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Coaching Mind's Podcast: Perform at your best!
Coaching Mind's Podcast: Perform at your best!
#141 - Confidence Pt 2: Building Belief Through Reps, Proof, and Preparation
Confidence doesn’t come from hype—it comes from work. In Episode #2 of our Confidence Series, we break down how athletes, coaches, and parents can build earned confidence through three critical “bricks”:
- Reps – putting in the work with intention
- Evidence – gathering proof of growth and wins
- Preparation – creating routines that build stability
You’ll hear stories from the field, practical tools (like the Rep Tracker and Confidence Journal), and the science behind why deliberate practice and routines create real, lasting belief.
📖 Following along with the Confidence book? Grab your copy on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4pfeU5a and be sure to download the free workbook that comes with it!
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/teams
Hey, welcome to the Coaching Minds podcast, the official podcast of Mental Training Plan. So excited to be back with you guys, continuing our series on confidence, going through my newest book, confidence Tools to Build Belief for Athletes, coaches and Parents. If you have not listened to the first episode, would encourage you to pause this and just go back real quick, give it a listen so that you've got some of the background information. Today we are hopping straight into part two. It's all about earned confidence, confidence that's built through reps, preparation and proof. I had somebody ask me why did you write this book? And, to be honest, we're now in the thousands plural of athletes that we've worked with across 100 plus different schools in 14 different states. That's just me. That's not including some of the certified coaches and some of the coaches that we work with that then go and train. They're athletes and I've heard I can't tell you how many times I'm not confident or my son or my daughter are just not confident. When this happens during competition and on the coaching side of things, you know my job is to try and figure out. Well, why not? Because there are a wide, wide range of reasons for someone to not be confident and all too often we just say, oh, you just got to believe or you got to be confident in yourself, but we don't actually know how to teach that, how to coach that. I'll be honest, I didn't. When I started doing this a decade plus ago, and I was working with a quarterback who I felt like should be confident, I was confident in their preparation. I believed that they had the tools they needed to succeed. I believed that they had put in the time and put in the work, but for some reason they were not, and so it didn't matter what my level of confidence was. It mattered did they believe that they have what it takes to succeed? I would say, just going back through every athlete that I have ever worked with, this book includes the tools that I would need to be able to work with that athlete and help them build their confidence the right way or repair the holes in their confidence that are either missing or were damaged or just weren't put there to begin with.
Speaker 1:I absolutely believe that there is a place for therapy on the mental health side of things. I love my therapist. She's awesome at what she does, and I also think that there's a time and a place for mental performance coaching, because there was some deep work that I needed to do with my therapist and be able to, you know, work through some emotions and process some things that had happened in the past. But then there were also some times where it was like, okay, but now I need to like, go get to work. And now I I want some action steps so that I can start seeing results. And there've been plenty of athletes who I'm working with and it's like I've got this tournament coming up and we need to get rolling, like, let's get to work. We need a plan so that I can be confident in this moment.
Speaker 1:And so one of my, one of my former coaches, jake Gilbert, called it our Friday night product, and the concept was simple. It was on Friday night, everyone in the community is going to come out and they're going to see this product that we put on the field and in that moment we're going to be evaluated as coaches, as athletes. Do we have what it takes? Were we quote, quote, unquote successful? That's going to. That's going to look different times. That doesn't always mean winner, loss, but at the end of the day, there's going to be a game, there's going to be a product put out there on the field and everyone's going to see who is more prepared, who is more talented, et cetera. And so what?
Speaker 1:What I'm trying to do with this book is help you with your Friday night product, whether that's in the business side of things, and you need to be confident going into close a sale, going into to lead a group of people that you're in charge of. Whether that's in the arena of performance I've got professional singers that I've worked with, actors and actresses, musicians whether that's you're an athlete yourself and you are trying to build your confidence. You want to go out there believing and knowing that you have what it takes to be successful. You're a coach who's trying to build confidence in the men and women or the boys and girls that you are coaching, or it's a parent, which, I've got to say, I'm starting to realize that's maybe one of the toughest roles, because there's so many times, even with my own kids, that I know what they need and I know how to fix it. They don't always necessarily want to hear it from me. Sometimes it needs to come from somewhere else. Sometimes it's more impactful when someone else says it, just because there are times that they get tired of hearing the same things over and over from me. I think watching my son or watching one of my daughters struggle is way more challenging and way more difficult than anything that I've ever had to go through.
Speaker 1:So, no matter who you are, no matter why you picked up this book, no matter why you're listening to this podcast, my hope is that I can give you additional value, which kind of brings me to the whole purpose of this podcast series. I'm making the assumption that you have the book. This is not an audio book. I'm not going to just read this thing to you. Everybody would be bored out of their mind because hopefully you've all have a copy of this and have at least started reading through it. I'm also making the assumption that you have the workbook. For those of you that are watching the video version of this podcast, I mean, here's mine.
Speaker 1:I literally printed out each one of the worksheets. I three-hole punched them and they're in a binder. If you have not downloaded that, the link to do so is in the book. I would encourage you to get those because, again, they're not the exact same thing.
Speaker 1:The idea in the book is it goes a little bit deeper. The idea on the worksheets is. It goes a little bit quicker and we'll talk about, you know, in some ways, how do we integrate this, how do we use this? You can almost think of this, these podcast episodes, as, like a I don't know. My wife's in a book club and they sit around and sometimes they talk about the book. Other times I feel like it's just social. But that's a. That's a side topic In my mind. If you were to buy this book, you were to read this book and then you and I sat down and had a conversation about it. My hope is that this podcast sort of reflects that. It's got some additional content. It's got some ways that you can implement this. It's got some stories about the why behind this or how I've seen this, how I've used this with different athletes.
Speaker 1:Format wise, we're going to go through kind of the main idea of each chapter, or what we call each brick, and we'll give you a little bit of the science. We're trying to abide by the Goldilocks principle here. If we have no science, you know it's that that chair is too small and Goldilocks principle here. If we have no science, you know it's, it's that that chair is too small and Goldilocks didn't want to sit in it. But on the other side we also that chair can't be too big or that porridge can't be too hot, like we don't want this to turn into a neuroscience textbook. And if you're one of those folks like me who kind of nerds out on that stuff and you do want to read more, all of those resources are in the back of the book, so have at it. You can keep digging to your heart's content. But what I'm trying to do is say here's just the right amount and that's not going to be perfect for everyone. Certainly I'm just going off of kind of the average of all the athletes and all the coaches and all the parents that I've talked with and worked with.
Speaker 1:I think when we don't present any of the science, it comes across as fake or made up. That's where we get the resistance to. Well, I don't want to be positive. How could I be positive? There's nothing to be positive about in this situation. I just fill in the blank with something that you screwed up during competition. You know, I just threw an interception, I just got a bogey, I just lost my race. There's nothing to be positive about. And so just telling everyone hey. And so just telling everyone, hey, be positive feels fake.
Speaker 1:But when we can say, look, if you allow yourself to spiral into this negativity, here's some of the research about what that does to your muscle memory. Here's what that does to cortisol levels. Here's why you're no longer making as good of decisions. So, instead of being happy with being mediocre or just accepting failure, instead we're going to direct our focus and our attention somewhere else. We're going to intentionally choose not to spiral into negativity so that we can continue performing at a high level. Here's the science behind why it's important, a little bit of the science behind how we do it. But, more importantly, here's the action steps that you can take during competition the next time. Now we've got our athletes, now they're hooked. Now it's like, oh okay, well, maybe that is actually legit. Maybe I should give this a try. Okay, well, maybe that is actually legit, maybe I should give this a try. So that's going to be. That's going to be kind of the format moving forward. That's my goal is to give additional value and add on to the book and add on to the worksheets.
Speaker 1:So, without further ado, part two. So part two is is basically this concept that confidence is built through reps and preparation and proof. There's going to be three bricks or three chapters where we basically talk through how do we build confidence? Well, to start off, we've got to take some action and starting on page 28, it's chapter three, the rep brick. This is kind of the idea that it doesn't matter how positive your self-talk is, it doesn't matter what breathing techniques you use, it doesn't matter all the rest of the stuff that we get to later. None of that matters if you don't do the work.
Speaker 1:And I'll be honest, there have been plenty of athletes who I just kind of assume, because of the school that they're at or the program that they're participating in, that they are preparing the right way and they're putting in reps. And you know, there've been, there've been times where I didn't check this early enough and I just kind of made some assumptions and it came back to bite me in the butt and, to be honest, had we started here, had we evaluated this a little bit better, the the improvement in those athletes that I was working with, that the improvement in their confidence, would have been expedited quite a bit. But I I've skipped that brick before. It's kind of the idea that if you're a basketball player, that brick before. It's kind of the idea that if you're a basketball player and you want to be better at shooting a three-pointer, you're going to have to practice that If you want to be confident at the end of a game that you can catch that pass, step back and drain that three, it needs to be something that you've done over and over and over and even then it's not going to be a guarantee that it's going to happen. But you know, hey, I've intentionally put in the work, I've done what's required of me to be good enough to do this.
Speaker 1:And sometimes we come up short. Sometimes we think we're doing enough work, we think we're practicing hard enough, we think we're putting in the work in the weight room and the work in the film room and the work you know all of those things. But that Friday night product reveals to us, or that competition moment reveals to us hey, you know it's not good enough. I heard Alex Hermosi quote uh, on one of his podcast episodes that I absolutely loved and it was I'm not going to do my best, I'm going to do what's required. And you know just kind of this idea that it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter how good I am, it's going to take whatever it takes to accomplish a certain level, to reach a certain level, accomplish a certain dream, things like that. And so if my best isn't good enough, sometimes I've got to go back to work, I've got to put in the time, I've got to put in the reps to be able to improve in that area.
Speaker 1:Just a little bit of the science. Remember? We talked about deliberate practice. I think that's a really powerful one that if I was a coach who was responsible for a program, I would want to figure out. What is deliberate practice? How are we doing that and how can I bring attention to that so that my athletes also see how deliberate we're being about practice, how we're evaluating how practice went, not confusing activity with productivity. We are being intentional, every single rep, every single day.
Speaker 1:In this chapter we talked about self-efficacy, or basically Dr Bandura's work on this concept of how people build belief in their ability to succeed. I think it's important as coaches that we show the athletes what this progression looks like. If I was an individual athlete who was listening to this and you know, maybe you don't have a great coaching staff, maybe they're not preparing you as well as they should be, okay, well, that's unfortunate. What are you going to do about it? How are you know, what are, what are the skills that you need to develop from the bottom up, and how are you going to practice those skills? Is that going to be, you know, getting extra lessons? Is that going to be extra work? Can you just go have a conversation with your coach and say, hey, I think I need to improve in these areas. How can I do that? You know? Can we stick around after practice? Can we come in before practice? Are there things that I can do on my own? Because, you know, ultimately we talked about, you know?
Speaker 1:The next one was neuroplasticity. We talked about this idea and this concept that our brains can grow, our ability to be confident can change. We can rewire our, we can rewire neural pathways so that there is more confidence, the growth mindset. All of these things sort of play into. There is a process to build confidence, and I think it's important that we start there and that we're making sure that we're not cutting any corners in our preparation. One of the things that Josh Miracle talks about all the time is, when you cut corners, you cut confidence, and so I think we need to be intentional, either as individuals or as coaches, to point out the fact that, look, if you're not doing everything that you can every single time you step onto that practice field, then ultimately you're cutting your confidence.
Speaker 1:And so in the book, you know, we talked about some different tools like the rep tracker. You know an individual athlete could certainly use something like that. I've done that before with athletes who don't feel like they're prepared enough. Uh, the, the confidence journal is is something that's similar. Some athletes like journaling a little bit more, others don't. Uh, we actually have a whole podcast episode called does journaling actually do anything? Uh, yes, is spoiler alert, is the answer. Um, you know, but but if I can't get an athlete to journal, maybe I can get them to just write down what were three wins from. Today was one of the other tools.
Speaker 1:Somehow, if I'm working with an athlete and they don't feel confident because they're not putting in enough reps quantity wise, good enough reps, quality wise you know they're not. They're not doing it over a long enough period of time to where they burn it into their muscle memory. I think the the big takeaway here is not only do they need to put in the work, but somehow we need to document that. Somehow we need to document that. Somehow we need to point that out, somehow they need to see that building so that they can piece together in their mind. Oh, I have earned the right to be confident. Which kind of?
Speaker 1:Next brings us to the worksheet. If you downloaded the workbook, brick number one reps we've got some different sections on each one of these worksheets. So the first one is learn. We need athletes to know confidence doesn't come from hype. We need them to know it comes from work and that each rep you put in really becomes a brick in this wall that we're building. And so if they don't have meaningful reps, we want to help them recognize that and we want to help them do something about it.
Speaker 1:So you know, I'll be honest, just handing this worksheet to an athlete, there will be some times where you know they maybe have enough personal awareness to be able to analyze themselves with a younger group of athletes. You know, instead of just reading these two sentences and thinking that, that's going to help them realize how important confidence is, you know, maybe you need to tell a story, maybe you need to talk about your own experience. So the learn section, I think you need to look at that you need to be aware of. You know where are my athletes at? Do they know this? Do they believe this? Do they think this is just made up a bunch of hokey, fake stuff?
Speaker 1:The second section is connect. So you know, asking them some questions to get them to connect the dots. Have there been times where reps in practice carried over into a game in terms of confidence? Can we help them connect in their head? Oh yeah, when I do this, it makes me feel like this. And then we always have an evaluate section where we want to ask them OK, now that, now that you know why this is important and we've started to get your brain thinking about you know, have I been doing this? Have I seen this in real life On a scale from one to 10? Let's sort of evaluate where am I at right now and then, if this is an area that I'm lacking and this is an area where you know what I get a lot of bang for my buck doing some improvement here then let's take action.
Speaker 1:So you know whether you want to use the activity that's on the worksheet or you want to use some of the tools that are in the book. Some of them are a little more complex. Some of them are a little bit simpler and shorter. At the end of the day, we need our athletes to know that if they cut corners during preparation, they are cutting their confidence. So if they need to improve in this area, we've got a tracker that you can use on that workbook. They can do this in their own journal. You can come up with your own worksheet. Just like we say at the end of literally every podcast episode make a plan and put it to work. Having the knowledge, having the information, is a great first step, but now we got to do something about it. There are also some coaching corner questions in the book. There are some coaching corner questions on the worksheet.
Speaker 1:If I was doing this in a team setting, I would absolutely want the individuals to have a conversation about. You know, am I confident? Am I destroying my confidence by cutting corners? Am I putting in the reps and putting in the work that it takes? I would want to know who are the athletes on my team or in my program that feel like they're doing a really great job, so that I could have conversations with them and recruit them and say hey, you're doing awesome in this area? How can we help bring some of your teammates along?
Speaker 1:Where are some of the times or where are some of the areas that we're maybe cutting some corners or we're not putting in the reps, or what are the things you know when people are talking in the locker room? What are the things people don't really believe in yet or they're not confident in yet? These questions are helped. These questions are designed to help you have some cultural change conversations. These questions are built for you to get a pulse on the heartbeat of your team, on what's actually going on. Figure out who are my athletes that are scoring really high in this area. Who are my athletes that are scoring really low in this area? Is it? There's just a few stragglers? Okay, well, let's get them caught up. Is it? More of you know? Our entire team is feeling this way. Maybe we thought we were preparing as coaches. Maybe we're doing what we think is enough, but we're not doing what the players think is enough. These questions are designed to help you have those conversations, and that kind of wraps up chapter three, or the first brick, reps.
Speaker 1:The second brick is evidence, and I just I want to go back to this story that I that I start the chapter off with. I mean chapter off with. I mean, the names have obviously been changed. This was an actual golfer who was convinced in his mind that he was not good at something that in reality he was really good at, and I don't think that it would be too much of a stretch to assume that there are plenty of athletes out there, and or plenty of athletes maybe on teams of some of the coaches that are listening, who are in that same spot, who all they remember, because of the negativity bias that they've got going on in their head, are the times that they've screwed up. All they think about and you know, they beat themselves up over. Am I holding myself to this expectation of perfection?
Speaker 1:And so, just like it talks about on page 46, I think, as coaches and as individuals, it's important to gather some of this information. You know the wins, moments where we were successful score-wise, we were victorious, especially highlighting ones where we had to overcome some sort of adversity to make that happen. Survival times where you know we didn't win but we held it together. We battled, we fought, we showed some mental toughness, we showed grit, we showed resolve, we showed some of this family togetherness, we lifted each other up, we finished. Another one would be struggle, maybe the painful games that taught you something, where we adjusted, we grew, we changed because of those.
Speaker 1:Feedback is another type of evidence that we can gather. You know somebody that you trust notices some growth and says so. I think we can have a tendency so many times to downplay that and we've got to be careful that we celebrate these wins along the way, because if we don't ever celebrate these wins along the way, the polar frontal cortex and the front part of your brain that's responsible for long-term, meaningful change is going to say I don't know if this is worth it because it's really hard and it's really uncomfortable. But if we can have some of these wins and maybe we can get some feedback along the way from a trusted outside source who's saying, yes, you're doing the right things, you're growing the right way, you're improving in the right areas, that can be so powerful. That can be just what that front part of your brain needs to say yeah, maybe this is going to be worth it, maybe we can actually do this. Let's keep going. And patterns is the last one that we talk about there. You know, just consistent habits that show you're becoming who you want to be, even if the maybe the winds aren't there yet, maybe the results aren't flashy yet. Like what are the patterns that we're seeing, that are changing, and how do we point those out to our girls? How do we point those out to our guys? On page 48, we start getting into some of the science. I love that. I love that attribution theory.
Speaker 1:Confident people tend to explain success in terms of things they can control, like effort, preparation and strategy. Unconfident people often attribute success or failure to things that are outside their control, like luck, natural talent, how good the opponent is, weather refs, calls, all of that kind of stuff. I think, as coaches, we need to be aware of that. We need to be aware of the fact that our athletes are going to have a negativity bias. There are a lot of times where, as coaches, we think we just need to, you know, during a timeout, we need to hammer hey, I can't believe you did this. What was wrong? Why were you? And we bring up some of these past things that have happened just a little bit ago because we feel like it's our job to teach and to correct and to coach, but there's times where we've got to know our players. We've got to know who are the athletes, that they already know what they did wrong and they're already beating themselves up and they already feel like they're not good enough.
Speaker 1:I think, just like you know, in the next book that's going to be all about focus. That'll hopefully be coming out sooner rather than later. You know, one of the things, one of the things that we talk about is, like, what matters right now Are there? Are there things that, yeah, we need to fix and we need to correct? But could we do it after the game? Could we not do it right in the middle of this time out, like, could we not beat our guys down? Could we, you know?
Speaker 1:Going back to the, the self affirmation theory, could we help our guys instead of just beating them over the head with mistakes? Could we point out like values or strength or personal growth or the the things that we can control? We've got to remember that our words are powerful. We've got to be intentional about building our guys up, not to just accept mistakes and gloss over them, but about being intentional on how and when we correct them. There were two tools in the book the confidence resume We've talked about before on past podcasts about having a success board. It's kind of a similar idea where we're trying to document some things in the past, we're trying to show some patterns, we're trying to gather some of that evidence. We're trying to prove to our brain that we know is going to intentionally be biased toward negativity. And we're going to gather some of that evidence, we're going to get it in front of ourselves. We're going to get it in front of our team. Don't just hope that they're going to somehow magically do that on their own.
Speaker 1:I like the post-game reframe grid. That's on page 51. You know just what went well. What did I learn? What did I prove to myself? What's one thing that I'll carry forward. You can obviously modify that to to your age, your level, your sport, but I think there's power in Jake Gilbert talked about all the time. Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn, and when we don't win, it's okay if we learn from that, like I. Like I will die on the hill of in 2016,. If we don't lose those two games pretty early on in the year, I don't think we win a state championship Because those two losses showed us we weren't quite preparing hard enough.
Speaker 1:Maybe we weren't quite hydrated enough. We didn't have quite enough sleep. We didn't have quite enough sleep. We didn't study quite enough film. We didn't maybe have quite enough physicality during practice. At that point I think we played at our best, but our best wasn't good enough. So we had to improve, we had to get better, and we did so, helping our girls and helping our guys realize this loss was not failure. This was just a reflection of where we're at right now, so that we know, moving forward, where we're trying to get to and what needs to improve.
Speaker 1:So on the worksheet, you know, there's the learn section. Somehow we've got to get them to realize, hey, we've got to gather some evidence here. We can't just downplay every time we do something. Well, we know there's going to be this negativity bias. How can we show like, yes, we're earning this, yes, we're doing this the right way, yes, we're moving in the right direction, yes, we can be confident that we're on the right track. Just keep going. Somehow help them connect that with have they seen that on the field? Do they feel like that's lacking in their game, in their mind? Have them evaluate themselves and then take some action.
Speaker 1:I love this coaching corner at the bottom of the worksheet. I love what are three things we've done as a team that prove we're growing. And what I love even, maybe even more, is the conversation that's happening as we're trying to narrow down and we're you know we're. I'm standing up there at the whiteboard and I'm saying I want the top three things that show we're growing and just write down every single idea off to the side, all around on this whiteboard. And now, man, we've got this collection of all this stuff that we're doing. That's earning the right to be confident, that's building our confidence. That's showing us, yes, we're headed in the right direction as a program. Here's why our culture is different than it was. Here's the expectation, here's where we're headed. And then you know, we eventually hopefully narrow it down to three things. But, man, that that brainstorming leading up to that is just as powerful.
Speaker 1:So, brick one we got to do the reps. Brick two we've also got to gather some proof along the way, some evidence along the way, that, yeah, we're doing this the right way and we're earning the right to be confident. Which brings us to our last brick in this section, the preparation brick. And the core concept on page 57, just flat out lays it right out there. Confidence loves predictability.
Speaker 1:I think some of this science is pretty powerful. I think there are so many kids out there that have, you know, a free throw routine because they heard sometime on some TikTok video that you should do it. And they watch an NBA game and they see guys doing it every single time, but they don't understand the science behind. Hey, there's a way that you can get your mind and your body and your emotions in the best place to be successful and I think showing them some of the science of routines is powerful. You know it goes into a little bit about routines being able to do things automatically. You know muscle memory, anchoring through repetition, psychological readiness, getting into that flow state or getting in the zone. We want our girls and we want our guys to be at their best when competition starts, really when practice starts. So how are they getting physically prepared for practice? What are they focusing on? How are they controlling their self-talk, how are they controlling their physical energy levels?
Speaker 1:You know, at the time of this recording it was college football, opening weekend was last week and Urban Meyer was at Ohio State, number three playing number one Texas, one of the, if not the biggest, season openers, and you know he was talking about, in the locker room there is no pregame speech. The pregame speech before that moment, before that crowd, with the anticipation leading up to that moment, and that environment was just let's do this together. Relax, do your job, let's go execute. You're ready for this, this? But on the other hand, there are times where we've got athletes that are showing up to our practice who just got in a fight with their boyfriend or girlfriend. There's times where we've got athletes coming to practice and they're exhausted and they're worn out and their brain hurts.
Speaker 1:We've got athletes that are showing up that are dealing with all kinds of junk at home, or they're dealing with a diagnosis or a death or an illness, or you fill in the blank with the adversity that your team's dealing with. How do we get them to, on a regular basis, set aside all those big, heavy burdens of the world and be able to, just for a couple hours, go out and focus all of their effort and all of their energy and all of their you know, mental and all of their focus just onto this task at hand, and of their focus just onto this task at hand? And routines can play a big role in that. I think one of the things that I that I left out early on in my career on page 65 was the post competition routine. I think I think we did a pretty good job of getting guys ready to practice and they saw the value in that and being able to improve at a faster level than our competition, and I think we did a good job with getting guys ready to perform. But I think that we wasted some opportunities for growth when we didn't have any kind of a routine afterwards to help them rest, to help them rest, to help them recover, to help them evaluate what went well, what didn't go well, being intentional about the whole identity piece, separating who you are from what you do, helping them not tie up all of their self-worth into their performance and man, that's hard but it's so powerful.
Speaker 1:Along with teaching them these routines, in my mind we have to teach them the difference between superstition and routine. If you don't wear the same socks or enter the field a certain way, bad things happen. And you know, is there some comfort in you know when you do everything the right way? Sure, maybe a little bit, but the second that things get out of order, the second you have a weather, delay, a bus breaks down, something goes wrong, somebody gets injured, a coach has to leave or the second. Things change. Now you're in big trouble. Now. Anxiety is skyrocketing and I would argue in that moment it's worse than if you would have just not had a routine in the first place.
Speaker 1:But instead, instead of superstition, if we can help them see, look, routine is built on preparation and trust. It's not about magical thinking, it's about stability, about predictability, about familiar actions that signal to your brain and body it's time to lock in, it's time to go. And I think, helping them think through. You know, it looks very different if you're traveling the night before and you're going to have an overnight and a hotel stay. It looks very different. If you've got a three-hour bus ride, it looks very different if you've got a 10 hour bus ride. It looks very different if you've got a 10 minute bus ride where you're going to hop off the bus and be ready to go. It looks very different if you've got a home game and there is no bus ride.
Speaker 1:But I think being intentional about you know, maybe you start at kickoff or you start at that first whistle or that first first shot on that first tee box. How do I get my mind and body ready 10 minutes before that, 20 minutes before that, an hour before that, four hours before that, the day before that? How do I make sure I get sleep the night before? And then realizing that when things change, it's not like we're held captive by our routine. No, I would say, our teams and our athletes have to believe that this is a tool for them, to help them, and so, no matter what is thrown our way, we're going to be ready. We're going to be prepared, we're going to know. Yes, we have what it takes. We know what the next step is. We know how to get, how to move from I'm relaxed to I'm starting to get engaged to I'm locked in and I'm ready to go. So, again, you know, on the worksheet, it's got the learn you got to figure out. How do I get this message across? How do I teach my level, my sport, my, my program?
Speaker 1:I think this is a really powerful one too that, if you've ever done this before, have some former athlete come back and talk about it? Have you know one of the team captains stand up and say this is just how I've done it? Find a YouTube clip from some professional athlete in your sport. That's talking about why they do it Somehow. Get your kids to buy in that, yes, this is important. And then help them connect. Help them connect the dots in their head hey, have I done this? Do I do this? How do I feel before competition? What do I do when things change? Get their mind thinking about those things and connecting those dots, and then have them evaluate themselves, have them give themselves a score. So we've got something that's a little bit more objective.
Speaker 1:Now. Who are the people scoring really high that can maybe bring others along with them? Who are the people that are scoring really low that need a lot of help in this area? Maybe you've been hammered on this all last offseason and so you're good to go. For the majority of the people on your squad, they're set in this area. Or maybe you've never talked about this before and as an entire program, you need to address this. You need to teach this, integrate this.
Speaker 1:I love the coaching corner questions on here, where you know it's talking about what are the routines that we already have? Because, just like individuals have routines, teams have routines also, and so you know, especially before the first game, especially, you know, before a tournament game or before postseason play starts, how is the routine going to be a little bit different? I'll be honest, in 2013,. That completely caught us off guard. We had no idea how short our pregame warmup was going to be, and so it wrecked the confidence of some of our players, and they even talk about it to this day. So that's something that, in my mind, is absolutely worth having a conversation on the team level, not just the individual level.
Speaker 1:That wraps up part two. Next time, we'll be hopping into part three, chosen confidence. If you have questions, if you've got feedback, I would love to hear from you guys. Do you like this format? Is this format helpful? Should we spend more time? Should we spend less time? What are you looking for? How can I deliver value to you? How can I help you get your team prepared? How can I help you believe that you have what it takes to go out and to succeed? That's been my entire motivation, from writing this book, to putting this workbook together, to recording these episodes.
Speaker 1:There were times as a player in my own life where I wasn't confident and I didn't always know how to fix it.
Speaker 1:There were times, especially early in my coaching career, when I felt like my athletes should be confident, but for some reason they weren't, and I didn't know what to do about it. And so this book, and really this entire series, is just me continuing this mission of helping no one to have to go through that terrible feeling of oh my goodness, what do I do next? And having no idea how to fix these problems, how to address some of these things that we have to deal with. If you enjoyed this, if you found it helpful, would love for you to share, leave a comment. Right now, the book doesn't have any reviews on Amazon. If you find this book helpful and you'd be willing to go in and write a review and just explain so that other people and so that the algorithm can see what did this help you do? How did this help you improve, would be super appreciative if you'd be willing to do that, just so that other people can find these resources also Appreciate you guys being here. Until next time, make your plan and put it to work.