High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 208: Check in With Yourself with Marc Strickland, Sport Psychologist, Oakland Athletics & Multisport Psychological Services

Episode Date: September 26, 2018

Dr. Marc Strickland works with professional, Olympic, collegiate and elite junior athletes including the Oakland Athletics. He has also spent time with the Chicago Cubs. He specializes in helping athletes improve their mental toughness by developing sound mental skills. As the founder and CEO of Multisport Psychological Consultants, Dr. Strickland is trained in the use of Performance Physiology techniques, like Biofeedback and Neurofeedback, to help clients train their minds to overcome mentally challenging situations. In this interview, Marc and Cindra talk about: What the best do differently How the best in the world take care of their emotional needs His advice for others working in this field Why mental health is a performance enhancement issue The growth of sport psychology in professional baseball His advice to coaches who are dealing with a mental health issue on their team You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/marc

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Sindra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you're here, ready to listen to an episode with Dr. Mark Strickland. 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. Now typically with two episodes weekly, we explore everything

related to mindset. You can learn secrets from a world-class consultant like in today's episode or listen each week where I provide a powerful short message to inspire you to be at your best consistently. Now if you know that your mindset is essential to your success, then this is the podcast for you. Now before I introduce you to Dr. Mark, I'm going to go over to iTunes and read a rating and a review. This one is from Tiny Dance You. She said, this is one of the best podcasts out there. A year ago, I had an accident that led to many injuries that were threatening to my career. And although I was, it was lucky it didn't end in my career. And as a

professional dancer and performer, it's critical that my mind and body are in tip-top shape to perform at my best. This podcast has been a daily transformation for my mind as I tackle my injury, set goals, and get closer back to my career each day. This has been a lifesaver. Thank you so much, Tiny Dance U. I really appreciate your rating and review over on iTunes. And please keep listening. I hope I pronounced your name right.

Please keep listening, and thank you so much. Let me head over and tell you a little bit about Mark Strickland. So Dr. Mark Strickland works with professional Olympic collegiate and elite junior athletes, including the Oakland A's. He's also spent some time as the sports psychologist for the Chicago Cubs. He specializes in helping athletes improve their mental toughness by developing sound mental skills. As the founder and CEO of Multisport Psychological Consultants,

Dr. Strickland is also trained in the use of performance physiological techniques like biofeedback and neurofeedback to help his athletes train their minds to overcome mentally challenging situations. And in this interview, Mark and I talk about what the best do differently, how the best in the world take care of their Needs, gives his advice for others working in the field. He also describes why mental health is a performance enhancement issue, which I think you're really going to enjoy hearing about his perspective. And then he provides advice for leaders and coaches who might be dealing with a mental health issue on their team or within their workplace. So my favorite part of this interview is his quote where he says,

the best in the world check in with themselves and their emotional needs. And then he also describes that they take care of their family, their financial needs, they read, they grow themselves. And that part is really powerful in this interview. If you enjoyed today's interview, you can head over to iTunes or Stitcher Radio, iHeart Radio, wherever you're listening and leave a rating and review. And I am always at mentally underscore strong on Twitter. And Mark is also at multi sports psych, if you'd like to reach out to us. Without further ado, here's Mark. Thank you so much for joining me today. Mark, it's great to have you here on the High Performance Mindset Podcast.

Thanks for joining me today, Mark. It's great to have you here on the High Performance Mindset Podcast. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to talking with you. It's been a while since I saw you, but we both got our master's degree at UNC Greensboro, so we've had a little overlap. And maybe just to start us off, Mark, could you tell us a little bit about your passion and what you do right now? Currently, the sports psychologist and director of EAP services for the Oakland Athletics, as well as I own a private practice called Multi-Sport Psychological Consultants, where I work with Olympic and professional level athletes

in Phoenix, Arizona. I'm trained as a licensed psychologist as well. Cinder and I did get our master's degree together, but in exercise science, but I continue my education and training in the world of psychology so I could understand mental health needs of athletes as well as the performance needs. Yeah, and why did you decide to do that, Mark? What was kind of driving you at that point to go that route? Well, at that point in time, the field of sports psychology didn't have a real firm hold in sports like it does now.

And I felt like, one, having a license as a psychologist offered me a little bit wider array of employment options. Two, I felt like mental and emotional needs weren't being addressed in athletics. And I felt that would be a strength of mine from an employment standpoint. And then three, I was just curious about human behavior. And I felt like a degree in psychology would just further my knowledge and understanding of human behavior. Yeah, nice. Awesome. And so tell us a little bit about, you know, when you finished your doctorate degree, tell us a little bit about how you started your practice. And you know, now you kind of just specifically work with Olympic and elite athletes. So tell us about

that transition. I was pretty fortunate after I finished my doctorate at RUC University in Phoenix, I did my postdoctoral training. At the time, you had to do a year of postdoctoral supervised training to get to sit for your board exam for your license. So I was fortunate enough to do my postdoctoral training with a gentleman named John Stapert in a private practice. So I was essentially building my own practice at that time while completing my education and training to sit for my license. So once I got my license, I sort of already had a leg up on starting a private practice. But at that time, I was doing sports as well as general mental health, just for financial reasons and for

training reasons. And so once I got my own license, then I started shifting my practice more and more to sport. And as you know, over time, it's just become more and more, you know, obviously a fixture in the community of Phoenix. There's not a lot of sports psychology professionals in the area, so I've been able to expand my practice to work with various teams that train in the area, various athletes, both professional Olympic that train. Phoenix has advantageous weather year-round. It's a little hot in the summer, but in the fall and spring,

there's a lot of athletes who come there to train because of the weather. And then we have elevation just an hour and a half away in Flagstaff. So there's a lot of variety of athletes that come through the Southwest area to train in their off seasons. I'm thinking about professional runners, right? I know at least from being in Minnesota. Yeah, track and field is really big. Yeah, there's a large track and field group in Phoenix that trains primarily in the spring and fall

because a lot of the athletes race in the Diamond League in Europe. There's a big cross-country slash marathoning group in Flagstaff that have had a couple of marathon winners throughout the season. So there's a big group there. Obviously there's all the major sports teams, football, basketball, baseball, WNBA, hockey, you know, there's a major university, Phoenix, there's a major university in Tucson, as well as in Flagstaff. So there's a lot of athletic participants. And then there's just, you know, there's a lot of athletes that aren't professional. There's a lot of recreational and, you know, pre-elite athletes, again, just because of

the weather and the ability to train you around, the ability to, you know, have resources at your disposal, whereas, you know, like in Minnesota, where you are in the winter, you have to train indoors or you may not train at all. So that's important in deciding your career. I mean, sometimes where you live is important as what you want to do. For sure, for sure. So Mark, so that we can get to know you a little bit more before we kind of dive into a little bit of more of your work and your perspective, tell us about a time that you failed. Tell us about a time that didn't go so well for you and what you learned from it. So it could be professional. It could be, you know, when you were young, could be, you know, when you were studying,

but just tell us a little story about you. I would say professionally, the times that I failed is when I have not taken the time to build the relationship with the athlete. You know, if I look across the board where either an athlete hasn't returned to my practice to continue working on whatever they came for, or a team has, you know, not hired me back after a presentation or something of that nature, it's the relationship wasn't strong enough. And, you know, if you look at the research, the key to success in mental health work and in sports psychology, I would extend that is the relationship the athlete and the relationship and the trust between myself and the athlete were not completely strong, then I think that, and I've rushed to try to provide an intervention or,

you know, push the athlete in a way outside their comfort zone a little bit to work on an issue. I think that's when I probably had some of my more prevalent professional failures. I mean, athletically as a person, I mean, I've had lots of failures as an athlete. That's probably why I got towards the sport. I had a lot of success as a young athlete in high school. I was participant in NCAA sports, but I was always a little smaller, a little slower, a little, you know, I wasn't always the biggest,

fastest, toughest, strongest, but I always had a really good idea of what was happening mentally on the field. And I could kind of see things developing. I couldn't always get my body to react to them. But so I think that's really what motivated me to get in this field is I see a lot of athletes with a lot of physical potential, which I didn't always have as a young athlete, but mentally and emotionally, they don't know how to harness that. And so they're successful, but not consistently successful. And so I want to help those athletes learn about themselves, discover themselves mentally and emotionally so they can use their gifts and use their abilities to their best. Absolutely.

You know, so Mark, when you were kind of talking about professionally, it's when you don't build a relationship. When you think about the success you have had, can you give us maybe a little insight on how you might build that relationship? The biggest advice I can give is don't be in a hurry. I mean, lots of times as mental health professionals or, you know, performance professionals in sports psychology, we see an issue. We see an athlete who's inconsistent or has a poor routine or, you know, doesn't use positive self-talk or something that is limiting them and we want to rush in and fix it. So my best piece of advice

is take your time. And we feel like sometimes we have to validate ourselves and, oh, that we're doing our job or that we're, you know, we're, our service is valuable. So we rush in with an athlete and try to intervene and the athlete either doesn't trust us or doesn't know us or doesn't respect us yet. And then it just turns into a sort of a mess. And, you know, then that athlete calls another athlete and, you know, sort of it can really affect your, if you're working with a team, it really can affect you across the team because you have good information to give. It may just not be the right time to give that information. And so I,

you know, my philosophy is be patient. It's hard to do sometimes when you see someone failing or see someone, you know, engaging in a process that you think is not most beneficial to them, but you have to really make sure that you're giving the athlete enough time to really trust you that when you go and talk to them, when you get that opportunity, when the opportunity presents itself, that they're going to A, listen and B, they're going to really absorb what you're, what you're giving them. And then C, they're going to take that and put it into actual practice. And when, and when they see that you care about them and, you know, you're there for

them and not just for the team or a paycheck or whatever, then that's when think you've got you know buy-in absolute buy-in for your athlete. I'm thinking about that applies to so many different people Mark just about building relationships and being patient and you might be you know I'm just thinking about a leader or manager they might you know start a meeting off with kind of the the content they have to cover instead of building their relationship. But I like what you're saying is about just being patient and not being in a hurry to build that trust. Yeah. And getting to know them as a person. I mean, I spend a lot of time asking athletes about their families or, you know, how's your son? If I know

he's been sick or how's your wife or where are you from or and you know they're they're not innocuous questions they're they're meaningful it's meaningful information to me because the one that might help me create a relationship they're from north carolina and i was where i grew up like we may have something in common that you know a restaurant or a town or something and that's just a way for them to get to know me as well i think sometimes as mental health professionals or paraprofessionals in the field feel like all the athlete can't know anything about us well we we have to create some boundary but that doesn't mean that we can't build relationships we don't need to be best friends but we do need to build relationships

and so that's really important and you're right it spills over into the coaching world or, you know, into business, you know, there's a need and a drive and even the research supports it that the best athletes have great relationships with their coaches. Their coaches may not be the best coach in the world, but it's the relationship and the trust and the bond that helps them persevere. Absolutely. You know, Mark, now that you work with the Oakland A's, you've worked with them for many years and I know you did some work with the Cubs as well. You know, when you look at professional baseball and how they're hiring more and more people like you and I, right, just the prevalence of the understanding of mental health, but also like mental training has increased. What do you see the difference, you know, within baseball and what does contribute to that growth? Well, baseball was an early pioneer with Harvey Dorfman and Ken Revisa, but they, you know, a lot of people don't know that they're not household names, but they are, you know,

legends in our field. But I think when I started in baseball 11 years ago. There was probably six or seven of us that were quote-unquote full-time, and now I would say probably 27 of the 30 baseball teams have somebody full-time, and many teams have multiple people operating in this role now. I think in sport general, specifically in baseball, we have so many players. I mean, baseball is unique in that we have a minor league system, and there's seven teams, and from the Dominican Dominican academies all the way to the major league level. And, you know, baseball GMs have finally discovered that we can go out and scout great players with great talent, but if we can't get them through our system and get them through our systems quickly, you know, one, it's financially very expensive,

but two, you know, we're just, players just aren't meeting their potential. And so I would say on the performance side of things, baseball has started to really buy in looking at why these players aren't reaching their potential. And so the mental side was an area just like 10 or 15 years ago, there was no strength and conditioning. You know, there were no strength coaches in baseball. There were no, you know, and then somebody hired one and that team did well. And I think that's part of it also is keeping up with the Joneses type mentality. Like no team wants to not think they don't have what everybody else has. And so, you know, so there's a, there's an L to that as well. You know,

some teams hire strength and conditioning coaches at every level 15 years ago. So everybody else started doing that. Now the league, the league actually mandates that if you look at the most recent collective bargaining agreement, the players union wanted sports psychologists listed in the, you know, as a requirement by every team now. And just like they want nutrition and they want strength conditioning, they want athletic training and things like that. So the players are starting to fully understand our mental and

emotional needs need to be met as well. Cause being an athlete is, it's difficult playing in front of 40, 50,000 people every night is difficult, but being away from your family is just as impactful as, you know, having a bad game and understanding the stress and demands of being away from family or, you know, having sick parents or sick children while you're trying to play or the unique demands of being a professional athlete and the psychological toll that takes. The players have really, I think that's the biggest shift that the players have really now started to understand. This is important to us and we need to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves mentally and emotionally. And I would guess that makes it a

little bit easier for you to do your work if there's more awareness that it's important and that they need to address that side of their performance as well? Oh, yeah, for sure. It's easier for an athlete to understand, like, this doesn't mean I'm weak. You know, that was always the knock in our world in gaining entry into sport was the athletes were like, oh, there's nothing wrong with me. Or, you know, talking to the shrink is, you know, an admission that I have a weakness. And if a coach knows I'm weak, they won't a weakness. And if a coach knows I'm weak, they won't play me. Or if a GM knows I'm weak, they'll release me. And I mean, there's been

enough athletes now, high profile athletes that have talked about their mental health issues and panic attacks and depression. So the stigma is being slowly diminished, even in our greater society. I mean, you know, the general population is also starting to understand like, yeah, mental health issues, they're expensive. They cost companies lots of money in this time. They cost people, you know, their lives potentially, you know, knowing that recently it was suicide prevention day.

And so we as a society, I think have just gotten a better understanding that the cost of mental and emotional needs and then athletes have bravely stepped forward and said, I have these issues and these have affected me in this way. It doesn't mean I can't go to work and can't do my job, but I also sought help and I got help and there's no reason not to at this point. You know, and I know last year about March, Mark, you know, Kevin Love, an NBA basketball player came forward talking about he had a panic attack during a game and then wrote this amazing article in the Players Tribune.

I think it was called like someone is going, everyone is going through something, right? So how do you see Kevin Love speaking out or other lead athletes speaking out? How do you think that changes the culture of addressing mental health issues within major league baseball, but just in sport in general? I think it just gives players an opportunity to say, yeah, I'm human. I have problems. I have these issues. Doesn't mean I can't do my job. Doesn't mean I'm, you know, mentally ill, I'm human. I have problems. I have these issues. Doesn't mean I can't do my job. Doesn't mean I'm, you know, mentally ill or I'm dysfunctional in some way. It just means I'm like everybody else. I, you know, five to 12% of Americans struggle with anxiety and depression. Athletes are no different. They're part of that five to 12%. They just happen to have a job as

a professional athlete versus being a banker or a lawyer or, you know, some other profession. So I think it really frees the athlete up to say, you know what, it's okay if these things happen to me and it's more important that I take care of myself. And so I think it's good. It gives athletes when someone like CC Sabathia talks about a substance abuse publicly, or Kevin talks about it or the USA Gymnastics women talk about sexual trauma and abuse in their lives and how it affected them. It just gives the greater athletic population an opportunity to say, man, that's happened to me too. Sometimes they don't know what the words are or what, how it's affecting them. And when they see it affect a teammate or another individual in sport,

they may go, Oh, that's happened to me. Or that, you know, I, I sometimes experience that and it gives them a vocabulary to explain to, you know, a sports psychologist or someone, a mental health professional, like, this is what's happening. I didn't know what that meant. So I didn't seek help. But now I'm going to talk to you about it because there's a way to fix this. I didn't know that, you know. And I also think it helps them not feel like they're alone, right? They're not the only one going through this. Oh, for sure. And they're not alone, but, and they're not the only one going through this. Oh, for sure. And they're not alone, and they're not the only one. But there's also, you know, they don't have to stay this way.

They can work on it, they can improve, and they can learn new strategies and behaviors to help them not have to deal with this anymore. You know, Mark, I know you told me this a few days ago, and I've been thinking quite a bit about it when you said, like, mental health is a performance enhancement issue and that we all have kind of mental issues. Tell us a little bit about your perspective and what that statement, you know, we have this debate about who can do this work. And there's people who are trained in kinesiology and physical education, extra science. And there's people who are trained in psychology. And a lot of people say, well, I only do performance work. And I go, well, so do I. As a psychologist, I think mental health issues are performance issues because if you're

depressed, let's say, and the symptoms of depression are, you know, not sleeping enough or maybe sleeping too much or appetite changes or changes in mood, a depressed mood. If you're, if you're not feeling up to par, you know, if you aren't sleeping enough, you're not eating the right nutrition, you're not, you're in a bad mood or you're in a depressed mood you're probably not going to perform your best we all go have depressive symptoms from time to time it doesn't mean we're clinically depressed you know you're ever family member passed away or your dog dies you're sad and it affects you it may affect you for a couple of hours it may affect you for a couple weeks and

during that time you're not performing at your optimal level. It doesn't mean you can't perform. It doesn't mean you can't learn how to effectively deal with those emotional underpinnings, but it doesn't mean you're operating at your best. Well, I don't care if you're a banker or you're a lawyer or you're an athlete. So I see mental health issues as a performance issue just in life. If you're a very anxious individual or, you know, you may have difficulty public speaking or you may have difficulty stepping out onto a playing field that has 40 or 50,000 people and, you know, then that creates, you know, maybe negative self-talk or it may physiologically cause your palms to sweat and your heart rate to raise. And so, again, you know, maybe negative self-talk or it may physiologically cause your

palms to sweat and your heart rate to raise. And so again, you're not going to perform at your optimal level. So mental health issues are just as much a performance issue as negative self-talk or, you know, competition anxiety. And I don't draw the line between this is a mental health issue and this is a performance issue. To me, they're all performance issues. And that was true for me when I saw general mental health. You know, someone who was a parent came to my office and wanted to work on their anxiety issues, you know, or a mom with postpartum depression. I mean, you're not being your best self.

You're not being your best, you know, you could be as a mother and giving your child attention and attachment that they need or as a father, you know, so that's a performance issue. We all need to perform at our best, no matter what our job responsibilities are or our life responsibilities are. So that's just the way I've always viewed it. Yeah, that's good. And I could see how that really shapes the work that you do.

Sure. You know, like I said, I spent a lot of time talking to athletes about their families, about relationships with other people. It's not just, you know, how are you playing today? Because that's what a lot of people want to know. It's about other things. Like if they're having spousal issues, you know, and nobody else on the team knows it. And I talked to him about it. It may relieve some of their anxiety. Like there's other guys, there's other people in the world that have gone through spousal problems or have had sick kids. And here's ways to deal with that. Here's ways to departmentalize your life a little bit and understand this is a stressor in this area, but not a stressor in this area. And this is how you can go out there and still do your job and

perform and then deal with this problem in a, in a healthier way at a different time. And so, you know, we sometimes compartmentalize the athlete and just treat the problem. We need to treat the whole athlete, just like we need to treat the whole person, you know, in our work, you know, in society. So, Mark, tell us a little bit about, you know, when you think about your private practice and then, you know, your work in professional baseball, what are some of the things that people come to you for? You know, when you think about what are the issues that you might address and work on someone with? Give us a little snapshot of what that looks like. Well, in my private practice, it's probably different than in baseball. In my private practice, I probably see more athletes with mental health

issues than just strictly come in for performance work. I don't know if that's because the type of athlete that I see or the sport that they participate in, but I see a lot of trauma, people who have experienced trauma in their lives, and it's affecting them physiologically and psychologically. I see a lot of anxiety in my private practice. In my work in baseball, I would say it's more stress management related. Some performance anxiety definitely comes into play. There's always issues around substance abuse, performance enhancing drugs or drugs of abuse, recreational drugs, family issues. You know, again, as an athlete having to be away from home a lot, feeling guilty about missing time with children or spouses or there's financial demands being an athlete. You know, everybody just assumes they're making a lot of money and they're not. Relatively speaking, they do make a lot of money, but they also have a lot of expenses and they're, you know, oftentimes their lives are insecure.

They make a lot of their money in their early 20s and sometimes that money doesn't last. And there's some good documentaries out there about that. So there's stresses about, you know, what their career is actually going to look like. You know, in baseball, we're fortunate that most players have guaranteed contracts, but in other sports, they don't have guaranteed contracts, so they could be cut or released. And that money that it looked like they were going to make, they are not going to make, so there's financial stressors.

And then there are a range of mental health issues in professional baseball. Again, guys that are dealing with anxiety, concerns, depression, and things like that. But I would say the big difference is in my private practice, I probably see more trauma-related mental health issues than in any, than anything else. And tell us a little bit about that trauma, like kind of paint us a picture of some of the things that people might be, you know, experiencing. Well, trauma is a unique experience. I mean, what's traumatizing to one person is not to another necessarily. So, you know, we can look at things like PTSD, you know, and war veterans and things like that. But, you know, the most

blatant sport example I can give you is the Larry Nassar case at Michigan State. I mean, there's hundreds and hundreds of women that he traumatized with his actions. And so those experiences not only affect the athlete as an athlete, but they carry that in their lives. And I think some of these women have spoken very eloquently about how this affects them in their daily lives, relationships with other people and trust and being able to bond with coaches and medical staff and things like that. So trauma is a very unique experience. It could be from traumatized from catastrophic injury sustained in sport or car accident. It could be negative coaching. You know, we've seen

recent issues like at Maryland football program, the way the coaches treated athletes. Sometimes coaches, at least old school coaches, feel like they can say or do to the athlete what they want, and sometimes that's very psychologically damaging. Obviously, domestic violence and rape are an issue. So those are really types of traumatic experiences that athletes come with. And if you look at the research, again, specifically look at Bessel van der Kolk's work, you see not only the psychological impact of trauma, but you see the physiological impact of trauma. It actually changes the way the body reacts to stress. We see incidents of injuries go up in traumatized individuals. We see how they react to stress change physiologically. We look at the neurochemical changes in the brain in sometimes traumatized people don't know how to connect because they don't know how to trust and physiologically they are interpreting everything as a stimulus and everything as dangerous to them just because

of the hard wiring it's not their fault so once we treat and reprocess the trauma then they're actually able to stay healthy and connect to their coach and communicate openly with their coaches. But it's about putting them in a situation where their brain and their body can reprocess that emotional experience, that negative emotional experience, so we can start to give them positive emotional experiences to build upon. Absolutely. And then they have to, you know, perform to their best ability in sport while dealing with all of this trauma or, you know, the things that have come from that. Sure. Yeah. And that's the biggest challenge is, I mean, you know, if you work in, if you're, you know, in the general population, you can,

you can maybe take time off. You can get FMLA. You can take a leave of absence from your work and go and do these things and go to therapy. And athletes don't always have that freedom. I mean, there's often a very short offseason. And in some sports, there's almost no offseasons now. Two, there's the challenge of I've got to hold my position because somebody else is coming after my job. You know, there's always a younger, better, faster, smarter athlete coming along. So there's that challenge of somebody's coming after my position.

So I can't afford to take this time off and work on these things. And so helping an athlete understand that by working on themselves mentally and emotionally, they'll actually improve their performance or at least have the potential to improve their performance really ultimately allows them. It's just like going to the gym. You don't wait to get injured to start lifting weights as an athlete. You lift weights all throughout the year. I want you to lift your mental weights and work on yourself mentally and emotionally throughout the season. There's times when we may have to shut you down like an injury. And if you get hurt, now's the time we can really dig into some deep emotional stuff because we have the time. Let's use it

to repair your body. Let's use it to repair your mind. Sometimes, you know, there are instances where coaches are like, you need to go work, get this, you know, get this help first because, you know, we're just going to spin our wheels here. But then we have are like, you need to go work, get this, you know, get this help first because, you know, we're just going to spin our wheels here. But then we have challenges like, you know, in certain sports, you've only got an Olympic. You know, that's where you're the pinnacle of your sport is the Olympics. And it only comes once every four years. And maybe you have a world championship the year before and the year after. But your time to really peak and make the most of your athletic potential, you know, things aren't really dialed in, you know, then for the Olympics,

then it's, you know, you miss a very small window of opportunity, certain sports. And Mark, you said something really important that I think is something really discuss and hit on, as you said, you know, when the athlete has experienced trauma, they're more likely to be injured, right? And I know earlier when we were talking, you said one thing that you see is like the more life stress someone has, the more likelihood that they might be injured. Tell us a little bit about like at least what you see and the different reasons why we should really address either that life stress or trauma? Well, yeah, there was some research a couple years ago that looked at NCAA football and that there was a 20% increase in hamstring injuries during final exam period.

So with no other changes in training or season, the fact that they were in exams, which is the most stressful time of an academic year, these athletes had a 20% higher rate in hamstring injuries. So there's further research that just looks at life stress. Life stress could be academic stress, financial stress, lack of sleep, changes in diet, illness, you know, just anything that creates stress in your life. There's an increase in injury potential. So a lot of coaches, you know, when they program their training for an athlete, it's all based around physical stress. I'm going to apply a load this much weight or this many reps or this much distance and see how the athlete responds. And they load the athlete for two or three days and

then they, you know, deload and have days off and recovery days and things like that i think what coaches don't fully implement into periodization table or training program is what is the athlete's emotional stress psychological stress are they in exam periods uh have they had a breakup in their life? Are they going through a divorce? Have they had a family member die? Is their child sick? Because those are stressors as well. Those are just as detrimental a stressor as applying too much weight on the athlete and injuring them by asking them to pick up too much weight on the barbell. So from a psychological standpoint, trying to educate coaches and, safety, tickets for their family, all the other, you know, sort of distractions that come along with a major sports event,

those are all stressors. And how do you affect that? And how do you put that into an understanding? We don't want this athlete to be injured in any way, shape, or form. And their stress load may be what's actually causing them, their bodies to physiologically change any way, shape, or form. And their stress load may be what's actually causing their bodies to physiologically change. Those stress hormones go up, cortisol, the effect on the adrenal system, the adrenal system is drained. It doesn't recover itself as quickly. And so those stressors, whatever they are, and again, the stressor could be individual. What's stressful to one person is not always stressful to the next. And so, again, that goes back to that connection with the athlete and saying what things are stressing you out right now, what stressors are going on in your life right now that we need to program around.

You know, if this is exam periods are coming up and I work at an NCAA institution, maybe I bring the volume of training down slightly. It doesn't mean I stop training them. It just means I adjust it knowing that that stress load is there. So I'm going to reduce the physical stress load to try to prevent injury. You know, if a professional athlete's getting married, let's say they're a track and field athlete, and they may be getting married at the end of the season, and they're trying to plan, and, you know, there's various demands on them off the field, like, coaches need to know that and take that into account. And talk to their athlete about their stress load. What are they doing to reduce their stress load?

Are they meditating? Are they journaling? Are they, you know, engaging in recovery strategies, whether that's pole tub or massage or Reiki or anything else? And just understanding to have that discussion on a regular basis with your athlete about what are your stressors right now? What's going on in your life? What's going on with training? What's going on with travel? I mean, travel is a stressor. You travel, you know, if you leave Phoenix and you go to Germany for track meet, you know, and you change time zones at seven or eight time zones, that's a stress. That's the stress on the body, but it's also a stress emotionally. Your sleep patterns are off, your eating patterns are off, and then you still have to go and perform. And financially, maybe you don't have a lot of money. So you're staying in a cheaper hotel or staying away from the venue because, you know, it's cheaper.

But then you've got to commute to the venue and you don't want to be late. You know, meet times change and there's weather demands and things like that. So, again, to me, it goes back to the relationship and really communicating with the athlete. What's going on in your life? What's stressful to you right now? And how do we make adjustments in your life and in your sport to make sure that we're keeping you healthy mentally and emotionally as well as physically? And you know, Mark, as I'm hearing you talk, I'm thinking about how that might be easier to do at the college level, right? Meaning get to know your athletes and what they're experiencing and then

adjust based on, you know, their stress levels. I'm thinking about how, at least what I see in professional sport, where it's like, okay, you know, if you're not going to perform, we'll bring up the next person, right? And sort of like these no excuses mentality. What do you see in terms of best practices for coaches at the pro level? Do you see, you know, coaches still developing that relationship and better understanding what's happening in the athlete's life in terms of their stress level? Yeah, I think that's part of it. I mean, you know, asking, you know, every professional sports team, you know, they don't practice every day. Let's take football, for example, they play once a week. So they play

on Sunday, Monday's an off day, Tuesday's a sort of, sort of get back into it. Wednesday's a full practice. I mean, there's time on Mondays and Tuesdays to reconnect to the athlete and it doesn't have to do anything to do with football. For example, it can be, you know, Hey, tomorrow's your off day. Make sure that you're spending time with your family, make sure that you're doing these things. You know, the game is over. Let you know, make sure you're deloading your stress level on Monday, make sure you're taking care of yourself, make sure you're taking care of your family and the things that may be coming up in your lives, you can talk to

them about that, you can talk to them about, you know, off days and how to really use their off day to be off, you know, not, you don't have to study your playbook on that day, you don't have to, you know, worry about the game film that day. That really needs to be off. And that goes back to mindfulness and being self-aware of what your needs are, the relationship, you know, and if the athlete feels that they can trust the coach or the sports psychologist or anybody else, then they can go to them and say, look, you know, my kid's sick. You know, like I might have to miss practice say, look, you know, my kid's sick, you know,

like I might have to miss practice, or I might be late, or I might need some accommodation here this day or this day. And then, you know, good coaches are like, yeah, we'll work around that, you know, those things are important to you. And they realize that, you know, if I give this guy, you know, we move practice back 30 minutes for this guy so he can attend an appointment with his wife, you know, for a prenatal exam that calms him down and keeps him stress-free to know that his wife in the pregnancy is going well and he can come and focus at practice. You know, I think you're starting to see more of that at coaches starting to understand I can't coach everybody the same way. You know, and I think, you know, and again, old school coaches are like, it's my way or the highway.

And I think you're starting to see individualized coaching on a team. What are the needs of this athlete? I think European coaches, I think European athletic systems are way ahead of us in that regard and that they're individualizing programming to what the individual's athletes needs are for that segment of practice. There's still some things that all the whole team has to do, but they're allowing each athlete to prepare individually and what their needs are, whether it's in the gym, conditioning, recovery, to make sure that each individual athlete is prepared, maximally prepared, and that makes the team maximally prepared. So individual programming is also, it's more work for the coach. I get it. It's harder. It takes more time. It takes more effort. You have to collect more data, but it ultimately makes your team better because each athlete is better prepared.

So taking that time to actually look at your programming from not only a whole team standpoint, but then looking at the needs of each individual athlete. And Mark, I like the discussion we're having about implications for coaches. What would you tell a coach or a leader of a team, or maybe, you know, maybe your advice would differ in the workplace, but what advice would you give a coach or a leader who they can tell, you know, one of their players is struggling with a mental health issue? What would you, what advice would you give them? Don't avoid it. I mean, if you have concerns, you know, in a respectful, confidential way, talk to the athlete, you know,

talk to them, say, look, this is what I'm seeing, you know, and talk about the behaviors. Don't, you know, don't think, don't accuse them of something that you're not sure of, but look, I'm noticing that at practice you're less focused, or I noticed that, you know, you're easily angered, or I noticed that you look really tired today coming into practice, or, you know, it just appears that you're not recovering from set to set as well. Is there something going on? You know, are you, are you struggling with something? You don't have to tell. And that's the other thing is if you're noticing it, there's probably other coaches who are noticing it or other people who are noticing it and you give the athlete

permission. Like you don't have to discuss it with me. You know, you may not feel comfortable with that, but you need to talk to somebody. So if you have a team psychologist, or do you have, you know, a mental health professional or a doctor, you know, that they can go to that they trust or that you trust, you know, because again, if you're seeing it, chances are other people are seeing it. And a lot of times, you know, when we are struggling, we don't think anybody notices it. But we oftentimes do. Oftentimes, other people notice it before we even notice it in ourselves. And that's the analogy I kind of give athletes is there's a lot of times where something's going on for you. You may not fully understand what it is yet, but other people are noticing changes in your behavior.

And if they're starting to point out changes in your behavior and you're not, you're like, I'm fine or I'm not in a bad mood or, you know, then you need, if more than one person says that to you, then you probably should take a minute and go, where is this coming from? And so as a coach, don't avoid it. That's probably the biggest thing, because if you're avoiding it, nobody else, everybody else is going to avoid it. And that athlete's not going to seek the services or get the help that they need absolutely so don't avoid it make sure that you are talking to the athlete about it or the employer or or whoever you're leading the employer yeah whoever you're leading talk to them about it not in a hey you're crazy type of way or you know you're depressed but just talk to them openly about the symptoms that you're crazy type of way, or, you know, you're depressed, but just talk to them openly

about the symptoms that you're seeing, the things that you're noticing, they're less focused, or they're always late for work, and they used to never be late. Like that's a symptom, potentially. You know, you notice that they've lost or gained weight. I mean, that's a sensitive topic. But again, that's related to symptoms that may be related to depression or anxiety. And you don't have to accuse them of anything. But again, if you're doing this on a regular basis and you're doing it from a place where they know that you care about them, then they're going to take that information and go, wait, this guy's not trying to fire me or trying to release me. He's really concerned about me. And, and then revisit it, you know,

because again, sometimes it takes two or three times to refer an athlete to get services or get help before it finally sinks in. I mean, I, I had an athlete yesterday, a referral provider who has some specialized, and I can't treat that or I'm not qualified to treat that. So he finally connected back to me yesterday and said, I finally made the appointment. I've been encouraging him to go see this person for three or four months, but he just wasn't ready emotionally to take that leap.

But, you know, I revisited with him, you know, several times, like, hey, have you called this person like how are you doing with this issue you know and it still seems to be affecting you you're still having problems with your work and you're still having problems with this and you know I just want to strongly encourage you like just go one time you know just give it a try and so sometimes coaches go you know maybe you should talk to the doctor. Then they drop it. They don't ever revisit it. You know, I think we need to come back around to it.

And, you know, in a couple weeks or a couple days, if you haven't noticed changes in the athlete's mood or behavior, revisit it. Hey, did you call the doctor? Like, what are you thinking about it? You know, I know it's scary. I mean, there's a lot. But you know what? There's no reason not to get help. Lots of times athletes are more than willing to rush into the training room and get help for a physical injury or rush into a strength coach

and work on something physically. I think that's the piece is the coaches really need to make emotional training and mental training and performance training make that just as much an emphasis of the athlete as the gym and the training room and all the other, you know, phases of sport. Absolutely. And I think then we're serving the athletes the best that we can, right? Because performance isn't just physical. Right. And we're not just reacting to problems. I think that sometimes mental and emotional part is we're reacting. The fire's already started. We roll up with the fire truck once it's already started. And I think good coaches and good teams that are starting to realize, let's put emphasis and money into prevention. Let's address these needs. Let's talk about mental and emotional problems. Let's talk about anxiety, depression, substance abuse, trauma, domestic violence, whatever it is.

Let's talk about these things openly and honestly so that athletes are working on these things before they become problematic. Absolutely. And you know, Mark, I'm thinking about, I think what we've talked about is really powerful because I don't think there's always awareness of what you should do and just kind of the different range of issues people might be struggling with. When you think about the people that you work with or that you observe that are really thriving, you know, what do you see them doing from an emotional or psychological standpoint that

allows them to really thrive, you know, in their performance and in their life? I just see them checking in with themselves on a daily basis and their emotional needs. I mean, the athletes that I think that are doing a really good job of it, you know, they spend some part of their day making sure that they've dealt with their emotional needs for that day. And that can come in a lot of different forms, whether that's meditation or journaling, or they come in and just had a quick session with me. They have made sure that they have addressed their family, financial relationship, all of the various off the field problems prior to coming to the field. You know, they, they work on those things regularly. They, they read, you know, a lot of

athletes are interested, but they don't know what to read. So, you know, I recommend a lot of books on a variety of topics, not just sports stuff. And they're doing, they're engaging in some practice actively to grow themselves, both from a spiritual standpoint, from a religious or religious standpoint, potentially, from an emotional standpoint, from a relationship standpoint, both on and off the field. And they just engage in that practice regularly and consistently. They don't, like, again, they don't wait for there to be a problem before they start doing something. They do this stuff on a daily, a regular basis. I won't say daily, but they do these things on a regular basis.

Love that list. I think it's really, really powerful. But I like what you said about checking in with themselves and their emotional needs, that they're not waiting for a problem, but they're making sure that they are doing what they need to do to take care of themselves emotionally and psychologically. Absolutely. And sometimes my role, you know, in my role as the sports psychologist is really to create accountability for them. So I might call them just randomly out of the blue, or I might check in with them and

just say, hey, are you still doing these things? Are they still working for you? Are they still helping you maintain that balance that you're looking for? Because again, like everybody else, we can get off track once in a while. We can fall off the wagon because something else has gotten in our way or travel has gotten to be really tough they're on a long road trip or they haven't slept well for a couple days or had a couple bad games so sometimes it's just my job to check in and go hey are you still doing these things because again they may have gotten off track and not really noticed it and it's just about steering them back onto track for them to continue to work on themselves so sometimes it's just holding them accountable and again that's something a coach

can do if they're talking about these things on a regular basis not just when a problem occurs they're talking about emotional needs they're talking about self-awareness and mindfulness and these topics on a regular and consistent basis then athletes are going to engage in these topics on a regular and consistent basis, then athletes are going to engage in these processes on a regular and consistent basis. And that's what we really need. We don't need to just wait for the fire to grow and try to put it out because it's harder to put out the bigger it is. And Mark, what do you see? You know, you said you recommend a variety of books, but what's one or two that seem to be keep on, you know, popping up in your work and what you recommend? I like Mindset by Carol Dweck. That's one I recommend a lot. I, well, I work in baseball, so I recommend there's a sort of a seminal text called the ABCs of baseball or the mental game of baseball. They're both by Harvey Dorfman

and they've been out for a long time, but they're still really good techs for baseball. I recommend, I'm going to butcher his name, but Atul Gurande, I think he's a surgeon and he's written a couple of books. One's called Better. I recommend sometimes Malcolm Gladwell's work. Some of his books are really good. So yeah, there's a variety on my shelf that I recommend. You know, sometimes I recommend, you know, really tough books like Man's Search for Meaning. That's a really tough read, but a really great book. It's an athlete sort of searching for like, why am I still doing my sport or why am I still struggling with these things, you know, and obviously living in a concentration camp is way more difficult and horrendous than playing any sport, but it really gives you a good insight into sometimes you're not the only person with a problem, and sometimes there's a lot of problems

in this world that are a lot bigger than you, so that's a really good book from time to time. So those are kind of my go-tos, probably just off the top of my head. Love it. Mark, I really enjoyed hearing your perspective and just talking with you today to learn more about your work. Tell us how we might reach out to you if we want to learn more about what you're doing or your website or if you're on Twitter or social media. Tell us where we can connect with you. The easiest way to connect with me is probably through my website, www.multisportpsychological.com. My practice is Multisport Psychological Consultants in Phoenix, Arizona. And through my website, my contact information email is all listed on there. I am on Twitter, but I don't really post very much.

Occasionally I'll post a research article or things like that, but it's just at Multisport. Yeah, at Multisport Psych, I think, is my Twitter handle. But yeah, those are probably the easiest ways to contact me. Excellent. You know, Mark, as I wrap up, there are three things that were most meaningful to me. First, your discussion or your perspective on mental health, that it is a performance enhancement issue. So I enjoyed our discussion about that. Your recommendations for coaches would be the second one, you know, when they're dealing with a mental health issue, not to avoid it, but talk to the athlete or, you know,

however you lead, but talk to the person about what you're seeing. And then our last discussion about, you know, what you see that the best do. And I liked what you said about checking in with themselves and their emotional needs and making sure that they are taking care of themselves psychologically and emotionally before that, you know, there is an issue. So Mark, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time and your energy and our discussion. Yeah, thanks for having me, Sindra. 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.