High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 189: Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement with Dr. Keith Kaufman, Clinical Sport Psychologist, Researcher & Author

Episode Date: June 23, 2018

Keith A. Kaufman, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in the mental training of athletes and others who wish to improve their health and performance. He has operated his own private practice since 2008, and currently has two office locations in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Dr. Kaufman is also a Research Associate at The Catholic University of America where he teaches undergraduate sport psychology, and co-developed the mindful sport performance enhancement (MSPE) program.   His recently book, “Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement: Mental Training for Athletes and Coaches,” was the focus of this interview. In this interview, Keith and Cindra talk about: What is Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement (MSPE) The latest research on MSPE The mental training paradox The benefits of practicing mindfulness Formal vs. informal practices of mindfulness How to adopt MSPE to you and your team You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/keith

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 thank you so much for joining me for episode 189. 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 our sport.

In today's episode, I interview Dr. Keith Kaufman, a clinical sports psychologist, researcher, and author. Dr. Kaufman is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in the mental training of athletes and others who wish to improve their health and performance. He has operated his own private practice since 2008 and currently has two office locations in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. So Dr. Kaufman is a research associate at the Catholic University of America where he teaches undergraduate sports psychology classes and co-developed the Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement program.

He recently co-authored the book Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement, Mental Training for Athletes and Coaches. And this is one of the focuses of this interview. I purchased the book probably about six months ago and think it's an outstanding resource for those interested in mindfulness. And so in this interview, we talk about what mindful sport performance enhancement really is and how we can apply it to not only sport but to our life. We also talk about the latest research on this topic, what he describes

as the mental training paradox, the general benefits of practicing mindfulness, what the difference is between formal and informal practices of mindfulness, and how you can adopt mindfulness sport performance to you and your team and your life. So I look forward to hearing what you think about this interview. You can join the conversation over on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. Look forward to hearing from you. Without further ado, let's bring on Keith. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. Today, I am joined by Dr. Keith Kaufman.

Thank you, Keith, so much for joining us here on the podcast. Thank you for having me, Sindra. I'm looking forward to talking to you about your new book, Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement, Mental Training for Athletes and Coaches, and just talking to you more about how we can apply these principles to our life, to our work, to our sport, to business. There's so many ways that we can apply them. So Keith, you know, just to kind of get us started, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you do right now. Sure. So I'm a licensed clinical psychologist and I specialize in sports psychology. So I divide my time between my private practice and also with MSPE and with

our book coming out, we're working on what hopefully will become the MSPE Institute. So that's taking up a lot of time right now. I would say. That is a definite passion. But this is all about really trying to affect and influence and help people in the way they approach achievement and trying to make performance better, but also more enjoyable. Something I see all the time in my practice and certainly in the consulting work is how anxious, especially, people can become around performance and achievement. And that's part of what we're so excited about with MSPE is trying to make a difference there. Absolutely. And I think, you know, so anxious about their work, you know, and business. I mean, there's so many ways that this can apply because I do see, you know,

in my own practice, like anxiety has gone up and people are just more living in the future. Exactly. I think what I find myself saying all the time is we are an outcome-oriented society, maybe even an outcome-oriented world at this point. And what comes with that is an awful lot of pressure and anxiety. And part of what really drew me and drew my team. And I work a lot with Carol Glass and Tim Pinot. They're my co-authors for the MSPE book. What drew us to this is that it's such a different way of going about things. It's more about process and less about outcome and how much power can come from that. So tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are now. You know, what has your journey been in terms of, you know, studying MSPE? So for MSPE specifically? How about we just go

broad and then tell us a little bit about studying MSPE and how you got there? Sure. Well, I've been in love with sports psychology for a long time. I was very fortunate when I was in college, I went to UNC Chapel Hill, and I was there when Dr. John Silva was there and happened to take his class. I didn't even know sports psychology was a thing until I took his class. And that was really just an eye-opening experience for me and went to his office one day after class and said, okay, tell me how to do what you do. I love this stuff. And, you know, tell me what I need to do. And he was very kind. And, you know, this undergraduate who was just sort of begging for some advice. And he really put me on a path that I followed through graduate school. I ended up studying clinical psychology and getting as much research and

teaching and clinical experience as I could in sport performance psychology on the way. And it was actually during graduate school, it was for my dissertation project that MSBE came into being as this sort of different way to approach sports psychology and achievement in general. Excellent. And so, you know, one of the things I ask everyone, Keith, at the beginning, then we can really dive into the heart of mindfulness sport performance. But tell us about a time that you failed and what you learned from it and what we can learn from your experience in terms of what wisdom can you share with us? Yeah, well, it's interesting. I mean, I think my relationship, I've always been a type A person. I would say that a lot of my life has been working hard to guard against failure.

And that's one of the ways that mindfulness has so changed my life. And thinking about a question like that, you know, something that comes to mind that I don't even know that I would conceptualize it as a failure. I really try to see adversity as educational experiences at this point. And that doesn't mean that they don't hurt or I don't experience emotions related to it. But, you know, one that just jumps out to me is early on in presenting MSPE, I was at a conference with a lot of esteemed colleagues and got some pretty good grilling, I would say, in terms of our model and our theory.

And it is different and and depending on your audience some people come from a particular background and what we're suggesting with MSPE is very different and people can sometimes have strong reactions just disagreeing with it or or you know this is admittedly and and we we are very clear about this in our work this is a new science and we're not trying to sell it as anything other than that, right? That there's a lot of work needs to be done to understand. And at this particular meeting, people just got really heated. I think it was, you know, it's good that it arose their passions.

But as a presenter who was, I think, a little naively just thinking, oh, people will think this is so cool that it's new stuff. And, you know, I had to field a lot of skepticism and some of it was pretty harsh. And, you know, again, I don't know that I would consider it a failure because I think what I learned from that experience was, okay, you know, I'm not going to just show up in front of a crowd and people are going to thank me for being there and just think it's all wonderful that I have to recognize that what we're trying to suggest here is in many ways a paradigm shift. And so going through that very, very uncomfortable and difficult experience

showed me, okay, that, you know, this is this, again, sort of living with what we teach, that this is going to be a process and that's okay. So I think it wasn't what I expected going into that meeting, but it ended up being an incredibly valuable experience. Absolutely. And that's similar to how I see failure, however we define it. It's like it actually leads you to the path that you're supposed to be on. And it's really meaningful and helpful, but it's hard to, in the moment, I think, see that kind of silver lining. So Keith, tell us a little bit about, you know, why you see it, or I guess in that audience, or, you know, why you see it as a paradigm shift. How is it different in terms of how people are thinking or living or performing? Wow, I mean, I could spend an hour

just talking about that, to be honest. Okay. Within sports psychology, I won't do that. I think within sports psychology, the short answer to that is much of what has traditionally been done perhaps by trying to change, for example, a negative thought into a positive thought, we're drawing more attention to negative thoughts and people can get stuck there. And so one of the arguments for why mindfulness when it was first coming into the field is that perhaps that's a different way. That's a way that we can help people manage these difficult performance situations without triggering these ironic mental processes. And some, you know, but a lot of people are much more familiar and have done a lifetime of work in more traditional cognitive behavioral approaches. And so now saying, well, you know, here's this different way to think about it. That's not always so easy. And I think from a consulting perspective, in terms of athletes and coaches, and athletes and coaches and a lot of times in the world of sports, but certainly in society at large, time is at a premium.

And everyone is looking for the most bang for their buck. What can I do quick and easy and get the most out of it and not take a lot of time? And so I think in some of the sports psychology reading that I've done, they talk a lot about the idea of parachuting in, right, that teams will call in a sports psychologist or consult with a sports psychologist when things have gone wrong. And so come on in and fix it. And we consider mindfulness to be the anti parachuting in technique, where, you know, certainly it's, it's something that we want to be user friendly. It's something that we want to be effective and well worth people's effort, but it is

something that takes time and it's something that takes commitment and effort. And so what we have found is that a lot of times people are really interested in this buzzword mindfulness. You know, we've heard of mindfulness maybe because of someone like Phil Jackson doing it or someone like Pete Carroll doing it or, you know, maybe some of the science on it. But then when you actually get to the fine print that, wow, this is something I need to do for a couple of hours, or I need to do, you know, several times a week, or even every day that, wow, that's maybe a lot more than I was looking for. And that can be intimidating, I think. And so I think maybe what might be helpful,

you know, is to define what you mean by mindfulness and then what you refer to as mindful sport performance enhancement. Because I'm thinking, you know, that might not, not everybody might be familiar with the terms, but also just to kind of hear your perspective of what that means to you as well. Sure. Well, I think not only are people not necessarily familiar, but there's a lot of different definitions out there of mindfulness. And so people might be confused. And in fact, that's been one of the knocks on mindfulness research is that there isn't a universal definition of exactly what we're studying here. So how can we tell whether it's effective? How do we standardize this? Because there's so many different understandings of it. So, you know, again, I think

we want to take a careful stance in our work and say, you know, we have one particular way of framing it, but it's not the only way and different people might look at it a little differently. But where our work comes from is the tradition of Jon Kabat-Zinn's work in his mindfulness-based stress reduction. And then like Zendel Siegel's work with mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and his team. So we look at mindfulness very much as a way of paying attention, a way of experiencing the world. And we basically borrow right from John Kabat-Zinn's definition that it's about being present focused. It's about being nonjudgmental. And it's about being present focused, it's about being non-judgmental, and it's about being very intentional with how you're focusing, right? So you're managing your own attention. And so that's kind of the framework that we're coming from. And that's really how we package it in MSPE is

what we're training is a particular regimen, I would say, for ultimately managing your attention and managing your emotions. Certainly, there's other definitions of it out there as well, but that's how we think about it. Excellent. Okay, that's really helpful. And, you know, how I became familiar with your work, first of all, was a couple of, maybe three years ago, we had a conversation on the phone where I was reading some of your research about mindfulness and distance running. So, you know, besides that study, just tell us a little bit about like what research is out there right now to support that mindfulness is actually like a performance enhancer. Yeah. So, well, we've looked at the performance implications, but we've also looked at related psychological variables. And

we've tried to so far, and again, as I said earlier, this is a very new science. And actually, a big reason why we wrote the book and included within the book, our protocol is because we want people to be doing lots of research. So if you're listening to this, we want you to use MSPE, we want you to study it, we want you to apply it with your population. And that's within sport, but also in other population realms. But our work, my team's work is largely based out of Catholic University in Washington, D.C. And what we've done is mostly with college athletes. And we've done a couple of open trials with different sports across sports. And we also recently did a randomized control trial in the entire athletics

department. So this was a massive study that included representation from various sports within the athletics department. And that was with cooperation of the administrators there. And we've also been consulting with other folks who are doing work really around the world. We just completed a really exciting consulting relationship with one of the Premier League soccer teams in England. They implemented a version of MSPE with one of their academy teams over there. We've been in contact with folks from Australia, from Austria, from Brazil, from really all over the world. And so it's exciting that people are interested in this and interested in using our protocol. In terms of the findings, I think what we've seen, I think is fair to say it's exciting

potential that we've seen, in particular, some exciting relationships between mindfulness and MSPE training and flow experiences. And flow, you know, has also something that different people might understand in a few different ways. But in many circles it's considered at least somewhat synonymous with being in the zone, a very highly desirable performance state. We've also seen some relationships with anxiety and also perhaps some protective factors against things like depression and some other more difficult mental experiences. The performance data, to be perfectly candid, has been harder to come by. And that's mostly because it's very, very difficult in sports psychology to get a very good objective measure of performance anyway, but also particularly with mindfulness outcome studies, that can be challenging. So a lot of what we've seen is anecdotal reporting and something that we collect from time to time,

but also use as a performance feedback tool in our studies is something called the FAME profile. And the FAME profile stands for Flow, Anxiety, Mindfulness, and Emotion Regulation. And so we've seen some really exciting switches in FAME measures amongst individual athletes and also in some of the smaller studies that we've done in aggregate. But we're badly in need, to be honest, of some really good performance data, you know, with a large sample size that shows just how effective this can be. What we've seen to this point is mostly promise. But and again, like we want to something that we really pride ourselves on is being clear on what the science says and doesn't say at this point, that there's exciting correlates and exciting potential here. And certainly conceptually, it makes a whole lot of sense, but we're at a stage here where we really want people to be picking this stuff up and doing it and doing high quality research to really show, okay, this works from a performance perspective. And Keith, do you see that, I mean,

your theory in terms of how it might impact performance, do you think mindfulness impacts performance through these correlates? So, you know, by decreasing anxiety and increasing these protective factors, maybe increasing the potential of experiencing flow? Or what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, so one of the things we offer in our book is a conceptual model for how MSPE works. And one of the way that we kind of sum it up is that our theory, and this is all it is at this point, is the theory is that MSPE operates by impacting the factors that impact flow. Yes. operates by impacting the factors that impact flow. And so now whether that, we certainly don't want to say that there's a cause-effect relationship here or it's a unidirectional relationship here.

The way we present the model is very much as an initial sketch that we're hoping that as more people do research and as we continue to do research, we can get a clearer understanding of what the true mechanism is. And I think there needs to be studies on things like mediators and moderators so we can really understand exactly what the relationships are. But yeah, I mean, the way we think about it is that there are certain performance factors in particular that this training targets, and that by doing things like improving concentration, by being able to reduce extra anxiety or body tension, for example, that that is ultimately what aids in attaining flow states and potentially having an optimal performance experience. That's really helpful.

You know, I know one of the things that you talk about, you know, in your book, Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement, is this idea of like the mental training paradox. Tell us, you know, why did you start the book with that, talking about that paradox and what does that mean to you? Yeah, I think that relates back to what I was saying earlier about the fine print and doing a training like this. And we wanted to be right up front with people in our book, like, hey, if you're going to read this, if you're going to do this, you need to know what you're signing up for, that this isn't for the faint of heart, so to speak, right? That this isn't something that you can just pick up and thumb through and it's going to change your life, that it takes work and it takes dedication. And the mental training paradox is

our affectionate term for this phenomenon. And I did some reconnaissance on this when we were writing the book as I interviewed a bunch of people. I'm in the Washington, D.C. area, so mostly within the Washington, D.C. area, but at a bunch of different levels of sport. I talked to coaches of elite youth performers. I talked to college coaches. I talked to high school coaches. I talked to pro coaches and basically asked them about this idea, you know, do you think the mind is important? And almost everyone, of course, agrees yes. Of course, mental factors are are important and then you follow up with the question of well what do you do to regularly train the mind of your players or if you're an athlete what do you do to regularly change your mind and and there's a much less clear-cut answer to that and in fact a lot of

the people that i talked to and and the reason i did this research is because in my experience a lot of what i've seen is that people either just don't know how to do it or don't know, you know, they think they know the mind is important, but they think when they think of practice, they think of training, they think of the physical or they think of the tactical. They don't necessarily think of the mental. And so that's the paradox, right? That we all know the mind is important, but we don't necessarily train the mind with the same intensity or the same prioritization that we do of these other performance factors. And that's excellent. And I'm thinking about how mindfulness in particular

fits with that, because people might think like, you know, it's just a quick fix. But clearly, kind of one of the things that you're saying, Keith, is like, it's not a quick fix. It's more of like this way of life, you know, so how might you describe that to people who might not be familiar with mindfulness or just this idea of mindful sport performance enhancement? Yeah, well, for folks who take the training, we spend a chunk of the first session really going over that and explaining the rationale for the training and explaining what the training is that, you know, it's what you put into it, you get out of it, which is true for any endeavor, right? And trying to make the sale here that, look, investing in the mind is a worthwhile investment. And by doing a program like MSPE,

if you do it, if you invest in it, it can really help you. And it can help you both on the field or while you're performing, but it can also help you in day-to-day life. It can help you with the way you function in relationships or the way you think about work or the way you think about school, depending on what stage of life you're in. And so, you know, to think about changing an operating system, right, changing the way you might pay attention in the world, which is what this really is, that's not also really encourage people to make the training their own and think about the strategies we're suggesting and implement it in a way that's meaningful to them. But if you don't do the work, if you don't do the practice

and really think about it other than when you're attending an MSPE session or certainly if you never think about it again after the final session is completed, then you're not going to really benefit from that. And what we really hope is that people take this kind of thing and run with it and make it their own and really, you know, to benefit that they're doing this for a lengthy period of time, if not for a lifetime. That's good. And, you know, when you think about the kind of this anecdotal evidence on how this works, and you know, what can you tell us in terms of people who describe that it does change how they pay attention to the world? Can you tell us a little more about, like, you know, just by practicing this, how does it really help them? And what do people report? Yeah, you

know, it's interesting, I like to borrow so many different metaphors and ideas to answer that question. And one that I really love, I'm going to borrow an idea here from George Mumford, who wrote a book on mindfulness. Yeah. He's the sports psychologist who consulted with Phil Jackson and his work with the Bulls and the Lakers. And he's worked a lot with Jon Kabat-Zinn. And in his book, he talks about this metaphor of the eye of the hurricane. And I love that metaphor because he's saying basically something that we say in our book, too, that this stuff is chaos, that sports, but frankly, life in general is chaos, that things are always happening, we're constantly responding,

that it's not predictable and it's uncertain and we don't know what's going to happen next. And what mindfulness, this way of paying attention, can help us with is standing in the midst of that chaos, but somehow being calm, being centered, being aware, and just being present with it all, and not getting stuck in it, right? Not getting swept away by those wins and losing our focus or, you know, in a sports sense, you know, having a choking experience that instead that we can face adversity, we can face the chaos of the maelstrom of a sport experience and through it all be calm and centered. And that's kind of, you know, I'd hate to say in a mindfulness training that that's the

outcome we're looking for, because it's not an outcome oriented process. But that's kind of the idea here that we want to pay attention and be able to take it all in without getting lost in our reactions to it. And so for those people who are listening and saying, well, gosh, how do I do that? Yeah, I'd like that benefit of being calm and being the eye of the hurricane when there's chaos around me, but I can stay calm and present and not, you know, future-based in terms of my anxiety. What would you tell us in terms of kind of the best practice guidelines of how to start, but then, you know, like how to continue? What do you think? Well, that actually goes to the heart of what MSPE is. So the program itself, I mentioned earlier, it's six sessions. And what we do is we start off by practicing this

mindful style of attention just by sitting still, right? Learning the very fundamental practice of just getting in touch with your concentration and getting in touch with your focus and getting in touch with your body and learning what this feels like, just dipping your toes in the water. And what makes MSPE unique is that over the course of the six sessions, we increasingly incorporate movement and action into this style of paying attention. So when we set out to design this, we didn't just want to train mindfulness, we wanted to train people how to be mindful while they're in the middle of a performance. And so ultimately, the way that MSPE culminates is by doing what we call the sport meditation, which is where people engage in core skills, core movements associated with their sport

while paying this mindful style of attention. So it's meant to be very applied, very integrated, so that you learn over the course of this training, you know, kind of the basics leading into how do I apply it and then how do I actually do it while I'm playing my sport. Really good. What I really like about your book, and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast to tell us more about it is like that you do have these six sessions very outlined and you have scripts. So, you know, that, you know, we could, I'm getting a sense like you could deliver it or you could do it yourself. Is that kind of the intention? And you kind of said something about like making it your own as well. Yeah. I mean, that, that's exactly the intention is I mentioned earlier, we wanted people to study it and do more research on it, but we also want people to be able to pick up our book and guide themselves

through the program or guide their team through the program. And something we worked very, very hard in developing the book to do was to make it accessible to everyone. So you don't have to be a sports psychologist with, you know, a deep scientific knowledge of sports psychology or psychology to be able to pick this up and understand it or to be able to use the program that we wanted it to be something that was that was yes, based in science, but was very understandable and usable by by any athlete by any coach, or frankly, by any performer who can adapt these strategies to what

they do. And then the way I think about it is like we perform every single day. So, you know, as I look through your book, there's, yeah, there's some sports specific things, but, you know, we can adapt it to, you know, any time we perform. So Keith, tell us about like, maybe your two or three of sort of like your favorite exercises or the most impactful things that are within these six sessions to kind of give us a snapshot of how you might practice this. Yeah, so it's interesting. I wouldn't say I have a favorite exercise per se. I mean, I sort of love it all. But the way, you know, that said, each MSPE session includes a couple of different components. It includes the exercises themselves. So an experiential practice. So we do an actual

training portion of it. But it also includes an educational component. So we introduce different mindfulness-based concepts in each session that, and then we talk about kind of the sport- specific meaning of it. So something like expectations, which is something that comes up just about every day in my sports psychology practice, you know, what are expectations and how do expectations or goals, how do they fit into how we perform? And so we talk about that specifically within the MSPE modules. So you've got the experiential stuff, you've got the educational piece, but then there's a lot of discussion as well. So while MSPE can be used with individuals, and certainly anyone who picks up our book can guide themselves through the

program, the real spirit of it is as a group intervention. So to deliver it to a team or to deliver it to a collection of teams or to a group of athletes or a group of coaches. That's really, if you read the manual, that's kind of the spirit of it. And so I love all these exercises. And I mentioned that the sport meditation, the sport exercise, the last one that we do is really what makes MSPE unique and different from mindfulness-based stress reduction. A lot of the other exercises that we do are adaptations of things that are done in Kabat-Zinnian types of programs. But when we get into the really applied portion in the last two sessions, that's where we really kind of take a leap in a different direction.

And so that sport meditation is something that is very near and dear to my heart. But the other part that really stands out, and I talk about this with my colleagues all the time, is the discussion pieces. That when you're working with a team and different people have very different reactions to this kind of training, and when you see those aha moments or where you see within a training like this some of the team building that can happen and how people can start to rally around each other. One of the things that we do in MSPE is talk about developing cues for being mindful, right? So not only doing these practices, but when you're out there on the field or when you're in a game, what are some ways that you can remind yourself to pay attention this way?

Because it's not a perfect process. And when we're working with a team, we might talk about that as a group. Okay, so how are we going to help each other? What kind of cues are we going to come up with as a team? And Dr. Pinault, one of my colleagues, one of the examples I believe he talks about in the book, but definitely in some of our publications, is with one of the teams he worked with, they came up with this sort of rallying cry of hold the rope. That to them, when the team said hold the rope, that was their cue that,

okay, let's be mindful, let's focus, let's tune in in this particular way. And so they would yell hold the rope if it seemed like someone was struggling or if it seemed like, you know, if they just gotten scored on and they wanted to refocus and let that go and then move into the present moment, you know, hold the rope. And that was the rallying cry for the team to be mindful. So I love stuff like that. When you see a team come up with a cue that they all get real fired up about, that's that's the stuff that really gets me excited. That's good. How might you suggest if, you know, a leader or coach of a group is listening, how might you suggest that they kind of develop that? Yeah, so I mean, that's, that's part of our program. That's part of if you pick up the book

and you start going through it, that we suggest discussions around that at certain critical times in the training. But certainly if you're thinking about implementing a mindfulness training or even really any sports psychology training, to be honest, it's the kind of thing that you don't want to just kind of do once and then forget about that, that it's practice just like anything else. And there's a lot happening, as I was saying earlier, with like the eye of the hurricane. And so talking about as a team, or talking about as a group, or even just having a partner that you can do it with, like, okay, I'm really trying to focus in this way. So if you see me struggling out there, you see my shoulders sagging after I

give up a goal or something like that, you know, say, hold the rope. And that's going to be a reminder to me to, okay, you know, let that go and let's focus in on the present moment. That's good. And, you know, I know you've outlined these six sessions. So why six sessions versus seven, eight, nine, 10, you know, why the six? Yeah, so it's funny. So MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction, which as I mentioned, that really, we wanted to take those kinds of ideas and bring it into this different domain.

And that's an eight session program. And several mindfulness-based programs are eight sessions. And when we were first developing MSPE, we thought, well, no one's gonna wanna do eight sessions in the world of sports. That's way too much time. So we cut it to eight sessions. And when we were first developing MSPE, we thought, well, no one's going to want to do eight sessions in the world of sports. That's way too much time. So we cut it to four sessions. We did a four session program. So our first couple of studies, if you pick up our publications, they're talking about this four session protocol. And what we found was that we started to see some change, but it was only just starting toward the end. And when we collected

some qualitative data, just some anecdotal reporting, everyone was saying, yeah, this is starting to click, but we need more time kind of stuff. And so we felt like, you know, here we are, we're training people in an entirely different way of paying attention, asking them to do that and implement it into their sport performance in just four sessions, that's awfully quick. But we still are a little bit concerned about saying, let's do eight sessions or let's do longer, because again, we thought people might balk at that as well. So we kind of settled on six as splitting the difference thing. We felt like four was a little too short. And so far, what we've seen with the six sessions is that's worked pretty well. But again, we frame that as only a beginning. We don't say you do these six sessions and then you're done. You never have to think about this

again, right? That the six sessions is basically enough to give people an introduction to these strategies and to begin building a practice and training routine or integrating a practice or training routine. And then hopefully after those six sessions, then they're ready to do it on their own. For sure. And so it's just an introduction. So, you know, Keith, in terms of like the research in this area of mindful sport performance enhancement, where do you think it needs to go next? Because, you know, one of the things you're kind of talking about is that there's some support, but that there needs to be more work done. And then it's promising, right? So where do you think it needs to go next?

Yeah, well, I think the word that we're really using a lot is integration, right? And I mean, it's just, there's no getting around that. It's an uphill battle getting people to really commit to this. And if you read not only in sport, but in general, the mindfulness literature, the real challenge is getting people to practice, getting people to follow through on the between session work and then to stick with it after the training ends, that just the adherence to these training programs is not super high. And it's hard because people are busy and people are doing a lot of things. And I think the way we tend to operate, whether we intentionally do it or not, is, you know, we're sort of constantly moving and trying to do more, more, more, more, more, but yet seeking stress reduction. And it's a bit of an oxymoron.

Yeah, that's true. And so we talk a lot in our book about this idea of lack of time being kind of the number one excuse that sustains the mental training paradox that we just don't have time for this. And I mentioned earlier that recently we did a collaboration with a Premier League team over in England. And I think probably more than, if not all the studies, most of the studies that have been done, they really integrated it into their academy, into their system, that they made it a part of what they do on a weekly basis. And they really took the exercises that we developed and adapted it to fit what they were doing. And I think that was incredibly exciting to us.

Now, even in doing that, something that we saw when it came time for the leader of that program to collect data is it was still a tough sell to get people to even just fill out the measures because they're so strapped for time and they're all doing a million things. And so while I think, you know, from a consulting perspective, they ran an unbelievable program, unfortunately, the research part didn't pan out all that well because it was such a challenge to get these super busy soccer players to fill out performance measures. And so I think what we're really looking to do is to integrate the MSPE strategies into what people are doing and really trying to collect data over time on that to see, okay, not just for six weeks pre-post, but over time, how are people changing as they're

continuing to use this for a period of months or even ideally years and seeing what kinds of shifts occur. Ideally too, and this is a big challenge in sports psychology in general, is being able to do some controlled studies to really get at more of a cause-effect relationship here that most of what we have so far is correlational in nature. And as I mentioned earlier, trying to get more at those mediator-moderator relationships, excuse me, that most of what we have so far is correlational in nature. And as I mentioned earlier, trying to get more at those mediator-moderator relationships, excuse me, that what's causing what, that if we're seeing these performance improvements, is that because, you know, there's an indirect relationship with anxiety or because there's something else that's happening? A lot of integration and then a lot of kind of parsing the science. But, you know,

I think to be fair, that's really where we're at with the mindfulness research in general, is that this is such a hot new area of study. And certainly it's a hot new area of study in sports psychology. But one of the real concerns that a lot of people are wary of is the youth outpacing the science

or the salesmanship outpacing the science. And so, you know, we have to be frank that, you know, we're at the tip of the iceberg here. And that, again, as we're saying, the potential is exciting, but there's a lot more work that needs to be done before we can say definitively what's effective and what's not. Absolutely. Sure. I can hear what you're saying. And so, you know, I kind of go back to the integration piece. And if people are listening and saying, well, okay, yeah, I'm going to learn more about this mindfulness sport performance enhancement or just mindfulness in general. And but making sure that you integrate it. Can you talk about like the best practices of integrating?

So you kind of said, you know, the soccer league was, you know, incorporating it weekly or is it incorporating it daily or what do you think? Yes. So, so what they, they were having weekly sessions. And that's, that's how the, our protocol talks about, you know, these six sessions is meeting once weekly and then doing some kind of daily practice. And we talk about both formal practice where you sit down or stand up or run or whatever you're doing that, that you do do the exercises in a formal way. And also informal practice that, that it's something that you're doing, that you do do the exercises in a formal way. And also informal practice, that it's something that you're thinking about even like while you're brushing your teeth or while you're walking across campus, that you're making an effort on an ongoing way to be mindful and to practice mindfulness skills. And so that's what we mean by integration is if you're a team and you're wanting to use this, that you make the time to do the sessions, but maybe perhaps between sessions, that you're still incorporating some of the vocabulary and you're still doing things like I mentioned hold the rope earlier, that you're developing keywords, you're developing, you know, as part of the culture of your team, mindfulness-based concepts, so that it's not just something that you, you know,

pull out of your pocket and dust off when you get anxious or before the championship game, but that it's something that becomes part of the fiber of the culture of the team. Because that, I mean, again, think about what we're saying. We're talking about nothing short of changing the way that you pay attention in the world as an individual or maybe even as a team or even as an athletics department, right, or as a franchise, whatever. And that is a massive undertaking. What's so exciting about this is that there's reason to be optimistic that it's attainable, that you can do this, that it can be effective. But that's what we mean by integration is that it's going to take a lot of work and a major commitment and a lot more research to really make that relationship clear.

You know, and I'm thinking about, you know, my own mindful practice. Can you tell us a little bit about yours, Keith? And, you know, just being integrated into the science of how this works and, you know, the potential of the so-and-so's promising results. How do you practice it every day? Yeah, I mean, I try to practice it both mindfully, mindfully, excuse me, both formally and informally. You know, I sort of, you know, I try to make some time, some space in my day.

A lot of times what I'll do is I'll do it in the evening because that's what works for me, you know, before bed. I also integrate it into the activities that I do. So whether I'm playing music or playing sports or just exercising, I make an effort to pay attention mindfully, to bring my focus intentionally into the moment and to try to just be with what is without judging it, without trying to change it. And so it is this mix of just making time in my day and then thinking about it as I go about my daily activities. And I'm fortunate that I also immerse myself in the science all the time. So I'm constantly reading about it and thinking about it and, you know, and helping other people read about it and think about it. And it's a big part of what I do in my private practice where I help the individual or the teams that I'm working with to pay attention

this way. So I honestly feel that I kind of live and breathe this stuff. I feel very, very fortunate in that way. But that, you know, that doesn't come easy. There are certainly days that I, you know, aren't, that I'm not able to make as much time as I would like. And that's part of being mindful too, is recognizing, you know, the choices that we have available to us and recognizing that there is no perfect. And, and that, as we were saying before, with the George Mumford idea that there's a lot of chaos and, and trying to, or, you know,

another idea that I love is what John Kabat's entitled his first book was full catastrophe living, being able to embrace the full catastrophe of life and that there, there is no right or wrong, good or bad, that there is only what is, you know, I really love that idea. Awesome. So what would you tell us in terms of the next step? So obviously, tell us where we can get the book mindful sport performance enhancement. I know you also have some trainings that I learned about, which are cool. I think the one that you have coming up this week, you can't register for anymore, but you know, there's some opportunity to actually go and get some training from you and your colleagues.

So tell us a little bit about, you know, what would our next steps be if we wanted to learn more about Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement? Yeah, so well so we've written a number of articles that have been out for a handful of years, and we've got a couple more coming out too. So that's kind of the roots of this. And then we just had this book that we were talking about come out this year. And so that's kind of the MSBE resource.

And the book talks about, as I mentioned, includes the full protocol. It includes the science behind this and includes some case studies illustrating in their own words how an athlete and how a coach went through the program. So just a ton of helpful information and some additional resources that really give you an overview as well as the nuts and bolts of what the program is. And I mentioned earlier, too, that a big initiative that we're working on is creating this MSPE Institute, and that's myself and Carol Glass and Tim Pinot. And part of what we're offering through that is what you mentioned, is we're offering instructional training programs, workshops. We kind of offered that more casually as an idea of something that people could potentially be interested in, and we've been very overwhelmed and deeply gratified by the response

that we've gotten, that there seems to be a lot of people interested in wanting to learn best practice techniques in terms of delivering MSPE. And so, as you mentioned, we're offering our first version of that this upcoming weekend in Washington, D.C., but we're hoping to, in the very near future, offer more of those. And we've also gotten a lot of questions about online versions of it that people can access on demand or simulcasting it if you can't be in Washington, D.C. And while we're not able to do that for this one, unfortunately, but we are really hoping to be able to do that in the near future.

So those are things to look out for. We have a website that contains information about our book. You can order the book through there I also did a DVD demonstration that was put out by our publisher American Psychological Association So there's a DVD of me demoing some MSP techniques You can also order that through the website, but our website is www.mindfulsportperformance.org and

On there again, you can order these materials. We also include, if you register for free on our site, you can access recordings of all the different MSPE exercises. So if you were looking to do a personal practice, you can access those recordings through our website. Or if you're doing research or interested in doing research, that can also be a handy resource. And if you do register with our site, then from time to time as we're announcing new programs, we send out email blasts and let people know. So that's a great way to be in touch. Another thing that we offer too, or we'll be offering even more of, is consulting opportunities. So if you're interested in having us help you implement MSPE, you know, please reach out to us.

We've had some exciting collaborations I mentioned with the Premier League. We're talking possibly with somebody who's going to do something with Major League Baseball team coming up here. So some exciting collaborations there and also with research. So if you're interested in doing research and we're looking for some guidance or want to bounce some ideas off us, please reach out to us that way too. And you can contact us through that mindfulsportperformance.org website and let us know any questions or thoughts you've got about the program. No, I think you're just getting started, Keith. That's an exciting time for you. So that's really excellent. Are you on social media or any other ways that we can follow you? Sure. So we do have an MSPE Facebook page. So please feel free to follow us there. And that's another way that we post announcements of things that are

going on in the MSPE world. So, you know, definitely follow us on Facebook. I have a practice website. You can certainly get in touch with me through the Mindful Sport Performance website. But I also have one that's just my name, KeithKaufmanPhD.com. And that's just for my practice. So if you just wanted to get in touch with me individually, that would be a way to do that. So, so yeah, lots, lots of different ways you can reach out. Well, Keith, I'm grateful that you spent some time with us just talking a little bit more about this concept of mindful sport performance enhancement in your new book published by the American Psychological Association. You know, my favorite parts of the most meaningful parts of kind of what you talked about was this mental training paradox that, you know, we know that

our mind is important in terms of our performance, but do we regularly train it? I think that's a really important point that, you know, that you made and mindfulness can help us do that. I also appreciated that you talked about kind of like overview the six sessions, your rationale for the six sessions, and then how we can develop these cues to be more mindful. We might do that in our group or our team. And then even your distinction between kind of formal practices of mindfulness and informal, I thought was really helpful, because I think sometimes people don't maybe understand kind of these formal practices, which you outline in your book, right? Going through these sessions, but then these informal practices of just working to be where you are, you know, while you're, you gave examples of while

you're playing a musical instrument, or, you know, while we're just doing our everyday activities. So I'm grateful that you spent the time with us today. Is there any kind of final advice or comments that you'd like to leave us with? Yeah, well, I think if this is something that interests you or you're at least a little bit curious about it, I think, you know, that this is exciting stuff. And as I said earlier, I think, you know, hopefully people can pick up the mantle and continue the work that we've started, and we're going to certainly continue it. And I think, you know, whether we're talking about what the training's all about, or mentioned earlier about the idea of paradigm shift, that, you know, what we're hoping to really do is create open-mindedness. That's what this is all about, is that, you know, that

mindfulness, it's so powerful because it's all about being open-minded and accepting of whatever's happening. And that in trying to sort of shift the way we might think about mental training or think about traditional sports psychology techniques, that so often we're so outcome-oriented and how reductive that can be and trying to just be open-minded in how you approach your achievement endeavors, that that's really kind of the main takeaway here of what we're after is just helping people be more open-minded. Well, I really appreciate all the work that you've done in this field, and I think developing a protocol like you have is outstanding, takes years and years of work and development. So thank you again, Keith, for joining us here on the High Performance Mindset. Absolutely. Thank you so much for the

invitation. It was great. 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.