High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 136: The Journey Towards Excellence with Dr. Traci Statler, Professor & Consultant to USA Track & Field

Episode Date: September 29, 2017

Dr. Traci Statler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at California State University, Fullerton. She has been providing sport and performance consulting services for over 15 years, and currently serves as a consultant for USA Track and Field, USA Volleyball, USA Pole Vault, and a variety of additional collegiate programs. She furthermore conducts individual performance enhancement sessions with professional and junior elite athletes, medical practitioners, and police officers in southern California. She is the upcoming president for the Association for Applied Sport Psychology and also has served as the Vice President of the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP). She had the privilege of attending the Rio Olympics with USA Track and Field as their sport psychology consultant. You can find the full show notes at cindrakamphoff.com/traci. If you enjoyed today's episodes, tag Traci @TraciStatler and Cindra @Mentally_Strong on Twitter.

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 episode 136 with Tracy Stadler. 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 high performers in our field or sport.

And in today's episode, I enjoyed talking to Dr. Tracy Stadler. Tracy is an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology at California State University Fullerton. And she's been providing sport and performance consulting services for over 15 years. Most currently, she is a consultant with USA Track and Field, USA Volleyball, USA Pool Vault, and lots of other collegiate programs. Other programs she's worked with or other sports she's worked with include football, water polo, baseball, softball. And she also works individually with athletes to enhance their performance. She's the upcoming president of the Association for Applied Sports Psychology

and has served as the vice president of the International Society of Sports Psychology or ISSP. Now one of the coolest things that we talk about is she had an amazing privilege of attending the Summer Olympic Games last year with USA Track and Field as their sports psychology consultant. And we talk about a lot of different things here. She describes her definition of mindset, why struggling is essential for our success, and how the best deal with mistakes and disappointment. We also talked about what you should do if you're just not feeling it, why failing faster is the key to success. And then we describe and talk about things like authenticity and how it's connected to being successful and how successful athletes prepared for the Olympics.

And this is interesting. They actually worked two years before the games to help prepare their mindset. So I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation. Very fascinating into a deeper level of Olympic athletes and what they need to do to be at their best when it matters most. Now, I have a few of my favorite quotes from this podcast interview. This one is my favorite. Tracy said, we have to fail to have the pain to be motivated, which ultimately leads to

our success. And then she talked about how we can intentionally show up at our best. And she talked about, we want to think about how to think, feel, do, and be. Now, if you enjoyed this episode, we'd love for you to head over to Twitter. You can tag Tracy at Tracy Stadler on Twitter, as well as myself, mentally underscore strong. And you can find a full description and show notes over at the page,

cindracampoff.com slash Tracy with an I. Before we head over to listen to Tracy and gain her insights, I'd like to head over to iTunes and read a review. This is from Jay Kenneth says, great podcast that shows the road to success that comes from our inner selves. Lots of takeaways. Cinder makes what we need to do very accessible. Thank you so much for Jay Kenneth. And if you enjoyed today's episode, I'd encourage you to do one of three things. You can head over to iTunes,

leave a comment and review. That helps us reach more and more people each week and keeps these interviews for free. You can also share it on social media, such as on Twitter or Facebook. And the third thing you can do is tell a friend about the podcast. That would be awesome. All right, without further ado, let's bring on Tracy. Welcome, Tracy Stadler, to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I'm stoked to talk to you today about mental training and sports psychology. Thank you so much for joining us here. So happy I could finally do this.

That's great. So to kind of get us started, just give us a little bit of background about what your passion is and how you developed that. Well, my passion is probably for helping other people attain excellence in whatever domains they're trying to attain excellence in. Okay. I got into this a long, long time ago, mostly because I was an athlete who never felt like I was reaching my maximum potential. Okay. I was sort of tapping out on my physical skills, but I wasn't advancing as far as outcome was going. Okay. So my coach at the time recommended that I take a sports psychology class

as an undergrad. And it was the first time, first introduction I'd ever had to sports psych, and I was absolutely blown away by what that class was about, what the content was, to the point where that pretty much had me change my major in college. Wow. Completely take a new track from that point forward. So was this when you were in college at UNC Chapel Hill? Yeah, as an undergrad at the University of North Carolina. I was lucky enough to have that undergrad class with the founder of ASK, John Silva. Yeah, that's awesome. That was pretty cool. And what, what do you feel like led you to pursue that? Was there something athletically, you know, can you kind of paint us a picture of what, what happened? Because I have a, I have a similar situation where I was a really, really good athlete and kind of just trying to figure it out on my own.

It was like my mind got in my way. So just tell us a little bit about that and what made you to seek out that class. Yeah, I was probably a coach's nightmare, quite honestly. Because I was that athlete that needed to hyperanalyze everything. And I was always asking why and if you weren't like a really secure confident coach I was probably that kid that you just rolled your eyes when they saw you walking up to them um so because of my like super hyper analytic nature I really wanted to understand every element of performance and while that can be really good for deconstructing something, for breaking it down,

for unpacking all of the elements of what makes performance great, for an untrained mind, that can also lead to perfectionism, that can lead to anxiety, and that's kind of what I was experiencing. So I would compete really well in practice runs and practice competitions and those kinds of things, but when it came to bigger competitions, I was terrible. And my coaches couldn't figure out what was going on because technically I was fine. Skills set, I was fine. If you looked at rankings, I was expected to be competitive. You know, not necessarily podium, but competitive.

And I just wasn't hitting that capability. They basically threw up their hand and said, we don't know what to tell you. Go talk to this guy, go, you know, take this class, see if that helps you. Yeah. It did help me become a better athlete in my, in my senior year. It made me a better athlete. But I pretty quickly realized that I was pretty much tapped out on my physical capabilities and my mental capabilities got me a little bit better, but still not enough to make it to the next level so so Tracy what sports were you in there tell us

like what you were competing in yeah so at that time I was a skier I was a competitive downhill skier um well my discipline was downhill but because I was skiing on the east coast in college where I was we didn't really have a lot of downhill competition. So I did a fair amount of super G and giant slalom. But I was also, before that, I was competitive in volleyball, softball, and swimming. But I'm talking predominantly from college, it was for skiing. And then that first class with John Silva helped you, you know, pursue the interest in sports psychology is my sense. Tell us a little bit about your trajectory since then. So that, like I said, that really sort of opened my eyes to the possibility of this as a profession. I didn't even know that this existed. And I got really excited about the idea that there was this, this job, this profession where you could,

number one, work with athletes all the time because I love being an athlete I felt like being an athlete allowed me to do lots of different things in my life number two at that time it would put you in predominantly an academic environment and I loved college so being able to stay in a college environment was like a dream come true to me and being able to help other people like like I said, maximize their potential. I feel like I was able to maximize my potential in that particular sport. Granted, that potential wasn't at the highest level, but I was able to recognize that that's the best I was capable of. And I really squeezed everything I could out of my mental, physical, technical, tactical abilities

to do that. So at least I knew that's what my max was. The idea of being able to help other people do that just really resonated with me. So between talking with Dr. Silva at UNC and another faculty member in a different department in the educational psych department, Dick Koop, Richard Koop, at the time was working with professional golfers, kind of picking both of their brains, I realized that in order to do this, I needed to go on for master's level training. And they as most really good undergrad advisors do said, go do some research, go ask some questions. They sent me on my way to a sports psychology conference, a regional conference at the University of Virginia, where I got to listen to people like

Bob Rotella, and Robin Vealy, and just some amazing people. And at that meeting, that first sort of regional sports psychology meeting that I went to as a junior in college, Ken Reviza was there. And he was speaking, he had just returned from, I think, a personal trip to India, and was regaling the audience with his stories of yoga and mindfulness in India, and how that related to sports and baseball. And I was blown away. And because I probably was a precocious pain in the neck student, I managed to get myself an invitation to like an after party, if you will, that Bob Rotella was having at his house, where he invited a bunch of his colleagues, and I guess some random students,

you know, from his grad program, invited them back to their house afterwards to talk to all of his friends. And Ken Revisa was there. So, you know, here I am this, this, you know, junior in college, I don't know anything. I don't know anybody and I'm sitting in this room with some of the Titans of this industry and just listening to them absolutely blown away. And I decided sitting in Bob Rotella's basement that I was going to be a sports psychology consultant. I was going to follow Ken Revisa and whatever he told me to do,

I was going to do. Oh, that's super cool. That's a great story, Tracy, because you know, for people who aren't necessarily in the field, working in the field, they don't necessarily know who Barbara teller or Ken Revisa or Robin V Lee, you know who they are, but these are people that we've looked up to who are a mentor and then to know that you committed to pursuing this field when you're in Bob Rotella's basement that's awesome so then you went and studied with with Ken at Fullerton and then ended up putting your PhD as well yeah so I did my master's with Ken Revisa at Cal State Fullerton and had such a

great experience there I I tried to get everything I could out of working with him, having him guide me. I went to shadow as many opportunities as he allowed me to shadow him on and really just tried to understand what it was that made him particularly so special. And doing that, I got exposed to the Association for the Advancement of Applied Sports Psychology, ASPEN. Started going to conferences, started listening to other people who were also phenomenally amazing at what they did doing the same profession, and decided to go on for a PhD. And because of my interactions with Ken and going to ASP and interacting with some of his colleagues, I got introduced to Keith Henschen at the University of Utah.

And Henschen was one of the, you know, again, one of the gurus of the field and basically just decided that it wasn't, to me, it wasn't about the program, it wasn't about the geography, it was about people. So I took every opportunity I could to learn from the best people where they were or what they were doing because that's how I figured I could make myself better so I got to spend a really good amount of time with Keith Henschen learning from him and and following his experiences and and thankfully being able to you know I look at it like picking up his breadcrumbs,

the business that he couldn't take on because he was overloaded and had too much to do. He would turn to us, his graduate students, and say, I got this guy. You want to talk to him? I'm like, yeah, please send it my way. Yeah, well, that's awesome. You've had such incredible mentorship and mentors along the way that really shaped you. Let's talk a little bit about your work now, professor at Cal State Fullerton, but I also know that you do a lot of work with like USA Track and Field, and you said USA Volleyball, and I know you do a lot of other work in elite sports. Let's actually just kind of dive into that a little bit more, and tell us what you think separates those who can really outperform those that don't. What do you think are their psychological

characteristics? What do you think are their psychological characteristics? What do you see them do differently? It's funny that you ask that in that particular way, because that was exactly my dissertation research. Nice. So there we go. I was trying to uncover what makes great performers great. You know,

what's the difference between effectiveness and excellence? Very specifically with regard to sports psychology consultants so what makes the great sports psychology consultants great sports psychology consultants um but that's kind of shaped my my philosophy if you will um for the last 30 years is trying to really unpack what's the difference between people who are amazing at what they do and people that are really really good but maybe not at that upper echelon, that highest level. I've been incredibly fortunate to be able to, to really dive into performance at the highest level, being able to work with a couple of Olympic teams and the athletes and the coaches and the support

people that contribute to that. And, and honestly, the thing that I find that makes the biggest difference, other than at sport, obviously, the physicality, the physical, the technical, the tactical, the physical and the technical are pretty much consistent across performers. I mean, you might have a phenom like Usain Bolt or somebody like that who's just ridiculously good at everything that they do but for the most part the physical performances really start to compress at the highest levels what I'm finding makes the biggest difference for me is mindset and the ability to maintain consistency of high level performance no matter what the conditions. Okay. Anybody can be great one time.

Yeah. But true greatness to me is an outcome that comes from being really great all the time and being able to mitigate all of the external factors that might derail somebody with a slightly lower level of ability. That consistency, that consistency of mindset, that consistency of attention, that consistency of confidence, that consistency is really the thing to me that separates the truly phenomenal performers from the other really effective, good, but not quite podium level. Absolutely. So I like what you're saying in terms of consistency, but then also the mindset. Tell us what you mean by mindset and what do you think the things that are included within that in terms of what are the best do differently?

Yeah. So, so mindset is one of those really popular, like catchphrases right now. A lot of people are jumping on the mindset bad wagon um you know that and mindfulness yeah for sure well maybe because carol dweck's you know like exactly exactly fix mindset but yeah keep on going tracy sorry about that so i love i love the the foundation underlying all of those concepts um but i think to, what mindset truly is, is your ability to control your thought processes, control your emotions in such a way that they contribute to your task. So being able to recognize what relevant cues are and filter out those irrelevant cues. The ability to be reactive to environments, but recognize what emotional reactions are going to negatively detract

from your performance and which ways you can siphon off that energy to help benefit you. So mindset to me is about being able to use your cognitive abilities very intentionally for ideal performance. And that fills a whole gamut of different sort of mental skills type things. Absolutely. But I think it transcends that. It's not just about how you use your self-talk.

It's not just about whether or not you do effective imagery. It's not just about how you know, how well you direct appropriate attention and focus. All of those things are absolutely a piece of it. But there's a bigger umbrella to me that really sort of encompasses the idea of putting all of those things together in the right recipe for the individual in that moment. That's what generates that consistency. That's what generates the appropriate mindset for effective performance. Absolutely. And the reality is, is that mindset is going to be different for every person because every person's permutations are different. Sure, for sure. Yeah. And how do you see that, you know, even at the highest levels? I'm thinking

about at USA Track and Field, it might be a thrower versus a sprinter versus, does it depend on, do you think it depends on the person, their does it depend on do you think it depends on the person their mindset differences or do you think it depends on their sport or their event or what do you think about that yes all of that all of that so i mean to to come back to track and field for example the the mental skill set that you need to be able to be an effective 100 meter sprinter is in some ways very similar to the effective mindset that you need to be an effective shot putter. But the context of the performance itself has a lot of other variables that cause for differences in that effective mindset. So for a sprinter, you know, for an elite male sprinter, 10 seconds and you're done. For an elite male sprinter, less than 10 seconds and you're done. For an elite shot putter,

your competition can run an hour and a half, two hours. So how do you navigate the ups and downs within your performance is very different for a sprinter than it would be for a shot putter. You know, a shot putter has to be able to get their energy level, get their focus exactly where it needs to be. Yeah. Three seconds, throw the shot, step away, process, step back, wait 15 or 20 minutes while all of your competitors perform right bring your energy level and your focus back to where it needs to be and do the same thing and you do that six times right so that's very different than a sprinter who comes out of the call room steps out onto the track goes through a couple of starts you know waits to hear you know gets gets in the blocks waits to hear the gun you know, has that instantaneous reaction,

that step out of the block, and nine and a half seconds later, ten seconds later, they're done. So very different components of performance, but the other piece of that too is the person. So some people like to be like super social, some people tend to isolate. Some people are, you know, need, need a sort of an isolationist sort of mindset beforehand. So it really just depends on that person. And that to me is the beauty of doing what it is that we do is that every person is different. Every sport is different. Every competition is different. So it really forces us as consultants to have to really know our stuff, basically, that we have to be able to react effectively every single time. And that's one of the things I love about doing this job. I love being put on the spot and having to figure out a solution or a recommendation or

what's the right cue to reinforce this person right here, right now. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I also think about how when you were kind of describing the differences between events, I think about how, you know, in the shop put, for example, you have so much time where you have downtime. You said 15 minutes. And that can be a lot of time where you're like overthinking or you're questioning if you can do well. What kind of advice would you give to somebody who has a lot of downtime in their performance? You're right. It is very different than the fast 10-second sprint where it's over, right?

And the energy level needs to be different. So what do you think about that? Like, do you have a process you help people work through? Or, you know, do you have a recommendation on what you think they should be doing in that 15 minutes? Well, again, I think it comes back to the person. So you've got to talk to the person beforehand. Before you give them any advice, you need to understand what their process is. Yeah. You want to talk to them, obviously, about when things are going great, you know, how did that work for you? When things didn't go so great, were there any differences to when it was going great? To try to get a sense of what their baselines are. And then I'll work with them

to figure out what I call are the critical moments within your performance. So for a shot putter, for a hammer thrower, for a jumper, somebody who has multiple attempts within one basic competition, you've got to look at what those critical moments are. So to me, working with them, we identify critical moments of when do you need to shift your attention to getting ready for performance? When do you need to change your mindset to stepping into the ring the circle the line the point what you know wherever your start point is what do you need to do to shut things down so that you can then perform okay what do you need to do directly following as you step out of that performance zone and back into like the holding pattern okay and then what do you do during the holding pattern okay pattern? Okay. So there's all of the, you know, you look at it like a timeline. There's all

of these pieces to what has to happen, what has to happen when. So for a lot of people, it's that holding pattern timeframe that totally screws them up because that's where, like what I was as an athlete, if you're over analytical, that's when you start picking apart your performance. That's when you start watching your competitors who are doing great and seeing how they do it and thinking, oh, well, maybe I should do that too. No, don't. But that's when your brain can actually start hindering your performance. So you've got to come up with a strategy for what you're going to do in that moment. So for some people, it's, you know, I've done things to the point where bring a book with you. And you know, when you step out of that circle, after you debrief and process what just happened and come up with your plan for what you're going to do next, you shut down your thought processes about that performance. And you go and

read three paragraphs, a chapter of a book while you're waiting. For others that, you know, that can't shift that quickly, it's go back and do some physical drills and really connect to the kinesthetic feeling of those physical drills that keep you neurologically activated, that keep you warm, whatever works for that person. I've had people even, the task for that in-between, that holding period, is to look around at the stadium and try to identify as many different color t-shirts as you can. And keep a running list in your head. Oh, there's orange, there's purple, there's pink, there's blue, there's black. To try to just force you to think about something other than what you need to be thinking about right now. Absolutely. I like what you're saying that it's very individualized and also like it's based on

what the person needs. There's not like, I think sometimes people think that there's like this quick fix, right? And then, you know, these mental skills help fix you. But I like what you're saying is that it really depends on the person and if they are over analytical or, you know, what they need in that moment. Tell us a little bit about the Olympics and, you know, I'd love to hear about your experience there, but also, you know, what do you think that helps, you know, athletes do really well there? And especially because it can be a place there's so much pressure and it's like they're at the biggest stage and maybe for some sports they aren't used to that in terms of, you know they they haven't been in the limelight or these athletes are in the limelight what every once every four years so just tell us about the uniqueness of the olympics for an

athlete yeah so i i was lucky enough to be able to go to rio this past olympics with our u.s track team track and field team and um i'll tell you, a lot of the work in handling the Olympics happened in the two years prior to actually getting on a plane and going to Rio. We had meetings with coaches. We had meetings with athletes. We did a lot of preparation beforehand to get them as ready as they could, not just physically and technically to be able to do their sport,

but mentally to be able to handle how this was going to be different. Because we can say it all the time. There is no such thing as a big competition. All competition is the same. The Hoosiers reference, you know, you measure from the rim down to the court. But the reality is, is the Olympics are different. And if you're not admitting that, if you're not recognizing that, if you're not preparing for that, you are going to be woefully surprised when you get there and can't

perform at your best. You've got to recognize that you've got to prepare for it. So like I said, we did a lot of preparation in about two years beforehand. Um, we talked a lot with coaches about trying to strategically use competitions, um, in those two years prior to try to, to practice competing, not just competing, doing your event, but practice what it feels like to compete. So try to figure out not just how to throw your shot, not just how to run your hurdles, but practice your mindset transitioning from the warmup track into the

column. Practice your mindset of sitting in the call room for 40 minutes in a space with your competitors and nothing else to look at, think about, talk about just being in that practice that. So, so that when you get to the Olympics, that doesn't feel foreign to you. We talked a lot about how there's, again, there's, there's, I'm big on symbolism. So trying to find the symbolism within the process and preparing yourself using imagery,

using discussion to plan for what those symbols are going to represent for you. So, and by that, what I mean is, you know, that the, we had, we had an amazing scout team within the national governing body of USA track and field that went to the facilities in Rio long before we ever showed up. And they took video of things. They took really detailed notes. So they came back and gave us descriptions

of everything from the layout of the village to what the transportation system was gonna be to how long the shuttles were gonna take to the layout of the track to where the warm-up track was so we had a pretty good representation before we ever got there of what to expect right so we did a a lot of work working with the coaches beforehand on helping those athletes create sort of demarcation zones or markers that symbolism of when you step from the warm-up

track, which was just outside competition, and you walk through this big sort of gate area into the, like, essentially the holding area underneath the stadium, where do you want your, you know, how do you want to think, how do you want to feel, How do you want to feel? Um, what do you want to do in that point? So that think, feel, do was a big, of what we, what we talked about. Um, when you get from there into the collar, cause you, you, you get taken in, they ask you a bunch of questions. You got to show your credential. They check your bag, they check your uniform, and then you get put into the call room,

which is basically a holding area with you and all of your other competitors. And you can't have any electronics with you. It's a really sort of structured space. And it's trippy because you're sitting there with, you know, your other eight or 16 competitors and you're just looking at each other like, okay, you ready for this? So it's a real psych out kind of play. Yeah, for sure. How are you going to handle that? Then the symbolism of stepping out from the tunnel, from the call room, onto the track itself and sort of the grandiosity of, boom, here it is. So how do you handle what that's going to feel

like and look like? So we spent, like I said, a lot of time beforehand talking through all of that. And then once we physically got on site for a lot of the athletes that I worked on this specifically with during the walk through before competition starts, they allow the athletes to come into the actual competition track to just get a sense of the layout. And it's an opportunity for sprinters to practice warming up with the starter so they get used to what the gun sounds like, how it echoes in the room, in the stadium, those kinds of things. So we would be very specific about walking the route from the warm-up track

through the transition points, into the call room, out of the call room, into the tunnel, and then at that tunnel, the transition points, into the call room, out of the call room, into the tunnel, and then at that tunnel, the transition entrance point coming through the tunnel, and boom, here's the stadium in front of you. What do you want to think at this moment? What do you want to feel at this moment? How do you want to be? What do you, you know, how, what is this feeling like to you? So that they were prepared for that with the actual and the visual representation of what this is going to be like like the video that they took when they were at beijing right so they could like be be imagining that they were actually going

through it at the same time that they're watching the video yeah so knowing where the big banner is knowing where your coach's box is going to be, knowing, you know, trying to get a sense of, you know, where your family got tickets, you know, what zone are they in? Yeah. Getting a sense of those things beforehand so that when you got there, all of that becomes peripheral and you know it's there. Right.

But you don't need to pay attention to that because you've already thought about all of that. Yeah. You know, what's cool, Tracy, is I was rereading Dan Gould's article from 1999 this morning that kind of described what Olympic, Olympians did that succeeded at the Olympics and then those that didn't. And one of the things that he found a long time ago was that, you know, that the people who didn't deal with distractions actually didn't meet expectations. And what I hear is like a lot of planning. People might be thinking, well, that's just a lot of details, but then you don't

have to, you have no concerns besides just being at your best. It's details you then don't have to deal with when you're there. Cause, oh yeah, the difference of the Olympics compared to anything else is distraction. It is set up to be one big giant international distraction. So you've got to figure out how you're going to handle it. I mean, to the point of the village, if your team is stationed in the village, that's your housing arrangements. It is a phenomenal experience. And if you've not been to an Olympics or maybe at a slightly lesser magnitude of Pan Am Games, you have no concept of what that's going to feel like until you get there. It is, it's basically a small contained city of the most skilled elite performers on

the planet, all in one place at one time, all eating in the same place, all interacting with each other, mostly in line for McDonald's. But it's, it's a trip to be in the same place, all interacting with each other, mostly in line for McDonald's. But it's a trip to be in the village. And you need to have a little bit of forethought about how you're going to handle that. Because if not, it can either be a massive party, which can be a huge distraction, or

it can be really, really isolating because you don't have access to what your normal routine is. So you've got to come up with a plan for how you're going to handle that going into it so you're not trying to figure it out on the fly. Awesome. Awesome. So one of the main things I'm hearing is that being really detailed with your preparation and using videos and then a deep planning process that's going to help you do better. What about those Olympians who just, you know, like their first time they just shine, like what makes them differently different or, you know, what are their psychological characteristics that you think really helps people do that in that moment? I think the ones who, who are in this for the first time, there is, there is a beauty to being blissfully unaware. Sure. There is absolute beauty in not knowing what you don't know sometimes. And for a lot of, at least for a lot of the track and field athletes that I've worked with,

the turnover on our teams is really high because the quality of competition in the United States is ridiculously off the charts. So you get a lot of first-time Olympians every Olympic Games. You have a lot of veterans too, but there's always a high number of first-timers in the mix. And honestly, the ones who seem to do the best are the ones who don't really know what they don't know. They don't know that this can be super distracting. They don't know that this can be, um, you know, a different feeling. The one, the ones who have coaches, family members, support systems that are, are really connected to helping them do what they do no matter the situation don't seem to be impacted all that much.

So that's where it becomes really challenging for us as support staff to try to figure out which are the ones that need lots and lots of detail on preparation and which are the ones that you just want to get out of the way and let them do their thing. Because the last thing you want to do is get that kid who is blissfully unaware thinking too much. Right, for sure. So that becomes a really sort of, I think, part of the art of doing what we do. Right. Is figuring out who fits into which of those categories.

Right. figuring out who were, you know, who fits into which of those categories. So there were a couple of athletes during the Rio games that the mass quantity of conversation that we had, and we would have a lot of conversations, had nothing to do with sport, with track, with psych, with any, it had to do with, you know, so what's your favorite kind of Mexican food? You know, where, what's your best, you know, so what's your favorite kind of Mexican food? You know, where, what's your best, you know, what's the best book you've read in the last year that are just conversations that you have sitting next to somebody that have absolutely nothing to do with performance because you want them to be comfortable and you want them to, to just sort of do what they do without having to overthink stuff. Yeah.

And that's, that's a hard thing to know. So I think for us as the support staff, as the sports psychology people, the mental skills coaches that come in to help with that, we've got to be hyper-prepared. But we also have to know when to leave our preparations in our bag. Because we may not need to pull them out for everybody. Right. Yeah. When that kid comes up to you and says, you know, I'm feeling really good, but I'm having a little problem sleeping while I'm here. What can I do for that? You've got to be able to pull that out

in a heartbeat and go, okay, well, since you've asked, here's maybe some things that we can work on. Here's maybe some breathing techniques we can use here, some progressive relaxation, you know, whatever it is that you can do in that moment that can work for that kid. Absolutely. Well, I like what you're saying so far, Tracy, in terms of being really prepared and that allows you to focus on what you need to. And then that just becomes in the periphery as you've explained. I like what you said about, you know, helping people think about how they want to plan, how do they want to think, how they want to feel, how do they want to do, how do they want to be. When you think about a mindset topic that you always talk about,

you know, when you think about, you know, just generally with your clients, what would that be? And kind of give us a little insight into that. My sort of go-to's are not mine. And what I mean by that is some of the best things that I think I do, I have absolutely stolen from my amazing mentors over the years. So probably something I was thinking about this when, when we started talking about maybe doing this podcast in the first place, I was thinking about what are some of the things that I consistently share, no matter who the person is, no matter what the circumstance.

And one of the things that I consistently share, I straight up have stolen from Ken Revisa. And I stole a lot from Ken Revisa. Is the idea that you need to prepare yourself to be okay having a good shitty day. Sure. Because you are not going to have great days every day. You are not going to feel 100% when you hit the timeframe of your max performance. You have to be prepared to go whenever it's time to go. So I've had lots of conversations with athletes about the fact that if you're having a lousy day at practice, don't write it off as having a lousy day at practice. This is where some of the mindfulness comes in. Accept that you're having a lousy day at practice and grab

onto that and have a great lousy day at practice. You've got to figure out how to do the best you're capable of doing no matter how you're feeling. Right. I mean, you can wake up at the Olympics at nine o'clock in the morning, getting on a 10 o'clock shuttle to compete at two o'clock in the afternoon and you feel like crap. Yeah. You can't call up the IOC and say, you know, I'm not feeling this today. Can we reschedule? Yeah. We can reschedule the race. It's not going to work. It's not going to happen. So you've got to figure out a way to be able to go when it's time to go. Absolutely. Sometimes athletes, they focus too much on how they're feeling and they, and even elite athletes, but especially college athletes or high school athletes, a lot of us don't really feel like it's, you know, they'll handicap

themselves and they make excuses before the race or the event even starts. So do you see that as well? Yeah, we talk a lot about the idea of I'm not feeling it. So what? Oh, sure. So I'm not feeling it. Yeah. So what? Do it anyway. Right. To the point where with with a softball team that I work with, we actually we've implemented some things where we intentionally take them out of their feeling good okay that they're not feeling good and do it anyway because you've got to get used to not feeling you've got to get used to not having the right grip on the bat you know so what so it doesn't feel right you know use somebody else's gloves that's going to feel funky go anyway um you know use a a slightly different stance for your batting stance it's going to feel different go anyway um because you've got to be

able and again another revisit ism you've got to be able to compensate and adjust to whatever the circumstances are whatever the situation throws your way and again that comes back to to me what makes the difference between an elite performer, and I mean, truly, truly elite versus people who are really good, is that ability to be consistent, no matter what the circumstances. You're not feeling great? Good, go do it anyway. That's a great opportunity for you to practice not feeling great. Absolutely. And the thing that you said earlier about how you define mindset and things that the best do is they do things consistently.

So regardless of how they feel, they're giving their best effort, regardless of things not being perfect, you know, forgetting their batting glove or their goggles broken, right? They can deal with it despite the college athletes that I work with and the rookie Olympic athletes is that, that idea that things have to be perfect and, and perfection. Perfection is not an expectation. So we've got to get used to what it feels like to not be perfect. We've got to get used to what it feels like to not be perfect. We've got to get used to what it feels like to fail because failure is an endemic part of effective performance.

So you've got to fail. And this fear that we have as people in our society today of being failures, of being found out, of being, you know, seen as not perfect. That's a real challenge, I think, for a lot of the younger athletes that I deal with, is that, you know, they've been so good for so long that they can kind of mail in their performance, and it's still good because in comparison to everybody around them, they're still phenomenal. Well, that's great until you get to a point where you're competing or practicing or training with everybody who was that same person. Now you're going to have some failures. You're going to have some shitty days. You're going to have some days where it's

just not working and you've got to be okay with that because that's actually what makes you better. The struggle through imperfection is the thing that makes you a better, more consistent performer. If things are perfect all the time, you're never challenged. You're never pushed. You never extend yourself to figure out what you're capable of doing. You've got to experience failure in order to generate the motivation for change. You're never going to get better. Yeah. So what do you, when you think about the best, how do they deal with failure?

And let's say they, you know, don't place at the Olympics and are expected to, or, you know, they lose a big game, national championship game. What do you think the best do in terms of approaching that and then using that? I think the reality is you're going to lose. You're going to fail.

Just statistically, if you look at sport, you're going to fail at some point. Yes. So you've got to keep it in perspective that this isn't the end-all, be-all. I mean, and even at the Olympics, yeah, you didn't podium, or you got the silver, not the gold, or you made fourth, not third, so you didn't get the podium. There's some pretty powerful senses of failure that can come from that. You didn't make, for California, you didn't make CIF championships, or you didn't make the playoffs or whatever it might be. I think there's an important element that gets overlooked sometimes with performance psych kinds of folks that we want people to recognize the things

that were beneficial and focus on the positive and keep things in perspective. And that's great. Sure. But that comes later. I think there's an important element right afterwards of grieving. Because the reality is, especially for Olympics, for world championships, for pro athletes, the Super Bowl, the World Series, those kinds of things, you've spent an inordinate amount of time getting ready for this thing.

Absolutely. There's a huge letdown sometimes that comes afterwards. You've spent an inordinate amount of time getting ready for this thing. Absolutely. There's a huge letdown sometimes that comes afterwards. You've got to give credence to what that feels like. So there's a period of time afterwards where you've got to just be in the shit. You've just got to, you've got to embrace the emotion of what that feels like. And not be in a hurry to pass that until it's time to move past that. So giving the authenticity of what that experience feels like and how upsetting it is to not have done what you feel like you're capable of doing.

Absolutely. The trigger point, though, is you can like you're capable of doing. Absolutely. The trigger point, though, is you can't stay there forever. No. You've got to, at some point, make the turn, make the transition to taking the teachable moments from that experience and then extracting that out to get yourself ready for the next time or for the next competition or the next championship, whatever it be and that's that's I think what we're really good at as sports psych consultants as mental performance coaches we're good at helping people extract yeah moments yeah and try to help them be positive and

integrate those into the next steps so my caution to folks is just make sure that you're not trying to move people out of that space before they've had time to process what that space feels like. Absolutely. Yeah. And I've worked with quite a few people who have had just really devastating disappointments and you can't move past that. You can't also, because I think if you move past that grieving part and I think what ends up happening is you just, like, you deny it, right? That doesn't help. And then you're not also thinking about what did you learn? How are you a better person or a better performer or more resilient because of the disappointment or the mistake?

I think there's also the possibility of the person feeling like the work that you've done with them is then somehow disingenuous. That you don't understand what I'm feeling right now. I've been working with you for so long to do this and this is what I'm feeling. You're not getting it. So there becomes that question of why don't you get it? You've been in this with me. You don't get this. Absolutely.

So it feels like the work that you've been doing can somehow be perceived as being disingenuous. So, you know, the reality is we are in it with them a lot of times. And whether that transcends the limits of ethics or whatever, that's a whole other discussion. But we're in this experience with them. And we need to allow them and ourselves the time to process effectively yeah but then have the right the right mindset to be able to turn it around and figure out what's next absolutely that's where i mean i have coaches all the time like you know an athlete will do really really lousy and you know we're we're on the warm-up track watching their performance inside

the track on the big screen and somebody doesn't do well and a coach will come running up to me and go okay you got to go talk to them right I'm like yeah tomorrow maybe right I'm not going to go running to try to find them as they come out of the mix zone I'm not going to try to you know hover and be around to make it all better that's not what we do do. That's not our job. Our job is to help them process effectively so that they can be along this path to excellence. Excellence is not a destination. Excellence is a process. Excellence is a path. Excellence is a journey. And each one of these performances is a spot along that journey. You've got to figure out the ups and downs of that journey. And sometimes the downs are a really not fun place to be. Yeah, you're right. To be able to know what the really great ones feel like. Absolutely. I like what you're saying about feeling the failure, not

just like brushing it off and also letting people have the time to process. So you've shared with us lots of different, you know, strategies and techniques that you use. Is there kind of what would you describe as a signature technique? Is there something that we haven't talked about that, you know, that, yep, is always something you talk about? I was thinking about this. Somebody else asked me this recently.

I don't think I have a signature technique. Maybe I need to go and ask my grad students who have shadowed me. I'm sure you do, Tracy. Yeah, I don't know that I do, but I do think that I have a signature approach. Okay, cool. Tell us about that. Which may be a slightly different thing. I think my approach to doing this is very much, I think it ties back into my personality. Anybody who knows me, either personally or professionally, knows that I'm a no bullshit kind of person. And I'm going to be, you know, I am going to sing your praises when that's the right thing to do. And I am going to smack you upside the head when that's the right thing to do. And I think that holds

whether I'm working with a high school athlete or an Olympian, whether I'm working with a volleyball player or a water polo player, whether I'm working with a youth athlete or, you know, an adult. That's just my approach because I think it's really important to be authentic as a consultant because I mean, I have been unbelievably lucky and unbelievably blessed to be able to work with the mentors that I've worked with. And I watch what Ken Revisa does. I watch what Keith Henschen does. I watch what, you know, Gloria Ballagay does. And I see what these people do. And there's a piece of you that wants to be like them.

Sure. And every time I've tried to do that, I have failed miserably. Yeah, me too. That's not authentic to who I am. That's not the way I do things. Right. So I think over time, what I've learned to be sort of my signature technique, if you will, is be me. And that doesn't work with everybody.

I mean, I've been brought out to work with teams or individuals, and there is just not a fit there. Because the way that I will get in your face isn't the way that they respond. And that's not a slam. That's not, you know, judging myself as being incapable. And that's not a slam. That's not, you know, judging, you know, myself as being incapable. It's just not a fit. So I think, I think, you know, if there's anything signature about what I do, it's probably coming back to my base philosophy. I am consistent in the way that I interact with everybody I work with, whether it's track and field,

whether it's volleyball, whether it's softball, whether it's water polo, whether it's police officers, whether it's firefighters, I always bring me to this situation. Yeah. And me is always the same with that. The things that I do and the way that I interact with them will always be different because of all those different permutations of variables. But the one thing that does stay consistent is me. Yeah, that's awesome. I had a similar journey, I think, as you and tried to be a lot of other people when I started this work. Yeah, maybe because we're trying to figure out who we are and how we are at our best. And I have

been thinking quite a lot about just being your authentic self. And because I think that's what life is all about to me is like being yourself and finding your voice and finding out who you really are and discovering yourself along the way. But then showing up as yourself in tough situations. Maybe it's the Olympics. Maybe it's, you know, times that are a lot of pressure. But I think that's, you know, that's part of our journey is to find our authentic self. So I like that you said that, Tracy. When you think about, you know, a resource or a book, what would you recommend people to use to like learn more about mental training, sports psychology, or the type of work that you do? What do you think? I think there are a lot

of really amazing resources out there. I was just having this conversation with some of my grad students the other day. I think there's some amazing books out there if you're a reader. And there's a lot of books that are written specifically to certain sport populations, but they transcend the sport population. So like Kendra Viz's Heads Up Baseball is a great example. It's obviously written for baseball, softball, and the examples are all baseball, softball, but the teachable moments in that document transcend into any performance. That's a really great resource.

I look at a lot of resources that are outside of the sports psychology realm. So books like Good to Great in business settings. Things like, you know, a lot of the stuff by Brene Brown, a lot of the things by like Gabriel Ottingen, who we were lucky enough to get as a keynote speaker for our upcoming conference on positive psychology and what that really means. A lot of stuff like that, I think, is really great. And I'm sure on your website and all the amazing materials that you provide through your businesses, you've got great resource lists. One of the things I think that is super powerful for people who either don't style themselves as readers or resonate, that doesn't resonate as much, there's amazing podcasts out there. You know, so, so like Mike Gervais's podcast is astounding. The conversations that he has with people on performance transcending all different different realms is just amazing. I've gotten a lot out of some of the strength and conditioning podcasts. So there's a guy named Tom Foxley who does a lot of podcasts on mindset and

mindfulness in like CrossFit settings. He talks to some amazing people. Another podcast, again, from the strength and conditioning background called Barbell Shrugged is by a colleague of mine at Cal State Fullerton, Dr. Andy Yalpin. Amazing stuff about sports psychology, but approaching it from a different perspective yeah those are some really amazing resources those are the things that I listen to when I work out those are the books that I go back and I read over and over and over again you know way of the peaceful warrior by Dan Millman you know written in I think is one of my most influenced you know

influential books mastery by George Leonard again it's it's one of my most influential books. Mastery by George Leonard. Again, it's one of those things you can read it in one sitting, but the message is so impactful. I think I've gone back and read it probably 30 times in my life. Those kinds of things, I think, are really powerful, powerful resources for people. Excellent.

Yeah. Well, that sounds awesome, Tracy. And I'll make sure I list those in the show notes page so people can kind of look at those if they weren't able to write them down as you were talking. And, you know, just, I just want to thank you so much for your time and your energy and just giving us a little snapshot into your world. There were several things that I enjoyed hearing from you. I liked your definition of mindset, which is your ability to control your thoughts and your emotions that contribute to the task. And specifically our conversation about consistency and how the best do the small things consistently.

But then also how that, I liked what you were saying about if you're not feeling it, so what? You know, just that, you know, regardless of how you're feeling, that the best bring their best consistently, regardless of how they're feeling and they compensate and adjust as you said. I loved our discussion about symbols and how you guys use video, but also like the detail, the preparation that goes into the Olympic Games and how you help people ask themselves and reflect on how do they want to think, feel, do, and be. So those are the things that I really enjoyed. There's one more thing. I loved our discussion about failing, and I agree with that, that we need some time to grieve after we fail, and how you said excellence is a process, a path, and a journey. It's not this destination. Wow, you make me sound really smart.

Thanks to you. I'm just summarizing what you said. Well, when you think about, you know, the final kind of word or advice that you give people, what would you like to end with? Probably because it's really resonating with me right now. Coming back to that idea of failure. Yes. Don't be scared of failure.

You know, one, one of the greatest of all times, Karch Karai, who is the head women's coach for USA Volleyball for the women's indoor national team. I've been incredibly fortunate to be able to work with him. And one of the main themes with that team is the idea of fail faster. This is the idea that we're going to fail. We just need to fail faster so that we can extract all of those teachable lessons from our failures so that we can work on getting ourselves better through our failures and doing those faster. So yeah, I think that the big thing that resonates with me right now, just based on, you know, my own personal performance as a mental performance

consultant and the things that I do is don't be afraid of failure because you're going to fail and get your ego out of it sometimes it's it's what you need in that moment right then right there because that's the lesson that you've got to learn awesome awesome so if you enjoyed today's episode oh my god this is awesome thank you i know i know we could talk but i'm gonna have to have you back for sure. If you like today's episode, you can find the show notes. If you go to cindracampoff.com slash Tracy with an I, you can find the information there, the details, and I have a lot of good tweets that I pulled out from Tracy's interview today. So head over there and you can find the details. They're also on Twitter, Tracy Stadler. So if you

enjoyed today, we'd love for you to go over to Twitter and just tell us like, was there a statement or a concept that we talked about today? You can share that on Twitter again, Tracy Stadler, and then mine is mentally underscore strong. Tracy, what are other ways that we can get in touch with you or we can learn more about what you're doing? Well, you are my social media guru. I need to learn so much from you on these things. Honestly, that my, my Twitter feed is probably the best way to get me feedback. And it's,

it's Tracy Statler, my, my full name, T-R-A-C-I-S-T-A-T-L-E-R at Twitter. So yeah, I would just love to hear from anybody about what resonated for you, what questions you might have. And I would love to come back and do this again

if there's something else that we need to follow up on. That'd be awesome. I've only had one person on twice and it was Ken Revisa. We were just talking about his book last week, Heads Up Baseball 2, and specifically how it's not just for baseball, but for life too.

So Tracy, thank you so much for joining us. I look forward to seeing you in October at AdWords. Sounds good. Thanks, Sindra. Thank you. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like 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.