The Playbook with Colin Jonov
Formerly The Athletic Fortitude Show.... Colin Jonov’s Athletic Fortitude Show has rebranded to The Playbook with Colin Jonov, evolving from a sports-centric podcast to a universal guide for mastering life’s challenges. While retaining its foundation in mindset and performance excellence, the show now expands its scope to empower everyone—athletes, entrepreneurs, professionals, and beyond—to live life to its fullest potential
The Playbook with Colin Jonov
BEST OF THE PLAYBOOK: MASTERING THE MENTAL GAME: SECRETS OF ELITE ATHLETES- Bhrett McCabe & Brady Howe
Elite athletes emotionally regulate themselves by experiencing emotions fully, then strategically reframing setbacks as opportunities for growth rather than defining failures.
• Athletes who reach the highest levels face tremendous vulnerability during crucial moments
• Rory McIlroy and LeBron James demonstrate how champions process devastating losses
• True emotional processing requires experiencing disappointment fully before moving forward
• The four types of athletes under pressure: ostriches, possums, armadillos, and lions
• Adversity is an invitation to development, not a sign of inadequacy
• Building trust is essential before delivering critical feedback to athletes
• Athletes need different coaching approaches based on their alignment and knowledge
• The ecosystem around an athlete significantly impacts their development
• Wisdom is gained through experience, exposure, and navigating difficult situations
• Pressure situations require preparation, anchoring techniques, and honest communication
Coaches and mentors need to recognize that providing space for emotional processing is crucial. Elite performance isn't about eliminating emotions but understanding how they impact performance and learning to channel them effectively.
how do athletes emotionally regulate themselves? I'm going to pick two instances in the sports world, because I want to look at what we just saw happen with Rory McIlroy, and I think it's very reminiscent to what we saw with someone like LeBron James when he first lost in Miami, where it's almost like a suffocating feeling and athletes that care so much, put so much into this, are dying to win. They blow essentially you know, the heat blew a two, two O lead. Rory has a two stroke lead coming down the final three holes and they lose in fashion and then the world just comes down on them and it's like, as athletes, how do you move on from that? How do you not let that tank your career and where do you develop those skills?
Speaker 2:You know you've got to be pretty special to be in that position to start off with, and I think that's what people forget. And so there's tremendous vulnerability at the highest moments. You know, every movie of any kind of action movie right, it gets harder the closer you are to the final prize. And there are a lot of people who could have done it. There was a lot of people who said that they tried it. There's a lot of people, but there are few that have done it.
Speaker 2:You know, we look at somebody like Rory or LeBron or you know, jim Kelly with the Buffalo Bills, and you look at that and you're like they couldn't get it done. We're talking about the final step, the final piece of a puzzle that's so many factors out of your control. And so it's easy to look at Rory and say God, he missed those two putts. But the reality is, you know, it's so difficult and so volatile that anything that's worth gaining is worth risking for. And Rory and those types, their careers don't need to be defined by a mistake. But that's what we do in our American culture we want to knock down the giants. I think we do it because it makes us feel better, but the reality is, those types of players will retool, refocus and re-gear for the next moment, but I never want them to mute their emotions. I want snot in the locker room, I want sobbing in the locker room. I want, because if we're going to have joy, then we have to have disappointment, and I think it's critical to look at those and say, okay, when I'm in those situations, what changes and how? Not only what changes, but what did I perceive differently?
Speaker 2:I can guarantee you, if you look at Rory coming down the stretch, he had more negative thoughts. He had more fear-based thoughts. His mechanics did change, particularly with the putter, and it required Bryson to respond in a way that I mean let's celebrate the shot that he hit, not the failure of Rory. Okay, if Rory makes that putt, they're in a playoff. It wasn't like he. He forced Bryson to have to get up and down from almost 60 yards away in a bunker and he hit the shot. So let's celebrate that shot, but the media narrative will definitely be about the collapse of Rory and that's unfortunate.
Speaker 1:Brady, anything you want to add?
Speaker 3:Because I have a couple follow-ups here. Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. You know, I think each, each athlete is going to experience it completely different. We know that. But for the athletes like Brett's, playing like to be in a position like that one is an amazing gift in itself, you know.
Speaker 3:So, actually taking that embrace and understanding it where you know I thought I heard of it again as a reminder about a week ago where you have to give yourself, as an athlete, permission to fail, and that doesn't mean that you're going into it trying to fail, but along the way, you know, rory LeBron, like you see them instantly in there. Their pressers after, like, the communication that they're having is instantly. How can I take this, turn it into a lesson, turn it into an opportunity instead of an obligation and then move forward? Because that's how I see it with with the athletes I've worked with is how quickly can they move on to the next thing, not that they're disregarding what just happened or anything like that, but they can take it on the chin and move forward. You know, you can see it in those athletes after the game, or you can see it that they're wearing it and they're still working through it at the moment.
Speaker 2:So, going back Real quick to that point, brady, you know I look at athletes in four different buckets and I'm going to put them in animal terms. As pressure builds, that's where we make our biggest difference. The first type of athlete is the ostrich. When the pressure builds, they put their head in the sand and hope it gets away from them. Okay. The second kind is the possum.
Speaker 2:Now, I don't know if you've ever come across a possum. We have them in the southeast. They're pretty ugly looking dudes. They look pretty badass but they play dead when pressure hits. It's their only defense. The third type is we have a bunch of armadillos that walk around. They look like badasses but as soon as it gets ugly, see, the possum doesn't believe in what they actually have. The armadillo puts up a false front and as soon as pressure hits they roll up under their hardened shell because they don't want to expose themselves. But to be great, you got to be like the lion who sits on the rock who's got all the scars. When you look at that badass lion that sits on the rock, who's taken over the pride? They have battle scars, right? Nobody. And we've trained our youth right now, and we've done it with all the over-specialization. We've done it with all the youth travel teams and the transferring and the moving around. Is that adversity is a sign that you're short, not. Adversity is the invitation to development and that's the problem.
Speaker 1:A couple of points I want to pick up on here. First you talked about Brett. When your athletes fail, you want to see the tears. You don't want them to control their emotions, you want them to let it out. And then, to Brady's point, it's like okay, well, now how can we take this as a lesson and how can we move on and use this failure? So how much do you indulge in those feelings, those emotions? How long versus at what point is it becoming destructive to you?
Speaker 2:Well, when somebody comes off the field, the court, whatever, the last thing I want to do is sue them and the last thing I want to do is make it and try to get them to feel a certain way. I try to give everybody three to four hours of processing. Sometimes it takes 24 hours and I'm not going to be up them and I'm not going to be like it's okay, it's not okay, it hurts and you know, I think we have to look at that and allow people to process things the way that they need to process. If, immediately, we go in and sue them and make sure they're okay, then what we're telling them is the depth of those negative experiences aren't worth your time to delve into them, and in those moments we start finding some of the strengths that we truly have. So I let people go. I want them to experience what they feel. I don't want them to get destructive, obviously, but I want them to kind of allow those emotions and those thought processes to cycle and to go from like I don't think I can do this again. I you know, the climb is so tall. I want, I want them to have those thoughts because eventually they'll turn is like well, that's all BS, man. Let's get back to work. And when they I'd rather them call me with their motivation than me motivating them to say something they're pissed, be pissed. One thing that we do.
Speaker 2:I think in today's world and I hear this all the time there's way too many times that we're trying to coach emotion out of people. Emotion is what makes us separate from other animal organisms. Okay, it contributes, sometimes in a positive way, sometimes in a negative way, but to our decision-making and our ability to focus and work. Emotions are who we are. Some of us are very quick to be emotional, but we have to understand emotional discipline. Others, it takes a lot to light that fire and we're very process-oriented. But we need to be who we are. And if somebody's emotional, as long as they don't disrespect the game, their teammates, their opponents, I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it.
Speaker 3:I couldn't agree more Honestly. I think that people need to experience this to the fullest. However, I do think, you know and Brett's been a part of many sports, but in basketball that I've predominantly been a part of, you know they kind of tend to look at it you have tomorrow. You know what I mean. But you have tomorrow for another opportunity, you know, and that's a golf as well, but it's such a fast, rapid turnaround with travel and everything going on.
Speaker 3:I kind of think of it as creation. You know, part of their routines, a part of how they handle these things, is give yourself the opportunity to fully embrace that. If you just had the best game of your life, like, sit in it, live in it, evaluate it, digest it. But on the flip side, if you just played the worst game of your life, again let yourself experience this, don't quickly just deflect, go on to the next thing. But I see it as how is this added to a part of your routine post-game? But I also see that being a challenge for some who can't just experience it to the fullest and move on to the next day without living in it a little bit more and more. And now that's probably a different conversation, but I completely agree with Brett where I think to move on and take the lesson into the fullest, you got to live through everything that you just experienced.
Speaker 1:Is there any value to stoicism then? Because it seems like everything we're talking about here and maybe I have a misunderstanding of stoicism seems to be kind of anti of that stoic belief.
Speaker 2:I think stoicism has been misunderstood and stoicism is not the experience of emotion. Yeah, I think that's how we portrayed it is that we're in the face of challenge or opportunity. We have no emotional experience. That's not stoicism. Stoicism is I can face anything. Okay, I don't allow an event to dictate my emotion. All right. Now it will for a short amount of time. But true stoicism is I can respond and I can answer it and see the understanding of it. And that was a pretty big distinction for me.
Speaker 2:I spent a little time with Ryan Holiday and you know having those conversations because I asked him. I said you know, do you ever feel frustrated in what you do? And he said look, and this was right before Stillness Speaks came out. And he said I, you know, I've never been a New York times bestseller. I go get these talks on these national stages and I see other speakers who are bestsellers. I know I sell more books than they do. I know they're getting paid more than me and I feel jealous, I feel envious. That's okay. Okay, but I don't allow my emotion to dictate my next action. Awesome.
Speaker 1:Now, something that you also said is after the athletes think, oh, the hill's too hard to climb, I can't get there, and then it quickly changes into that's BS let's go do this. Is that natural or is that developed? Because I see a lot of talented athletes in interviews post-tough games, post-great games, and you can tell they just get it. The way they handle the process, the way they conduct themselves, they just get it. Then there's other athletes. You see how they experience failure, how they handle the media, and it's like I'm not sure they fully get it at least yet. How much of that is natural? How much of that is upbringing? How much of that is developed through working with people like both of you guys?
Speaker 2:I bet Brady can provide some insight in a locker room of mentorship, right? I mean I bet the young guys come in and they get mentored by an older guy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. In a team sport, setting the coach within the locker room sometimes has a bigger impact than the sport coach on the front line. To be honest with you, that's why you see it year in, year out. There's guys on every team. Look at the championship teams. I guarantee you you could look at the end of the bench and find a veteran player who's had a big impact in the league, like a ripple effect, where they can connect with the athletes. And that leadership from within is paramount.
Speaker 1:If you don't have that leadership on a team, how can a young athlete in professional collegiate begin to develop the right habits? Where can they look? Who can they work with? How can they develop these skills?
Speaker 2:You know it's funny, Go ahead.
Speaker 3:I was just going to spin off that saying. You know, what's funny is they come in there and it's not probably fair to use the prison analogy but they come in and instantly all eyes are looking around Like who can I gravitate to? Who might be in my corner? Who can I latch on to? You start to see little clicks, little groups, even within the team setting, and it is everything comes down to ecosystems that you're surrounded by, the people you surround yourself by, and that's everywhere you step into the training facility. Who am I really closely associated with? Who am I avoiding? Why? Same thing in your personal life. So I do think that there's a big impact by our environments.
Speaker 2:I totally agree with that. The ecosystem development. I think we as coaches need to look at ecosystems a lot more than the one-on-ones. I do a lot of my work in the ecosystem. I train coaches on how to communicate with people. I train every level of support teams around and I do a lot of my work that way, versus maybe one-on-one. Even in the professional organization I work with, they'll call and say did you talk to so-and-so? No, but I talked to the coach that influences them because they have that relationship with them and I gave them better tools to deal with what they're going through. They don't need another voice sometimes.
Speaker 2:What we're talking about is wisdom, and wisdom is gained through experience. It's gained through exposure. It's gained through difficulty and those scars and those wrinkles. People can say look, I've seen this before, you're going to be okay, but this is how we're going to respond. And to Brady's point, when you build a team in an organization, you have to look at the pieces of who are the influencers and who are the ones that are respected. I love using former players as kind of performance liaisons because, man, they've got the trust right, they've been in the trenches, they've been in those moments. They've probably struggled with things, but they speak a language that is credibility with it because of what they've gone through. And putting a team together is about understanding those different levels. If you have a young superstar and let's say in the youth baseball league or youth football league or youth basketball, you don't get that opportunity because they're all the same age, but then you better put people around from a coaching standpoint that has a positive influence In the professional ranks. The clubhouse is as important as the roster and that clubhouse could be.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's an old story. There was a major league baseball player who was an MVP by the name of Albert Bell. Albert Bell played at LSU before me. He played under the name Joey Bell and when he went to the minor league system he had some anger issues and emotional regulation issues and he went through alcoholism treatment and he changed his name to Albert. But he became an MVP, I think, with the Cleveland Indians and then signed a massive deal with the Chicago White Sox. But he never really created the same level of success with the White Sox and I remember reading an article or listening to somebody on the team I may have had a teammate on the team with him at the time and they were like, when Albert left Cleveland there was one piece that did not go with him, that nobody understood. There was an older mentor in the clubhouse and a clubhouse manager that had been around for a long time. It was an older African-American guy who was his mentor.
Speaker 2:Albert didn't trust many people but he trusted that man. When he went to Chicago he didn't have that man Okay, and you lose that resource sometimes. You know, I remember people talking about Barry Bonds. He trusted very few people and one of them was a clubhouse manager that was around for his dad and he used to tell him get your crap together or go apologize to that person. He was the only person he kind of respected because he knew the influence he had on his dad. And you have to look at that ecosystem and understand what's what I call. What's the spider web? All right, and we build in our organizations the spider web effect and it doesn't mean if they're hanging out with somebody that you don't like, they may be getting something out of that guy or that woman, but that's okay, it's not all or nothing. But you have to understand how that spiderweb all interconnects, to understand who are the influencers, who do they trust. Where do they go? And it may not be us, that's okay.
Speaker 3:But we got to get to the people, that get to them to help them. It's funny that you mentioned that, because we use that tactic in every department in basketball where it's like we're trying to reach the best result for the end user, which is that particular player, and then you start figuring out well, how can we speak the same language? When you brought that up, I just thought of countless times where we're pulling in a player development coach that's their individual coach. We're bringing in a front bench coach who's involved with overall strategy. We're bringing in a strength coach that he works closely with. This is why teams have 12 to 15 health and performance staff. You got three strength coaches with various personalities, not just for their skill set in the weight room, but who connects best with the athlete. You bring those people together to drive a similar language, a similar message to try to reach the athlete. We use that all the time.
Speaker 3:It made me think of your four buckets there, brett. When an athlete comes in as a rookie, again, he's going to gravitate to a certain group, naturally, but is he gravitating to live in the ostrich department or is he growing to be on the perch as a lion? And you're going to find out pretty quickly, because these athletes are very smart but they're also very just creatures of habits. They're going to lean to what gets them comfort. So it's interesting because I was thinking of all these different times where I've used that Brett.
Speaker 2:Well, to that point too is organizations need to look not just at the people who wear the suits on the sidelines. You know, I look at sports medicine all the time. You know people will say, well, did they talk about this in your appointment? I'm like no, but they've been on your table for eight hours this week and in that eight hours while you're working on them, you know where the tension is. You know if they kind of drop a seed, I'm not going to say, hey, your athletic trainer told me that you're having some problems at home. I'm going to try to give them that environment, but they're not going to tell me because they're going to a lot of times have self-preservation. But that athletic trainer knows, and so we spend an exorbitant amount of time at every organization. I'm in training the entire organization to feel confident. Am I asking them to be a psychologist? No, but I'm also not asking they're not asking me to be an athletic trainer or a physical therapist or a strength and conditioning coach, all right. But I want them to feel competent in their personal skills and developmental skills, to kind of pay attention and listen and not impart opinion and advice.
Speaker 2:My field is full of advice givers. It's not full of many coaches. I get on social media and I hear all the stories embrace failure, run towards discomfort, all that crap. Okay, that sells great. You might as well print those on shirts. They are worthless in a locker room worthless. If you're a coach and you bring in a fire breather and one of those people to come in there, 95% of your athletes are going to roll their eyes out. Go in there and talk to them about how to develop relationships, communicate, build safe grounds, demand a lot out of them and things like that, and you're always going to be better. And do that at every level of the organization.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit about why some of that stuff's useless. Did it work on you, maybe for a moment?
Speaker 2:It's like those rah-rah speeches yeah it works for a moment and you get your emotion up and then you go back to life, right? But you know, my field is full of mindset gurus who stand outside of private jets that's rented or it's borrowed. They drop their names of everybody they've worked with. I mean, I had to laugh the other night. How many people have claimed Steph Curry is one of theirs in my field? I mean, I swear to God, every time I look up if they've been in basketball and they've been in a private clinic. Steph Curry is on that list. Training Steph Curry.
Speaker 2:I mean, and I'm not saying that, but I'm like I've just I'm very jaded in my field because I've just seen the frauds for so long. It's like I remember listening to somebody in my field saying don't you got to get to a spot where you don't care what other people think? And I'm like but that's a human, that's a human drive, like, like, we do that Like the only people who don't care what other people think. Either is one of two things Either they don't think enough of you to value your opinion, which means that they're extraordinarily narcissistic, or number two is they're a sociopath. Okay, we care what other people think. We've got to learn how to compete while that matters, and I always laugh at the people who do that, and then they're checking their likes on Instagram. So the reason I say that is look for authenticity, look for individuals who build relationships and pour into people that don't give advice, and if they use well what I did with so-and-so, that's not coaching, that's peacocking. Move on. So when is the right time?
Speaker 1:to give advice, advice or coaching or like coaching. That's peacocking, move on. So when is the right time to give advice, advice or coaching, or like coaching?
Speaker 2:excuse me, Well, every day, every moment of what we do, Can you make a distinction between advice and coaching for me? Well, advice is telling somebody how to ride a bike. How did you learn how to ride a bike?
Speaker 1:That's a bad analogy for me. How to ride a bike. How did you learn how to ride a bike? That's a bad analogy for me. How to ride a bike.
Speaker 2:We need to teach you how to ride a bike, but it's like swimming, right.
Speaker 2:When you get out there and learn. I can kind of show you, but I can't give you advice like balance move left, stay right, kick your right. That's advice. Okay, bicycling is hey. When you fell, what did you feel and how are we going to try to ride our bike to not fall? Are we going to ride our bike to and what can we focus on the next time?
Speaker 2:Coaching there's a concept in psychology called motivational interviewing, which is accepting resistance as the standard and helping people move through their readiness to make a change. That's coaching. That's coaching. I mean, how many times has Brady sat in the office with somebody with the upper level and they're like this guy's got to make a change, he's got to make a change, he's got to make a change. And all of a sudden, when the guy is ready to make a change, then they make the change. But if they don't understand the why and the how and the what and it's not tailored to their development plan, just throwing advice is like looking at billboards on the side of the road. Not one of those ever motivated me to do anything.
Speaker 1:That's actually real quick for you because it's a big transition that when the athlete is ready to make that change, then we can make that change, tailoring specific training methods to go with individual athletes for their long-term careers. That's a really hard fine line, particularly when we're looking in the NBA NFL team organizations where it's hey, we want to craft a path for you to grow and have the success that you want, while also building it into the team dynamic. So I know a big thing is building the trust with the athletes. How do you maybe break through there to get them to see the long-term vision as opposed to just the next 10, 15 weeks, next, you know, eight months, that's what Brady does on a daily basis.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a that's a complex puzzle we're putting together each and every day, honestly, and that's not going to change anytime soon. You know, and you know, brett, the example you brought up on the training room table is the exact reason why I got into this side of things a little bit. More is because you become as the athletic trainer, as the strength coach, you become the psychologist at that moment become the psychologist at that moment.
Speaker 3:You know, and that was why I wanted to learn how to do these things at a higher level, because I was spending an ungodly amount of time with a guy on a table going through a year, you know, a year long rehab, if you will. That's a lot of time you get and it's that space between that's so critical, you know, like between reps, between and it's such a skill set, you know, people are doing this at the highest level and I can think of a count like a dozen people right now that I've learned more from their ability to foster these relationships in the middle of a rep, of doing, you know, rehab, and it's really powerful stuff and so but, colin, to your kind of point in question, when is the right time? I mean that's moment to moment, day to day, and Brett knows this. Colin, to your kind of point in question, when is the right time? I mean that's moment to moment, day to day, and Brett knows this. That depends on the individual and the coach they're working directly with. So Brett probably knows this really well.
Speaker 3:But there's the thing that's called the trans-theoretical model stage of change, and it's really. You just have to know where the player is at. You hear it all the time. You've got to meet them where they're at Well, really, you just have to know where the player's at. You hear it all the time. You got to meet them where they're at well. I've had a workout on the board, a strength conditioning workout for the day with the player, and I know certain players. The moment they walk into that training facility I can tell a certain mood that they're in and I'm either revving this up and this is the perfect program for the day, or I'm wiping that clean and I'm changing it, because I know that that dude just walked in not ready to go, and so you just got to read the room, really, and know where the player is at and if he's actually ready to embrace this coaching that you can give him, and if not, to Brett's point, you just kind of have to sit through it with him.
Speaker 2:To that point. Trust me, trans-theoretical model is ingrained in everything I do. I mean, I was trained me. Uh, trans theoretical model is, uh, ingrained in everything I do. I mean, I was trained in behavioral medicine, which is where it came from, um, and did my internship in Brown, which had originated at university, so let's just say it's, it's imprinted on my feet, um.
Speaker 2:But there were a couple of years ago I went in and gave a talk at a university to the football team, to the football coaching staff, and the athletic director called me afterwards and said very well received, that was awesome. But a couple of the football coaches called me and said so what, we just want to give in to our players all the time. And I'm like you just missed the entire point of that conversation. Okay, you can yell at somebody, you can get after them, but if you haven't built trust with them, you can't coach them. Okay, kids, our youth today, our players, say they don't know how to receive coaching because everybody's been telling them how awesome they are and how great they are and all the other stuff. So the first time they receive coaching, many times it's critical, because there is a critical element to it. Okay, you're at A, we want to get you to B. There's a gap. Well, just like, if I get a paper from a teacher that has 100 red marks on it, I'm going to see the negative on that and fixate on it. That's human nature. So you have to train them on how to receive feedback. Look, I'm going to be tough on you.
Speaker 2:Bob Starkey, who's the assistant women's basketball coach at LSU, been around the game for a very long time. He used to coach the men under Shaq. When I played ball, I was in school with Shaq, which I think is a pretty good guy in y'all's world, brady. But Bob Starkey is brilliant and one of the things that he said is you know, when you're coaching an athlete of today, you can give them negative feedback, but you better cycle back here pretty soon with a positive message to them and focus it on something that they can control Effort intensity, engagement and come back Even if they're doing it wrong. Go. That's what I want to see right there. That's what I want to see Keep working, keep going. Okay, because if you shake them and I call it their snow globe if you shake their snow globe, it's not going to immediately calm down. I mean they get their resistance up. But once you build trust, it's important. I put athletes into four different change models, okay, and so I want you to think about it like level of agreement with us, alignment with us and level of knowledge of what we're coaching.
Speaker 2:So let's say somebody comes into Brady and is really, really locked in. Man, they know what they're talking about and how the body moves, they study it, they go to people all over the country, right, and they're aligned with Brady. I call that person aligned. They know what they're talking about and they're connected to us. Okay, on the flip side of that, we have a lot of people who really don't know what they're talking about and they just don't like us. Now, it's either they've connected to a guru, they've connected to somebody, but they use being dismissive or antagonist or being an a-hole a little bit to keep us at bay, and a lot of times it's to not allow us to see their weakness. So they avoid and they do stuff like that. Okay, and you have to have a strategy for those individuals, because beating them over the head with it all it's going to do is further alienate the two of you guys.
Speaker 2:The antagonist person has extremely high knowledge, but just has a different perspective and a lot of times we see those as dangerous. They're not dangerous at all. If somebody came into Brady's shop and was like I work with somebody who does I don't know barefoot training and I've been doing it for 10 years and you're like, I mean I have a different philosophy and I like to do more heavy loads and all that, but they're doing more plyometrics and they're doing more strength, that's cool. We can have a conversation about that. We may differ but I respect it because, one, you've done the research and two and I want to pick your mind on a little bit how can I tailor to mix the two? A lot of times we see the antagonist is the squeaky wheel and we want them out just because they disagree with us. The most dangerous athlete you have in your shop is the one who has high alignment but low knowledge. I call that an accommodator. They tell you how good you are, they tell you they're doing it, but they don't buy in because they don't have the knowledge to buy in. And as coaches we need to use knowledge. Okay, but accept that sometimes they're not aligned with us, that's okay. They may differ In the professional ranks.
Speaker 2:You may bring in a free agent who's come from another shop, had a lot of experience. Let's say, somebody came out of a very solid let's use the Boston Celtics right now came out of a solid organization. They have a theoretical framework and put it in place. How do you undo that for a player? How do you undo that? How do you undo that for a player? How do you undo that?
Speaker 2:I remember a GM of a football team, an NFL football team, told me we don't like to draft Alabama football players and I said why? He said because they're so overtaught, so overlearned, that they see the game so fast they can't break their patterns. And I sat there and I thought about it. I was like what a dumbass answer. Okay, and, by the way, this team hasn't made the playoffs or want to play off game. And I think like 15 years and I'm sitting there thinking like you don't want to draft players that are coached to be coaches on the field because you want them to undo the learning that they've had here. My coach at LSU used to say by the time you're done with me, you'll have a PhD in baseball.
Speaker 2:Why is knowledge scary? Because it doesn't agree with what we believe. That's a coach issue, not a player issue. So we have to know where those four players are and know how to get them and move them along to the readiness to change the trans-theoretical model and understand that somebody may be different. But I got to get a plan. If somebody and I, if we're butting heads but we're both knowledge-based and you're like man, this guy kind of knows and I've talked to his coach Okay, we just have different views. How do we marry these two and build trust together? Because the last thing I want to do is create an adversarial relationship that every time they come in the gym or they come in the team meeting rooms or whatever, it's like man, he does his own thing, he doesn't want to pay attention to us. That's not the truth. He just doesn't believe in it and that's okay.
Speaker 1:Brady, anything to add there, you good.
Speaker 3:No, I love it. I love hearing this because sometimes for us, those that have a serious background working in the inner web of sports you know what I mean they just don't understand this. So I'm just listening to Brett and just clicking on all cylinders just what he's talking about.
Speaker 1:So it's good stuff All right, I want to take a step back and talk about performing in those highest moments, because you hear people say and Brett, I know you hate this to not think about it or to avoid the anxiety or, you know, suppress it or whatever. You're big and I've read your book on learning to thrive with anxiety, so I want to hear you talk a little bit about more when we get to these bigger pressure moments and this is at any level, because it's all relative. At high school, the biggest pressure moment of your life is your biggest pressure, the moment pressure moment of your life up to that point, all the way up to rory's putt. So it's like how do you learn to begin to deal with that anxiety and thrive with it?
Speaker 2:we we used to at lsu. My coach used to say that you had to graduate under pressure in order to earn the right to work through your own problems, and he used to play the graduation theme music in our locker room and it was are you willing? Are you? Are you out there trying to protect? Are you learning to be resilient and fight through? See, when we go into pressure and we hold onto a strict paradigm, then it's about the execution of the paradigm versus competitiveness. Sometimes we have to adapt, sometimes we need to call an audible, sometimes we got to be flexible in the way we do things, but we can never control thought. We can never control emotions. All right, it takes guys living in the mountains in Tibet 30 years to learn to control thought and they don't talk to anyone. Okay, I would rather know what that dialogue is and know how to pivot off, pivot off of it and where to anchor into. What I mean by anchoring into is like this is my truth, this is what I do.
Speaker 2:So I remember the band director at the university of Alabama at the time. I had him on my podcast many years ago and I was really reluctant to have this guy on because I was like, what's a band director going to teach me? Right, he's going to wave the stick and we're all going to sing in unison. That's what I thought he was going to talk about. No, he said this is a gentleman who was a world-renowned French horn player who developed, ready for this, the yips of the lips. He'd lost his ability to play music in front of people because he got so technical in the way he was doing things. And he worked his way back up and got through it. And he said my anchor when I walk out there I can't control the anxiety, I can't have the fear. I always want to put up the perfect performance. And he said in that audience there may be three people that can hear perfect the. They're there for a presentation, they're there for a show performance. But when I walk out on stage I can't ever get rid of that anxiety, that stress that's surging me. But there's one thing that's consistent across every single concert hall in the world is it's an exit sign. It's a universal sign. And when I first walk out on stage I look for the exit sign as I scan the audience and all that. That exit sign becomes my anchor and anytime I have the doubts I look at it and say I can choose to leave or I can choose to engage. That simple sense of awareness allows us to stand within the storm versus run from it.
Speaker 2:The only way we get better under pressure is to put ourselves there more Right. You know, the more times that we're in a competitive environment, the better we get and things do start slowing down. I mean there's a reason why people are upset that Rory hasn't won another major because he's been in contention so many times. Xander Shoffley wins a major and people are like he wins his first major. He had been in contention so many times. If you look at majors on the PGA Tour, it's the same group and crop of players. Very rarely does a out of left field person come in. Okay, if you look at like I'm just going to speak out of turn and Brady, you can correct me if I'm wrong Like I look at the Lakers and think of what a disorganized organization that is.
Speaker 2:There's no philosophy and you can read Magic Johnson's tweets and you can tell it's driving him nuts as now an owner. There's no organizational structure to get players better under pressure. They're playing all-star games and yet if you look at the Celtics and their ascension. It was systematic. It was systematic of what they did and and you have to look at that and realize that those moments under pressure were were more than likely going to fail. But what did we learn? Because the person with experience is almost always going to be better than the person without I couldn't agree.
Speaker 3:You know that comes down to even the physical side. You know a lot of times that pro basketball, at least the way we like, there's very little practice. Teams don't practice anymore. And so to brett's point, we're talking physical practice, your mental game practice, all these things. You have to put yourself in a situation to have this exposure, because if you don't have it, you're never going to be able to fight through it when it matters the most, especially when you're relying on a team atmosphere.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean. There's five players, there's only one ball. There's 10 players out there, there's only one ball right. So having certain practices for these guys, even on the court, like when there's a stoppage, there's a free throw, there's a timeout, there's all these different little microcosms during the game where there's an opportunity for players to gather themselves and figure out where we're at in the game, where am I currently at in my status, and then move forward with that these are healthy practices that most of these guys have never thought of, never thought of to get them re-engaged, to get them figure out what is actually going on.
Speaker 3:Because, man, in basketball it's a fast game, you know, before you realize that it's halftime and I've literally had players walk off the court and look at me and go what just happened?
Speaker 3:We were just up 15, now we're down 10, literally asking that like what just happened. And, um, it's interesting that brett brings that up because I starting to engage in a lot more of these conversations again as a group with coaches. How can we collectively understand our players and be on the same page, same language, to actually coach them? You know, going back to the last concept we were just talking about, when is the right time to coach them? I mean, it's in the heat of the battle, but also the what brett just said, like they've got to be comfortable being in that battle, and so hopefully what the coaches are doing is they're setting those simulations up so that they're practicing and experiencing it a little bit each day. But in the NBA that's not very common anymore. You're just playing and then you're watching film and then you're playing again, but that's not a bad thing either. You're getting exposure, but you're only just getting baptized by fire in that setting.
Speaker 2:There was a national championship coach in another sport. We were talking one day over dinner and he coached one of my professional athletes in college and he said I said what was the most valuable thing you did? And he said 72 hours after a big event, we would all get in a room and I would say, okay, tell me what you were thinking when that happened. And he said I didn't do it as a way to, like film study, berate a person Like I. Actually, I get. I understand why that happens in film study, but what it does is it creates an adversarial, fear-based model that nobody wants to be called out in film. Okay, if you have trust with your team, you can say what were you thinking in that situation? What were you queuing on? What were you seeing? Because there's more than likely somebody else in the room that has to put themselves in that simulation. And if you don't share, listen.
Speaker 2:In medicine they have what's called M&Ms mortality and morbidity conferences. After a tragic outcome or a less than ideal outcome, a lot of times, surgeons will all get together in a room and say, okay, what happened? What were you seeing? It's not a blame game. We must learn from one another. They have after action reports in the military, there's no feelings we need to talk about it because the shared collective growth of what's happening there is critical. And if I can learn one thing from somebody who's been there before I've ever been there, then maybe I'm one step further.
Speaker 2:And coaches too often follow the antiquated approach, which is the browbeat down and almost embarrassment to get. But what you're doing is you're getting players who are trying to avoid being on that call, and I get it. It's a show of dominance and I'm not against getting in somebody's ass. Trust me, I'm not one of those guys. I don't want anyone to hear this. No, no, no. If you have trust man, you can go to town on somebody, okay.
Speaker 2:But if you also use those moments to say, hey look, let's take a look at here what happened? We were up 15, now we're down 10. There was a defensive moment that happened. I think most games, most outcomes, have two to three inflection points during the course of a game that you can see where something is going to shift. The job is not to prevent those inflection points, the job is to be ready to deal with them. So if you watch a fight, if you watch a basketball game, if you watch a hockey game, there's inflection points. Somebody either makes the play or doesn't, and it changes the entire course of the flow of the game.
Speaker 3:It's amazing. You know that inflection point in basketball you guys all see it Like even the officials, two or three plays in a row. They look at the coach Like if you watch refs closely. They they look at the coach like if you watch refs closely. They instantly look at the coach and they know you're calling timeout right. And sure enough, the coach is walking out and it's like there's the break and the really good coaches know how that you'll see, you'll see the bench coaches gather up for 30 seconds. They'll talk about it. What are you seeing? What are we thinking? Then they go and if they'll have the right conversation with the players, to, you know, to brett's point, they should know exactly the language that should be used in that moment to bring them back to this moment and move forward. But I'm curious to hear Brett's take, because if you're a pitcher on the mound, if you're on Sunday, a golf round and you're Rory going through that you don't have the opportunity to realize your own inflection point is happening and you can call timeout.
Speaker 2:So of those, some of those best opportunities that you see that for the individual sports or positions, in golf, the professional guys, men and women, have caddies right and I always, you know, I don't like to see the caddy as a co-pilot, I like to see him as a navigator. My dad was a navigator in the air force. I think that's why I gravitate to it, and I don't mean that to demean the caddy. But they're not co-pilot, they're not swinging the club under pressure, but they're telling him where's their stress, where's our strength, what are we capable of? No-transcript. Rory may not want that feedback so I can't speak to it, but that's what some of the other professional golfers are like hey, look, we're seeing the same trend under pressure. You have an older person who's seen it more. It's like hey, buddy, remember that shot we hit eight years ago? That shot is when my coach would come out to the mound. Many times he wouldn't come out with any insight. He would come to slow you down, but he wouldn't say breathe and slow down, he'd walk out, he'd put his hand on your shoulder, which allowed a physical contact which allows us mostly to synchronize and to slow down energy-wise, and he'd say hey, look, this is what's happening. And I can't tell you the number of times he said look, just let's get refocused. I know you're getting squeezed behind the home plate. We've got to get a little bit better there. But we're going to start off with a slider here. We're going to get a ground ball double play. All right, we're going to come back in in the dugout and then we're going to score some runs. We're going to get a little turbulence for the next 20 minutes. I'm gonna do everything I can to avoid it. It usually is a lot better than if they don't say anything. Okay, and and coaches have that insight to say I've been here. I've got so many more hours of being here than you do. Okay, I'm going to guide us through this. I'm going to, I'm going to navigate us around the dark clouds and the storms and if you understand that and sometimes you can get out there and be like.
Speaker 2:I had an instance where a player recently, his caddy, looked at him and said get your head out your ass, start playing like we've trained. You're a lot better than this Player played great after that. Caddies have to know when and how to say it. Like I said, I'm never against getting in somebody's ass, but you've got to put it at the right time. It can't be your only hammer, sometimes you've got to have a chisel, sometimes you've got to have a saw, sometimes you've got to have a buffer, sometimes you've got to have a little sandpaper, but you've got to know how to be the craftsman there and it there and it's really difficult. But I also want my caddies to be a part of all the teams so that they don't feel like they're just a bag toter. I want the pitching coach to understand the pitchers but to prepare that.
Speaker 2:We used to have meetings every Friday night we called them yellow book meetings where we went through scenarios. I mean, it sucked when you're in college to have meetings at 7 to 8.30 on a Friday night, but that's what we did and it's the reason we won so much and my coach won five titles in 10 years and it was the fact that we were prepared for that. And I remember him looking across the dugout. We were getting ready to play USC my junior year and they had to beat us twice. And I was going to pitch, I was going to come in relief, which I like to do, and they had a lot of major leaguers and so did we and they're playing at our home place. They had to beat us twice and he looks in and he goes guys, they're really good, blah, blah, blah, but they don't have me in their dugout. Man, you talk about a powerful position to be in when you know you had the best coach in baseball in your dugout.
Speaker 2:It didn't mean we didn't get angry. It didn't mean we didn't get angry. It didn't mean we didn't curse at him Sometimes. It didn't mean we didn't go to town on him and didn't mean he didn't go to town on us, but he was. He prepared us for those moments and he used to always say man, you need to visualize yourself being the star of your own movie, because if you can't see it, you'll never achieve it. And we had a quote that was um that we use forever and it was from Paul Meyer. It was anything you ardently desire, sincerely believe in, vividly imagine and enthusiastically act upon must come to pass. If you can see yourself doing it, you really, really want it, you're willing to work your ass off for it and you're willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to achieve it. More than likely it's going to come to pass. But most people fail at some point in that system because doubt gets large, the efforts too much, or something like that.
Speaker 1:There's something that you said, brett, that I want to articulate through my own experience as an athlete, and it's the yelling part where you can come down on an athlete once you know, or once the athlete knows, that you care about them or you trust them or whatever the case is. So I don't think you could have explained a better experience in my own as an athlete. So I come in as a true freshman uh to bucknell university my very first rep ever, one-on-one. I undercut a post, it gets caught over me for a touchdown and the coach reams me like never been screamed at like like this before in my life. I'm like holy smokes. And so for the the entirety of that year, to give a better understanding, he MF'd me. He said I'm not good enough, I'll never play here If I ever undercut a post again, they'll never play me. Lo and behold, I become a starter within a week.
Speaker 1:As a true freshman, I played throughout that whole year thinking this guy's just a jackass. In the Patriot League Championship game, I give up the game-winning touchdown in overtime. Talk about anxiety. I've never experienced anxiety like I did in that game as a true freshman. But I give it up. I'm heartbroken, collapsed on the field. I'm crying. The first person to come to me was that coach Put his arm around me, pick me up and let me know he cared. And to your point, if he just could have done that, week day one, I want to hear your point, maybe, but he may have also.
Speaker 2:You may have also been an example for other people on the field, okay, and he may have needed to shake you out of being a cocky, swagger based freshman and realize that there's a process and a system in place that you have to follow. Okay, so you may have been a collateral damage, but I can guarantee you probably never really undercut somebody again, okay, and and so that message was strong. Now you were probably in a situation that you knew that or we knew that you could do that and you could receive that. If you don't know who your players are, their backgrounds, and know how to coach them, then you're going to miss, and some coaches get it pretty inherently. Some coaches get lucky, but the best coaches are prepared for what they know. They know. They know. Do they have a strong person in their life that gives them direct feedback? Is that person a father, is it a male surrogate, or is it a mother or an aunt or a grandmother? You have to know those differences, okay, so if somebody comes like I was raised with a dad in the military, there were standards, but I was also trained to believe and trust people of authority and you go there and you look at it and go okay, I have inherent trust in you because of who you are, and maybe that's naive now, but there are certain people who are in that right.
Speaker 2:So, working in Alabama for a long time, we had Coach Saban Like if he told you to do something in the defensive backfield, more than likely you should freaking do it. His track record is there. I've watched the new staff come in and how they establish trust with players. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. It's just different style. It's never wrong. The thing is, how do you respond? If he had lost you on that line and you didn't respond to that, he probably would have met you somewhere in the middle. Now you may have been terrified, but it was a seminal moment in the way that you prepared. That allowed you to have success over time. But he needed to shake you up and get you probably out of being the best athlete on the field to now being one of the athletes. Talent can overcome so many deficiencies until it can't.
Speaker 1:No, that's incredible because we have a fantastic relationship. There's nothing that he could ask me that I wouldn't do if I had the power to do it now. Yeah, 100%. But just wanted to highlight that because it's both sides of the coin and I'll never forget the people that were there in my lowest moments, and he was there.
Speaker 2:And and and you learn from it. Okay, you learn from it, and more than likely, if you were coaching, that would be one of your big teaching points we're not going to undercut, because it was one of the foundational elements of what you had to do in your position. There were certain things that we had to know. 80% of the time, if you throw the first base and a pickoff, the next pitch is a ball, because pitchers lose their focus and attention. 62% of the times, if you walk the leadoff batter, they score. You had to know those things, and the reason for that was to know how to navigate it Well.
Speaker 1:I know we're crunched for time here. I'm going to want to do a part two of this, because you two are great. I want to thank you both for coming on. Is there anything that you two want to promote?
Speaker 2:If people want to find you, they want to get to you. How can they do so? It's the easiest thing to go to my website. I got courses on there. I've got a great course that I've done for coaches called the Catalyst School, about how to be a catalyst in somebody's life. Check it out. It's great. But other than that, it's just an honor to be here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, likewise, like all my socials are Coach Brady Howe and kind of working on some of those resources as well. But, yeah, I'm just starting to put myself out there a little bit more so that I can help support all the athletes that I currently work with and I've worked with in the past.
Speaker 1:Ken. Thank you guys, enough for coming on. Love this discussion. Can't wait to run this back. Listeners, make sure to tune in next week. Thank you for listening this week. Check us out at athleticportagecom. Like rate subscribe. Have a good one, guys.
Speaker 2:Thank you.