High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 123: Mastering the Mental Game with Dr. Ken Ravizza, Educator, Professor, and Mental Game Expert

Episode Date: July 21, 2017

Dr. Ken Ravizza was a professor for over 40 years at Cal State Fullerton and has become a legend in professional baseball where he helps teams and athletes master the mental game. He has worked in professional baseball for over 25 years, and has worked closely with Joe Madden, the manager of the Chicago Cubs. Over the years he has worked with Madden at the Angels, Dodgers, Rays, and now at the Cubs. He has been involved in over eight Olympic Games where he has helped athletes master the mental game. You can find a full transcript of Ken's interview and the show notes at cindrakamphoff.com/ken/.  

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Sindra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you're here ready to listen to an interview with the legend, Dr. Ken Reviza. Now, the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best leaders, athletes, coaches, and consultants, all about the topic of mindset to help us reach our potential or be a high performer in our field or sport.

And today, I had the incredible privilege of sitting down with Dr. Ken Reviza. He was a professor at Cal State Fullerton for over 40 years and has worked in Major League Baseball as a mental game coach for over 25 years. He's been involved in eight Olympic Games, five Summer Olympic Games, and three Winter Olympic Games. And you might have heard about his work with Joe Maddon, the manager of the Chicago Cubs. And you know the Cubs won the World Series last year. So within this interview, Ken talks about many different things.

He talks about his start in Major League Baseball, what it takes to succeed to help people learn about the mental game. He talks about his acronym RAMP, see and you'll learn about that, as well as his new book Heads Up Baseball 2. He also talks about how the best respond to failure. And he shares his personal story about failure, which includes the legendary coach John Wooden. He also describes the trend of Major League Baseball in terms of hiring more sports psychology professionals and the advice he would give himself 20 years ago. So my favorite quotes from this interview are this, The mental game begins before it begins. And the mental game can be so simple, but at the same time, it can be complex.

So you can get a full description and summary of Ken's interview at cindracampoff.com slash Ken. And I thought this interview was so powerful, I have it transcribed. So if you'd like the transcription, you can head over to that same website, cindracampoff.com slash ken, and I'm hopeful that the transcript provides value to you. So cindracampoff.com slash ken. And if you enjoyed this interview, I'd encourage you to tweet about it, share about it on Twitter, or perhaps share your favorite quote from this interview.

And you can tag Ken and I. Ken is KenRevisa1 on Twitter, and I am at Mentally underscore Strong. So before we get started, I'm going to share with you an iTunes review. This is from Dr. Tide Turner. This is a great podcast for individuals who desire to up their game in their mindset and learn from individuals who are living a positive mindset way into their lives.

Dr. Sindra offers great guests such as Ken Reviza and her energy is contagious. It will have you turning in into each episode. Thank you so much for the comment and the rating over there, Mr. Tide Turner.

And if you could help us, if you could do one of three things, share this podcast with a friend. Maybe you could tweet about it or share it on social media. A third thing that you could do is you could head over to iTunes, like Mr. Tide Turner, and you can share a comment or rating. We'd be so grateful, and help us reach more and more people each week. All right, without further ado, let's bring on the legend, Ken Reviza. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset, the legend, Ken Reviza. Thank you so much for joining me here today, Ken. Thank you, Cindra, for having me. I'm so much for joining me here today, Ken. Thank you, Cindra, for having me.

I'm really delighted to talk with you today. And I know you're going to have so much wisdom to share with people who are listening. Ken, to start us off, can you tell us about your passion and what you do? What I do in terms of my practice is I work in, I'm an educational sports psychologist. I'm really an educator. And basically what I do is provide information, give the person skills to use that information and support them in refining and developing that information so they can put it into a system that works for them. And the reason my approach is education is I was a university professor for 40 years at Cal State Fullerton. And I had the privilege of learning from a lot of students and athletes over the years.

I love it. So you're Fullerton at 40 years. That's amazing. I know you do a lot of work in Major League Baseball right now. Tell us about how you got started in that area. Why Major League Baseball? How did you get started in baseball? Okay, interesting. At Cal State Fullerton, our baseball program is very strong. And going back to 1979, Sindra, before you were born.

There you go. And I started working with a coach there by the name of Augie Garrido, who just ended up his career last year at the University of Texas, being the winningest college baseball coach in the history of the game. And I got started with him at Cal State Fullerton. And then in 1984, we won the College World Series. And a lot of the players were saying, how much did mental game help? And at that point, a gentleman with the California Angels by the name of Marcel Latchman, he was their pitching coach at the time, he contacted me.

And in 1985, I started working with the Angels, and I worked with them from 1985 to 2000. And in that time period, Sindra, I worked with the major league club, the minor league club. There was one point where I was sent to the minors. The manager at the time didn't want me with the big club. There was a time I was released and then rehired. And that was interesting. Both of those experiences because I never realized what it was like for a player to be sent down or to be released until I experienced it myself and you go through the

self-doubt you go through wondering am I good enough and all of those things that they go through but that was my initial experience in Major League Baseball. And when I was there, I met one of our minor league coaches was a gentleman named Joe Madden. And Joe, of course, now is the manager of the Cubs. And Joe and I started working together in 1985. So we have a long history of being together. And after the Angels, I went to the Dodgers for a couple of years. And then I went, when Joe got the job with Tampa, I went over there to Tampa for about four years. And then the travel got too much and I came back to the Angels. And then when Joe got the job with the Cubs, I went over, back over with Joe to the Cubs. So I'm in my 25th year, Cendra, of working in Major League Baseball.

That's a long-winded story there. Oh, wow. 25 years. That's amazing. You have so much wisdom. I know that you can share with us. One question I have before we dive into that, you know, your first start with the Angels, tell us about how that worked. And, you know, I'm thinking about perhaps people who are wanting to

make some kind of leap like that. You know, how did it work for you going from Cal State Fullerton at the college level to the Angels? How did that happen specifically? Well, I think one thing I'd recommend to the audience, whether they're sports like practitioners or whether they're coaches, I think the biggest thing I can recommend is enjoy where you're at, learn where you're at, and really immerse yourself in coaching, delivering the sports psych services to that group, and do the best you can with it at whatever level you're at. I personally, Sandra, never had the idea that I was going to work with this team to get to this team to get to this team.

It never worked that way. I was just doing what I was doing and I was engaged in it and it just took off from there. I think sometimes we try to figure out how we're going to get there and we spend too much time figuring out how to get there versus really doing the work. So that would be the first thing I would say. Second thing would be each step along the way, it's critical to learn from those coaches and those athletes that you have the privilege to work with at whatever level, because their experience is so important and for them to share it with you is just incredible. And now with that said, Cinder, to get to your question, I'm finally

getting to it. Getting started, I think one of the things is that there's going to be a certain point, whether you go to a high school team, a college team, a pro team, where you're going to have to give a presentation, maybe a 20-minute, half-hour presentation, where you've got to basically present your program, and those people have to be sitting there, and they have to walk out of that meeting going, this can help us. This is worth our time. And when you do those presentations, that's why if you're working at the high school level, junior high, get in front of that group. Talk, because that experience is so important. And for me, being a university professor, one of the things I had the advantage

of is I was in front of a classroom all the time. So teaching is sort of my passion, my love. So it just came. I remember my first talk to the angels. I was brought in. I talked to just the pitchers. This was 1985. They had 30 pitchers in the room. Marcel Latchman, the gentleman who brought me in, said, Ken, you're going to have 30 minutes to talk to these guys. And at the end of the meeting, I'm going to hand them a 3x5 index card. They're going to write down, Yes, we want this man back. No, we've had enough.

And he said, you're going to have to deliver. So I do my talk. And that particular spring training day, it was raining in Mesa, Arizona. So we had to move the tractor equipment out of the back of the clubhouse and we sat on bags of limes in the back room of the clubhouse and I start doing my talk and Cydra in the middle of my talk the hot water heater for the showers goes on and there's this roar in the room. And I'm sitting there doing my talk, and I just didn't miss a beat. I didn't even hear the roar. I was so nervous and anxious about the whole damn thing.

I didn't even hear it. I'm just a liver in my thing. And after the talk, a number of players that came up and said, you did not even hear that hot water heater go off. And I said, what hot water heater? And they said, I can learn something from you. My point being, the medium is the message. The way you deliver that presentation,

the way that you handle any distractions, the players are picking up on that because they want something that works in the practical world. So that was my initial presentation, Sindra. I love it. I love your advice. And you know, what I really hear you saying is do great work, right? Is the importance of enjoying where you're at, doing the best you can with others. But then when you have the opportunity, you got to deliver.

And that's what I heard you say, is like being a role model for the mental skills and the sports I called your principles, but you got to deliver. You got to make it something that athletes and coaches can use. Correct. And I think what's very important is you've just like

you help the athlete with his or her performance. You've got to work on your performance and you have to do the preparation. You have to do the work. I just, I found with graduate students over the years that they wanted to work with Olympic teams, professional teams. But man, you need to work with that junior high team. You need to work with youth sport teams. You need to talk to a friend who's coaching a little league team and go in and talk to his team. You know, those types of experiences are just so important. No question. And that's where you hone your craft. That's where you get really good, right? And,

and to be really good at delivering these services in a group of people, you have to, you have to have good delivery skills, storytelling, techniques and strategies. And I like what you're saying is you get, we got to continue to work on our craft. So 25 years in Major League Baseball, Ken, one thing that I heard you kind of talking about is your relationship with Joe Maddon. And, you know, just like tell us a little bit about how you think relationships with, you know, managers or coaches really, really help sports psychology consultants. And, you know, what role do you think that plays?

Well, Cinder, that's a great point you're making, because the relationships with the people you're working with are just so critical. And especially where you work with professional football, a lot of work, I would imagine, Cinder, that you do is through the coaches. So you help the coaches coach the athletes. And sometimes we're doing that. We're helping the coaches coach the athletes on the mental game and these aspects with them. Because the coaches are there every single day. So they're the ones so that if you can build that relationship and work through the coaches, so the players not only hearing it from you, but he or she is hearing it from their coach, and they're hearing that vocabulary, and they're hearing that the mental game's important. That's

critical. No question. Absolutely. Coaches are there every day. So tell us, Ken, what advice would you give to people who perhaps are just starting or want to work to enhance these relationships? What's worked for you in terms of how to connect with these coaches and managers and how to develop this relationship that you're talking about? I think the first thing is you've got to spend time. You've got to learn the sport. You've got to show them you understand their sport. You've got to be able to take whatever you do in terms of performance enhancement sports side, and you've got to customize that so it works for that particular sport. And that's the first thing you need to do. Second thing is if you can get time to just observe and just go in and watch. I know when I had the master students in our program that came for two years, the first year,

all I had them do was go to practices, watch, observe. Yogi Berra had a phrase and it said, if you want to watch, if you want to see, you have to watch. If you want to see, you have to watch. So that you go there and you just observe and let that experience show itself to you. Instead of going in, I got this for you, that for you, that for you. If you get time, see what's going on in that environment and how you can customize your program to meet the needs of that particular team. So spend the time with the observation. So customize for the sport, observe what's going on,

two really important strategies or just things that we need to keep in mind. And I think, Sandra, in terms of that, I think what's important for the, and this is where the coach becomes so important. If we can integrate our sports psych skills into task-relevant performance cues so that the athlete can integrate them into their performance. So today the big buzzword, as we know, is a lot of stuff on mindfulness. Mindfulness, I'm going to meditate.

Great, that's great. But when it comes to performance, how do you integrate the breath into the performance? Because when you're performing, it isn't necessarily this quiet, gentle breath. Sometimes you need some intensity, you need some aggressiveness, you need some passion. And the key becomes how you take those skills and integrate them into task-relevant performance cues. And this is where the coach can be so helpful with us, to be a guide, to show us how to do that. Sure. So can you give us maybe a little more information, Ken, on how you might actually do that? You know, how would you teach the breathing to, let's say, an athlete? And then

how would you help, you know, that person make sure that they're incorporating the task-relevant cues, you know, working with the coach in the way that you're describing? Okay. Let's say, so here we go. Let's take the mindfulness issue of the breathing and you, and you, you work the breath. Okay. And you do your meditation and you're working your breath. Okay. So now you're in the game. And I remember when I was with the angels, Mike Trout was a rookie and he did come up and I worked with Mike for two years. When I left the Angels, the last thing I said to Mike, or when Mike and I talked, I said, Mike, from the two years we spent together, what did you get out of our work together? And he looked at me and he said, Ken, I got two things.

One is walk slow from the on-deck circle to the batter's box. Okay. Walk, it begins before it begins. The way you walk into the box, the way the swimmer walks to the starting blocks, the way the track and field athlete goes to their starting blocks. It begins before it begins. The second thing Mike said was,

I learned that I have to finish my breath because sometimes what I do is I rush the breath. And if I rush the breath, then what's going to happen is I'm going to pull out with my front side. I'm going to open up with my shoulder. But if I can finish the breath, at least I'm in control of myself to that point. So now we're taking that breathing from the meditation and we're bringing it in to a task relevant performance cue. In football, Cedric could be the quarterback if there's a time when they're coming out of a huddle that they just take a breath as they come up to the line of scrimmage or after he sees the formation makes the call he takes a breath to just gather himself get himself in control

and that's where we have to integrate it into task cues. Sure you bet well I like what you're saying in terms of it begins before it begins right it's really tricky. Can you tell us like how you might teach breathing? Meaning, let's just say, you know, is it, is there a particular way you teach it? Or, you know, do you let the athlete kind of figure out what's going to work best for them? Well, I'll tell you, first off, I think the breathing is, in my career, I've been involved in eight Olympic Games, five Summer Olympics and three Winter Olympics. And I would say the last four Olympic Games, talking with the athletes that I worked with, asking them afterwards, what helped you the most?

The overwhelming reaction from the athletes response was breathing okay and at first cinderella i was sort of offended with all the stuff i had to listen to that they came back and said breathing was the most effective thing but that's the way it goes but let's look at the breath what does the breath do number one the breath brings oxygen to the brain so that you can think clearly. Number two, the breath. When you need energy, focus on the inhalation. When you need to calm down, focus on the exhalation. So there's two phases of the breathing. The inhalation, when you need energy, the exhalation, when you need to calm down. The breath brings you to the present moment. Inhale, exhale. It gets you back here. The breath allows you to shift from thinking to doing, to make that shift from the thinking mind to the athletic

mind, the doing mind. And the final thing with the breath is the breath is the start of good rhythm. Good rhythm begins with good breath. So any sport where you get a chance where it starts and stops, if you can catch a breath in there, it helps you reset and get started again. How do I teach the breathing? Generally, after I take the people through relaxation, then we do the abdominal breathing. And we may do it for like two minutes. Now, from teaching stress management at the university, we know that if you're really going to get the physiological effects out of meditation, you have to go at least 20 minutes. But hey, at least two minutes is a start, and at least they're doing something to get into this approach. Yeah, absolutely. Really good evidence on why breathing is important. Ken, do you think that the breath, would you say that's the centerpiece of kind of what you do?

Or what would you say is at the center of sort of like your philosophy on performance and what works for athletes? I think the centerpiece for me comes from my sport philosophy background. And what do I mean by that? I taught courses in philosophy of sport. And one of the sections that we spent a lot of time with, and any athlete that I work with, I start with, why do you play your sport? Why do you do this? Why do you love competing? What is it about it? Why? Why do you do it? Because when you know why you're doing something, it helps you shovel the garbage that goes with the pursuit of excellence. Because one thing that's real clear, high-level performance in whatever it is, is a love-hate relationship with what you do.

You love it at times, and you hate it at times. There's no question about it. And when you know why you're doing it, it helps you deal with the negative parts of the performance. So the first thing for me is a philosophical thing. Why? parts of the performance. So the first thing for me is a philosophical thing, why? Second thing is the athlete has to take responsibility and be accountable for his or her actions. If they're not going to be responsible and accountable for their actions, you might as well stop because they're not going to be able to do anything. So responsibility and accountability is critical.

And we talk about that before we do any of the relaxation or any of the breathing or any of the focusing stuff. We got to get some of these things really laid out and get them to buy into why the mental game is important in this puzzle. And for me, once we get that in place, and in my baseball book that I wrote with Tom Hanson, and we just finished it, we talk about this as RAMP C. And RAMP C, the R stands for responsibility. You got to be responsible and accountable, like I said. The A stands for awareness. You have to develop your awareness of what's going on. Because athletic performance is like driving a car. You come to a signal light.

If the light's green, you go. If the light's yellow, you need to attend to the intersection, check your rearview mirror for a police officer, and then make your call. If the light's red, you got to stop. What do most of us do with yellow light syndrome? We speed up. What do most of us do with yellow light syndrome? We speed up. What do most of us do in athletic performance when the garbage hits the fan? We try awareness. M, mission. Why do you play your game?

What are you trying to do? P, preparation. It begins before it begins. What are those routines that you use to channel in your energy and get yourself where you need to be? And the final point is ramp C. The C stands for compete. And this is a big change, Cendra, in my years of doing this, that I would say the last five years, what I'm hearing from the college coaches and high school coaches

is the kids do not know how to compete they know how to showcase how to get the scholarship how to show their talent but they haven't spent the time competing and learning to compete is a skill and as crazy as it sounds we have to teach them how to compete. And for me and Tom, what we came up with in our book was competing basically equals giving 100% of what you've got to win the next pitch in baseball and softball. In basketball, it may be the next possession. In football, it may be the next play based on the sport. But you're going to give 100% of what you got. And that's what

competing is all about. So those are some of the techniques that we get into and I get into in my work syndrome. Excellent, Ken. There's so many ways that I could go from there. Two follow-up questions I have for sure is, how do you think that we teach athletes to compete? You know, we can tell them, you know, it's about giving 100% of what you got right now on this play. What other ways do you think that we can really teach athletes this? Because this is something I've heard as well in terms of at the high school or college level that, you know, like maybe another way to explain it is that they're just,

the athletes aren't as gritty or they don't stick with things as long as they possibly can or as long as they used to. Right. Well, a couple of things leading into competition. One thing I've learned in my years of doing this with professional athletes and Olympic athletes, confidence is fragile. Let's be real clear on that. Now, I know for the listeners, they think these top-level athletes have everything all together. Believe me, they're human beings like you and I, Cedric. They have their flaws and their

frailties. You don't see it on TV, but we all have it. Confidence is fragile. To learn to compete, you've got to learn to compete when you have your A game, when everything's going great, that's fantastic, but you also got to learn to compete when you got your B game and your C game. And one thing I ask athletes all the time is I ask them this question. Are you that crappy an athlete that you have to feel good to perform well? Because from my perspective, feeling good is overrated. You don't have to feel good to perform well. With baseball players, if you ask them when they were a kid

and they played wiffle ball with their friends, how many times did their friends come to the house, knock at the door, and say, do you want to play? Never once do you ask yourself, how do I feel today? Where's my swing at? I don't know. No, you went out and you played, you competed. And it didn't matter what you had, you made the most of what you got. And that's what's so important. And how do you teach that? The way you teach that is, I think, encouraging kids to compete more in different sports. I mean, the one thing the research is showing us is this specialization may not be as

great as we once thought it was, and that the athletes need to participate in a variety of sports and get those different competitive experiences. So that would be one area where they could do it. Another area is in the way they do their practice and training. And this is one thing, Sindra, I don't know about your work, but in my work, when I first started, so much of my energy was getting college teams ready for nationals, big meets, big competition, big games. And within five years doing the work, my energy shifted to today's practice, today's training. And talking about today's practice, today's training, that's where you do the work. That's where you do the competing.

That's where you give 100% of what where you give a hundred percent of what you got to take care of the next drill the next thing you're trying to do um so it's got to be done in practice and training boy cindy you asked me a question and i blah blah am i talking too much no way it's amazing i feel like you're like giving us so much wisdom. I appreciate everything that you're giving us, but absolutely no, I love it. And with the wisdom, with the wisdom syndrome, one thing I want to say about that is the stuff I'm sharing has come from the coaches and athletes that I had the privilege to work with and learn from. And I have learned so much more from my failures and the mistakes that I've made. And when you do the

work and when you're coaching, you're going to make mistakes, things are going to happen. But you've got to spend some time reflecting on it and learning from that experience. And this is what goes on when you talk about how do we teach competition. Well, one way we teach competition is we have the competitive experience, but then it's not only having the experience, but it's processing, reflecting on, and talking about what the heck we learned out there. For the coaches in the group, after your games, do you spend some time just debriefing and getting the lessons learned from what happened?

In my last 10 years of teaching at Cal State Fullerton, Cendra, I had students that graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. They served in Iraq or Afghanistan, where they were in charge of 140 to 150 soldiers. And after their tour of duty, they came to Fullerton, where they did a master's with me in sports science. From our program, they went back to West Point where they worked in the performance center at West Point where they work on the mental skills as they relate to academics, sport, and military. And one of the things I learned from those four gentlemen and one woman that I had the privilege of working with was the after action review. When they went out on the mission, after the mission was over, they sat down and got the lessons learned.

And even just as a performer or for the coaches in the audience, if you could just ask these two questions, what went well and what do we have to get better at? And that will start triggering stuff so that then we can learn. We have this game. We went out and competed. Great. But what did we learn from it so we can get better for the next time? So this act of reflection and thinking about is a very important skill for athletes to embrace. Yeah and I would guess

really important for coaches and also you know consultants like us you know there are times that it doesn't always go perfectly for us either. Ken, I have two questions about failure. What do you think that the, when you watch the best of the best, right? So we could talk about Major League Baseball here. When you see, you know, the best perform, how do you think that they respond to failure? How do they approach it and how do they respond to it? I think they get upset. I think they get upset. I think they get frustrated.

They get, I mean, one thing I've learned is when you don't perform to your capabilities, you feel terrible. Okay. I talk with teams, losing sucks. But if the opponent beats you, you can sleep at night. If you beat yourself, then you stare at the ceiling all night. So there's the point where getting back to that responsibility, accountability, did I do all the things I could do to perform to my capabilities. And if I did, hey, I can feel good about the performance. Now, right after the performance, I may be upset. But in reflection, I can get the

information learned from the performance so that I can get better. Okay. And also, this is one of the things we hear all the time about focusing on success. Well, I'll tell you, fear of failure is a heck of a motivator. I mean, I see a lot of high level athletes, they do not want to fail. So what does that mean? That means they're going to do the work. They're going to do the physical preparation. They're going to do the mental preparation. They're going to take care of their bodies. They're going to eat properly. They're going to do everything so they don't fail. And that can be a heck of a motivator because failing hurts. And when it stops hurting, then it's time for you to leave your game. It's one of the things I see with the high level athletes. Wow, that's really good. Ken, can you tell us about a time you failed? You know, like,

as we're listening, we might think, oh my gosh, 25 years at Major League Baseball. You know, your book, Heads of Baseball, is a legend, you know, but I know there are times that didn't go perfectly for you. Tell us a story about a time that you failed and then you know what we can learn from it I think I think what you're saying here is critical and you brought it up earlier for the sports site people listening to this we are performers and there's times we do fail and we have to get the lessons learned out of our failures and what happened in that situation. I think of the time, failure, three years into my career and I'm teaching at Cal State Fullerton. I'm working with the teams. And the UCLA Athletic Department invites me to come up and give a presentation to their coaches.

They have one meeting a year where they have a banquet. And then they have speakers. They have a speaker talk to their coaches. So I was selected to be the speaker and I'm sitting there, we're in this restaurant and I'm getting ready to do my talk. And who walks in the back of the room? John Wooden, the great UCLA basketball coach. He had retired, but he came to hear the speaker. I was the speaker. And John Wooden is going to be listening to me.

Here's one of the greatest college coaches of all time, and I've got to talk. So I start doing my talk syndrome. Stress management in sport, I think, was the theme. And all of a sudden, I noticed that my armpits are getting a little wet and then I start noticing sweat building up on my forehead and the next thing I know is I have this bead of sweat dripping down my forehead coming to my nose and dropping on my notes in front of me. And basically, I'm doing this presentation on stress management for athletics. And I'm basically starting to freak out in the midst of the presentation. So that didn't go too well, Sandra, to say the least. But what I learned from that that was very

important is I had gone into this presentation thinking, I'm going to go in there. I'm going to give a startling presentation. All the coaches are going to like it. They're going to want me to start working with their teams. This is going to be the beginning of my career. That was a heck of a lot of pressure to put on myself instead of going in and just talking about what I do. So that's what I learned from that one syndrome. So that was a disaster, but in the long haul, very positive experience, but frightening at the time. No question. One thing that I'm hearing in that situation is that you were just future-based. You were thinking about, you know, what was going to happen after your presentation instead of just being there with them and getting delivering. Absolutely. And being there for them, you were really maybe perhaps there for yourself,

which you're right, doesn't always help us. Yep. You got it on that one. No question. So Ken, you've talked about a lot of lot of man so much value already you know besides the ramp c which you talked about the breathing which we talked about the y is there you know a signature technique that perhaps you use you know that you know is is like ken revisit could you share with us one of those i I think two techniques I'd say. One we've already talked about, and that's the breathing, which I've been doing for ages with athletes. And the other is making sure with their performance that they spend time

when they go to a new venue, new place where they're performing, that they spend the time familiarizing themselves with the environment. And then one of the things, this idea that it begins before it begins, that you get comfortable as you can be in that environment. And in the venue, you pick out a focal point, something, a flag. It could be a sign on the wall. When you look at that thing, it reminds you to pull your chest up. It reminds you that you worked hard, that you paid the dues, that you belong here. And that technique of a focal point has been huge.

And so many athletes have shared with me how much that helped in their moments of insecurity in performance and being able to get themselves back. And also, Cinder, what it serves to do by having something external that you're focused on, it gets your attention out of your head where all the fear and self-doubt is, and gets you out, gets you on that external thing. Because competition is external. You have to focus on your opponent, the ball, the target, whatever the thing may be, and you've got to lock into that. So you can't be too internal with your focus and concentration. Yeah, that's good.

So those would be two of the techniques that have been real helpful for me. Awesome. Awesome. You know, one of the things that you mentioned earlier was just that, you know, we might think these elite athletes are like these just super humans. They never experienced self-doubt. You talked about how confidence is fragile. And just now you talked about, you know, that even these high-level athletes need a focus

cue to remind themselves that they belong here. What insights can you share with us just in terms of that they are human? And what am I really trying to get at is that they are just like all of us, right? So maybe you can share with us a story or maybe an example or your insights at this level. What do you see? I think one of the things, Cinder, and you're really hitting it, we tend to think that at that level, these people have it all together. And we all have our frailties. I just want to emphasize that, that whatever level you're working at, whatever level you're coaching at, whatever you can do, I mean,

the top level really isn't that different. In some ways they are, but very often the only difference they have is they have a special talent, okay? But emotionally they go through many of the same things especially as a professional athlete gets older and he or she doesn't have the physical skills that they once had you don't think they notice that they notice. And then they have to get their mental game together if they're not already using it

to make the most of what skills they do have left. And that's what a lot of our young practitioners are doing with the teams they're working with is making the case on why the mental game is important at all levels of performance. One thing I would recommend, Cedric, to your listeners is we did this thing, and it's almost eight years ago, where ESPN did a thing called E60, and you can get it on the internet. And you just punch in Evan Longoria, the third baseman for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Evan Longoria, E60. And it's a 10-minute clip of him talking about the mental game and how he got into it in college at Long Beach State where we worked together. And he talks about how as a young athlete he worked with it and now as a professional athlete how he's working with it. And I'll tell you, I just saw Evan about a month ago, and he's still working it. And it's just a beautiful thing, and it's a nice tool for coaches to show athletes or sports-like people to get the buy-in that the mental game is important.

Yeah, and one thing I heard you just say is that, you know, that even Evan is still working it, right? Like the mental game isn't something that you maybe work on for a year and then you don't. It's a constant process. Absolutely. It's just like life. We've got to be working on ourselves and getting better at what we do. It's not like once you think you have it, you're in trouble. It's constant evolution. It's a constant learning that you're

going through. And this is one of the things we really emphasize in the new Heads Up Baseball 2 book is the ongoing journey and how there's constant fluctuations that occur with the mental game. Because the mental game can be so simple, but at the same time, it can be complex. And in one of our discussions, the gentleman I wrote the book with, Tom Hanson, he said, so really, Ken, what we're talking about is simplexity. And I said, that's it. It's simplexity. It's simple, but it's complex. And I think one of the issues we have in sports and coaching today is we simplify everything. But there's a point where you can make it too simple and that becomes a problem.

No question. For sure. For sure. Yeah. How do you see that play out in real life where maybe we simplify it too much? I think where, hey, if I just believe I can achieve anything I want, you know, if I just have the image of it, if I just believe, if I believe I can achieve. Well, I'm sorry. It takes a heck of a lot of work, and it takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. And the belief is one part of the puzzle, but you better do the work that goes with it and the preparation. And you better be ready to deal with the adversity. It's not that simple. And I think this is one of the issues we get into today is we make it sound so simple. You know, if you believe you can achieve. It's complex. It's not that simple.

And it's hard for young people to understand that, but that's what it takes. You know, Ken put a tweet out today that I was going to be interviewing you and got several responses. So I'm going to ask you a few questions that people post on Twitter. Okay. Okay. These are really good questions, and I can't ask you all of them, but I've picked a few here. So one question is, you know, what do you think about, it seems like in Major League Baseball, there's more of an openness to hiring sports psychology or mental training staff compared to other pro sports. What do you think that's about? And, you know, do you also see that? So that baseball's having more, is what you're saying? Yeah. Yep.

And that is accurate. I think the first wave of sports psych work was with Olympic athletes. And this goes back to the 1960s when the Soviet Union and East Germany had the powerhouses, and they were doing a lot of work in sports psych. And the U.S. caught on, and then it hit the zenith in the 1980s, especially the games in L.A. Most of the teams, U.S. Olympic teams, had sports psych people working with them. Now, from there, at that time, 1985, when I started with the Angels, there was Harvey Dorfman with the Oakland A's. I was with the Angels. And there was a gentleman, Charlie Maher, who was with the Indians.

There were three of us. And that has mushroomed today where I believe 28 of the 30 teams have sports psych people working with them. And most of the changes happened in just the last five years. And the reason for that is because in baseball, they did the strength and conditioning. Everyone got into that. Then they did the analytics, and now everyone's into analytics. And it's almost like right now the next new thing is the whole mental game thing, and a lot of teams have jumped on board with that.

So that's why baseball has really taken off with it. Now, football has some, and I'm hearing more and more in the football world, the NFL, and the NBA, more of the teams are getting involved. So I think it's just part of performance and people are finally getting it, Sindra. Yeah. But what's key is for the young practitioners, you've got to learn your craft so that you can do the work. So when your opportunity comes, you can really deliver the program you want to deliver. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Next question. If you were going to write a letter to your younger self, let's say maybe when you just started out or maybe, you know, 20 years ago, what would you say in that letter? That's great. That's a great question. Whoever came up with that, that's a wonderful question. What would I do differently? One, I don't think I'd do

much differently because what I said earlier was when I was doing the work, I was always doing the work where I was at. And then one thing led to the next. So that was very, very helpful to just be patient. What would I tell myself to do differently? In the baseball world, I would say learn Spanish. I wish I had done that. I tried on a couple of occasions, couldn't pull that off. That would be one thing if you're going into that sport where so many of the athletes speak that language. That would be important.

Another thing, I did a lot of work on myself. There's not a technique I've used with athletes and coaches that I haven't used on myself. And what I would do differently is probably do even more self-work on figuring out my stuff. That I think I would do more of. I did some of it, but you never can do enough of that. So those are a couple of things, Cendra, I would say. That's excellent. Excellent.

Really, really good. What about this question? What are some of the key or desirable attributes of a sports psychology consultant who's just starting out and trying to get their foot in the door? So what do you think really, you know, the desired attributes of a consultant are doing this type of work that you and I are doing? Okay, great question. I talked about that a lot in my, with my graduate students over the years. I think one, what are some of the attributes? I think the desire and willingness to learn is huge. And that plays itself out with going and observing and watching and spending the time. You're not going to learn this quick. I remember I would have graduate students and I would always say, I'm doing a talk. You can

come and sit in and they sit in the back of the room and they watch. And there would be some man, I could talk about anything. They would be there. They would watch. It would be the same talk they heard a hundred times. They would be there because every time they heard it, they were picking up something different. Sometimes when they were watching me talk, they would watch me. They would watch the audience. They would reflect back and forth. Other times they were just listening to content. Now, there were also students who said, well, I heard that talk. Well, they didn't get it. So this idea of going out and doing the observation and really learning to perceive things and take them in.

Second, work on yourself. Like I just mentioned, you don't do any technique with anyone that you haven't used on yourself. And I would also encourage you to use it on some close friends. Experiment with it. Try it. That would be another thing I'd bring into it. Third thing, learn the literature. Read in the area of sports psych.

Read books. Read journals. the literature, read in the area of sports psych, read books, read journals, because part of our job is taking research data, some of it, and applying it and putting it into a language that coaches and athletes can understand. And I'm not going to sit here and say everything has to be totally research-based, but you do have to understand some of the basic concepts that go into it. Just because you played sport isn't necessarily a reason why you're ready to do sports psychology. That's for darn sure. What other qualities? I think being creative is very important, that you're able to deliver your program in a way that keeps people

engaged in what you're doing. I think that that is huge. And the creativity that it takes to do that. And that's what's exciting in this day and age, how we how we get the athletes to buy into what we're talking about. So those would be a couple of things that I would throw out. Yeah, good, Ken. You know, I wanted to ask you a question about your creativity, because one of the things that I see that's unique about you compared to perhaps other people in the field is that you're able to present these ideas in really sticky ways,

like RAMP C, you know, like this acronym or this phrase you came up with. Can you talk about, you know, how that's developed over time and how you still work to stay creative? I think a lot of that developed for me from the teaching in the university environment, that being in that university environment, you had to be creative in your classes to keep the students engaged. So that was definitely a part of it. And for me, it was also a matter of bringing it to life. You can talk about releasing things, but then one of my things was I would have like a small, this small plastic toilet that had a flushing sound. And people, you know, it was just, it became a symbol.

This toilet became a symbol of letting stuff go, of flushing things, of moving on to the next thing, so that the symbols really represent things to the athlete, and just the symbol can become an important teaching tool. One of the techniques I've used over the years, Cinder, is when an athlete's feeling a lot of pressure, I will actually get up sometimes and just lean on their back and be the pressure and just have them walk around with me, dragging me around a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. I think another story on that, Cinder, early in my career, I started in gymnastics. And I remember we had one meet where we had a great meet going on. And then all of a sudden, we went into the subliminal scheme. We went into beam.

And we did a terrible job. And then we carried the beam to the uneven bars. And the uneven bars were terrible. And the coach was totally frustrated. So that was like on a Friday night. And then Monday when we practiced in the gym, I had the men's team, they got there early, the men's team was there.

I had them take the balance beam and put it on the run, put it right in front of the uneven bars and that's that's an unusual sight to have the beam in front of the uneven bars for women so the coach came in talked about the meat and he said we're going to start off put on your grips we're going to go to uneven bars we get over to uneven bars and the girls go we can't do uneven bars the beans in the way and the coach said what did we do friday night did we carry the bean over to the uneven bar you know and the girls went that's exactly what we did we can't do that

yeah it's one thing to tell them you can't do it, and it's another thing to see it, feel it, experience it, and that is huge. Excellent, Ken. Ken, one last question from the Twitter feed, and then we'll wrap up. I know you and I could talk all day, but the last question I have on Twitter is, this is what someone said. They said, I heard Ken Revizzo speak in the nineties. It was life-changing for me as a coach. And so he wanted me to ask you about filling a bathtub with water to test one's perfection. Tell us that story. Yeah, that's a good one. That's another example of perfectionism. And what I developed was what we call the Kenra Vista bathtub test for perfection. And that means basically you fill a

bathtub up with an inch of water and you have the athlete stand on the surface of the water. If they're able to stand on the surface of the water, they're expected to be perfect. But if they fall through and touch porcelain, they're a human being. And I haven't had too many people that can walk on water. So let's let go of the perfectionism. You can also do it with swimming pools. It doesn't work, right? People can't walk on water. It doesn't work. Yeah.

Once again, once again, Sandra, the issue is it gives you a chance to just laugh at it a little bit and just chuckle and take the serious thing out of it and go, yeah, that's right. I do do that. You know, because the first thing is the athlete has to understand it and learn it. The next thing is they have to do it. And then the final thing is they have to own it. And owning it is where you customize it into a system that works for you. Ah, excellent. So three steps, understand it, do it as the second step, and then own it. Oh, Ken, man, you have given us so much value today. I think everything that came out of your mouth could be a tweet. It's so much value. Thank you. Of course. I thank you so much for being on the podcast. I know you have a classic book,

Heads Up Baseball, that everyone should pick up. You have a new book coming out that's going to be launched in September, Heads Up Baseball 2. Tell us how we can get on your mailing list so we can learn about the book's launch. Tell us a little bit more about that. We'll be sending more out, but I know I'll be contacting you to send out to your people, but they can go to headsupbaseball2.com and they can sign up there for your, we're trying to get the email so we can send out information on the launch, which is going to come September 17th, around then.

And people could get the new book at that point. And then we're really excited about it. Tom and I spent the last, we thought we were going to bang it out in a year, and it ended up taking three years. But we really feel good about it. And I think it's really a nice extension of our first book. Absolutely. I have a preview copy here and it's absolutely amazing. So everyone needs to head over to Heads of Baseball 2.

Get on the mailing list so you know when it's launched, September 17th. Is there anything else you can tell us about, anything else about the book before we wrap up? About the book? Yeah. It's for basically coaches and for athletes. And it's very comprehensive. It has a lot of quotes by athletes. Every athlete in the book, well, pretty much every athlete, I'd say 90% of them are athletes that I actually worked with. And they're talking about the mental game and and also, Cinder, how complex it can be.

And to hear it from these folks is very interesting. The other thing we're excited with is when we wrote the first book, we got a lot of feedback from parents how the book helped their son, their daughter in life, not just in baseball or softball. And in this book, we put a chapter in on how the mental skills come into play, not only in sport, but in life in general. And that's just something in my years of doing this, I can't tell you, Sandra, the number of students,

ex-athletes I had that came back and said to me, you know, Ken, the stuff we did 20 years ago when I was at Fullerton was great. But I'll tell you, I'm using it more in my life today than I ever did as an athlete. And to me, that's really what it's about, Cendra. These are life skills we're talking about. For sure. For sure. So you can pick up now, Heads Up Baseball. I know it's about, Cinder. These are life skills we're talking about. For sure, for sure. So you can pick up now, Heads Up Baseball. I know it's on Amazon. I have a copy right here. What else were you going to say, Ken? Well, at this point, Cinder, it's not on Amazon. They're going

to have to go to the website, headsupbaseball.2.com, and then they can put in their information there. And that's the best way to progress at this point. But September 17th, that's when the launch will be taking place. Excellent. And they can pick up your first book, Heads Up Baseball, on Amazon, right? Correct. Correct. Excellent. Excellent.

Perfect. Well, Ken, first of all, I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast, for sharing so much amazing value and being open to sharing your wisdom with us. I know that you impacted thousands of people just by engaging in this interview. And I want to share with you a few things that I absolutely loved that you shared. So I liked that you said, you know, your advice for people doing this work is being engaged in what you're doing right now. shared. So I liked that you said, you know, your advice for people doing this work is being engaged in what you're doing right now. That so many times we can wish we were working with this team or,

you know, doing this work, but being where your feet are is really important. You talked about how confidence is fragile and how, you know, that even the best of the best sometimes struggle with their confidence. You talked about breathing and how actually you teach the breath and why it's important. Then you talked about ramp C, responsibility, awareness, your mission preparation. And you talked about competing and how we can help our athletes compete. And we talked about failure and how the best really take these lessons from times that they failed. And then how the mental game is simple and complex all at the same time. So, Ken, I just want to thank you so much for your willingness to share, you know, so openly

everything that's going through your head. And thank you so much for your time and your energy and your amazing impact on this field. Well, Cinder, that was a heck of a summary. You did a nice job pulling all that together. Good for you. And hopefully you'll have me on again at some point. And it was fun talking to you about the mental game. Absolutely.

So everyone can head over to headsupbaseball2.com. Thank you so much, Ken. I appreciate your time. Okay, Sindra. Take care. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you liked today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend, and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out drsindra.com.