High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 213: Becoming One with The Shark with Jen Schumacher, Certified Mental Performance Consultant & Performance Psychology Instructor, West Point Academy

Episode Date: October 15, 2018

Jen Schumacher, M.S., CMPC, is a Performance Psychology Instructor at the Center for Enhanced Performance at the United States Military Academy. She works with cadets and teams on the psychological aspects of elite performance. Jen works with cadets on the mental aspects of the Survival Swimming course, incorporating virtual reality training alongside workshops. Jen operates a private consulting practice, providing individual training for elite and club athletes, marathon swimmers, and executives. She also runs mental skills seminars and team building retreats for athletic and corporate groups. In addition to performance psychology, Jen’s other passion is marathon swimming. She has completed two Catalina Channel crossings, the 28-mile length of the LA Bay, the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, the Strait of Gibraltar, Lake Tahoe, and several Catalina Channel relays. Jen credits much of her athletic success to her experiences working with and learning about the mental aspects of performance. Jen earned her Master's Degree in Sport Psychology at California State University, Fullerton, studying under Dr. Ken Ravizza, and is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant through the Association of Applied Sport Psychology. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Health and Human Performance at Concordia University of Chicago. In this interview, Jen and Cindra talk about: How she became grateful while swimming with a shark How she uses Ravizza’s “3 Rs” in marathon swimming The difference between offensive and defensive self-talk The 4Ps of self-talk How to address your fear with “fear statements” You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/jen

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Sindra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you're here, ready to listen to episode 213 with Jen Schumacher. Now, the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best leaders, athletes, coaches, and consultants all about the topic of mindset to help us reach our potential or be high performers in our field or sport. Now typically

with two episodes weekly we explore everything related to mindset. You can learn secrets from a world-class consultant, coach, speaker, entrepreneur, or leader each week or listen to me provide a short powerful 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 head over to interview Jen, I'm going to go over to iTunes and read a rating and a review. And this one is from the Food Healers podcast. So another podcast. And the Food Healers podcast said, episodes of pure gold.

I'm always working on my mindset and love Dr. Sindra's approach. She interviews a variety of people each week, athletes, doctors, speakers, and coaches, which makes her episodes much more relatable to all of you. She truly has something for everyone. And the Food Healers podcast particularly loved the episode on fear, courage, and stress with Dr. McLaughlin. And they end with, I look forward to much more episodes. So thank you so much, Food Healers podcast. I super appreciate the rating and review over on iTunes. And if you enjoyed today's episode, you can head over

wherever you're listening to it, iHeartRadio, Stitcher Radio, iTunes, and leave a rating and a review, and I will read yours next time. All right, so let's talk a little bit about Jen Schumacher. One of the reasons I titled this podcast Becoming One with a Shark is because literally she explains her experience of swimming several miles with a shark and how her skills and mental performance really helped her do that. So it's fascinating. So I can't wait to hear what you think about her story. So let me tell you a little bit about Jen. She is a performance psychology instructor at the Center for Enhanced Performance at the United States Military Academy, where she works with cadets and teams on the psychological aspects of elite performance. She also works with cadets and teams on the psychological aspects of elite

performance. She also works with cadets on the mental aspects during the survival swim course, where she incorporates virtual reality training alongside the workshops, which is something we talk about in today's episode. She also operates a private practice where she works individually with elite and club athletes, marathon swimmers, and executives. And in addition to performance psychology, her other passion is marathon swimming. She has completed two Catalina Channel crossings, the 28-mile length of the LA Bay, which is amazing, the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, and several other races and channel swim relays. So she credits much of her athletic

success to her experiences working with and learning about the mental aspects of performance. Jen earned her master's degree in sports psychology from California State University Fullerton, studying under Dr. Ken Reviza, which I've had on the podcast several times. She's also a certified mental performance consultant through the Association for Applied Sports Psychology, and she's working on her PhD in health and human performance. So there's lots of things I enjoyed about today's episode. I definitely enjoyed her story about swimming with a shark and how she became grateful while swimming with a shark. how she became grateful while swimming with a shark. So

it's really fascinating and I think you'll learn a lot about how you can switch these moments of adversity into gratitude. She talks about how she uses Ken Reviz's three R's in her marathon swimming and it's something that she teaches. She talks about the difference between offensive and defensive self-talk and how we can use both. The four P's of self-Talk and How We Can Use Both, The Four Ps of Self-Talk, and then specifically How We Can Overcome Fear. She talks about how she uses fear statements to really address the fear that she experiences. So I know you're going to get a lot out of this interview. I look forward to hearing what you think.

And my favorite quote from this interview is this, we need multiple diverse sources of confidence. Thank you so much, Jenen for coming on the podcast today and if you enjoyed today's episode you can head over to twitter and join the conversation there let jen and i know what you enjoyed about this interview or what you took from it and i'm at mentally underscore strong and jen is at channel swim jen all right without further ado let's bring on jen schacher. Jen, welcome to the High Performance Mindset. I'm super pumped to have you on and talk to you more about your work

and share your work with the world. So how's it going today? Good. Thank you, Sandra. I'm super stoked to be on the podcast. And yeah, things are going well. Thanks for having me on. You bet. So we got to see each other last weekend at the Association for Applied Sports Psychology Conference. So amazing conference. And what I'd love for you to do, Jen, just to start us off is like, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you're doing right now. be there with you and with all of our peers in the field and just learn from everybody that's doing awesome things. So my passion is applied sport and performance psychology. I studied at Cal State Fullerton under Dr. Ken Reviza and just absolutely fell in love with the work and primarily because I saw such a huge influence in my own swimming career, which is my other passion. I do long distance open water marathon swimming, which is a bit of a mouthful.

So I usually just call it marathon swimming, but I'm really passionate about those two things and especially kind of where they intersect. So I do in my applied practice, I do some work with marathon swimmers, but right now I'm primarily at West Point. I'm a performance psychology instructor here and have been for almost two years now. So I've just been absolutely having a blast working with the cadets and learning from the folks here on staff and just being exposed to performance psychology in this environment. And then, of course, still continuing to explore it in my own personal life. So yeah, I guess my two passions break down to that, performance psych and marathon swimming.

We're going to have a lot to talk about. So maybe let's start and tell us a little bit about like, you know, marathon swimming. Tell us a little bit about how you got into that and why marathon swimming. Okay, man, that's a good question. I mean, a lot of people say why not in our sport, but I got into it. Well, it's sort of a long roundabout story, but the short of it is, was never a very fast pool swimmer. I walked on at UCI and just barely squeaked my way on the team and then was plagued with injuries my first year, ultimately ended up leaving the sport of competitive

pool swimming and pursued my academic passions at Cal State Fullerton, where there's no swim team. When it was time for me to kind of get back into swimming and I really fell back in love with the sport, I had to get creative in the absence of a swim team. So I turned to open water and got really into what I would call like short to mid-range distance open water swims, like one mile, 5Ks and 10Ks. I had a friend at the time that was on the same swim team, the same master's team that I was on, and he was training to do a marathon swim. He was training to swim from Catalina Island

in my hometown of Southern California. So I got really curious. It had been something I'd heard about since I was a kid, and sort of I assumed that people that did that swim were like the people of legends, like superhumans that would do this. And, you know, as a kid, we used to go out to the island and my dad would show us a stretch of water and talk a little bit about the history and the people that have swum across. And here I was training in the pool next to this guy that was getting ready to do it himself.

And he was just a regular guy like me. So I, you know, got really involved with his training and, uh, crewed for him and did some long distance swims with him. I ended up doing actually the first two hours of the swim in the dark with him. Cause you start that swim at midnight. Meanwhile, I was also in school studying sports psychology at Cal state Fullerton and seeing the impact of that on on my training and on his performance too there's some really interesting moments during the swim where he had some challenges and I was the support swimmer in the water and kind of doing that in the moment like you know brief contact intervention was one of the topics from from the conference and you know I was getting firsthand experience of like how that played out in the water and, and really just opened my eyes to, you know, how the power of the mind affects our

performance. And then he finished and, and, you know, it wasn't necessarily the prettiest thing, but I was just, it was, I was completely wrapped up in like the romanticism of that huge, big endurance feat. And there's no coaches in the sport of marathon swimming. It's pretty niche. So you kind of find mentors. And he had this mentor that, you know, I struck up a conversation with him. And basically, by the time we were back to the dock in Long Beach, I'd convinced him to take me on to swim it next year.

And so that was in 2008. So I swam it in 2009. I spent a year training and preparing, doing a lot of cold water swimming, doing a lot of long-distance swimming. And in August of 2009, I did my first, my first channel swim, which was Catalina. Yeah. And you were the fastest female at that time. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. So of that so of that summer not not that wasn't a record but for that summer it was yeah the fastest female time so what do you think that it takes you know one of the things that whenever I see you at ASP that I like love about just watching you is you know you go and you find these people to swim with and these open waters you know so it might be

at Hawaii or you know this year we were in Toronto or wherever it is. So what do you think it takes in terms of, you know, the mindset? And I know you kind of said that you attribute much of your success in marathon swimming to like your mental game, right? And working on that and in terms of, you know, like learning about that at Cal State Fullerton and now obviously what you do, but tell us what do you think that takes in terms of the mindset or, you know, the mental edge? Tell us what that might take just in terms of you're out there in open water, cold water, anything can bother you in terms of fish or sharks or whatever. So take from a mental standpoint. Oh man, that's a great question.

Yeah, I've had some fun adventures around Asked conferences this year, swimming with the Toronto Open Water Swim Group in Lake Ontario, and last year with Lucky's Lake Swim in this random lake in Florida. It was pretty awesome. Amazing. Aren't you worried about water quality? Yeah, to an extent, but there are also more dangerous things that I think we, as humans, engage in on a day-to-day basis. I mean, take driving, for example, without much thought for the risk and the consequences. So, you know, one thing I really learned in my studies was the importance of understanding why you do what you do and finding finding meaning in in the task at hand and that to me has always been something so valuable and just really a gift that my mentors at Fullerton gave me about like getting in touch with the why and to me like my why with merit on swimming has always been really threefold one it's it's just this connection with the movement and this sort of meditative state that you get into of just being totally absorbed in the movement. And I think, you know,

night swimming is the perfect example of this, where there's complete sensory deprivation. You're just into the movement and the sound of it and the breathing pattern. And you're, you know, you can sometimes even hardly tell whether the black you're seeing is the sea or the air. I mean, it's just totally immersive in the moment because there's nothing else that you can do. So to me, that's more of like a moving meditation and it's really deep connection with the activity itself is one of my whys. And I would say another is being able to be in that place, like being exposed to that water, just that different perspective and different environment that I'm well aware and keenly aware through my experiences teaching beginning swimming at Fullerton and through working with survival swimming classes here at West Point, that not everybody has the skill set that I feel extremely fortunate and grateful to my parents

for having that I get to see the shoreline from the perspective of being a quarter mile offshore, or I get to see the Manhattan skyline during a long distance swim that goes right by, you know, some of the major iconic buildings there, like those are some perspectives that not everybody gets. And then there's the wildlife portion of it where you get to see a lot of marine life that a lot of people just simply don't get the exposure to unless they go to SeaWorld. So to me, just being immersed in that unique environment is number two. And then my third meaning piece of this is the community and the connections I've made through the sport and just being able to go and travel, travel the country and in some cases travel around the world and meet people that have this similar interest and just like lust for adventure, I guess I would call it, has been a really meaningful

element of why I do what I do. So I try to keep that in mind and then I weigh that against the consequences and risk that's associated with some of these swims because that's important too and I don't like to discount that but yeah to me it's always it's it's about making a carefully calculated judgment about do the benefits outweigh the risk and the benefits you know really stem from that why yeah I think that we can learn a lot from what you just said kind of first what I I'm hearing you do is like normalize the fear, you know, that, you know, well, you know, you might have the same risks in terms of if you're driving from place to place in a city, right?

But also, the second thing is that you're balancing, you know, this weight of the consequences versus the risks. And obviously, your why is pretty strong. You're pretty clear on that. I think we can all connect to that. You know, when we think about why do we do what we do and, and making sure that we're connecting with that every day. You know, Jen, what else do you think in terms of like, what are some really important mental tools or mental skills that you think, you know, long distance marathon swimmers would need to understand? Oh man, that's, that's good. I mean, all of them.

But yeah, no, I, I think a big part of the mental game of marathon swimming is about just having robust coping skills because as much as we'd like to get into the zone and to be confident and feel great at all times. And certainly that's something that, you know, we work'd like to get into the zone and to be confident and feel great at all times, and certainly that's something that we work on trying to get into those optimal states of functioning, and we talk about that a lot here with cadets too, there's going to be times during the swim or entire swims itself that just are not going well or according to plan, so you better have something to go to. So I have a lot of refocusing routines,

very similar to the revisit R's. I've just kind of boiled it down to a more continuous and nonstop sport where I call it the three R's, recognize, release, and refocus. You know, sort of similar to learn, burn, and return. But the idea, yeah, the idea is figure out like, okay, become aware of what's going on you know check in with your signal lights are you having a yellow light or a red light moment or even swim if it's the entirety of it try to get to the bottom of like why was it a fear that set off that feeling of panic or was it a frustration with say another swimmer or a contextual situation that's causing some frustration and tightness in the stroke, but we've got to be able to recognize where we're at. And then if we recognize

and we've got some tension or doubt or negative thinking, then being able to release that is so key. And so I like to do that either through like a deep exhale or strong exhale. You can't really do much strong deliberate inhaling while you're swimming, but you can certainly focus on the exhale. And to me, that's a good symbol for releasing. Or perhaps at the next feed, so we call it feeds every 30 minutes, you stop and tread water for hopefully less than 30 seconds. And while when I entered the sport of marathon swimming, people thought it was sort of a sign of being a novice I used to always put my goggles on my forehead during my feeds where you tread

water and take in nutrition but in my mind that was a way of releasing it was a way of letting go of that last 30 minute segment and then when I put the goggles back on my eyes that's a symbol for refocusing what's important now and getting back into okay this is how I want this next 30-minute segment to go so I like kind of using cheesy symbols like that for recognize release and refocus but essentially it's about being aware by recognizing and then releasing letting go of what you don't have control over and then refocusing on what's important now. And do you think the refocus, okay, so the refocus would be what's important now. So I hear what you're saying. And then is it refocusing on, like, give us a little bit more examples or,

you know, for you, what then the refocus is, what are you going to focus on? What's important for you at that? Yeah. Well, I think it's always got to come back to the performance and the task at hand, and if we think about, like, our best experiences in performance, we're almost always completely present and absorbed in the moment, so connecting that, that refocus or that attention to the task relevant to you in any performance is so key. So, I like the acronym, What's Important Now, which, you like the acronym, what's important now, which is, you know, when what's important now might be familiar to some of the listeners. I like that because it reminds me that I need to figure out like, what do I most need to pay attention to at this moment

in order to perform at my best? And it's probably not beating myself up over something that already happened. And it's probably not how I wish the weather conditions were better on this particular swim right it's probably something having to do with my stroke or my rhythm maybe it's a confident thought that I repeat to myself with a keyword or phrase like I get to be here I use that one a lot because okay you know marathon swimming is not the cheapest sport out there and so I spend a lot of time and resources doing this. And so sometimes I have to remind myself of that. Like I get to be here. Sometimes the refocus is on my stroke technique so that I can make sure that I'm keeping my elbow high, getting a good catch on the water and, you know, protecting my shoulders from wear and tear. And then I think

my favorite refocus is on like the rhythm and the sound that the rhythm of my stroke makes. Because to me, that just absolutely connects me with the present moment. It reminds me of what Eric Lindros said at the sports psychology conference. So he's one of our keynoters. And he said, like, after he made a mistake, and he was pretty honest, you know, he said he said like I've made some doozies you know yeah it was really hilarious then he said you know what he did is he refocused on like his task at hand right he focused on what he needed to do to kind of get out of his head and he you don't know who he is you know and the listeners yeah 14 14 years in NHL and the Hockey Hall of Fame. So yeah, yeah, that's great. A lot of like similar things to you is that, you know, to refocus that you thought about your technique or, you know,

use these confident phrases, but you know, just getting out of your head and letting go of what just happened. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, I definitely want to talk more about the fear and the survival piece of swimming, particularly because you're way out there in the water. But I want to also ask you, Jen, a little bit about your work at West Point. So yeah, so tell us a little bit about what your day-to-day is there. And then, you know, how about let's work to connect to your work at West Point versus, you know, compared to marathon swimming. but tell us a little bit about your work at West Point right now. Sure, okay, so I'm a performance psychology instructor in the Center for Enhanced Performance, or the CEP here at West Point,

and for those who are not familiar with West Point, it's the U.S. Military Academy, so cadets will apply, or students apply, and they become cadets. They have a 47-month experience here that involves basic training and then four years of academic study in which they earn their bachelor's degree, and they also become second lieutenants in the U.S. Army upon graduation and commissioning. It's quite a rigorous experience because every cadet's an athlete, so you know, whether they're a Division I athlete or an intercollegiate, or sorry, that is intercollegiate, they might be a Division I athlete or a club athlete or someone that participates in company athletics. We have those three tiers of participation. So they really truly are student athletes that, oh,

by the way, also have what sometimes feels like a full-time job of military training. They're incredibly busy and under a lot of pressure, but rightly so because they're going into a job that involves a lot of pressure and where your performance matters. So what we do at CEP is provide them with the skills and support that is necessary to not just survive, but thrive at this place. So a typical typical day I'm often asked about what's a typical day I would I would hesitate to say that there is one but I would say most days I come in and meet with maybe three or four maybe even five cadets before lunch so we do appointment-based mental skills training or performance psychology training cadets can come in on their off hours and schedule appointments with myself or any of

the other trainers here. And so we'll do, you know, 20, 30, 40 minute discussions about where they're at and working on different mental skills. We generally cover the five core mental skills that are a part of our model here, confidence, energy management, attention control, imagery, and goal setting. And then, you know, several other things that fall into those categories or are related. We'll probably, you know, teach a class or two depending on what day it is and what time of the year it is. I'm the course director for PL360, which is our 300 division, 300 level course. It's called the Psychology of Elite Performance, but that's only in the spring. So in the fall, we're just doing freshman seminar courses right now. So we'll teach a class and then perhaps have a team that comes in during the lunch hour, maybe one or two more

individuals after that, and then we go out to work with teams or attend practice and chat with coaches. So that's a pretty typical day when we're here, but we usually try our best to get on the road a couple of times a season with each of our primary teams. Yeah, nice. So a couple of follow-up questions I'd have for that, Jen. Like tell us a little bit about the specific sports that you work with there then. Yeah, so right now I've got baseball, softball, swimming and diving, men's gymnastics, women's basketball, and women's volleyball on my plate as far as D1 sports. And then I also do a bit of work with men's volleyball and triathlon, which are competitive club sports. Nice, nice.

So when you think about, you know, the cadets that you're seeing and the teams that you're working with, and we can talk about it in a lot of different ways, but what do you see kind of the best doing there, you know, in terms of the mental skills that they use? And so, you know, we could talk about within the military and military performance, or we could talk about within, you know, maybe tell us what your observations there. What do you see that the best do differently from a mental standpoint? Man, that's a good question too. The best have really, really strong performance routines. So they have excellent time management skills, of course, and they're getting a lot of sleep compared to the average cadet,

which is anywhere from five to six hours, which is atrocious. But the best of the best are really, really present-minded in whatever they're doing. So when they're in class, they're in class. When they're at practice, they're at practice. When they're studying during evening study period, they're doing that. It's called ESP. So when you're at ESP, you're doing ESP. And that kind of allows them to be in the right place at the right time. And then they have really strong like transitioning routines. I like to talk a lot about like segmentation or the changing of the clothes as a way to mentally park the academic self and then put on the athletic self. And that's a symbol for letting go of the academic day and then becoming the athlete.

And the nice thing here is they have a uniform for everything that they do. And so it really kind of anchors that mindset to that, you know, that outfit for that activity. And then they do other things to kind of get their minds in the right space for that practice or that class or that presentation, whatever it is that they're about to do. A lot of them employ the use of daily goals. So like positive process oriented goals that they set before a practice or a class and then reflect on afterwards as a way to kind of keep accountable and keep getting lessons learned out of what they're doing. So that's one thing that I see differentiate some

of the most successful from the ones that struggle a bit more. And then I would say another key thing comes down to just confident and effective thinking. And then I would say another key thing comes down to just confident and effective thinking. And I've seen that, I think, maybe a little bit more here than I did at my work at Cal State Fullerton. And perhaps it's a function of, gosh, everybody here at Sendra is really, really talented. They're the brightest. They're the most athletic. They're the strongest leaders. They were big fish in small ponds. And now they're all here. And it's probably the first time for many of them, the first time that they're getting some feedback that maybe they're not all that great. And maybe they're

not the best at everything, you know, so a lot of them get their first, you know, what they might consider a bad grade here, a lot of them, them you know experience their first time of not starting here so that can that can really influence confidence levels especially if you didn't learn growing up that we need to have multiple and diverse sources of confidence and we can't just be confident when we're successful so we we try to teach them you know different strategies for building and maintaining really robust confidence. And I think that's one of the things that I've learned a lot here from our program and working with Doc Z, with Nate Zinsser, who runs our performance psychology program, is the importance of confident and effective thinking strategies and how that affects the way we perform. So, Jen, one question I'd have from that, I like what you said about multiple and diverse sources of confidence.

So, you know, tell us a bit about where are those different sources of confidence typically, you know, so we can be thinking about ourselves, you know, how we might build our own confidence and then, you know, how you think or how you might teach kind of this confidence effective thinking. Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, at least for myself, and I think for a lot of people that I've talked to, not just here at West Point, but other performers, we kind of grow up with this perception that we gain confidence from winning, from personal records, from beating other people, and from being told that we're good at what we do. And that's great, and we might build a tremendous amount of confidence from all those things, but the problem with that is it's fragile because they're not controllable sources of confidence. We can't control the outcome, we can't control what other people tell us, and we certainly can't control our opponents.

So all those things eventually are challenged. And if those are the only sources we're drawing do in terms of teaching cadets that, hey, you know, you can feel great, right? You can have a good crappy day. Yeah. That sounds like Ken was using right there, yes? Yes, yes. I hear his voice all the time. Absolutely. I mean, we don't have to feel great to perform well, but it certainly helps. And when we can control what we're saying to ourselves day in, day out, then I think

we owe it to ourselves to give ourselves the best chance at confident thinking because we know that that relates directly in a lot of cases and in a lot of the research is a strong relationship between confidence and success. So some of the strategies that we'll use for more controllable and diverse sources of confidence are, you know, what you're saying to yourself all the time. We focus a lot on self-talk and we teach the use of affirmation. And we create scripts that remind athletes that, you know, they're good at what they do. They've put in the work and they're here for a reason. So we cover that as more of a way of,

I like Doxy's metaphor of that's offensive self-talk or you're on offense. And when you're on defense, you've already been maybe saying terrible things to yourself and beating yourself up a bit. And we got to talk back to that voice, maybe use a thought stopper or perhaps rationalize the negative thinking. And that got to talk back to that voice, maybe use a thought stopper, or perhaps

rationalize the negative thinking. And that's more defensive self talk. So I like to think of it in those two categories that both areas are important. And we got to work on them and have plans for both. So it's not enough to say, okay, I'll use a thought stopper one day when, you know, a lot of my work with cadets is, okay, what are our plans for when things aren't going well? What are the contingency plans or our if-then statements, which, gosh, I love talking about if-then statements because I'm a big technology nerd. My dad was in IT, but nowhere have I had as much success relating if-then statements as I have here at West Point because they all have to take IT. So it's fun. They immediately get it. You know, we got to have if-then statements for performance too. If this happens, then I do X, Y, or Z. Can you give us an example of a script that

maybe you've helped someone, you know, make? And I'm thinking about, sure, we're not West Point cadets, but you know, all of these strategies and tools are things that we can use in our own life and not just as athletes. But, you know, you think about the military and cadets, I mean, they perform not just in sport, but in, you know, in their job. Maybe there's a better word than that, but that's kind of what I'm thinking. So, yeah, give us an example, Jen. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we'll often start or anchor the activity with either like goal setting or different categories of performance, right? So if we look at what someone's goals are for the season, or if we look at, you know,

what they're on a mission to accomplish, Okay. What are the, what are the elements of performance that are required for that? So, you know, let's say, I don't know, let's take a swimmer, for example, just cause that's my background. And I tend to come up with swimming examples a bit more easily, but let's say we have someone who's working on making the Patriot league travel squad, or maybe someone that wants to podium at the Patriot league championship meet, you know, both not totallyot League Championship meet, you know,

both not totally controllable. So, you know, we try to root that in the process. Okay, what are the categories of performance that you have to take care of in order to do that? And perhaps to come up with, you know, I have to work on stroke technique. I have to work on, like work ethic in the pool. I need to work on, you know, weightlifting. I want to, you know, increase muscle mass. Maybe I also need to work on recovery, nutrition, just sort of like a wellness category. And then maybe I also want to work on toughness. I want to work on my mental game. And so for each of those, we'll figure out, okay, what are the specific things you need to do and then write affirmations about those. So if let let's say, this swimmer wants to work on their mental game in practice

or wants to work on their work ethic in practice, we'll write affirmations just one after another and read them into a script. So things like, I don't need to feel great to swim fast. Or my underwater dolphin kicks are my secret weapon. Or whenever it's close, I get my hand on the wall first. So those are some powerful information targeting like work ethic when we're not feeling well, a skill set that they're working on and then a mentality about being competitively minded, relative speaking. And we might just list off a dozen affirmations or two dozen for

each of those categories and then record it, set it to music that they enjoy. And that's something that they can listen to and take with them on the road. I love it. And do you record it? Do they record the statements? So either I'll record it or we'll have one of our wonderful interim staff members record it. Generally speaking, at least, I don't know about you, I don't love listening to my own voice. Yes. And I always give the cadets the option, but I have not yet had one of them take me up on them using our recording studio to use their own voice. And what do you think of like the power, because

what I'm, what I'm hearing is these statements are really process focused, not outcome, right? And, and it's also like who you are, right? Because kind of one of the things I talk about is like, you never outperform your self image. So if it's like, you're, you're saying, you know, whenever it's close, I'm going to get my hand on the wall first, right? Like, you're telling yourself who you are, and that you're ready, that you're going to push it at the end, right? When it comes down, you're going to be the one. And it's really powerful. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think of just an example that happened a few weeks back. We're sitting here working with a swimmer, coincidentally, on this same thing. And through just kind of exploring what was going on, at some point, he mentioned quite offhand and not really intending to be so revelatory. He said something along the lines of just feeling like he's always going to get out of touch, like he always just knows he'll get out of touch. And I just paused and I was like, did you hear that? Because I'm not sure there was even an awareness that he had this fixed belief about it. And so we wrote that into the script. Like, you know, I win the close ones.

And just starting to constantly erode that previous undermining belief. I love that. You're never going to outperform your self-image. That's so true because, you know, he was sort of setting himself up to be out touched every time. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Right. And then that's who he becomes. So Jen, what would you tell us in terms of like, let's say we want to write our own, right? We might not be athletes, but let's say we're a leader, a CEO, or let's say, you know, we are in college. Yeah. I don't think what, how you perform, so tell us, you know, what would be sort of like maybe your guidance on how, you know, what would you tell us on what to do?

Well, I guess where I'd start is figure out, like, what's, what's the mission? What are you working towards? Like, what's the best version of, of what you're, what you're on a path to becoming, right? And then, you know, me, whether that's looking kind of deeply at your own performances and where the areas for improvement lie, or looking to someone that's really, really excellent, or many people that are really excellent in that performance, what are the elements that they take care of? Like whether that's physical, tactical, strategic, mental, right? Or maybe there's other elements that they're including in their performance,

like if it's baseball or softball, like, you know, working on offense, defense, mindset, and recovery, perhaps. And then within each of those categories of performance, just start writing out affirmations. And affirmations are really tough at first if you're not used to this or have a practice of doing it. But we, you know, here at CEP, we give guidance on using the four P's. Affirmations should be present, like they're worded in the present tense. They are positive,

they're personally meaningful, and they're powerful. So, you know, a couple of examples of where folks maybe write less than effective affirmation statements are saying, like, I will do this. So I will focus on recovery or I will sleep eight hours a night. Well, that's great. But will implies in the future. And in the future, it lets you off the hook for tonight. If you were to write, like, I sleep eight hours every night, I'm in bed no later than 10 p.m., that sort of puts a little bit more skin in the game, and you read that, or you hear it played back to you, and you're like, oh, I guess I

better go to sleep tonight at that time, right, instead of, okay, this is something I'm working towards. So sometimes that's tough, because, you know, occasionally we'll get the question, like, well, but if I'm not an A student yet, then why should I write I'm an A student in my affirmation script? You know, because I'm not there yet. And we just reiterate, like, if that's something you're on the path towards doing, then just reminding yourself that you are an A student makes you more likely to engage in the types of behaviors that get you there. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't also focus on the behaviors that get you there, right? If you're going to throw down something big like that, and let's say you're far away,

let's say you've got a 3.0 and you want to be an A student. Yeah, you can write, you know, I'm an A student, but then we also need some affirmations about the things that you do and the behaviors you engage in to get you there. Otherwise, we're overlooking, I think, the most crucial step, which is the process. Outstanding. Really good. Good, good. I like the, I like the like, clear concrete examples you gave us. You know, so Jen, when I go back to when I asked you, you know,

what, what do the best do, right? And you, you gave lots of different things. You said present minded about what they're doing. You know, they have daily positive process-oriented goals, confident and effective thinking, and then they use multiple sources of confidence. Let's go back up to the first one, you know, because I think being present-minded in what you're doing, so important. We know that that's an attribute of peak performance, but what do you think about, like, how to teach that, you know, or how might you do that there at West Point or just within your own work? Yeah, that's a good one. I mean, I'm a big fan of like relaxation strategies and meditation for just having a skill set of getting into the present moment and really working on that. I think that we can learn a lot of awareness and ability to stay present and grounded by some sort of breathing practice. And it doesn't have to be, you know, traditional

meditation. I think a lot of people get scared off by the label, but there's so many apps out there that are making it like fun, easy and creative that can be helpful. And then, you know, here at West Point, we have a whole host of different relaxation recordings that we share with the cadets and encourage them to use in our alpha chambers. They can walk in anytime and use that resource. So I encourage that as a way to just build up a foundation of having that ability to kind of lock into the present. And then I think also building in robust pre-performance routines and in-performance routines, like, you know, using, I like the example of the R's, but I use that when I'm doing a long swim and my mind starts wandering or I start

thinking about all the other things I need to do that day. And just having the wherewithal to recognize a skill or you know a tactical way or a symbolic way of releasing that like whether that's clenching the fist and letting it go and then I think that all-important last component of refocusing on okay what I have control over right now what don't I and let's focus on a task relevant cue that that brings me to the present and what kind of suggestions might you give us for a task-relevant cue? It depends on the performance. For me, for swimming, I like some very specific stroke technique, so I wouldn't focus on five or six different things

because we can fall into the trap of paralysis by analysis. So I'll pick one thing. And I often ask athletes that are in sports I'm less familiar with, like say a gymnast, okay, what's one thing that you can focus on or that you would like to focus on that's relevant to this performance? And let's say I'm working with someone whose routine is vault. And I've learned a lot from our gymnast here. I'm still kind of picking up on that sport. But from what I've learned, the way you plant your hands on the apparatus is all important. That sort of determines how the rest is going to go. And so we talk about, okay, just, you know, planting the hands really well. Don't worry about the rest of the vault because you've trained it, you're prepared, your body knows what to do. We sometimes get in our

own way. But if we keep it simple and just stay connected to the present moment, like having a really great breath before we begin our run and then getting, you know, great hand placement on the vault, right? That's been it real simple and connected to the present. You know, I'm thinking about like when I speak, when I give notes and sometimes I'm in my own head and thinking about what they're thinking about me, right? But part of my performance routine is like get connected in my heart and, you know, make it about them. So I think by changing your focus, kind of what you're saying, what's the task relevant cue can really help. Yeah, absolutely.

So Jen, I connect your work at West Point with marathon swimming, right? And one theme I'm hearing is kind of this, obviously having these mental skills and mental tools that you can use to be at your best. Tell us a little bit about how fear might come in in both of those areas. Yeah, yeah. So fear is, at least for my experience in marathon swimming, it's been a big part of the mental game. And I feel like I've done a lot of work on overcoming fears.

And that's actually really set me up quite well for some of the work here at West Point. I'll get to that. But first, I'll tell a little story on my relationship with fear. A lot of people, you know, the first thing they ask when I tell them I do marathon swimming, specifically, you know, I've done things like swim across the Catalina Channel, and I've swum between two islands in Hawaii. Those are pretty shark infested waters. The first thing they say is, well, aren't you worried about sharks? And my answer is, yes, yes, I am. No in all seriousness that's that was my biggest fear I would almost even borderline call it a phobia growing up I um I used to see sharks all the time and they weren't really there um you know I used to swim over you know a dark shade that was

probably kelp or a rock you know in southern California I'd assume it was a shark I used to see a sea lion and I would think it was a shark. I used to see a sea lion, and I would think it was a shark. I used to see nothing or just a shadow, and I would think it was a shark. And I really credit a lot of my work with, you know, Lenny Wiersman, Kenra Vizet, Fullerton, who almost became my de facto performance psychologist. They helped me tremendously in this area of just understanding short behavior and then understanding like how I balance out that fear response with some of the mental skills we've talked about today and then I think you know what I've learned a lot from other people in the sport is having a plan

having something to go to specific to that fear so and this stems back to what we you know what we talk about in performance psychology too but I call it having like fear statements or fear rationalizations. So if and when that day comes where you do experience that fear, that thing that is kind of on your mind or that you're worried about, what's our plan? And for me, it always comes back to a solid breathing strategy to get the heart rate down, which is quite fun to try when you're swimming. And just cognitively restructuring or changing the statements, changing the self-talk and having some pre-planned keywords and phrases that I say to myself. And some of the ones that I prepared when I was really getting into the height of my training was people pay good money to see this, right? Because they do. I mean, people pay a lot of money to chum the

waters and go see sharks in a shark cage. And I get to do this without any of that present. And I don't have to cage the animal up to go see it either. I'm out here in its world. I'm in its world. It's allowing me to be here with it. Or I'll say, you know, you've beaten the odds for the day, right? Meaning I've already dealt with the, at the time, the freeways of Southern California and survived. So the odds are in my favor at this point. And then one of my favorites is the shark you see isn't the one you need to worry about. They're apex predators. They attack at 40 miles an hour from below and behind you know it's going to happen

it's going to happen you're not going to know it's coming so if you do happen to see a shark you know that's not the one that's interested in you of course it doesn't make you feel any better if you're not with a shark these are things I came up with and then one of my

good mentors in the world of marathon swimming told me, make your decision on the beach. And that's really where I started thinking about the importance of weighing the risks and the benefits. Make your decision on the beach. And I always reflect on that before I get into a body of water that might not be like, you know, as safe as a pool. I say, is the reward of doing this swim and doing what my passion is,

does that outweigh the risk? You know, however minuscule that might be. And if the answer is yes, then I move forward. If the answer is no, then, you know, of course that's the day you don't get in. And sometimes certain things happen during a swim where you do that risk reward analysis and all of a sudden the agenda's changed. So if you're, let's say, with a shark, you might change the calculus there. I'm so glad I worked on this because when I did, I think, my fourth marathon swim in Hawaii, I was swimming between the islands of Kauai and Nihao. We actually were graced with the presence of a shark for

approximately three hours. I was swimming tandem, so side by side with three other guys. And we had a boat, of course, you always have a safety boat. They're your escort. And then my mom was in the kayak. She does most of my kayaking for my long-distance swims. She's actually, I think, more talented at her craft than I am at mine. But she's done some tremendous things kayaking for swimmers in a bunch of different channels. But anyways, we see this large gray shape starting to approach or come up from the depths. And in Hawaii, the water is just so clear and visible, you can see forever. And as it comes closer and closer, getting up to 20, 30 feet,

I realize this is not just a fish. This is, you know, a 10-foot shark or so. And, you know, we had actually had a meeting to discuss what we would do because it's a pretty common occurrence seeing a shark. And we decided if it was not behaving aggressively we would continue to swim because in marathon swimming once you put your hand on the kayak or the boat your swim is disqualified it's over so you can't you can't touch the support craft so we stayed in it wasn't behaving aggressively it was just you know a bit

spooky at first and my heart rate was through the roof, like classic fight or flight engagement. And I went back to my plan and I'm so grateful I had it right. The shark you see isn't the one you need to worry about. People pay good money to see this and just really trying to get back into like my typical breathing and stroke rhythm to get back to the present moment. After about 10 minutes of that, I was able to just be grateful for the experience because man it's something I'll never forget wow that's hard to wrap your brain my brain around

to be great so like swim with the shark oh it was amazing cinderella it was It was truly one of the most impactful experiences of my life. And I'll never forget that. I can see the image right now. It was so clear to me. And we were just so, I often think about it, we were so fortunate that shark was with us on and off for about three hours. It would sometimes leave and come back. And honestly, that was what was more nerve wracking is where is it going? But in reflecting on it, and even at times, I kept thinking like humans are very slow, clunky swimmers, even at the highest, most fleet levels of sport. We're really, really terrible swimmers. If you think about like aquatic creatures who are so graceful and streamlined and hydrodynamic and meant for that environment. And we're really not very good. So this shark was doing the equivalent of like, let's say, you know, after work today,

you leave your office and you're heading out and you go across the sidewalk to get to your car and you see a snail on the sidewalk. And, you know, you're towering over this snail and the snail is looking up like, oh my goodness, it's a human, and you just decide to, like, cross the street with the snail for, like, 10-20 minutes. Like, that's what was happening. That shark had to be going so intentionally slow that you couldn't help but be grateful for the experience and this gift that was given us. Wow, when I heard how you became grateful for it in the moment, right? Like Wow. Well, I heard how you became grateful for

it in the moment, right? Like, you know, I think it's a different thing to become grateful for it afterwards because nothing happened to you kind of physically, you know, the shark didn't attack you. But the cool thing is you were able to use your mind to train, you know, train your mind to like see and feel gratitude. And so what I'm hearing is like you had these pre-planned statements that were specific to your plan if you saw a shark, but then you got to the present moment, right? And you didn't let yourself go to the fear, the anxiety, or the what-ifs. Well, that's very close. I mean, I certainly went there for like the first two, three minutes. I'm not going to lie. Yeah, of course.

Yeah. Yeah. Without the plan, I would have stayed in that space and it was not pretty swimming at that time. So I, you know, I think the initial activation was inevitable. And I think even to this day, I would still have that in the presence of a predatory creature like that. But I had trained myself to like work back down from there to the point where I needed to be, because, I mean, you know, we still had seven hours of swimming left. That was, that was

too, like, just way too much energy to be burning, and I couldn't have sustained that pace. Wow. So, Jen, one other questions I have for you, when you think about fear and, you know, survival instincts, you know, I know you said that you have done some virtual reality kind of with that. And tell us a little bit about, you know, how that might fit in in terms of your work with cadets or maybe with marathon swimmers. How might you use virtual reality to kind of, you know, train your brain to not go to this, you know, fight or flight? Yeah. So that's been one of the coolest things, Cindra, about working here is I've really learned a lot from our population of cadets that struggle in the survival swimming course. Cadets struggle because they have a really strong fear of water. They maybe haven't had the exposure or the experiences that I've been really blessed with having, or they've had some bad experiences in the past. And then the other population that I work with, with regard to that class are those that struggle with heights because there is a six and a half meter tower entry into the

water that they have to complete in full combat gear. So, you know, and some people are fortunate enough to get to learn how to deal with both of those fears. As I like to, as I like to say, it's an opportunity. But I've gotten to learn a lot and really kind of use what I've learned through my own experiences with fear and with swimming to put together what I think is a good program that some of them say is helpful. So we have a mental skills workshop that we do for cadets struggling in that class. I've been running that for about, this is the third semester of that right now. And for context, I started here at

West Point, this is my fourth semester here. So that's been really fun. I've just really gotten to learn from their experiences and share what other cadets have done to be successful in that class. But while the fear, I think we're working on good skills and strategies to desensitize to fear a bit, we found that we're not as successful as we'd like to be with the cadets with true acrophobia or fear of heights. And while that's certainly a smaller percentage than the ones that struggle with the water part of the class. You know, we want to serve that population of cadets that needs help. So I've really tried to get creative. And right now I've been implementing the use of virtual reality to try to aid in systematic desensitization from this fear. So we have some 360 footage of, well, let me back up a bit. We do like a tower training protocol where we step off platforms from lower heights, like the side of, and we'll actually go

to the pool and train mental skills in this environment. And then we'll teach like pre-performance routines or breathing strategy and have the cat step off of like, say, a one meter board or three meter board and work their way up. And the way we've implemented virtual reality is we have 360 footage of doing all those, that entire progression. And we do it both with instructor commands, because that's how they'll have to do it in the actual test itself. And then also without any commands so that the performance like instructor who's in the room with them while they're doing VR can talk them through some

breathing strategies and some, some self-talk. And we've heard that, you know, some cadets are benefiting from that. So we're seeing a little bit more success. But to be honest, we still have a lot of work to do in that area. Wow, pretty cool. Well, Jen, as I wrap up the interview, there's a lot of things that stood out to me as important. So I'm just going to state them back for you, but also for the listeners, because there's some really outstanding things that you talked about in this interview. I loved your story about how you got into marathon swimming and specifically, you know, this refocusing routine that you use. And you mentioned Recognize, Release, Refocus.

It comes from Ken Reviza. Just like how you use that, which I thought was awesome. And then, you know, you talked about also what the best of the best do. And you said they have strong performance routines, present-minded focus, daily positive, process-focused oriented goals, confident and effective with their thinking. And I loved our conversation about how, you know, you can have multiple diverse sources of confidence. I think that's really powerful. And then even what you were saying about offensive self-talk or defensive. Yeah, I thought that was a cool idea to think about how can you have pre-planned self-talk, right? Before things happen or the negativity sets in, but then there's this defensive self-talk

that you can use too. And then the last couple of things would be, you know, your recommendations on how to write our own script. So I liked that. And the four Ps you mentioned to try to keep it present, positive, personally meaningful, powerful,

and then loved your story about the shark and, you know, just what you did to overcome that and deal with that fear. So Jen, I'm so grateful to have you on the podcast today. Tell us how people can reach out to you if they want to learn more about your work or, you know, hire you for speaking or consulting. Thanks, Cinder. I appreciate it. And that's actually a great summary, better than I could have done, that's for sure. You're a a careful listener I appreciate it um so people can reach out to me um via either one of my websites I have a swimming website that I'll warn you is is in need of an update but that's okay there's still some stuff on there it's jenschumacher.org j-e-n-s-c-h-u-m-a-c-H-E-R.org. And then my consulting website is jenschumacher.com.

And certainly, and people can reach out either way. I check both emails quite regularly. And I believe my phone number is even on the.com website. So if people want to get in touch, they're more than welcome to do so. And I can certainly send over my West Point contact information too, if people are looking to hear more about what we do here at the Center for Enhanced Performance. Okay that sounds awesome and are you on social media anywhere that we can follow you there? Yes I am I'm on Instagram I'm Jen Schumacher on Instagram I'm on

Twitter as channel swim Jen and I Although I am trying to, you know, spend less and less time on those platforms. You know, I can still be found. Love it, Jen. Thank you so much for your time and energy today. Oh, you're very welcome. Thanks, Cinder. It was really, really awesome getting to talk with you and I appreciate it. 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.