Mental Training Lab
Master your mental game with the Mental Training Lab, hosted by Pete Kadushin. With 15 years of coaching experience and a PhD in performance psychology, Pete digs deep each episode to provide practical tools and expert insights so you can perform your best when it matters most. Enhance your focus, harness stress, and overcome challenges whether you’re an athlete, leader, or high-performer. Subscribe to learn how to elevate your game in work, play, and life.
Episodes
86 episodes
Stop Trying to Fix Athletes: Dr. Kate Bennett on Love, Psychological Safety, and Mental Performance
In this episode of The Mental Training Lab, I sit down with sport psychologist and three-time national champion Dr. Kate Bennett, founder of Full Send Consulting, to explore one of the most powerful and often misunders...
Inside the Mind of a Tour de France Rider: Brent Bookwalter on Pain, Performance, and the Mental Game
Brent spent years competing at the highest levels of cycling, including the Tour de France, the Olympics, and World Championships. Since retiring from professional cycling, Brent has completed graduate training in mental performance and now wor...
Don’t Let Optimization Hold You Hostage
In this solocast, I’m exploring a paradox I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: the more optimized a system becomes, the more fragile it can get.We start with sleep, but this applies to performance routines, recovery, leadership, traini...
Psilocybin, Performance, and Deep Healing: Adam O'Neil on Going Beyond Mental Skills
**This conversation is all about psilocybin-assisted therapy, but it is not medical advice. Psilocybin is not appropriate for everyone, laws vary by location, and anyone interested in this work should seek support only from qualified pro...
You Can't Outcoach Your Nervous System
Your nervous system is the foundation of everything else. It shapes the way you perceive reality, and everything flows from there: what you think, how you decide, what comes out of your mouth, and what your people feel when you walk in the room...
Beyond the Grind: Lodro Rinzler on Meditation, Worthiness, and the “I’m Not Enough” Trap
In this episode of The Mental Training Lab, I sit down with Buddhist teacher, meditation teacher, and author Lodro Rinzler to explore a concept that has powerful implications for athletes, leaders, and high performers: basic goodness.<...
Stop Hiding Behind the Process
In this week's solocast, I’m unpacking something I’ve been seeing a lot lately: the idea of caring less about the outcome and just focusing on the process. That mindset may not seem like that big of a deal to you, but the more I hear it, the mo...
From Formula 1 to the Boardroom: Building Trust and High-Performance Teams with Peter Hodgkinson
What does it really take to build trust and psychological safety in teams under pressure? In this episode of The Mental Training Lab, I sit down with Peter Hodgkinson, high-performance consultant and the former Head of Build at Mercedes F1. Pet...
Unlocking Flow: Breath, Challenge, and Embracing Nerves
In today's solo-cast, I’m digging into something I see all the time with athletes and high performers, the way we misunderstand nerves, pressure, and what it actually takes to access flow.We’ve been taught that the goal is to calm down, ...
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Crossover Episode | Live Coaching + Feedback on The Transformational Leader with Adam Quiney and Chris McAdoo
On this episode of The Mental Training Lab we are sharing an episode of The Transformational Leader featuring a conversation with Pete Kadushin. "On this week's mid-week episode of The Transformational Leader, Adam Quiney welcomes f...
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Beyond the Grind: Redefining Mental Toughness with Dr. Hillary Cauthen
For decades, athletes and high performers have been taught to grind harder, push through pain, and silence weakness at all costs. I’m your host Pete Kadushin, and in this episode of The Mental Training Lab, I sit down with clinical spo...
The Illusion of Progress
In this solo episode, I’m exploring something I see all the time in the performance world: the illusion of progress. From the outside, it can look like we’re doing everything right. We’re building mental skills, trying new strategies, putting i...
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Hypnosis for High Performance: How Intentional Focus Can Transform Pain, Sleep, and Stress with Dr. David Spiegel
What do a hypnotized high-school wrestler, Olympic athletes, and modern neuroscience all have in common? In this episode of The Mental Training Lab, I sit down with Dr. David Spiegel, one of the world’s leading experts in clinical hypnosis, to ...
Train Your Mind Like an Olympian | Mental Skills for Peak Performance from the Skimo Gold Podcast
It’s officially the Olympics season, and I was stoked to join endurance athlete Travis Macy and Olympic ski mountaineer Cam Smith to talk about the mental skills behind peak performance. This episode is shared here on the Mental Training La...
Bad Advice: Discipline > Motivation
On this week's solocast I'm taking a hard look at the way motivation and discipline are talked about online — and why a lot of the popular advice actually works against long-term performance.You’ve probably seen the posts: discipline...
Turning the Mic Around: Pete Kadushin on Meaning, Mindfulness, and Mental Performance
What happens when the Mental Training Lab host hands over the mic? I’m your host Pete Kadushin, and in this special reverse interview episode, I’m interviewed by psychiatrist, meditation teacher, and longtime contemplative practitioner Holly...
"No Big Deal"
In today’s solocast, I explore one of my favorite mental training mantras: “No big deal.”We look at how quickly we label experiences as good or bad, and how those judgments (often made without the full story) can quietly hijack our nervo...
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From Self-Criticism to Self-Compassion: How Mindfulness Changes Performance with Dr. Holly Rogers
In this episode of Mental Training Lab, I sit down with psychiatrist, meditation teacher, and author of The Mindful Twenty-Something, Dr. Holly Rogers. We’re breaking down how mindfulness and meditation can trans...
From Fear to Freedom: Skiing and the Art of Acceptance
In today's solocast, we hit the slopes and explore the transformative power of acceptance through my own experience of learning to ski. We touch on how embracing the possibility of injury actually unlocked my ability to be present t...
Safety, Stress, and Performance: Megan Bartlett on Rethinking How We Coach Under Pressure
How does stress impact the experience of sport? In this episode of the Mental Training Lab, I sat down with Megan Bartlett, founder of the Center for Healing and Justice through Sport, educator, and faculty member of NM Sport, to explo...
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What's the Worst that Could Happen?
Today's solocast explores the role that negative visualization can play in generating gratitude, wonder, and a connection to the present moment.I share a vivid story from my early days as a mental performance coach, and outline practices...
Practicing What We Preach: Dr. Ryan Hamilton on High Performance, Self-Awareness, and Pushing Limits
In this episode of the Mental Training Lab, I sit down with Dr. Ryan Hamilton, someone who truly lives the work he teaches. Ryan is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of New Brunswick, a certified mental performance consulta...
Don't Step Over "The Suck"
Today's solocast explores the difference between positivity and optimism, and how positivity can often get in the way of both presence and progress. I also cover how to practice The Stockdale Paradox in real time, and the importance...
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The Hero’s Journey: Jilyne Jarvis on Transformation, Dancing with Fear, and Empowering the Next Generation
In this episode of the Mental Training Lab, I sit down with Jilyne Jarvis, co-founder and executive director of ZGiRLS, a confidence-building program transforming the lives of middle school girls. Jilyne was a professi...
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Not Good Enough, Need to Be Better: A Broken Model of Motivation
In this episode, I explore a common motivation pattern that presents itself as people walk the path of mastery. I'll outline the negative motivation model, why we get hooked on being driven by fear, and how it holds us back.
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