Let's Play When Bored

Do you ever feel bored in your sport?

Not because you don’t love it anymore, but because the season feels so far away, practice starts feeling repetitive, and every day begins to feel the exact same?

In this episode, Coach Jojo talks about the kind of boredom athletes experience during the offseason, preseason, or long stretches away from competition—and why that boredom can kill motivation, effort, and growth if you don’t learn how to manage it.

She asks athletes to rate their excitement for practice on a scale from 1–10 and breaks down what that number actually says about your mindset, your habits, and your relationship with your sport. Athletes will also learn how to raise that scale and create more energy, purpose, and competitiveness in everyday training.

This episode dives into the importance of understanding how your brain works, because when you understand what your mind needs, you can stop waiting around for motivation and start creating it yourself.

Coach Jojo also talks about how injury can increase feelings of boredom and disconnection from your sport, making it harder to stay motivated during the recovery process. Gratitude, competitiveness, and learning how to challenge yourself daily are all discussed as ways to reconnect with your sport and stop feeling stuck.

If practice has started to feel repetitive, draining, or meaningless lately, this episode will help you bring energy and purpose back into the process.

Let's play when bored!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Are you somebody in a place that's probably in the preseason or you have months away from playing your first game, from playing your first match, a preseason gamer match, or even just an exhibition game? And you're going through these practices right now where it's the same thing every single day, or you're putting in so much hard work and you're like, wait, what's the point of putting all this hard work in when it's months away? I'm not seeing any results because I don't have a chance to show my results. I don't have a chance to show my performance and all the work I've been putting in, and it's so far away, and you're getting so unmotivated to even practice the little things, to practice the hard things. And you're almost like on a verge of burnout. Like you feel like if you push another week of this, you are going to not want to play your sport. You don't get excited to go to practice, and you just feel like every single practice is so boring. Well, if that is you right now, or you have struggled with that at one point or another, being an athlete, I know we all have done that. We've all gotten to the point where we just feel bored and we just want to play in our games, then you are in the right place. You have clicked on the right podcast. This is for you guys. So let's get right into it. I'm so excited to talk about this subject. Ironically excited to talk about a subject about being bored, but it's gonna be a good one. So let's go. When I am making podcast episodes for you guys and I'm coming up with them, I try to tune in my experience and what I would have wanted to listen to when I was an athlete. And being bored, being an athlete with games months away is something that I really, really struggled with. I luckily never had to do summer workouts, so like, or I didn't have to do it with my team, and that really helped me. But even if I am in the preseason, I'm at school and it's still months away from being games, it still affected me so much. Because we are working hard for a result for a game that we're gonna play in, a match that we're gonna play in, and we are doing it for performance, to play in front of people, to to show our success and to show all of our hard work. And when you're not even getting a taste of it, it is so unmotivating to keep going, to not even do the little things, but to do the hard things, like to do the big things. Like it's hard in general to do everything without feeling like this is so repetitive and this is so boring. And it gets to the point where we could feel burnt out. And I have a lot more other podcasts talking about that where it's specific to that subject. And I also want to shout out the people who get injured because if you are somebody that has a redshirt ear and you're out the entire year, not just a few months, like I don't even, I can't even comprehend how you guys are able to keep striving forward, but I do understand it because yes, you have to, it sucks, right? You get injured and you're like, oh my God, this is gonna be a long process, especially if you do have to take a returner ear, right? There are also obviously injuries where it's only a few months. Few months still is a long time, but then you have to get in this mindset where first you're not accepting that this happened, right? Like you go through five stages of grief um during this whole entire time. And I haven't been injured like this personally. The most I've probably ever been injured is two months, but like I have had so many teammates who have had to do the redshirt years where they've been out not only one year, but two to three years. And so I know that you guys get in the mindset of five stages of grief. Like it literally happens and you don't intend for it to happen, but you literally don't accept it at first, and then you start to realize that like you're just so mad. First you're upset, then you're mad, then you what's this five stages of grief? It's literally the process. Here we go. I just looked it up denial, anger, bargaining, which I guess like you're just still not an acceptance, right? And then depression, and then you get to acceptance. I have actually a teammate right now, or she's not my teammate anymore, she's like my best friend right now, and she just got injured for the second time. It's an ACL injury. She knows the mindset of what it's like already to go through this. So even if you're somebody too that is already had an injury and you have to gear up for the next one, like she knows at month six, she's like, that's when it gets really bad. And obviously the whole process is bad, but she's like, that's when you get so depressed, and that's when you get like, can I keep going? Can I keep doing this? And then you get to, you know, eight months and you get to ten months, and you're like, okay, I could, I'm finally gonna be back soon, and this is really exciting. And you know, I'm talking about just injured people right now, but this is the same that goes for people who are just getting done with their season, and you got how many months would that be? It varies for every sport. Mine was seven months until like my season ended, and then seven months later, I'm gonna play another game, which you know, we're taking a month off, maybe, and we're doing other things before we are getting to that point of boredom. And for people who are injured right now, I really am not comparing being an athlete who can have the ability to practice and they just get bored, like they are super lucky to not be injured and to keep practicing. And by all means, all your feelings are valid. You could be angry, you could be depressed, you could be in denial, and then you could finally, I hopefully, you get to acceptance. And acceptance probably comes when you're finally just playing on that court or field again. But in the same sense, what I'm just trying to say is that the time off that we take is super crucial because that's when we could start to kind of lose ourselves because we find so much of our identity in our sport. And if we aren't competing, if we aren't in a game or a match or we're in we're playing in front of a crowd and we're showing all of our hard work off, we start to feel like there's no value in life, like there's no value in ourselves. And that's exactly why I am so big on knowing who you are outside of your sport compared to who you are inside your sport, because you're not just an athlete, you are so many other things, and you have so many other qualities that you could bring to life that have a purpose, that have ambition to want to do things other than just play a game, win a match, you know, win with your team. Like there's other aspects of life, but I get that that's really hard. That's a whole nother mindset that we have to master, and that takes time. So honestly, if you guys are able to really get good at knowing who you are outside of your sport, you're gonna feel much more secure in your sport, and you're not going to feel so bored in your day, and you're not gonna feel so unmotivated because you're gonna have other things going for you. But I want you guys to ask yourself this question on a scale of one to 10, how excited do you get to go to practice right now? And I get that there's different timelines right now. Maybe you are somebody in season, but you still know the feeling of what it's like to be in preseason. Maybe you are somebody in preseason or you're in the summer workouts, whatever you're in, on a scale of one to ten, if you had to go to practice tomorrow, how excited are you? This question is going to vary by the month. It's going to vary by the week and by the day, it will be a different answer. So for a week, if you could do this and you could answer this question every single day, then you're going to start to evaluate yourself. And if you evaluate yourself, then you're getting information. This information means that you are starting to understand your mind a lot better. If we're able to understand our mind, then we are going to be able to know how we operate. And if we know how we operate, like the things that we like, the things that we want, then we're going to be able to satisfy our needs. So if you really don't know yourself, you could do this for the next week. But if you do know yourself, then you could evaluate yourself on the past week. So you could do this right now. You could go through a week of practice. You could be like, okay, today was I a seven out of 10 of how excited I was to go to practice. Like right before practice, how excited were you? Maybe on another day, be like, okay, was I a four? Like, make sure that you know your scale for about seven days of practice. What I want you to be is at least an eight out of ten. You should be an eight out of ten for you to be able to enjoy your sport, to be having fun, to be wanting to work harder every day, to be wanting to get better every day, even through boring ass practices. Also, I will say that I am a person that is so like I need my scale to be super accurate. Like, I, whenever somebody asks me, like, oh, how'd you like that movie? I literally like get so I'm so weird. I like need the answer to be perfect and I want it to exemplify exactly how I felt after I saw a movie. I don't know why it mattered. It really doesn't matter. It does not matter. But for me, I care so much about my own scale for any question I'm ever asked. If any of you struggle with that like I do, think of a practice where it's 10 out of 10 out of 10 and not a 10 out of 10, like, oh, if this was in practice, that would be great. If this was in practice, that that's obvious. That's kind of like saying a utopia type of practice. Wait, can I use utopia like that? I think it's a noun, not an adjective. Oh, okay, okay. I should have said utopian. That's an adjective. Guys, I'm always challenged on here with my speaking. It's kind of like, don't put your scale to where it could just be 10 out of 10 is the most amazing. Like, ice cream was served at practice. Like, no. Think out of think of an actual practice that happened that was 10 out of 10. If you cannot think of a practice that is 10 out of 10, then sign up for one-on-one coaching. No, I'm just kidding. Just think of a practice this year and the past year with the same coach and the same team where it felt like the most excited that you could have gotten for a practice. Then I also want you to think about the worst practice you've had with that coach and that team that you're currently on, and not a practice you're making up, just a practice that you and I know we could all remember the practices that we hate the most. So one out of 10 practice we could remember way more than a 10 out of 10 practice. So now I want you to ask yourself, why is that a 10 out of 10 practice or nine out of 10 practice? Like, what made that practice so exciting to you? Now it's been a long time since I have practice with my team, but I do know specific drills that we did in 10 out of 10 practices for me. So I'm using that as my example for what I'm gonna say. It was this drill that we did for a very long time in practice, and it was scrimmaging. It was literally 5v5, and that's my favorite thing to do. My favorite thing to do in a practice is scrimmage because it's like playing a game. Like I'm literally playing basketball. So of course that's 10 out of 10 for me. A one out of 10 practice for me would surprisingly, you guys, it would not be a conditioning practice. I would much rather do conditioning practice than a shooting practice. Not that I have anything against shooting. I was a shooter. I just I hated getting the reps in. And it wasn't, it was just so boring to me. If a practice was boring, it was a one out of ten for me. So now I'm gonna ask myself, why was that practice 10 out of 10? What made it so exciting? Why did you get so excited before practice to want to go there? And it's funny because this question is so obvious. I ask very obvious questions to you guys at first and you know to my clients that I'm on with my one-on-one coaching. And it's just funny because it's like, well, because it's fun and that's what I like to do. But what I do next is that I ask you more in-depth questions, and that's what we're getting to. We always have to start with a basic question in order to get to the deeper questions. So now I'm like, okay, my answer would be because I like to scrimmage. Well, why do I like to scrimmage? I like to scrimmage because it's competitive. And then I would ask, why do I like that it's competitive? And I would definitely answer because that's what I like in life. Like anything that I do, I need to make competitive because when I'm competitive, I feel it's fun and it gets me fired up and it gets me feeling ambitious. It makes me feel like I feel a sensation of like a good shakiness. Like I know that might not be like somebody's ideal type of sensation that they want to feel, but I just feel so giddy and a good type of shaky. I that's just how I would explain my sensations and feelings for it. That's how I want you guys to answer that question. Because if now I could understand myself. Now I could understand why I like that 10 out of 10 practice and I'm evaluating my brain. I understand that what I want to get out of every practice is feeling competitive. So now if I'm thinking of a practice where I'm gonna go into a 2 out of 10 or even 4 out of 10 practice, I'm gonna say, okay, well, I want to feel competitive because if I feel competitive, then I'm going to have fun. If we have fun, we could work harder. We will be more motivated to work harder to get better, to see our vision and we could see our goal because it's fun. We want to do things that are fun. We are going to choose things out of our day. We would rather choose the fun thing than the boring thing. So maybe it is a shooting practice that I'm going into. So I'm thinking, okay, literally, how am I gonna? I got a plan. I gotta plan on how to make this fun, how to not make this boring, how I'm gonna go in, and I'm gonna make sure every rep counts and that I'm not gonna be bored. I'm probably gonna do something like I'm gonna have to make a certain amount of shots in order to beat myself. Like I have to come up with some sort of bet going with myself. Or if you play a team sport and maybe you even if you play individual sport, like you could still, your coach is there, you could be competitive with your coach, but especially if you play a team sport, I guarantee that your teammates are also gonna want to be competitive. You're gonna find at least one of them on there. And you could go up to them and be like, if it's specifically a shooting practice, you could be like, okay, um, do you want to compete today? Like, do you want to count our shots and do you want to see like who wins? And whoever loses has to, I don't know, buy the next Starbucks or something. Me and my friend would do that. We would actually at the before practice or at the end of practice, we would have like a half court um shootout, and whoever made it first had to buy the wait, I'm getting that wrong. Whoever didn't make it had to buy somebody else Dutch. And it was just something I look forward to every single day. And, you know, it would be in a preseason practice or even in season practice. Like sometimes in season gets a little boring if you are a player that sits on the bench and you just want a little more fun. And this is just my quality, I will say. Like, think of a quality that you like. I just think that being competitive is in within every single athlete. But there are also people on my team that loved the shooting practices and hated the scrimmaging practices. So it's really just all about your preference and what you like and if you want to share an experience with somebody else or if you just want to keep to yourself, but like really try to see the qualities and values that you have and apply them in your sport to make sure that you are showing up every single day for yourself and you're showing up for your teammates and you are just having fun. And sometimes it's still hard. Sometimes it's still hard to be like, okay, I know that I like to be competitive, but do I want to be competitive today? Like, I'm gonna do the same drills. This is so boring. Like, I'm not even playing games, like games are months from now. Why am I even here? What's the point in getting competitive? I totally get that. And that's a feeling that we're probably gonna have. What I think though is the solution with everybody, because there are definitely different factors for everybody's situation, for what you're going through. But honestly, to come to a consensus, what we all want and why we get bored and unmotivated is because we're not playing in games and we're not showing our talent and we're not performing, we're not winning, like we're not getting that feeling that we all are striving for. So I really do think a solution is filling that competitive side and wanting to show some sort of performance just in another way outside of your sport. Of course, you could do things like in your sport rally a bunch of people up, play in a couple games like scrimmage against each other, or like find if you play individual sport, obviously just finding some other competitors. But what always helped me and still helps me to this day is just since I love to be competitive, that is so fun to me. That's my number one thing, that's what I value most, is just making sure that I'm making life what I want it to be. Like my parents always tell me that no matter what I'm doing, just make sure that I'm having fun. And I've they have told me this since I mean, I was in middle school. Like they've told me this. I think about this all the time. And even if I'm in an aspect where I that I find really boring, like a subject like school, like I find school to be so boring, but I always think about like make it fun. What can I do in that moment to like make this fun, make this something that I could be grateful for? And even my friends, they make fun of me so much because I constantly am needing to like be can be competitive, needing to play a game. Like I am bringing cards everywhere I go. And not that I think that we should always be like just dead set on always having fun because I really do think it's good to be bored. And you know, I did I helped you guys talking about what to do in practice to make sure that you're not having such a shit time and that you're bored and that you could still feel motivated. But honestly, something else that could help you not feel bored in practice is literally having a purpose outside of practice. So maybe that's picking up pickleball. Like I remember when I got to my second school, I really got into pickleball. And me and my teammates on my team, we would go after practice and play that, and we were competitive there, like literally during preseason, literally before pre-preseason, like or in pre-preseason, we would be playing pickleball, we'd be playing spike ball, and it just it made us excited still. Like we were like, Yeah, we gotta do basketball. Like, okay, we're gonna go to practice. This is it, but then like we're excited to go do something afterwards, like even game nights. Like, I remember we would play Rummy Cube all the time, we play cards, like we were always doing something to make sure that we were still fulfilled in life because then practice really didn't seem so boring. It was almost like we were so fulfilled in other aspects that really basketball was like, okay, we're gonna go, and this is something cool because it's something that we're working hard towards, and yeah, we have a long way to go, but hey, I got other shit going for me. Something that I just kind of mentioned was about being grateful. Being grateful is one of the most underrated things that we could do for ourselves in our lives. I listened to this Mel Robbins podcast a while back. I forgot which one it was called, but in it it said that we, I think it's like literally called three reasons to be grateful, or something like grateful is in the title. And she said that before you go to bed, write down three things you're grateful for about your day. The simple things seem so stupid to us. Meditation, so dumb. Journaling a page, so dumb. Do you realize or do you even know that the people who are meditating and the people who are journaling, the people who are being grateful and doing all these little tasks are the happiest people on this planet. Sometimes when I'm crashing out, I'm having a bad day, I'm crying, I will literally like sometimes I'll journal. Sometimes I do the method of talking to myself in the mirror and you know, reliving the moment. But one of the things that I also do is I write down five things that I'm grateful for. When your mind becomes clear of something and you could see it written down, you start to actually comprehend what you're thinking, your mind, your perspective in your mind changes completely. And it could be as simple as writing three to five things down that you're grateful for. It could be as simple as breathing steadily for two minutes or taking deep breaths for two minutes, but we overlook it because we're like, it's too easy. Like, life isn't easy. Like, life is so complicated. Why would that easy thing work for me? Have you tried it though? Like, have you literally given it a chance at all? You don't even have to give it your full effort. You could literally just do it for two minutes and kind of be like, hey, this is not gonna work, like whatever. I guarantee this this is my experience. This is why I'm so adamant about it. Like, if you get in the mindset where you don't think it's gonna work, it will still work. And that's not the case with everything. That is not the case with everything. But doing this mindful work, it really does numbers on your mind. It really changes your perspective and it gets you out of a victim mindset into a very strong, level headed mindset. And so I went on my tangent just now about all of these tools that we could use because it applies to this podcast. If you are not excited to go to practice the next day and you just write down three things that you're grateful for of your day that just happened and what you did in practice that day, and you also write down three things that you're thankful for for tomorrow's practice that you're gonna be thankful for and you're grateful for, then it's going to change your perspective in so many ways. Like if I can't find a way to, because I know it's sometimes hard. Well, I should not say sometimes hard. We there are so many things to be grateful for, so we should definitely be able. This should be an easy list to make. A lot of times, like I'll just start going. I just keep going thing after thing. Like I keep saying how grateful I am for everything because it should be overwhelming how grateful you are for things because we are given so much in life. But if it is hard for some of you, then literally don't even think about the sport like that you're playing. Think about I'm gonna see my teammates tomorrow. Like I get a if you do an outdoor sport, I get to play outside tomorrow. I get to see the sun, or maybe it's raining that day. But you know, like find other things to be grateful for that isn't necessarily that's pertaining to your sport. Like, even things like you are so grateful that you are not injured. You're so grateful that you have a body that if you are injured, I'm so grateful that my body could heal. I'm so grateful for, you know, taking this time to know that it's a sign that everything happens for a reason. Like, if you could just literally get so specific and so down to everything, your perspective's really gonna change. You're gonna be an overall happier person. And if we're happy, I'm pretty sure we're having fun. But I totally understand if we're at that point where we are just so freaking bored, we're doing the same thing over and over again for no result. First off, just know that the result is coming and that you want to set yourself up for your future self. And if you have any respect for yourself, then you will work hard in that moment and you are allowed to have days where you don't work hard 100%. I think that there needs to be a balance, right? There needs to be a balance where you're allowed to sit there that day and be like, I don't want to work hard today because this is so fucking boring. That's okay. But we just have to make sure that we're not doing that every single day. And of course, use the tools that I just told you guys in today's podcast. We just have to navigate the boring days. We have to navigate not wanting to get motivated or being motivated. But I believe in you guys. You guys are gonna do it. You're gonna get to your season soon. I promise you, it's gonna come in no time. Keep doing those boring practices because those practices really they are they're helping you, they're staying there in your mind. And if you are somebody that is, you know, working super hard and your results are not showing up, maybe there's something wrong with your mind and we want to get that straight. If that is the case for you, if you are somebody working real hard, it's not showing up, then please get on one-on-one coaching with me because I could fix it just like that. I don't know if you guys can hear that snap, but um, I try to be dramatic in that effect. Anyways, I love you guys so much. Thank you so much for being here. Thank yourselves for being here. Like I just said, make sure you're being grateful for everything. But seriously, you guys are doing amazing, and I believe in you, believe in yourself, and I hope to see you guys in my next podcast. That is all I have for you guys, though. Bye.