, exercise physiologist, and certified personal trainer with the Endurance Edge and the Fueling Edge. With more than 20 years experience in the fitness industry, 18 years in multi-sport, and over 10 years as a sports nutritionist, I'm speaking with athletes and experts about key actionable steps you can take to reach and sustain peak performance and health. Let's do it. All right. Welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. This is your host, Chris Newport, and today I am with a special guest. His name is John Jaeger. Welcome to the show.

Thanks, Chris. It's great to be here.

So John, I found a little bit of information about you and positive psychology and coaching. You have a wealth of knowledge and experience in this field. So tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into this field in sports and coaching and that kind of stuff.

Well, Chris, I'm the CEO of Jaeger Leadership Group, where we do positive psychology consulting work with coaches, athletes, teams, also with schools, and also with businesses. And I've always been fascinated about the why of sports. Why do we do what we do? And looking behind that by kind of understanding Notion of what the why is, I really believe helps coaches, athletes, and teams flourish.

Fantastic. Um, and you've written a couple of books too, right?

Zone, and that came out this past April. And that really focuses on taking coaching to the kind of the next level, as opposed to the standard coaching book that really looks at that social-emotional aspects of not just working with your athletes and your teams, but who you are as a coach yourself. And we focus on 3 different areas. One is coaching self-management. The second is leading and empowering teams— athletes, I mean. And the third is called choreographing dance. So we begin to look at 3 different components that are really important part of sport.

Awesome. So with this whole coaching athletes and Well, I foresee this conversation kind of taking a couple of different directions because when we think of like positive psychology in endurance sports, we're often thinking of how can I entertain myself for 6 hours when I'm on an Ironman bike ride? But I want to kind of take it to a little bit of a different, a different level. I feel like we are our own worst enemies. We, uh, especially in this particular sport, in endurance sports, we label ourselves easily fast, slow, or Oh, I just want to finish, or I'm super competitive. So are we okay with starting that? How can we sort of get around some of these labels? And how is that affecting us and our ability to be in sport as well as, you know, it seems to me like that affects our longevity in a sport. If we're really berating ourselves and beating ourselves up, how long are we going to stay active? How long are we going to be in the sport?

What comes to mind first of all is a great movie. It's a black and white movie, I think from the early '60s. It was a great, from England, it's called The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Okay, and in that movie, it is just, it's about a character who's, I think he's a teenager and he's gone to this kind of like, almost like a reform school type of situation, but then they give them an opportunity to go out and run. And that's where you find so much joy. I've also seen with endurance athletes too, this, this idea of almost like, I wouldn't call it diagnostic, but post-traumatic stress from some different types of mindsets that some athletes go there. And I'm really looking from the idea of positive psychology and and post-traumatic growth where athletes can understand their strengths, being able to understand their vocabulary of their emotions, which they be positive and negative. And then also to look at some of their blind spots that they have. I think having athletes look at their stories are really important. From the book, I— there's a quote from Peter Brown who wrote a great book called Make It Stick. He said, the stories we create to understand ourselves become the narratives of our lives, explaining the accidents and choices that have brought us where we are, what I'm good at, what I care about most, and where I'm headed. And I think when athletes begin to understand their own story— what I originally talked about is looking at their capacity to be the best that they can. I think that's really important, but it's really difficult to eliminate labels. You know, one of the things that you had mentioned to me in the questions is, you know, am I fast or slow or competitive or just want to finish? And it's, I'm not suggesting that we eliminate labels because sometimes people spend so much time trying to eliminate a label that they, they concentrate on that more. I'm more under the understanding is that if we can be more nonjudgmental about that, label, okay, and be more mindful of where we are in the present moment and letting when that label comes up, finding a strategy. And many times it gets into relaxation training and some deep breathing work, okay, so to note those thoughts and emotions that come up, but then to go to what's called a task-relevant cue. What do I need to do right now? This is where I am. This is what's going on right now. I'm not feeling so good about what I'm doing, but then saying, well, what do I actually need to do right now? So you note the thought, but then you go and have a cue that you can go to to find out what you need to do. A great example of this is a story of my own. This is my first— I wasn't much of a runner, but when I was 11 years old, I loved to run. And I asked my parents if I could go into the July 4th road race in Framingham, Massachusetts, a town that I grew up in. And it was July 4th and we were there. We had a 3-mile race that happened before the parade. So I got over to the start of the race and I realized that I was the youngest person there by around 10 years. Everybody was an adult except for me. So I had read, evidently I had read, I had read the registration wrong. And I just really at that time started freaking out. I'm saying, what am I doing here? And so what I did is I looked up over at my father and in many ways he was the first coach I ever had informally. And he looked at me and smiled at me, which basically said, it's okay. You want to do this or do you not want to do this? And I said, okay, I'll suck it up. And I stayed there and I got on the starting line. The gun went off and I ran and I finished dead last. Okay. Uh, the parade almost caught up to me. Okay. As I went there. But one of the things I learned from him and that I think endurance athletes can really learn to focus on is the notion of an acronym called HERO, H-E-R-O. This is based on the work that Fred Luthens has done at University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and it stands for psychological capital. So for example, if you're an endurance athlete, human capital, which are your skills and your knowledge of your running, you might have some social capital in there, but psychological capital is so key to performance because the H stands for hope and hope is all about setting goals, finding pathways to reach those goals. So if one pathway gets in the way, what is another way that you can achieve that goal? And the third piece is having agency. And agency is the ability to kind of go forward towards that. The second is E, efficacy or confidence. And confidence is basically this notion of how can I take mastery experiences that I've had in the past and transform them into new things. Along with doing that, along with the mastery experiences, Chris, is the ability to model other athletes, model other endurance athletes and what they do. The third is getting feedback and recognition from other people, which I think is really, really important. You can't be all by yourself with this. There needs to be some level of getting from just not self-recognition, but getting recognition and feedback from others. And the fourth is, what is your mindset? What is your psychophysiological readiness when you actually go out there and perform? And how do you put yourself back into that set? Do you need to be really calm before you go out there? Do you need to be really raging, have headphones on before you run, or do you need to be kind of right in the middle? So I think those are very, very important parts that go into the experience there, which also brings in the notion of our self-talk, because I believe we have good movies, bad movies, and horror movies in our brains, you know, and then sometimes the bad and the horror movies can elicit the negative self-talk, you know. So I look at pairing up self-talk with images of real or imagined positive behaviors. So for example, here are two typical belief systems, Chris, that athletes have, whether they're endurance athletes or not. One is, I'm threatened and I don't have a coping plan. Okay. And this could be before a race or during a race. And the emotion that typically comes up is fear and anxiety.

And so that seems to me that it, that a lot of our novice athletes or somebody who's new, especially with triathlon, there's a lot of pieces. You've got a lot of sports going on. You have, there's a lot of like a lot of fear that goes into that. Yeah. So I like how you mentioned we do need some other feedback and then this self-talk thing. So yeah, let's continue with that. How, how do we get over this fear? How do we put ourselves into that better mindset?

Well, originally what happens is the athlete gets into fear and anxiety and they don't even realize what their belief system is about what's going on. They're just dealing with the emotion and how, you know, and so they basically resort to how do I actually perform when I've had fear and anxiety before? And it's performing well, then they're all set. If not, so, but I look at athletes really looking back to the belief system. I'm threatened, I don't have a coping plan. Then I ask them to saying, let's reject that. What is something that you can reject? To not having a coping plan. And what typically it is, is when I talk to that, and I work with a lot of collegiate Division I swimmers, and, you know, and basically they end up saying, well, I've put the body of— I put the yardage in, I put the body of work in, the evidence is there. I've done this. And, you know, and so—

We like to say the hay is in the barn.

He's in the barn. Wonderful. Yeah, exactly. And that can bring up confidence, but it's actually shifting the belief system. But you got to look at the belief system after you look at the emotions so that you can get to an understanding so you can think through this a little bit more. You just can't automatically change that fear and anxiety. A second one that comes out there, and this might be for more experienced endurance athletes, I've failed to meet standards. And the typical emotion that comes out is shame. And when you feel shame, you want to disappear. Okay. And so basically, instead of just feeling the shame and saying, well, what kind of standards have I felt to make? You know, and I challenge athletes with this and saying, you know, is it, is it a self-imposed standard? And we get to the bottom of, okay, you know, so aren't you doing the best that you can out there? And so we come up with a couple rejections and a couple new type of confidence and encouraging pieces of self-talk there that can really help. Okay. And, but, but we're also, what goes along with self-talk is having some sort of positive cue. So like, for example, I work with a couple Division I college hockey goalies. And when I have them kind of look at these two different areas, one of their positive cues are taking their gloves, they have a catching glove and a blocking glove, and actually taking and interlocking those gloves together. And that's basically the metaphor, the analogy is locking it in. I've got it locked in and they lock that in with their positive self-talk. Some Runners I work with, I have them take the tip of the index finger of their dominant hand and just touch it to the tip of the thumb of their dominant hand. And it's a reminder. It's a cue. And when they do it together, it's a cue that reminds them of what does this look like? What does this sound like? What does this feel like? So using those cues are really helpful by taking a physical cue and connecting it with a mental emotional piece to help with the self-talk. So it helps them to say, you know, what does this look like, sound like, and feel like? Because in many ways, Jon Kabat-Zinn, kind of the father or founder of mindfulness, talks about the monkey mind or the drunken monkey that we all have in our heads, which is basically sometimes saying, am I an imposter? I'm not very good, and having these negative belief systems come in. Okay, that's where to actually have to work at strategies too, so we can counteract that and to be more mindful and to be more nonjudgmental with that. Okay, and that typically happens when we're in a case of what's called HALTS, and HALTS stands for H-A-L-T-S, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, or stressed out. And that's when their monkey mind is going raging typically more. So that's where many times we need to sit back and slow down and to be more mindful. Note the thoughts and the emotions that are happening. And then what are the things that I need to do right now? It's basically accepting and tolerating. Okay? Not trying to get rid of something, but beginning to tolerate something until eventually you can befriend that. And this is a lot of work that needs to happen. But it's very, very, very doable.

So I was going to say, when you were talking about the gloves and the finger touches, like these are not things, it would seem to me, these are not things that you are just, hey, I'm on the starting line, let's do this, you know, put my fingers together and magically I'm going to be better. It sounds like this is something that really needs to be practiced. And having said that, how do we practice that? How do we, where do we start?

Well, I believe, Chris, we start also while we're not doing the activity, okay, when we're sitting down in a quiet spot and kind of working through some of these belief systems and finding ways to counteract or bring up more positive self-talk, but then actually getting on a mindfulness script. And there's a lot out there online. But getting into a mindfulness script. There's an incredible book out there that one of my former graduate students at Boston, when I was teaching at Boston University years ago, wrote. It's by Amy Baltzell, B-A-L-T-Z-E-L-L. It's called The Power of Mindfulness, and it's called Mindfulness in Sports. And she has a variety of exercises in there that really are designed for maybe for endurance coaches to help their athletes, you know, slow, you know, kind of, kind of slow the process down and trying to be more nonjudgmental. So when the athlete is practicing this, they're doing it in a mindful way as opposed to being mindless. Okay. Of where, you know, just any thought is coming in there and not making sense, but being mindful, being nonjudgmental, Getting into your breathing, breathing is the rhythm of life, concentrating on your breathing, doing a variety of different breathing exercises. You know, some are called build a breath and some are called breathing ladders or breathing pyramids where you're literally practicing your breathing and counting your breath in different ways. And so that allows you to practice on being nonjudgmental with that. And if you screw up, you start over again. Well, so what? You're still breathing. Breathing is the rhythm of life. And so this helps people get more into the present moment. So when they have an instance that happens at the starting line or happens in the middle of an event and they start going negative, they can just note that thought. Hey, say, hey, wow, I've got a little anxiety coming in right now and negative stuff like that. Okay. Note it. Okay. Let's cue it and move forward. And this is what I need to be doing right now. I think that's the most important thing to think about is once the athlete is practicing this and they need to practice this during, you know, practice workouts. So they do the more and more that they do of that. So when it comes time for competition, they're in much greater shape to actually affect this and make this happen.

On that note, it seems like, you know, a lot of people are training by themselves. They might be in their garages, you know, on their trainers riding their bikes versus race day. There's a lot of people around, there's a lot of energy, there's some stress going on. You know, that monkey brain's probably kicking in. Is there a way that we can perhaps recreate that race day feeling to be able to practice these types of things? Or does that make sense? I'm trying to think of how we can turn our garages into the starting line of a race.

One is to visualize races where the stress and the pomp and circumstance and all that stuff is happening there. You know, is actually to begin to visualize and to picture that happening and actually getting the athlete to kind of run through this in their mind, what it's like when they're at an event and to actually try to put themselves right back into that. I mean, that's one way of doing that. In your own head, as opposed to trying to kind of coerce other people to come in and to practice this with you. I think that's one way to do that. That can be extremely helpful is to visualize, to see what it does. Does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like when I'm there? Okay, this is the race. This is where I've been before. And they go back to a past race. And usually what's really helpful is to go back to a race where you've performed well. Okay. And then you go over this enough, you know, okay, the look like, sound like, feel like, to the point where it feels like, yeah, I could do this again. And you get those images and you get those sounds and everything else about everything going on around you. And that allows for you to bring yourself, you know, closer back to that. That situation.

Interesting. Yeah. And what about the novice? What about the person who's not been there? Is it maybe, I don't know, queuing up YouTube and seeing what race—

Yeah, I would say, yeah. If they're not used to that, it is to, yeah, to go to YouTube and to actually see what's going on in those races. And then the other thing too is to actually experience that. Many times we don't make our changes until we've experienced something. Okay. And so knowing what it's like when you first get there, just like I was as an 11-year-old feeling, you know, the cold clammy hands, rapid shallow breathing, heart rate going a mile a minute before the race even started, is to experience that as a novice and to go out there and to accept that challenge, trying to be nonjudgmental about it, to accept that, then afterwards, the more that, that one does that, the more that one gets used to it, and then they have the ability to begin to make some changes in there. So sometimes I believe you just have to go out and do it.

Yeah.

You know, and deal with the stress, you know, and, and, uh, because you can't fake that, you know, it's just that real thing that's happening there.

I'm almost wondering if, uh, volunteering at a race perhaps might be a good way to experience the energy.

Yeah, I think that would— that's a great idea. That's a great idea. I mean, I remember for years I volunteered at the Boston Marathon, and just, just an amazing thing. And to have a person who's an endurance— a novice endurance runner to be out to see that, to see what it's like, you know, I think that's really, really important. You know, another thing too is just that You know, the more that athletes can have accountability partners too, you know, that helps to increase that relational piece so they can have those conversations with other people about what's going on with them pre-race and during race.

So I'm glad you brought that up because as you were saying, as we were talking about YouTube and these other things, a very popular thing, especially as, you know, through COVID and we've been all online, are a lot of forums. You know, you get a lot of these various athletes on various forums asking about different races or, you know, what's this course look like, you know, and there's no guarantee on the responses you're going to get as a level of perhaps trust and that kind of thing. How do we, how do we find a trusted group that's not going to lead us astray, that's not going to lead us into a more fearful state or perpetuating poor self-talk? That was a big question.

It's a big question. It's a tough question because you can't always tell somebody's personality before they get on the forum and looking at what are their motivations for being on the forum? Are they out there so that they can empathize with other endurance athletes or are they going out there to run the show? Are they going out there to run the forum? They want to win the forum.

Right.

Just like they try to win the race there. So that, that's an uncontrollable piece in there. But I really believe that comes in with groups of people and teams, a team atmosphere that really works well together is when there is the kind of almost that, that it could be part of the requirements of the forum is that there's a level of empathy going on. And I look at 3 types of empathy here, and this is based on Daniel Goleman's work and his work called The Focused Leader. And one is having cognitive empathy, you know, understanding the perspective of other athletes. And that typically comes out, you know, in a forum. But also emotional empathy, actually feeling what those feelings are in other athletes. And I think the third, which is just as important if not most, is called basically, I am here for you. It's empathic concern. No matter what, I am here for you and I can support you. And this may go on beyond the forum where you have an accountability partner who is unconditional that can support you. And when empathy is shown at that level, people feel really, feel that they really matter. Okay. And people feel really matter, that they really matter, that increases their capacity to do positive and proactive things. So, John, that's—

oh yeah, go ahead. I didn't want to interrupt. Go ahead.

Okay. Well, part of that also is developing a type of what we call vulnerability trust. And vulnerability trust is more about You know, predictive trust is knowing somebody's next move. Vulnerability trust is really being honest with yourself to the point where you can admit some of your faults and foibles and stuff like that. And to be really honest with that, and that helps to build it in other people too, saying like, you know, this is what this race really— that I did not— things did not go well because I didn't, you know, train in a certain way, whatever, like that. When there's greater vulnerability trust within a group, there's a greater chance of having overall trust being built. And once again, it gets to this idea that, that you do matter. You're not in some hierarchy. Okay. That's part of this group. But you also, you know, um, you know, one of the things you'd ask that, you know, sometimes people are in a team atmosphere where people are different fitness levels and maybe training for different events. And that is basically to understand that they matter for their scope of contribution. So if they're in a team atmosphere, it's knowing what their scope of contribution is. Okay. You know, different fitness level, training for different events and having other members of that team acknowledging that and expressing that. I had a really cool experience that happened when I was working with a college track and field team. During their indoor season, and the coach had communicated with me saying that we don't— if we are so individualized in our track and field events, if we could be more of a team for the overall process, I think we would do better individually and also with our team score. It isn't all— he said it wasn't until the conference meet at the end of the season until everybody kind of rallied around each other. So I spent around 6 hours with the team and we did a polarity analysis. And basically what a polarity is, it's two types of perspectives that need to live with each other, but they seem opposite, such as inhale and exhale. You need to do both. I just don't want to focus on inhale because if I only do that, I can't exhale. And so the same thing, like with activity and rest. If I focus too much on activity to neglect the rest, I get overuse issues. If I rest too much to the activity, I get detrained. One of the cognitive or one of the cerebral things to look at was what we call the individual and team polarity. And so, in the individual and the team polarity, that allows the athlete to assert themselves in their training, to focus on their talents and growth, and to care about their own impact on the team. That's really, really important. But at the same time, they also can care about each other and their investment in the team. They can work well together and they can focus on maximizing team achievements by supporting each other. So they had, uh, was one of the events there that the next day they had an indoor meet and, uh, the pole vaulters got together with some of the sprinters who they weren't competing at that time, went over to the shot put cage and they cheered on one of their teammates who was a mediocre shot putter. And this, this guy threw a personal record of 8 feet beyond his best. And it happened there just because of people realizing their scope of contribution, but also realizing that the team matters. The team matters. And if people aren't used to being part of that team, then they need to— that's where the empathy and the trust and the mattering need to come in so you can feel part of that. Wow. I think that's really, really important. Yeah.

That was really— that was a great story to kind of tie us all together. So we've gone over a lot. John, can I have you back? Can we talk more again?

Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Because I know there's so much more that I wanted to talk about and we didn't even touch on that, but we're— Coming to a close, at least for this episode, based on what we've talked, we've talked about self-talk, we've talked about this hero and halts and a couple of different great stories that you've had. What are, based on what we've said today, what are 2 or 3 things that athletes can walk away with in order to empower them to reach and sustain that peak performance and health?

Well, the first is HERO. It's hope, efficacy or confidence, resilience, and optimism. That's your psychological capital can be built and changed and grown over time. Okay, the research says that, and that they can be more attentive to those areas. Second is trying to live in the present moment. And if those negative thoughts are coming in there, have strategies that you've worked for to get to more of a healthy positive self-talk, but also being nonjudgmental with those negative thoughts. And, and then, then go to what you need to do at that moment with a task-relevant cue. And the third comes from this notion of that you matter. And this is where the team atmosphere and the accountability partners come in. I think that's really, really important.

John Jaeger, thank you so much for joining us. This was Amazing. And I look forward to continuing additional conversations in the future.

Thanks, Chris. Great having me on.

Thanks again for listening. Don't forget to check out our brand new team training programs at theenduranceedge.com. We're offering a series of classes with John this winter, but only if you're part of the program. We'd love to have you join us no matter where you are in the country for this amazing opportunity. Once again, check us out at theenduranceedge.com.