High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 295: High Performance Tips with Lindsey Hamilton, Assistant Head of Mental Conditioning, IMG Academy

Episode Date: December 14, 2019

Lindsey Hamilton is the Assistant Head of Mental Conditioning of the IMG Institute at IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL where she helps lead, develop, and facilitate several areas in the Mental Conditioning Department. The Mental Conditioning Department oversees the mental skills development of over 1,200 middle school and high school aged student-athletes in 8 sports. She also works with external groups such as professional athletes, military experts, business leaders, and year-round campers. She leads the IMG Institute through developing and delivering High Performance Mindset training to corporate clients, such as VISA, Marriott, and Gatorade. Growing up, Lindsey was a competitive soccer player in California, where she and her team won 5 State Championship and went on to win 2 National Championships. Following her youth career, Lindsey played collegiate soccer at Chapman University, while also receiving two bachelor's degrees in psychology and sociology. After graduating, she pursued her love of psychology at Stanford University, where she worked in the social psychology research lab. Years later, she combined her passion for psychology with her appreciation for sport when she pursued her master's degree in Sport and Exercise Science with an emphasis in Sport Psychology from the University of Utah. Lindsey is now pursuing her doctorate in kinesiology from UNC Greensboro. She is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant through the Association of Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) and serves as the Chair of the Student Development Committee. Lindsey currently lives in Florida with her husband, Paul, and her three kids, Benjamin (6), Mark (4), and Nora (2). In this podcast, Lindsey and Cindra talk about: How the mind and body are not separate 3 Ways to improve confidence along with a specific exercise Her story of failure and what she learned from it Powerful tips for parenting You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/lindsey.

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, Dr. Sindra Kampoff, Certified Mental Performance Consultant and Keynote Speaker. And today I'm excited to welcome you to the podcast for episode 295 with Lindsay Hamilton. Now, if you know that mindset is essential to your success, then you are in the right place. Because in this podcast, we explore everything related to mindset,

key principles related to mindset, key ideas. And then I interview an expert each week about mindset. And today's expert is Lindsay Hamilton, who is the Assistant Head of Mental Conditioning and IMG Institute at IMG Academy in Florida, where she helps lead, develop, and facilitate several areas in the mental conditioning department. So the mental conditioning department oversees the mental skills development of over 1,200 middle school and high school age student athletes in eight sports. And she also works with external groups like professional athletes, military experts, business leaders, and year-round campers. She leads the IMG Institute through developing and delivering high-performance mindset training to corporate clients such as Visa, Marriott, and Gatorade. So her position is legit.

You know, growing up, Lindsay was a competitive soccer player, which we'll hear a little bit in the podcast today. She grew up in California, where she and her team won five state championships, and then she went on to win two national championships. Following her youth career, Lindsay played collegiate soccer at Chapman University and also received bachelor's degrees in psychology and sociology. So after graduating, she pursued her love in psychology at Stanford University. And then years later, she combined her passion for psychology with her appreciation for sports. And she pursued her master's degree in sport and exercise science with an emphasis in sports psychology from the University of Utah. So Lindsay is now pursuing her doctorate degree at UNC Greensboro. It's where I got my PhD.

So we chatted about that before the interview started. And she's also a certified mental performance consultant through the Association for Applied Sports Psychology. She currently lives in Florida with her husband and her three kids, Benjamin, Mark, and Nora. And so in this podcast, Lindsay and I talk about several different things. We talk about the concept of how the mind and body are not separate and how her work at IMG really follows that principle. We talk about three specific ways to improve your confidence or to improve the confidence of the people that you work with with a specific exercise that she presented at the Association for Applied Sports Psychology conference this fall which I

was in the audience and and I love the exercise. So I asked her to share that, and it's really awesome. And then she talked about her story of failing and what she learned from it. And she also describes towards the end of the interview some powerful tips for parenting. So my favorite parts of this interview were these questions. She said, you know, how can you build in a layer of repetition in your work

but not be repetitive? I thought that was super eye-opening and insightful, very wise. And I'll be using that idea moving forward. And then she said, you know, am I serving the people that I work with in the way that they need? And I love that question because it's not about you, but it's really about the people that you serve. So without further ado, here's Lindsay. Welcome to the podcast, Lindsay Hamilton. How are you doing today? I'm sure it's sunny there in Florida.

Sindra, hi. Yes, it is. It usually is here in Florida. I'm just so glad to be here with you and really appreciate you inviting me on for a chat today. Yeah, I'm really excited about talking with you or just talking to you in general. And first of all, I loved your presentation that asked this year the Association for Applied Sports Psychology. And that kind of prompted me to say, I've heard so many great things about your knowledge and your wisdom and your work there at IMG. So I'm really pumped to have you on and just to explore a little bit more and you can help

us all learn. So to kind of start us off, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you do right now. Sure. So I'm currently the assistant head of mental conditioning and IMG Institute at IMG Academy. And for those who aren't familiar with IMG Academy, it's essentially a boarding school for elite athletes. So we have the full gamut of athletes that are elite and trying to go pro and trying to get D1 scholarships, all the way to those who, you know, are in boarding school and they happen to be at one that does sport. And so we have all developmental levels, all expertise levels, but we have an incredible opportunity here to have mental conditioning integrated into the academy. So every athlete that's here, whether they're here on a full-time basis or they're here in a

camp setting where they might just be coming to soccer camp or tennis camp for the week, everybody will have a formal mental conditioning session. All of the teams or groups here get a mental conditioning coach throughout the course of the year where they get to train some of the mental skills and to help them in their performance, primarily sport-driven, but then also in other domains of life and school and sport and social and all those kinds of things. So really lucky to be on a team of 12 practitioners here at the academy that we get to learn from and collaborate with to try to help the youth student athletes with their mental game. Yeah, 12. What an amazing community and team where you can really work together and be creative.

And when I think about my time that I've been at IMG and went to a workshop, I was trying to think maybe five, six, seven years ago at this point where I was there for a weekend at IMG. I loved it. And then I visited it several times. And I just love the way that you work together as a team. And isn't it awesome that all athletes there get exposed to mental conditioning? Yeah, it really is. And isn't it awesome that all athletes there get exposed to mental conditioning? Yeah, it really is. And it's incredibly powerful with the age of the athletes and the all different levels that they're at. So, you know, of course, there are some who are prepared and ready and want the mental skills and they know that they might need to enhance their focus or they know that they need a strategy to help manage some nerves or pressure. And then there's some kids

who aren't ready yet. And there's still such an incredible opportunity to plant the seeds of an effective mindset or plant the seeds of how you can navigate your mindset to help your life in some fashion. So it really is powerful to know that we get to have these conversations and create these relationships and develop these skills for student athletes at such a young age. So it's quite a privilege. Yeah, for sure. So tell us a little bit about how you got to IMG. I know you went to the University of Utah. So go Utes. My nephew is a student there. So go Utes. Tell us a little bit about how you got to IMG. Sure. So I actually was a psychology major in undergrad and I was an athlete myself. I played soccer in college. So go Panthers at Chapman University. And I remember

being a senior and someone telling me I should go into sports psychology and I vividly we're out in the soccer field and I vividly remember telling them I'll never go into sports psychology like I just felt like my experiences in sport were so raw and so you know kind of just very much present in my life that I thought you know I'm I'm probably never going to go that route well of course then I, then I didn't say probably, I said never. And so sure enough, I took, I ended up moving on. And I had a real passion in research, I went on and worked at Stanford University in their race and ethnicity lab doing some social psychology research, found my way into some extended travels, and then worked my way back actually into the automotive industry. And I had been in the automotive industry for a number of years, a couple of years, and just think that there's something different for me. And I had been in the automotive industry for a number of years, a couple of years. And I just think that there's something different for me. And I was living in Utah at the time

and ended up making my way to the University of Utah. So go Utes. And I had very much the plan of pursuing the research, which was in line with my past passion and being in academia and finding this new path. And I had the privilege of being in a class with Dr. Nicole Detling, who, you know, we were doing an exercise where someone said, okay, if you're really research aligned, come on this side of the room. And if you're really applied aligned, come over on this side of the room. And everyone was going to stagger themselves all across the room. And I was the only person on the research side, like way far over everybody else was like on the other end. And after class, Nicole was like, um, no, you're not, you know,

what do you mean? Um, she's like, I really think you should consider the applied part. And at the time, again, I loved research. I was pursuing the thesis track. I also was working full time and was eight months pregnant with my first child. And I was like, there's no way I'm going to pick up this applied work also. And I remember walking to the parking lot, reflecting on the conversation and you know, what I have enjoyed so much about my master's program up to this point. And I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna not have time when I end up not having time. So I decided like, I didn't know what was going to be ahead, but I wanted to do the thesis track and do the applied work. So I got this opportunity to work with Nicole Detling,

and then was able to, I went to an ASP conference, actually my very first one back in Las Vegas. And I met Justin Sua and by meeting Justin Sua, who is of course a wonderful name and an incredible human more than anything. And I met him after a presentation, of course, when you're like, you love what someone does and you want to go introduce yourself. And so I met him. And of course there's like a line, a hundred people long to talk to Justin, right? Yeah, he was so gracious and nice to meet you all this kind of thing. And you know, 24 hours later, I was meeting him again in front with Nicole Detling, because he also was the University of Utah U. So he made that

connection and ended up getting a great conversation with him and was considered for the full time position. And, you know, three months later, I, I was here in Florida. So, you know, you never know it was the right timing also because Justin hired me and actually left to go with the Boston Red Sox before I even started. So it was being in the right place at the right time and, you know, making sure that, uh, you know, you just try to do your best where you are and see where the wind takes you. And here I am five years later at IMG and really just loving, just loving it. It makes me think about how proximity is power, right? And you've probably heard that conversation before, but it's because, you know, and thank goodness, like, Nicole said that to you in class.

You know, she's like, no, you're not. You're applied, right? And then it's like about, it's kind of about who you know and how you got, you know, that's one of the reasons you got to where you are. So I'm so glad I asked you that question. Yeah. So one of the questions before we kind of dive into some of your expertise and what you're studying in your doctoral program, tell us a bit about just the philosophy of mental training there at IMG. Like when I was there for that workshop, I remember a lot about like edutainment and, you know, just like making it really sticky. So tell us a bit about how you might do the work there. Sure. So generally speaking, I mean, all of our sessions tend to be really interactive and that interactive component

really comes from one, of course, we're working with youth. And so we know their attention spans are in a different place and we might be able to have these conversations with adults. We also know that they can't always articulate their own experiences. And so if we're able to provide them with an experience in our time together, that they might then be able to have a better understanding of the skills or the tools or the training that we are then implementing with them. So that is a big part of it. And then of course, we just know that the brain learns better when it's kind of involved and when it's having a good time. So those components really are what guide us through the types of sessions and the ways

in which we pursue our mental training with our athletes. So when I say interactive, that kind of looks in a whole bunch of different ways. We do do a lot of activities. We do a lot of times we will put the student athletes into experiences, whether that's a team experience or an individual experience that they can really have an experience that allows them to see the ties to how this might look in sport. And that has been really great, a great way to generate conversations, a great way to then tie the skill that we're working on to the experience

that we might put them into a situation where pressure is involved. And while passing a dice around and tossing a pen around and doing it in time constraint has nothing to do with the pressures of soccer, in some sense, you can really align those. You can really tie those back together. But we also do interactivity in different ways. It could be very discussion-based. It could be in a roundtable fashion. It could be showing videos or clips or pictures that elicit certain responses or provide some context that allow us to dive deeper into the mental skill or the mental component of the topic or the skill that we're trying to work on. So we definitely do a lot of that engagement and we try to take our the approach of having a lot of engagement in ways, again, that could be even just telling a story and creating a visceral response to some sort of topic that then allows us to move forward together on sort of a shared platform and train our mental skills through there. So that's a lot of what we do in the classroom. And then, of course, we were striving to transition that into their arena

of sport as well. Yeah, that's awesome. So I know part of your research right now, you're working on your EDD. So we know we have some commonality there because I got my PhD at the same place that you're working on your EDD. So University of North Carolina, Greensboro. So go Spartans over there. But I know you've been doing some research about creating the psychologically informed or representative training. Tell us a little bit about what that means and what are some of the takeaways we might gain from that if we're a coach or a consultant? Or I also think it could apply to a leader in a business and how can you create within your business more like psychologically informed place where people can really thrive

and do good work sure so when when I think about um representative design and this is work that has long been done in in other domains um what in in the physical coaching space, in the, just the sport coaching space, just in terms of like skill acquisition in general, um, the, the representativeness of the training environment to the, um, the competitive environment. So when we think about, let's say, and on a soccer field and, you know, we have to play under pressure and we'll create different constraints that will put us under pressure, whether that's a time constraint. And so now we have a little bit of pressure, whether that's a different, different numbers. So playing five people versus three people. And so you have different pressures. But oftentimes what we,

what I have seen in my experience as a mental coach is, you know, we'll, we'll have a conversation about handling pressure or taking a breath under pressure. And then we'll say, okay, great. You need to start doing this in practice too. Cause then you can start doing it in practice. And when you get good in practice, now you can do it in competition. But then there's a gap between the pressures that they experience in training compared to the pressures they experience in competition. And that's, you know, that's not rocket science. We know that there's going to be a higher level of value when we're in the competitive arena than potentially when we're in, when we're in training. But I think as a mental performance coach, it's, it's, it's getting to the point where it's not

sufficient for us to say, okay, this is what we worked on. Go ahead and practice it. Oh, and by the way, coaches, we worked on breathing. So just so you know, you can reinforce it when the training environment might not lend itself to requiring that skill. So that is sort of the foundation of the interest for me when I think about representative design. One of the areas in which I'm looking at this is through Newell's model of constraints. And so that's, that's a physical skill acquisition model that was back from like 1986. And it essentially was, was really looking at how your environment and what you perceive in the environment is directly related to the actions that you take. And so, you know, just to say like, oh,

we'll stand, it's kind of like random and blocked practice, right? Like you stand here that you take. And so, you know, just to say like, oh, well, stand, it's kind of like random and blocked practice, right? Like you stand here and you take 30, 30 swings of the bat with a certain type of pitch versus maybe you have a couple that are fast, fast balls and you have a couple that are change-ups and you have a couple that are, you know, a different, a different sort of pitch, a slider maybe, and how you have to physically respond differently when you perceive the pitch that's coming at you. So in using this sort of idea of how can we then make the athletes, put the athletes in a situation where they perceive

these different mental, psychological perceptions, right? So maybe that's the nerves in their body. Maybe that's the distractions in the arena. Maybe that's something completely different in addition to the environmental perceptions, right? So everything that is kind of occurring in their space. And what we know from, I think, Lewis's work in 2004 is that our mind and our body, they, they, they are not separate. So we cannot have a mental skill and do something and have that be separate from the physical work, they go in tandem together. And so being able to look at our practice design, and even if it's just our mental training, the time that we have in mental training,

how can we make our training with them as psychologically representative? So they're actually taking these considerations in when they need to use a skill in comparison to, oh, well, here's the skill. Hopefully you can apply it if you find yourself in a situation that matches. So in terms of like being really practical with that, give us like an example of what you do in a session to make sure that it's representative really psychologically like you're describing. Sure. So let's see. If I take an example from the soccer world, one of my favorite exercises is an exercise that I call whatever it takes. And this was something that our past head of department, who's now at UPenn,

she introduced to us, Dr. Andrea Wieland. And the sense of the exercise is to put them in a chaotic environment so that they are required to use the skills that we might have been working on. So in this particular case, if a soccer, have two small soccer teams and they're playing a small-sided scrimmage against each other, and each team has a dice. They roll the dice and whatever number shows up on the dice for that team is the number of players that they can have in the game. So if one team rolls a three and the other team rolls a five, then they're playing three v five.

And you can go to goals, you can play, you know, five passes in a row as a point, but putting them in an environment in which the odds are either stacked against them, or maybe they're in their favor. And then you play the game out and then the next time you roll the die and now it's completely different. And so putting them in a situation that requires a little bit of that adjustment and, you know, making it a little bit different where the person rolling the die, if they roll an even number, then you get half as many people than what is on the die. And what I've found is like some of the athletes will then be nervous to roll the die because they don't want to let their team down.

So now how does that, how does that psychological factor play into how they manage themselves in those situations? Let's say if they're going into a big showcase and they're nervous because they don't want to let their team down. Or when, you know, Lindsay, the mental coach steps in as referee and inevitably stops somebody right before they're about to score a point and awards the point to the other team. How do they how do they manage the next game? How do they get that frustration? And so really taking the the the lessons and the training out of the classroom and putting it into their sport environment and putting constraints on the game that require them to make the adjustments. So, you know, constraining the game by determining how many people are on each team, constraining the game. You could potentially

constrain them by putting that emotional frustration into them and then they have to manage themselves in the game or different things like that. So that is one example of an exercise that I have done that to sort of elicit that more representative experience that's more game-like. Yeah, that's awesome. I like this specific example. And I do think it's really important that, right, if you're not practicing the mental skills, how are you going to do it in competition? But the more we can practice it in like, I like what you said about like chaotic environments or, you know, that we might create as coaches or leaders so that they, they know how to, they can practice using the mental skills. Um, and then more likely to be able to do it when

they'd like to in a competition. So, yeah. And what I love about the, the model that I've, when working out of Newell's model is that it talks a lot about these different constraints. So how are we putting constraints or boundaries on the training that we're putting together? So we can have a task constraint, which is, you know, what's the outcome of the game? What equipment do you have? What are the rules, you can put a performer constraint, which is going to be specific to the athlete themselves. So are you constraining them physiologically in some fashion? Are you constraining them in a mental component in some fashion?

And then environmental constraints. And this could be the size or the shape of the field. It could be the surface that you're playing on. It could be an audience watching you in some way that changes the constraint of it. And I think what's really important is that we're really deliberate with the constraints that we're not randomly changing things just to make it chaotic, like maybe chaotic theory would say, but that we have some rationale. What are we really trying to achieve? What goal are we trying to meet here? Whether that's a physical skill acquisition goal, and we're trying to play

out from under pressure, or maybe it's a mental goal that we're trying to be able to manage our ourselves in those tough moments, what have you, but really being deliberate about what are we trying to accomplish? What do we need to create an environment that's going to elicit that? And then how do we constrain to get the environment that we're looking for? And that's something that has really helped guide me in determining what's the right approach to take for developing and designing these training sessions. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, and I think a little bit about your presentation at ASP, which I loved, and you might have to work through the steps. I was just looking for my notes before we had a conversation. I couldn't quite find exactly what you did, but tell us a bit about that because what I loved is like just how hands-on it

was and unique the activity was, but also like how powerful it was. And I, I remember you talking about a team that you worked with to do this exercise. So tell us a little bit about what you share to ask. Certainly. So I feel very humble and grateful that I was reached out to by Angie Pfeiffer, who was putting a lot of the ask conference together. And they really wanted to bring back the intention of the workshops, which is to really have some hands on experience of how mental performance coaches can do the work that we're doing in the field. And so they she had reached out to myself and Brian Miles with the Cleveland Indians asking if we would put a presentation together with that

philosophy in mind. And they had given us the topic of imagery. And it was it was a great experience. I had actually never met Brian before and so that was really fun yeah got to make a new friend and Brian's fantastic it was such a delight to work with him so I was thinking about in preparation of this is we often do imagery scripts in our in our work right and that's really in that individual work with that that in-depth specificity of of imagery and the repetition in the scripts. But, um, I, I was like, how can I bring something different? Cause he'd know, like as, as important as imagery scripts are, I don't think the audience is going to want to sit through two imagery scripts. I had essentially done an exercise where it was based in confidence.

I mean, you can do imagery for so many different things. You can do it for skill acquisition. You can do it for emotion management. In this particular case, I had been working on a team on confidence with the team and developing confidence. And we had specifically talked about what confidence does for us. So I started by asking this question. If you woke up tomorrow with all the confidence you ever wanted, what would your day be like? And people started talking about different things. Oh, well, I would, you know, I would, I would say hi to this person in the hallway, or I would raise my hand in class, or I would, you know, I would take on this person in the soccer field. And they were saying all

these little things. Okay, great. And then I said, well, let's say you woke up tomorrow with all the confidence you ever wanted and nothing in your life changed. And immediately you feel this huge deflation in the room because people don't want confidence just to make them feel a certain way. They want confidence because it's going to change their life in some fashion. And whether that's on a small scale in terms of their willingness to try something new or whether that's because it's going to encourage them to take on a really tough challenge. But inevitably, we want confidence because it's going to lead us and guide us into doing

something that's greater for us. So we use that as a foundation. And where I was really heading with this exercise in particular was I had done imagery in the past where I was like, okay, today we're going to talk about imagery. This is what imagery is. This is why it's important. And this is how you do it. Okay, great. So the unfortunate thing is while imagery is so powerful, it can be cumbersome, especially when you're first learning do it. Okay, great. So the unfortunate thing is while imagery is so powerful, it can be cumbersome, especially when you're first learning about it. It feels really academic. It feels, it feels different from their experience, which in reality, athletes use imagery all the time. Like a lot of them visualize their experience. And so I wanted to present it in a way

that might relate to them better. So here we are having talked about the point of confidence and what it could do for you. And then I transitioned it with the group and I said, okay, so let's say you woke up with all the confidence in the world tomorrow. What would that look like on the field? What would you be thinking about? What would you be feeling? What would your body be feeling? Go ahead and write some of those things down. And I would give them some time to write some of those things down. And then great, we get through that. And I said, so if you had all this confidence, what would you be doing? What would you be seeing? What would you be hearing on the field? And they start to write these things down. And then comes

the plot twist, which sometimes is exciting. And sometimes you get moans and groans, but I asked them to turn the paper over and draw what that looks like. And, you know, inevitably you just have to reassure everyone that it's okay to have stick figures because you feel uncertain about that. Um, and of course some people are creative beyond all measure and I greatly appreciate that, but it allowed them to take what they were putting in their mind and creating an image with it. And from that point, then we were able to talk about everything that you want for your confidence. You first want to know, well, what do you want that confidence to bring you? What are you trying to accomplish here?

And in creating that image, they're able to contextualize that, especially for a youth athlete who has a, maybe developmentally, I have a harder time articulating what they're thinking. But when you can put them on paper first and, you know, and then we were able to build from imagery. So I had my whole first session with them and never even used the word imagery. But we went through this entire experience. And then the next time we were able to talk about the mind body connection, we were able to talk about maybe a different theory of imagery. We were then

talking about vividness and where I had the girls come back and color their picture. Like, well, what color uniform are you wearing? And are you playing at night? Or are you playing, you know, on grass? Are you playing on the turf? And, you know, they really got to bring their image to life. And so that was the exercise that I, that I shared. And I think it aligns with sort of this, um, interactive engagement philosophy that we have at IMG and, and really walking them from where they were into the skill in a way that they could more resonate with it in a different way. And I loved the pictures. So that was really fun. What do you think the impact of actually having them draw like what their confidence would look like? You know what, it's great question. Because as we were doing this, we set the foundation, we we built on the

pictures, we brought more vividness into it, we went out onto the field and then gave them the the opportunity to like experience what the feeling of the grass is, you know, and being really deliberate. But what I ended up doing at the end of the grass is, you know, and being really deliberate. But what I ended up doing at the end of the kind of, um, module that we were working on was I didn't give them their pictures back and I gave them a blank piece of paper and I had them try to redraw it. And the vividness that they were able to bring back from their original image was far greater than I expected. Because oftentimes, especially we can have this experience with youth athletes where we're giving them something

and we hope that they're using it, but we don't really know, or they say that they are and they can't quite remember. But having kind of gone back for that check for understanding to see how, how, how well do you know your image? Like how, how vivid can you make your image? And then we're able, then they got their original one back and we can see either how things became more vivid or maybe we were missing areas of it. And for those, there were a couple of people who they thought, I just found a different image that resonated with me in a different way better. And it was like, perfect, right? You don't have to be stuck to the one that, that, you know, you did, but it presented an opportunity to have that conversation and become more personal. So them drawing that image, I think it allowed them to, to connect

and engage with it in a different way than if we would have just started right out of the gate with a script, which is something that I think is a little bit more advanced for, for maybe older audiences or for people who have experience with imagery in the past. So absolutely. Yeah, it's really fun. Yeah. That sounds awesome. Um, I love, I love the past. So absolutely. Yeah, it's really fun. Yeah, that sounds awesome. I love I love the questions. Like if you had all the confidence in the world, what would you do? You know, it's kind of like, oh, wow, well, yeah, you know, that I can continue to build my confidence, right? Even if I feel like I have confidence, that there's always another level. So Lindsay, what do you think about one of the things we were talking about offline before

we hit record as we were talking about like how to help teams and athletes that you work with over the long term. And I was sharing about how I work with the football team here. They're ranked like fourth in Division Two, they're playing Saturday to go to the national championship game. So go Mavericks, I hope sending you lots of excitement and confidence on Saturday. But nine years I worked with this team, so it's hard to have a balance between repeating some of the same concepts for the new guys. Let's say the guys have been on the team for four years, they've already heard. So there's a good balance between keeping it fresh. So tell us a little bit about how you might do that.

And I think there's some really great kind of take home points here about creativity. And I know that's one of your strengths. So many people have told me that. Oh, thank you. Well, I can really appreciate that challenge because especially I've been in a soccer program here at IMJ Academy for five years now, and we have the incredible opportunity to be with some of these student athletes for the duration of that time. And every year, inevitably, we will lose some kids to go back home or they'll, you know, maybe they graduate or something else and we'll bring new kids in. And we have the same experience. We have those who have been here and they've heard mental conditioning for three years. And we have some who have never had a mental conditioning experience. So how do you bring those two things together? And one of, one of the things that we do at the Academy is we give

the student athletes the opportunity to evaluate everything that's regarding to the Academy twice a year. So their teachers, their sport coaches, their mental coaches, their strength coaches, the cafeteria food. I mean, it goes, it goes the whole gamut. And a number of, a couple of years ago, I started to get some consistent feedback that the mental conditioning felt repetitive. Okay. And, you know, in some ways I want to say as a mental conditioning coach, well, yes, because when you want to get better at something, it takes repetition. It takes repeating it over and over. And, you know, oftentimes we get likened into strength and conditioning.

I mean, you go into weightlifting knowing that you're going to have to lift the weight again. And in thinking about that, you know, I started to really think about, well, how can I build in a layer of repetition without it being repetitive? You know, I think that's one of the big things that as mental conditioning coaches and potentially coaches, sport coaches in general, is how do we, how do we continue to work on the things we need to work on in, right? Like that's, that's what we're doing in this work, but in a way that allows them to, the athletes to continually engage with it and continually, you know, want to take a piece

and work with it and continually, you know, want to take a piece and work with it. And so over the course of time, you, we, you know, when inevitably somebody wants to work on confidence again, and sure, I've been working on confidence for the last little bit. And so finding new ways to reinvent the confidence. And, you know, one thing that always actually helps me when I'm feeling like I need a creative push is reading, which I feel like I wish I had more time to do. And I'm sure everybody feels that way in some fashion or another, but that can often spark just hearing somebody else say it differently can really help with that. And so, you know, this year I'm working on a curriculum for, I tend to use a lot of acronyms too, that helps it stick a little bit, but I'm working on the theme of I am confident. And so we spent this whole first, this whole first segment talking about imagery, which ultimately is going to

be the I. And not that I think that any of my student athletes are listening to this. So I'll go ahead and give away the rest of it. But the next part that we're working on is affirmation. So how are we talking about ourselves? How are we reaffirming the confidence we have and the strengths that we have and building upon those and really affirming the confidence in our life. And then the last part that we're working on is mindset. And this is specific to developing a growth mindset and developing a developmental

confidence so that I don't necessarily have to hang my hat on the confidence that I know I can execute this perfectly, but I can build a level of confidence that helps me know that I can navigate it even when it's not. And so like really developing that type of a mindset. And so inevitably that I am, we have imagery affirmation and mindset is the theme that I'm going with in building our confidence over the course of the, our time together. And this will be a 10 month curriculum, like to think for some, like to work on confidence for 10 months is, seems crazy. And when I first started, I was like, well, you come in one day and you do self-talk and then you come in the next day and you do imagery and then you do breathing and then you've

done your routines, right? Okay. I'm a mental coach. But I think really having the opportunity to layer in and pull that apart and understand the different skills from a variety of different layers And then being able to add in that on-field training, add in the representative training that is going to allow them to have an opportunity to have a psychologically representative environment so they can use this training. And I think that building in more on-field stuff actually helps decrease that feeling of repetitiveness because

they know what it's like to go on the field every day. And the number of times they kick that ball in the course of a season, but they don't feel like they've done the same thing all year long. So being able to use that environment in a way that facilitates the mental training allows, um, allows for some help in, in that repetition piece. Well, I love the acronym, you know, the I am imagery affirmations mindset. And I love the acronym you know the I am imagery affirmations mindset and I like the idea of like going deep instead of kind of going surface level right and I could imagine I don't know if you measure pre and post but that'd be pretty cool to kind of see the changes in confidence just from doing like a 10-month intervention yeah you know that's a big deal. And it really does make you kind of go deep into what confidence is and how to improve it from a variety of different ways. Yeah, I was when I did last

year, I actually was the first year with one of my programs that I didn't do confidence, which was definitely a task to figure out how to reinvent confidence every year for four years straight. But last year, I decided to take a different approach and I did mindfulness for the course of 10 months. And the pre and post data that I got was really exciting to think like, okay, their, their awareness has increased their, their, their ability to focus actually stayed pretty much the same. Their judgment of themselves decreased, which is what you would want. You'd want them to be less judgmental of themselves but what I found was more exciting for the data that I collected was the if I take one of the skills so we worked on breathing we worked on self-talk and we worked on what was the other one we worked on a on

a focus one and so what we found with breathing and self-talk is originally we also assessed usage how much are they deliberately using this skill in practice or competition? And in the beginning we had like 30, maybe 28% of the people were using breathing every day, which is, you know, that's exciting that 28% of the people are. By the time we finished the program, it was 56 people were using it every day. And that jump in just usage is like so exciting to think that I worked on, we worked on mindfulness for 10 months straight. And you can imagine the potential for the repetitiveness that could come from that. But we really tried to build it in a way that it didn't have that sense of repetitiveness, but the repetition is what got them to be doing it

every day. And so it was, you know, I think it's definitely a luxury to be able to work with teams over the long haul. I know sometimes, you know, we don't, we don't have that opportunity in this field. And so really trying to make the most of that and helping these athletes to both understand the skills, to use the skills, and then also to build the attributes from the skills as well. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Lindsay, the last kind of big topic I wanted to talk about is your recommendations from, for parents related to mental conditioning. And I'm a parent myself. I have a 10 and 12-year-old. I know that you have three.

Is that right? I do. I have three. I'm in a very different place. I have a 2-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 6-year-old. There we go. And I remember what that was like. And, you know, it's really hard. So yes,

thank you for, you know, keeping it all working with working on the EDD and your job there and even spending time with us. So what recommendations do you have for parents, you know, who might be interested in helping their son or daughter really thrive and continue to be their best? Oh, that's a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I think both as a parent and with someone who has worked with a lot of youth athletes and knows the influence that parents can have, of course. There's a couple of things that really stand out to me. I think when, you know, we use this a lot in our sport, and I have had the complete honor of working with Christian Smith, who's one of our senior mental conditioning coaches here and is a longtime veteran in the field. And he and I have co-led the parent education curriculum that we do here at the

academy. And one of the things that we find both in the literature, as well as in our experience of our student athletes at the academy is when the parents and the students are on the same page, that's where the magic happens, which is of no surprise, of course. But I think one of the most simple questions that we offer to our parents is why do you have your athlete participating in sport? And we'll even give them a list. We'll say, you know, is it because you want them to have scholarship? You want them to have fun? You want them to meet new friends? You want, you know, like we'll let them sort through all those things. Yeah. And that in and of itself is a really powerful question because if they have ever asked that of themselves before, it has not been for a very long time

because as someone who has a six-year-old playing in soccer for the first time, you know, of course I want to put them in because I want them to be physically active and I want them to be coached by somebody else. And I want them to, you know, meet new friends, what have you. But then all of a sudden my six-year-old becomes 16 years old and I haven't had that conversation. And now we're thinking scholarships and we're thinking, you know, potential opportunities and, you know, different things. So not only asking that question of the parent, but then encouraging the parent to offer that question to the student athlete themselves. And then seeing, do they overlap? Because if they overlap, incredible. Every strategy that we could work on to be a better parent from here, whether that's more effective praise or whether that's a different communication or whether that's, you know, supporting your athlete more effectively comes from that alignment. And if it's not aligned, incredible, because now we can have a conversation about it. Now, all the things that I think that I've been doing well as a parent, because I want to support you in getting this division one scholarship, I can, I can now

frame those good intentions given that, oh, you're not driving toward that. You actually are doing this for a different reason. Now we can, now we can have that conversation. And so that's the first thing that we offer to parents is how can you, can you get on the same page with your athletes with that, with a simple, with a simple question and conversation. So what have you seen? Well, I think that's powerful because it's kind of like, if you're not in alignment, it's really eyeopening. What would you suggest in terms of if they are in alignment? Do you have any best practices or thoughts on, you know, what parents can do to support their son or daughter? Yes. Great. That's great because I think that's the next step. Right.

And so, you know, in addition, like making sure that it's a collaborative process with this with the athlete is, you know, what do you need from me? How do you need me to support you? This is what I can bring to the table, or this is what I'm willing to bring to the table. You know, what are you willing to do and creating a collaborative understanding of what a support look like, because for one, that's going to look different from every kid, even a parent of multiple children. If I have that conversation with one child, and then I have that same conversation with another, we're going to get different things. But in addition to that, we also know that that's likely going to change developmentally. So we can't make assumptions about what a 12-year-old needs, because I might have a 12-year-old athlete who's just getting

started, never played soccer or field hockey or baseball before. And I might have a 12-year-old athlete who's on the all-star team, has playing for eight years now and, you know, wants to make baseball their life. And so the level, the type of support that those children might need could be really different. So I think first asking that question of them, um, and then just being very aware of the parent to reflect and say, this is what they need today. This might not be the same thing that they need 18 months from now. And so allowing the parent to check in with that. So, you know, as we grow developmentally as, as, as our athletes do, and as parents, parents have to understand that their role as a sport parent changes with the changing role of an athlete. So the type of support that we provide,

and this might come from like Kote's work in, in how we, you know, sport parent expertise and so forth. But what we know about, about athletes is they have this developmental experience where I'm having fun and I'm trying all of these things. And then they grow into this level of specialization where I'm starting to focus maybe more on one element. And then they get really, they get really in depth. And now they're really focused on on what they're doing maybe they're only one sport now and they want to play in college the type of support that a parent might provide changes along those ways as well so in the beginning when our kids are just exploring we're oftentimes the one who are paying for it and we're we're driving them to

practice and we're buying them equipment and and we're doing we're very hands-on because of the nature of the developmental level and then our kids get a little bit older and they become more specialized and we're not driving them to practice anymore, but we kind of help them to navigate the sport experience when they win and when they lose. And how do we talk about that? And you know, what does my children still know that I love them regardless of how this is going on. And then as they become really, you know, hyper-focused on what they're doing and more driven toward the expertise level, then we become really like, you know, we're always a role model, but we might, we might just like role model the actions that we want them to have. We might just be that supporter, you know, always being that sounding board. But again, the,

the distance in terms of support feels like it gets a little bit further and that can be hard for parents, especially if you haven't anticipated that change. Right. Yeah. I think that's really eye-opening for parents to just consider it that way, that your role does change as the athletes change and that like it should change. Right. Yes. So I appreciate that. When you think about, Lindsay, you know, like one or two pieces of advice that you'd give parents, you know, to positively support their child, do you have any other thoughts on what you might kind of suggest? Yeah, I would say for the benefit of the athlete and significantly for the benefit of the parents themselves is you are not your kids' sport experience. For sure. of the parent themselves is you are not your kids for experience for sure and I think that we have to be you know how we manage our own disappointment or frustration or worry and in

their performance and you as a parent are so much more than that and I think sometimes we forget that because we like we feel like our kids actions represent who we are as parents. And sometimes when you get into the sport world, it feels like that there are wins and losses and there are guide our children in ways to handle that. But if we so closely identify with what our child's experience is in sport, then not only is that going to present an opportunity to maybe add more pressure, that's not, you know, it might, it might be that we create a relationship with our athlete that we might not ultimately be wanting, but I think it does a real disservice to the parent that is so much more than that, you know, that the parent is, is so much more than just a sport parent that they are, you know, a loving kid, a loving parent that's trying to encourage their athletes to do something. And by creating a little bit of separation between what our athletes are doing and who we are as

parents, that we can then have more clarity from which to support them in a way that they might need. Yeah, awesome. Love that suggestion, or advice or wisdom, however you might describe that. Lindsay, you know, one question that I always ask people, and I'd love to ask you this question. So can you tell us about a time you failed and what you learned from it? And I'm wondering how it connects to what we've talked about today, which I know it does. So, but tell us a bit about that experience. Is this a way to be vulnerable? And as we listen to you, you know that nobody's perfect. Oh, and I am far from it. So, you know, when I have been asked this question in the past, I've found it quite difficult because I just really tried to wrap up all the failures into just the reality of the experience. But,

you know, when you asked me, I did think of this one in particular. And I had the opportunity here at the Academy, a parent had reached out to me, wanting me to check in on her daughter and see how she was doing. And, you know, just sort of give my professional expertise about what her needs might be. And I did that. And I had to work into a relationship with her. I have a great relationship with her now. But at the time, this was really my first few interactions with her. And we had some great conversation. She was a transitioning youngster into this environment, which is different, you know, living in a different place. And it was on a quite a good team. And so making those transitions as well. And after talking with her, I determined that she wasn't she's surely going through some

transition, but in general, she's doing okay. You know, and of course, like I appreciate as a parent that, you know, mom's wanting to check in on her daughter. So I followed up with the parent and let her know, my assessment, essentially, that, you know, this, this is what I'm seeing, I'm going to continue to keep touch with the athlete. And if anything arises, I'll be sure that, you know, this is what I'm seeing. I'm going to continue to keep touch with the athlete. And if anything arises, I'll be sure to let you know. Well, the athlete ended up doing fine. We went into summer. The following year, the mom actually connected with my head of department at the time and said that she had had a terrible experience with a mental coach. And she was referring referring to me and I was heartbroken.

I mean, of course I don't, I don't want to misrepresent myself. I don't want to misrepresent the work we do in this field. I would never want to misrepresent my team of mental conditioning coaches at IMG Academy who do incredible work. And so I really had to sit with that and in on it, what I, what I decided was that I checked the boxes of what I felt I needed to do, but I did not really serve what her needs were. And she, as a mom, needed me to follow up with her in a different way. She needed me to be connected. She needed, you know, whether that's, you know, obviously with minors, you're, you're,

you're, you're working in terms of different confidentiality, right? As a minor mom can know what's going on and so forth. So you have, you might have to take that into consideration in different contexts, but as, as a parent now myself, I can look and see like that mom needed more from me. And so it really has encouraged me to think about, am I serving the people that I have the privilege of working with in a way that they need, not just in a way that I feel like I've done my due diligence, not just in a way that I feel like I've done my due diligence, not just in a way that I feel like is most professionally relevant and is giving everybody the best chance,

but these are people that we get to work with and these are parents of children and these are, these are kids with aspirations. And so I think when I think about the tie back, it's really, it's constantly pressing me to ask, am I serving the people that I work with in the way that they need? And, and you know, or am I just kind of doing what I feel like I'm supposed to do? Because that's what I'm supposed to do. And

that's what we do, quote, unquote, but how can I continue to push? How can I ask different questions? How can I, you know, really connect with people on a more authentic level that's going to allow me to best serve them and meet their needs and whatever, whatever way I might be professionally able to do that. Yeah, I think that's a powerful question. You know, I can see your need for like constant ending improvement and just like continuing to be your best, which I really appreciate. I know everybody there at IMG does, but am I serving the people I work with in the way that they need, not the way that you think you need. That's a good perspective

because then I think you're more giving of yourself and you're keeping it for their perspective, not yours. Yeah. And I think it's interesting because in a line of work that is, I mean, for the most part, many of us are talking about similar things. You know, we're helping people manage pressure. We're helping people build confidence. And it can be very easy to say, oh, you're feeling nervous. Like here's a breathing routine or you need a little bit more confidence. Let's talk self-talk. But it's not just, this is the issue. It's, this is a person who's having this experience. And so how can we serve their experience and help them navigate through it? So, yeah, that was a tough lesson,

but something that has definitely powered a lot of, a lot of how I operate today. Well, thank you for just telling us about that. And it sounds like it was a gift because I really liked helped you become the practitioner you are today. So Lindsay, here are the things that I got from today. I liked that you talked about how the mind and the body are not separate. That was powerful and wise. I loved your I am confident and I am again stands for imagery, affirmations and mindset. And just like that, you could actually do a 10 month curriculum on confidence. I think that shows us a lot about different possibilities. Loved your exercise about imagery. And then at the end, when you're talking about parenting and why do you have your, your athlete participate in their

sport and answer that question for yourself and then asking the athlete and then is there alignment? So I am so grateful that you came on the podcast today to share your wisdom and your experience with us. What are the ways that people could reach out to you if they're interested in connecting with you? Oh, sure. I am available on, let's see, Instagram and Twitter. My handle is at Lindsay, L-I-N-D-S-E-Y-0-8-H, and also via email at lindsay.hamilton at img.com. So more than happy to continue the conversation with anybody that might be interested. And, and Sindra, I just am delighted

that you invited me here today for this conversation. I really, really appreciate it. And, and, and just look forward to continuing the conversation moving forward. Awesome. I'm so grateful. Thank you so much, Lindsay. Thanks, Sindra. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset.

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