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Coaching Mind's Podcast: Perform at your best!
Coaching Mind's Podcast: Perform at your best!
#114 - Our Story, Our Vision, Our Mission
Want to learn more about who Ben is and what Mental Training Plan is all about? This is a great place to start!
Join Ben Carnes on his transformative journey, ignited by a pivotal moment in high school sports in 1999. From struggling to perform under pressure to realizing the power of mental training, Ben's evolution as a coach and mentor took flight. Through coaching experiences, including a humbling defeat in the state championship in 2013, Ben honed the Prime Five method, a groundbreaking approach to mental preparedness for athletes. His dedication bore fruit with unexpected victories, including a state championship win in 2016. Ben's passion for empowering athletes extended beyond football to sports like golf, culminating in the establishment of the MTP Academy in 2024. This journey, chronicled in the Focus Cycle book, reflects Ben's unwavering commitment to helping athletes perform at their best, both on and off the field.
Ben then outlines his vision and mission for Mental Training Plan. Rooted in his experiences and successes, Ben's vision is to revolutionize the mental training landscape, making comprehensive coaching accessible to every athlete worldwide. This ambitious goal serves as the North Star guiding strategic planning and decision-making. Ben's mission is clear: to empower athletes, teams, and coaches with the skills and tools needed to thrive under pressure, overcome challenges, and excel in competition and life. Through customization and accessibility, the MTP Academy aims to provide tailored mental performance coaching that transcends sports and benefits individuals in all aspects of their lives. This mission underscores Ben's commitment to helping athletes perform at their best, regardless of the circumstances, setting a precedent for excellence both on and off the field.
Are you an ATHLETE looking to take your training to the next level? Check out our website to learn more about 1-on-1 training opportunities:
mentaltrainingplan.com/athletes
Are you a COACH looking for an affordable year-round mental performance training program? Check out the MTP Academy available through our website:
mentaltrainingplan.com/academy
Hey, welcome to the Coaching Minds podcast, the official podcast of Mental Training Plan. Our mission is to empower coaches with the tools and insights to develop the mental side of the game and their athletes both on and off the field. We believe in deliberate planning and execution, because just hoping you'll be at your best when it matters the most is not good enough. Today we're going to be talking about our story, our vision and our mission, and I know we've kind of touched on these throughout our time together. So if you've listened to all 113 episodes so far, I'll be honest, today's going to be a little bit of a review for you. But we're really hoping because there's so many new coaches. We've got a partnership that we're getting ready to announce with a coaching association. We've got there's going to be a clinic coming up that I'll be speaking at. We're going to have a booth there. We're anticipating some pretty big onboarding steps in the next, the upcoming weeks and months. And when I was really hoping to summarize, it's just kind of who are we? What do we believe For some of these people that are trying to decide like do I trust this guy? Do I like this guy? Do I want to work with this guy.
Ben:I want to go back all the way to 1999 because at that time I'm a high school sophomore. I'm playing football at Westfield High School, a small suburb just on the north side of Indian apolis, and we were 2A at the time. Indiana 1A is the smallest and then football 6A is the biggest, and so we were. We were a pretty small school at the time and you know I was starting on the varsity football team. I thought I was pretty hot stuff. I was confident in myself, confident in my abilities.
Ben:And then baseball season rolls around. We're opening up this brand new baseball diamond, brand new facility. It's the inaugural game and our starting catcher slices open his finger dunking a basketball and gym class. And so I find out that I'm going to be the starter and I'm thinking this is awesome. You know, now they finally get to see just how good I am. And I couldn't throw the ball back to the pitcher Like it was straight out of the movie major league, like it was like something came unplugged between my hand and my head and I had absolutely no idea what to do about it. So you know, that night I go home, I get on my dial up internet and I'm like what happened? How do I make sure this never happens again? You know, to make a long story short, I end up realizing like, oh, you can intentionally train the mental side of people. And so I kind of, I kind of fell in love that year with coaching. I had the opportunity to coach my brother Sam's little league baseball team and, you know, by the by the end of the season I had him convinced that he was pretty much the the greatest pitcher in the league and he certainly, you know he wasn't throwing better junk than anybody, he wasn't throwing faster than anybody, but by golly he believed that he could go out and do whatever needed to be done. You know, in 2008, let's fast forward, a decade of here. So by this point, you know, I'm done with high school, done with college. I come back to my alma mater, I get hired at the middle school and, you know, I'm teaching at Westfield. I'm coaching at Westfield. I end up, you know, new staff comes in. I end up being an offensive coordinator. Let's fast forward again.
Ben:And in 2013, we went back to the state championship for the first time in a couple of decades and just got absolutely destroyed. We were not ready for that moment we walked into that building and our eyes got big and you know we, for lack of a better term, we kind of just peed down our leg like we were not ready. And in that off season we kind of went back and it was like what's happening? Why is this happening? You know what's going on, what do our guys need? And at that time I was doing quarterback club, I was coaching the quarterbacks, and so they were all in my classroom at 6am before school and we were going through things on the mental side of the game and our head coach, jake Gilbert, pops in and says hey, we get, this is awesome, we got to do this with the whole team. It's like what? I don't know what the whole team needs.
Ben:Like you know, we kind of I touched on this briefly in the last episode, but just to you know, dive into a little bit more detail like there's a big difference between what do one or two or three or four quarterbacks need and what do 120 plus high schoolers need, you know, from every different position group on the team. And so you know, I was in the middle of getting my masters at the time and I dove in headfirst to the world of you know how do we help athletes self assess? What's that even look like, what's that mean? How do you do that? And we came up with the prime five that off season and, you know, figuring out like if we can help our athletes in these five areas, then we're going to be in business and we're going to be able to take care of about 90 to 95% of the issues that came up with our guys in the state championship last year. And so, you know, we really started, we started working on those. We started trying to figure out like, okay, how do we in this room of 120 plus guys like how do we give each person what they need? And you know, really did, really had some, some chance to kind of fine tune like, how are we going to present this to an entire team? How are we going to make sure they're not just screwing around? How are we going to, you know, make this meaningful? And got to the point where we were feeling. We were feeling pretty good about training the mental side of the game In 2016,.
Ben:We played some teams that were much better than us just from a bigger, faster, stronger standpoint, from a how many of their kids are going full ride D1 versus you know how many of our kids, someday, maybe, will play college football, and we ended up beating some teams who, on paper, were much better than us, because we were, as a team, able to perform at a higher level than our competition, and we won a state championship. And I remember that off season talking with Josh Bryant, who we've had on the podcast before good friend of mine, a golf coach at the high school, and he had been a former football coach and a former teacher, and he and I were just we're talking at a Christmas party one year, and he was like you got to come coach with me. I was like Josh, you know you don't want me to coach your golfers, I'm terrible at golf. And he was like no, no, no, like all this stuff you're telling me you're doing with the quarterbacks, like I need you to do that, and so, in 2018, that was my first year helping out the Westfield High School golf team as a I'm going to put this in air quotes golf coach, because I don't I don't really teach a lot about the, the game of golf. What I do do, though, is is what I continued to, you know, eventually turn into my career one day is, you know, working with athletes one on one, working with, with teams in a group setting, and helping them figure out how are we going to perform at our best when it matters the most.
Ben:In 2019, you know this. This started to take off at. So, at this point, like other coaches from other sports are hearing about this, we've got some schools from, you know, down south of us or to the east or to the west, that are like, hey, what's this mental training guy and how do we talk to him? Started the coaching minds podcast that year, partnered up with pro X. They had, you know, interviewed a bunch of different sports psychologists and came back to me and said, hey, we like how you are. You know this mental performance coaching idea. Where we're, we're, you're making a plan and you're helping people put it to work. Like this is what we want for our athletes.
Ben:In 2021, I sort of took the, the crux of what we were doing, the foundation of what we were doing with control in the mind and body, and wrote my first book called Focus Cycle. In 2022, I finally left the classroom I'd been teaching and coaching for 15 years and decided, like, this is what I'm passionate about, this is what I love, this is what I want to do. And then this year 2024, we started the MTP Academy. So you know, the the Academy was kind of our, our venture into how do we scale this, how do we expand this, because we had done it before, where we tried to do some online learning and the athletes that were highly motivated, the athletes that wanted to dive into that online classroom, they certainly got a lot out of it, but I'll be honest, like it, it wasn't effective for everybody by any stretch of the imagination, and so what we did was kind of blow up that online learning and replace it with more of a hybrid learning model where all the coach has to do is Play the video, print the worksheet, we deliver the content and the kids fill out their plan and then the coach, who's already developing that relationship with the athletes, is able to come alongside them and say, all right, you said in this situation, this is what you were gonna do, but you know I saw you do this as you were coming off the field. Let's, let's talk about this. You know you can hold them accountable, you can help with implementation, things like that.
Ben:So super customizable, super affordable. It's just a it's. It's basically kind of like an online curriculum. You know, I was a, I was a teacher for 15 years and there were a lot of times where I feel like I was just given access To a library of information and it was like, alright, here's all these lessons and all these programs. Now you can kind of go through it and see how it's gonna fit for you and it was like, well, thanks, but like I could have done this on my own with the internet. So what we've tried to do is map out here's the program, here's the basics that you should take everybody through. Next steps. You know, if you need to dive into specific topics, here's some different things that you can do based on the mental skills assessment that your athletes can take. So the the MTP Academy were we're super excited about and I know that you know there's a. There's probably a lot of listeners that are that are wondering more about that or maybe wondering more about Individual stuff that we do with the athletes. But but before we get into kind of the, the specifics of that, I want to get into a little bit of vision and and a little bit of our, our mission and purpose and what we're doing and why we're doing it.
Ben:You know, obviously my own struggles are are a huge piece of that. As a high schooler, feeling like I can't throw the ball Back to someone that I want to throw it to was absolutely humiliating. That was, you know, part of the reason we started the podcast was I was just hoping to be able to Give athletes out there a resource and a tool completely for free. That's like, hey, if you're struggling, here's some things that you can do. You know, obviously it's it's done pretty well. It's been a lot of fun. We're still continuing on. You know, here we are four, four and a half years later.
Ben:But but you know, really, even even beyond my own struggles, just as a as a coach, there've just been so many athletes that have had to Overcome things on the mental side of their game. And it's like, you know, as I think back through the, the 15 years of coaching football, then the six years that I've been, you know, doing this with individuals outside of just coaching football, like there's all kinds of stuff that I've helped people overcome and help people work through. And you know, eventually, like at some point they they start to just repeat like there's not really that many athletes that I talked to, that I'm trying to figure out like, well, how am I gonna fix this? Like I already know how to fix that. The question is, how do we get the athlete to understand what's going on, to get the athlete to be aware? You know, right now I like to use the example we're not paying attention to what the bottom of our feet feel like because our brain doesn't think that's important. And so, you know, we need to get the athlete paying attention to the right things, being aware of.
Ben:Oh, I'm starting to get off track. Whether that's my emotions, I'm starting to feel anxious. You know. Whether that's my body, I feel jittery, my palms are sweaty, my heart's beating out of my chest, whether that's, you know, that little voice in the back of my mind saying I just I don't know if I'm good enough to do this. Or you know, we're just focused on the wrong stuff. We're worried about what's mom think, what's dad think, what's coach think. Am I, are they gonna put me on the bench? Are we gonna lose now? Oh no, my competition's so good. Or, you know, I get stuck in the past worrying about that. The last time I played this golf, this hole on the golf course. I played terrible, you know, and now all I can think about is that bad shot. Or, you know, worried about the future. What's this gonna do? Recruiting wise or whatever, whatever that looks like.
Ben:Eventually, it just comes back to how do we overcome these obstacles and perform at our best? As we sat down and went through trying to clarify what are we doing? Why are we doing this? The place that we started was with our vision. Our vision is to revolutionize the mental training landscape, making comprehensive and customizable mental performance coaching accessible to every athlete around the world, helping them perform at their best when it matters the most. This vision is our ultimate goal. This is what we're trying to achieve. This is what we're aspiring towards. It acts as our Jake Gilbert last week called it a North Star.
Ben:Our guiding strategic planning, our decision making, kind of all goes through this. A clear vision can provide some, maybe even a little bit of inspiration, definitely a sense of purpose, not only to me, but as the company grows and as people are approaching me and say, hey, I want to be a part of this, whether that's as an investor, whether that's I want to help sell this. I want a partner, I want to bring you into my school. I want you to work with my athletes, whatever that looks like. These stakeholders need to know here's where we're headed, here's where we're going. I want to make sure that, as a company, that we're not lacking direction, because I think that just leads to unfocused efforts. I remember back in the early days when I was just trying to hop on the internet and find whatever I could and find some information out there and try it out and see if it works. It wasn't necessarily the best strategy, but it was kind of where we were at, keeping this vision statement in front of us.
Ben:The whole purpose is to say here's where we're going. We say we want to revolutionize the mental training landscape. What's that look like? There's all kinds of people out there that are doing this. We want to provide it in a completely brand new way where you don't have to have a mental performance coach on staff, but you can still get the benefit of having a mental performance coach on staff, because we're basically equipping these coaches to become that mental expert. We're equipping these coaches to be able to say look, we're going to go through this worksheet, we're going to provide you with some information and then I'm going to come alongside you and we're going to do this together. There's not lots of people doing that. We want to revolutionize things. We want things to change in the world of mental performance training.
Ben:The next part making comprehensive and customizable mental performance coaching accessible. It's very different when I'm a football coach and I've got all 120 of my guys in a classroom every Monday and I know what my schedule is going to look like. I know all right. Here's how I'm going to implement this versus some of the golf teams that we work with, where it's like the freshman and the JV and the varsity kids are never in the same room together, they're never at the same courses, they're never at the same workouts together. We've got to be able to customize this. We've got to be able to change this. This has to be flexible. We want to make sure that, as we're providing these solutions, that that's what we're doing.
Ben:The next part accessible to every athlete around the world. I think it goes without saying. Like all athletes at all levels Whether they are rich, poor, old, young, talented, white, black, male, female, football player, golfer none of that matters. If you have a human brain, then you need to learn how to control that mind and how to control your body so you can perform it your best. One of the things that somebody really challenged me on when we were talking about this vision was like, well, you know, I was thinking we want this to be available for everybody in the country. And it's like, well, why? Why? Like what you know, with AI where it's at, with language models where they're at. Like, the only thing standing between us delivering this here in the US and being able to deliver this in Germany, japan or wherever else is just budget, I mean, is being able to pay to get, you know, things translated into other languages.
Ben:But just, you know, want to make sure that we have a commitment to say, look, I don't care who you are, you need to be able to have some of these tools. So, you know, I was contacted today by somebody who's got an eight-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old son, asking what resources we had. And you know, if I'm being honest, we don't have great resources for that age group yet. But you know, part of our vision, like, we're headed that way, we're working on that, we're building that, we're developing that. Having that worldwide piece in there is important to me.
Ben:And then the last piece helping them perform at their best when it matters the most, like that's always been the goal, right, like since I started doing this. It was how do we help our athletes truly perform at their best, not like what maybe they think they're capable of, not what other coaches think or their parents, like what are they actually capable of? And how do we get them to perform at that level, on the biggest stage, when it matters the most, when the lights are on, when that gun goes off, you know whatever that looks like for your sport? So then, the you know. The next piece is our mission statement and we're trying to clarify, like, what do we do? How do we do it? Who were we trying to serve? You know, it really outlines our purpose and our approach to achieving this vision, and our mission is to empower athletes, teams and coaches with the skills and tools needed to thrive under pressure, overcome challenges and excel in competition and life. And you know, we we start with empowerment there, just a core value that really resonates with that growth mindset that we've got to have to be successful in life.
Ben:The next part we talk about the skills and tools needed to thrive under pressure. I mean, it's one thing to be able to play well in the gym by yourself. It's one thing to be able to play, you know, on the practice field and execute there. But really Athletes that are working with us, like we're trying to give them the skills and tools that high performing athletes have been using for decades, that are backed by neuropsychology, like what are the best of the best do? What's the military do? We've spent a ton of money researching how do we help our men and women perform in the ultimate high pressure situation where their life is on the line. We've learned a ton about how our body responds to stress and pressure, because that's the ultimate stress and pressure when our life is on the line. So what are? So, what are the skills and tools that are needed to be able to perform at our best? And then we kind of break down like what's that mean perform at our best?
Ben:Like the first piece is Thrive under pressure, not just survive, not just perform. Thrive under pressure, realize like this is an opportunity, the stakes are high, there's pressure that means this is important. How lucky am I? And then we have overcome challenges. Things are going to be difficult, you know we, we talk about optimistic perfection all the time where we're striving for perfection or we're striving for excellence, but in just about every sport out there, in every area of performance out there and in life, like that's not possible, that's not gonna happen. So, when we come up short, are we able to move on and continue, to be optimistic and continue? You know it's, it's not just like let's sit around and sing kumbaya and hold hands, like we're not talking about just accepting Mediocrity. We're saying, yes, I came up short. That's okay, though, because I know that I'm going to continue fighting and I know that I'm gonna be successful. I just need a little bit more time.
Ben:We want to help athletes overcome the challenges that they face in their sport and then the last piece, so they can excel in Competition in life. I mean, that's that's the biggest thing that I probably talk with parents about all the time is like man, I gotta get Johnny to their Susie to work with you. Like this is gonna help them not just in sports but in the rest of their life. Like I need this in my business you know, I'm walking into, I'm closing this ten million dollar deal and like my hands shaking, holding my briefcase, like yeah, that's a high-pressure situation and learning how your body responds and reacts in those high pressure situations. Like you figure that out on the baseball diamond. Well, now, all of a sudden, like when you're in the boardroom, you're like, well, this is a piece of cake. I don't have, you know, two thousand fans chanting my name.
Ben:So really, you know, through this mission we're just, we're trying to communicate to athletes like, look, push the limit. If you're trying to excel in these high-stakes Situations, we're gonna help you out with that. You know, we want to let the coaches and the teams out there know, like, if you're looking for Reliable and effective and tested and battle proven mental training, you know, here you go, we can help you out with that. You know the, the supporters, the parents, the family members of athletes Appreciate oh, there's a. There's more to this than just succeeding on the football field. Like this is gonna help out. You know, little Billy for the rest of his life, or little Susie when she grows up and wants to accomplish XYZ, which then like kind of leads to the last piece.
Ben:Well, how are we going to do this? What's this actually look like? You know, the first one you've already found. The first one is the podcast. There's a hundred and this makes a hundred and fourteen episodes that are all designed to help you with different aspects of the game. We've got the blog. Our new intern, emily Robinson, is doing a fantastic job with that. She's writing new articles each week. That's a resource that we hopefully will be able to continue to push out on a regular basis so that, you know, people have both a Something that they can listen to and something that they can read to help them out, completely for free, with.
Ben:How can I accomplish some of these things? How can I perform at my best? Obviously, there's my book focus cycle. You know, just looking at a financial standpoint, like it's not that expensive to get on Amazon I think it's like less than 15 bucks. You can hop on there, you can go through that. You can come up with your own focus cycle. You can figure out how am I specifically gonna control my mind and body in these high-pressure situations? And then really you know what's left is either working with athletes or working with teams, or helping coaches.
Ben:We do one-on-one trainings with athletes, either via zoom or in person at our office in Westfield. Like I said, we're partnered up with Pro X do training over there, and really there's two options. We've got the MTP training program. It's five sessions stretched out over two or three months. For the athletes that are looking for something a little bit more Serious, that are saying, look, I'm gonna have a mental performance coach moving forward, let's, let's start training on a regular basis, we offer our monthly plan to the elite athlete training program. We got four sessions a month. It's ongoing. Cancel whenever you want.
Ben:If you're a coach that's trying to figure out, like, how can I train my team, the MTP Academy is the answer. We've made it super simple. You print the worksheet, you play the video, we deliver the content. It can be as simple as hey, you know, we got lightning. Practice is going to be inside today. Cool, there's no preparation on your part. Print the worksheet, play the video, boom, you're good to go.
Ben:If you're an athletic director and you're like hey, you know, I want to do this for the entire school, like what? Like what Jake was talking about, where you know he was saying we hired a strength and conditioning coordinator for the whole school because we said we don't want you doing bigger, faster, stronger during the fall and then a push pool workout for basketball and then working out in your cousin's garage in the spring, like we want to say what's the best way to train our athletes year round? That's going to be your job strength and conditioning coordinator, signing up the entire athletic department to go through the MTP Academy. Now, all of a sudden, like when the basketball coach is talking about passion and principles, hopes and dreams, or the football coach is talking about go to statement like this isn't brand new, it's just kind of part of the culture, it's just sort of how we do things and, in my opinion, like that's the ultimate goal. Like the ultimate goal that one of the greatest compliments that I've received was when Jake told me that his son benefited from the culture that we built in the quarterback room and I never really coached the kid, but because of the way that we had built the culture in that room, the expectations, how we do things, how we train the mind, you know, he said his son was able to perform at a super high level down the stretch. They were able to come back in games. There was never a doubt like, yes, we have what it takes and yes, we're going to go win this football game and that's where we want to get to. Like that's, that's my dream. Is that every single high school around the world is going to feel like, yeah, we got this, we can do this. We're ready to perform at our best. So what are next steps look like If you go to mentaltrainingplancom, you can either click on parents, athletes or coaches up at the top.
Ben:It'll get you to the resources that you need. If you go to the resources tab on the far right, you can find the podcast, the blog. You can sign up for a free consultation link to my book. If there's something that you need and I can help you perform at a higher level, please don't hesitate to reach out. If you go to the podcast page and you want to submit a question, maybe you think, hey, here's a good topic you could do for an episode. We always love hearing from our audience. I absolutely love the people that I have the opportunity to work with on a daily basis. If you would like for that to be you in some capacity whether that's you partnering up on the business side of things, or you're an athlete, or you're a parent, or you're a coach I would love to get chance to meet you. I'd love to help you in any way that I can. If you've got questions, please don't hesitate to reach out and, until next time, make your plan and put it to work.