High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 304: The Importance of Understanding The Human Experience with Oscar Gutierrez, CMPC, Mental Performance Coach at the Cleveland Indians

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

The Colombia native is a Mental Performance Coach at the Cleveland Indians where he assists players, coaches and other staff members. His focus is on the development and integration of programs and services that enhance performance and mental and emotional growth. Additionally, Oscar’s responsibilities include the design and implementation of systems that facilitate the acculturation process of Spanish speaking players. Gutierrez’s practice in sport and performance psychology has included athletes and teams in soccer, tennis, swimming, diving, basketball, bowling, slalom, bowling, baseball, and other sports. He is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant with the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP). Oscar is a 2008 graduate of Florida Atlantic University, received a Master’s in Rehabilitation Counseling from Florida State University in 2012, and completed his doctorate in Sport and Exercise Psychology from Florida State University.   In this podcast, Oscar and Cindra talk about: His experience coming to the US What athletes needs as they transition from another country What he does when someone doesn’t buy in to mindset training 3 questions he uses to guide his work The lesson he learned the hard way You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/oscar.

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 Coach and Keynote Speaker. Now, I'm excited today that you are here ready to listen to episode 304 with Oscar Gutierrez, Mental Performance Coach at the Cleveland Indians.

Now, if you know that mindset is essential to your success, then you're in the right place because every week we explore topics related to mindset to help you be your best more consistently. In today's episode, I interview Oscar Gutierrez. So the Colombian native is a mental performance coach at the Cleveland Indians where he assists players, coaches, and other staff members. His focus is on the development and integration of programs and services that enhance performance as well as mental and emotional growth. So Oscar's responsibilities, as you'll hear in this interview, include the design and implementation of programs that facilitate the acculturation process of Spanish-speaking players. So Gutierrez's practice in sport and performance psychology has included athletes in lots of different teams like soccer, swimming, diving, basketball, bowling, baseball. He's also a certified mental performance

consultant with the Association for Applied Sports Psychology. And he got his bachelor's degree from Florida Atlantic University and his master's and doctoral degree from Florida State. Now in this interview, Oscar and I talk about various things related to mental performance. We talk about his experience coming to the U.S. and moving to the United States. We talk about what athletes need as they transition from another country to the United States and then play here. What he does when someone doesn't buy into mindset training and how he handles that. I love this part of the interview. We talk about three questions he used to guide his work or he uses to guide his work. And I think that you're going to really love that

part. And we talk about lessons that he has learned the hard way. So if you enjoyed this episode, we would encourage you to head over to social media. You can find Oscar and I over there. On Twitter, for example, Oscar is at Sports Psych OG for Oscar Gutierrez. And I am at Mentally Underscore Strong. So my favorite part of this interview was about the three questions that they use to guide their work. What is it? Why is it important? And how do we do it? So keep listening to learn more about how they use those three questions.

Have an outstanding week, my friends. Be mentally strong. And here is Oscar. Welcome, Oscar Gutierrez, to the podcast today. I am pumped to talk to you, Oscar, and it's going to be great to chat with you about your work and to share with the audience a little bit more about what you do. So welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. Sandra, I'm very happy to be here. Just full transparency, as I was preparing for this interview that you started back in 2015, it's amazing, so many years of quality work. I got to see great names that have been in this podcast, and I'm just humbled to be here.

I think I was able to count 15 people that I have known directly or worked directly, so it's very exciting to be in the same venue with you. Yeah, isn't that awesome? I know, Oscar, I was just recording the 300th episode and I had to look back my own self, like, when did we start this? And it was like 2015, you know, it's like we've just been grinding away and every single week.

And, you know, it's an honor to talk with you and to talk with other people in the field and help people out there and spread the word about mental training. So to kind of start us off, I know you're a mental performance coach at the Cleveland Indians, but I'd love to learn more about how you got there. So take us back to how you got interested in performance psychology to begin with. I'm going to take you a little bit farther. So as you can tell by my accent, I'm from Latin America. I'm originally from Colombia. So due to my dad's job, when I was seven, we moved from Colombia to Ecuador.

Then the same reason when I was 16, we moved from Ecuador to Florida. And this is very important now that I've been doing the job with the Cleveland Indians and something that I want to talk later on is just if you look at the athletes that we work with in baseball a lot of them transition to the United States around the same age so I had a really cool personal experience what it meant to move from one country learn a language learn a culture that I didn't know so it was the it was based on my racing and what I went through as a young teenager so long story short I went to a school at Florida Atlantic University I did neuroscience and psychology and I wanted to do family counseling or family therapy as I was doing my undergrad. And in 2008, if I believe correctly, I went to

an APA conference, and I heard a workshop on mental skills training, and I was fascinated. I was like, at the time, you know, I used to play high school tennis. I played some club-level tennis, both at FAU and FSU, and I was like, wow, this makes a lot of sense why I'm not that good. Among other things. Do you remember who gave the workshop at the APH? I forgot her name, but I think she was in NFL and she was working with the 49ers. Yes. And once I got back from that conference, I was able, back then we didn't have Twitter or

Instagram. So I went online and I started looking around people that did sports psychology or performance psychology around the South Florida area. I think I sent around 20 emails, to be honest with you. Yeah. And it was interesting. Only one person reached back. Well, two people reached back to me. One person wanted to charge me money money and the other person is David

Da Silva who's a dear friend of mine and he works he worked in IMG and he works right now with the cops yes and he's an outstanding professional I without him I wouldn't be here talking to you so he deserves all the credit so I reached out to him and he's he was a Chris Ever Academy and I was in summer and he was like yeah you should come and check it out I went one day at the end of the day he's like do you want to come tomorrow and I'm like yes and we kept going that way for a couple of months and so in that stage he was crucial for my development you know he's doing what i want to do he's working with the best in the world and the youth as well and he's giving me tips he went to barry university he told me apply to barry apply to fsu and so i applied to barry for the sports psych program and then fsu

for sports psych and mental counseling rehab mental counseling and I got accepted to the Barry University sports psych and then the rehab counseling at FSU and every decision every major decision that I have running into my life I reach out to my family and people that are doing things that I want to do and everybody agreed that the fastest way to get to do what David was doing was to go through Barry. But everybody also felt, I mean, felt like I would get a better experience and education if I went to Florida State. And I took the challenge. And I was fortunate because my brother, at the time, he was going to school there. So my roommate was my brother. And I moved to Tallahassee.

I did my master's in rehab counseling and during my master's i was taking a lot of sports psych class i was trying to get involved with everybody students and professors alike dr tenabon was amazing to me dr edlon dr eccles and towards the end dr greg chaw that you interview also was a key important mentor. So I did my master's in counseling, and I got the amazing opportunity to work with students with disabilities at FSU. And we had group dynamics with students with autism, ADHD. Then I got to do an amazing internship with tallahassee memorial hospital and there i got to work with substance abuse and i was introduced to motivational interviewing which is something that i'm very passionate i think it applies a lot

in the industry that i work long story short i applied to the doctorate program at FSU. I got accepted. And then, you know, I was in love of the classes. I was in love of everything that was being done. And it was a lot of really good research. And the challenge or the art was how I take that research and I apply it to the athletes. I started with the youth so we worked with a local swimming club then we went to Thomas University and worked with the soccer team with a couple of my peers and I got the opportunity to work for two years with swimming and diving division one at FSU and also women tennis and that was such an amazing experience because I got to see the importance of collaborating with coaches, to understanding the sport, to getting out of your comfort zone.

As you can tell, you know, the sports that I have mentioned besides tennis, I had no experience. And it just allowed me to create my philosophy as a practitioner. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, there's so many ways. There's so many ways, there's so many follow-up questions I could ask you from that aspect. But, well, so one question I have, though, first is, like, how does your experience just coming from Ecuador to the U.S., how does that shape your work now with the Indians, and just, like, how you might help other people make

that transition? So, Dr. Richards, you interviewed her, Bernice. She did her dissertation on a culturization transition from international athletes to the United States. And I was, I remember vividly sitting in a computer lab when she was typing her dissertation. And we had that conversation. She's from the Caribbean, from Trinidad and Tobago, and from Colombia originally. And we shared a little bit of those experiences, but I was very naive and I never expected that I was going to be working

with elite-level professional baseball players. And she talked a little bit about, and the findings that she got was, like, they struggled. Some of the most important struggles that they go through is food, social support, and language was a little bit later. So when I came to the United States, because I was in South Florida, it was very Hispanic. So the biggest challenge for me was the language and the small different cultural difference like personal space and when i started working with baseball players i remember back in 2015 they complained a lot about the food they said that the food in the united states they don't put any seasoning and

you know they struggle and we're talking about elite performance they need to eat a lot and they need to eat well so culturally that was a major challenge and they talk about social support and the organization has done an outstanding job the Cleveland Indians and the leadership with the Indians have created environments especially in Dominican Republic and here in Arizona that foster that social support. So a lot of us that are here are bilingual. We keep hiring bilingual and bicultural people. And that's, I think, I felt like for me when I came to the United States, my social support system was my family.

So my dad, my mom, my brothers. Our players come here and it's only by themselves. And there are 17, 18 year old teenagers who haven't developed a personality yet. And we teach them basic skills on how to ask help. And we started that since Dominican Republic. And we do a great job with the support of Martinin he's there and he's helping us and we've been working a lot for the last couple of years on how to foster that transition and last year we hired a life skills coordinator and she's also helping us with that so once again kudos to the organization because they are really preaching what they want to do but they are also applying it

to the lower levels and do you see that now when the players you know transition and play baseball here and they grew up in a different country is the social support more their team and their teammates and then the staff like you or the life skills coordinator yeah so we have also an english an education coordinator. We have English teachers. And he's very profound. And it's funny, like, we had a player last year. He's from Colombia as well. And he came here to the United States. And he's a starting pitcher.

So he pitches every five days. And certain days he has to be the bad boy. Certain days he has to watch. And it's just wonderful to see his interaction with the American players that came from the draft. So he's asking questions like, how do you say this? How do you say that? How do you say double play or whatever?

And they're like teaching them in practice, in games, and just that ability to be vulnerable, that ability to have a growth mindset, to ask questions. I think we as a department, one of our pillars is growth mindset, to ask questions. I think, you know, we as a department, one of our pillars is growth mindset. But I think as an organization, all of the coaches talk a lot about growth mindset. And it's huge for us to provide those environments

for the players just to be curious and learn and challenge themselves. Yeah, that's wonderful. So tell us a little about, like, in terms of your responsibilities with the Indians and just so people can understand like what you do day to day. And that's kind of then let's dive into your work. That sounds amazing. So I have in the five years I have different roles. One of the departments that obviously I support the most is player development. But I have been involved with international scouting. That's very exciting because we get to meet a lot of the players

before we sign them. We get to meet their families. They build that connection and that trust. We started interviewing players when they are 14, 15 years old and just having an understanding of their mindset. In player development, before last year, I was in charge of the mental skills training for Dominican Republic and Arizona, so the lower levels.

And I also supported the rehab group, so players that have been injured. We have a lot of injured players due to the demands of the sport. So we created content and we developed content as a department to support them. And finally, I feel like a lot of what we do is also collaboration with coaches to support the goals of every player and also the front office yeah excellent so give us a little insight on what do you see the athletes that you work with struggle with oh so many things so i think one one struggle that comes to my mind a lot of these players let's say are their best in their city or their state or in their country before we sign them and they they have a way of learning and then they come to us and we

we yeah we love what they have but we want to get them ready for the major leagues so a lot of the challenges that they see is how how do i learn the indians way how do we apply the concepts of growth mindset routines individual mechanics and team teamwork how do we as a young player learn under those pillars and that's a challenge that's a challenge because some of them, because they are so good, their ego gets in the way. And some of them,

it's just a cultural transition. They struggle with the language. They struggle with the food. They struggle with the heat of Arizona. And it's just beautiful because every obstacle that they face, the majority of Arizona. And it's just beautiful because every obstacle that they face, the majority of them, we try and we are very good at providing support systems because we believe that there is not like a big way to do things

or like there is a general way. We believe in individualized training. So we create these kinds of social support and techniques that allow them to succeed. So that will be some of the most common ones. Obviously, adversity. Baseball is so long. It's a long season. So how do we continue pursuing and staying motivated stay present in the present moment so those are some of the obstacles or challenges that i've seen so far um give us a little insight on when you see athletes struggle with their ego you know how do you address that or do you because i kind of say the same thing generally professional sport that born is really willing to learn because they don't

necessarily like are open to new ideas and that gets in their way they don't necessarily grow from a mental perspective and then they don't thrive because their ego is in the way what's your thoughts on that so going back to my practice uh with substance abuse and substance use, that is a theory, the trans-theoretical model of stages of change. So there are five different stages. And it's been quite interesting to learn how this theory applies to practice. So you have pre-contemplation, contemplation, action, maintenance, and termination. And a lot of our younger players, they are between the pre-contemplation and contemplation stage.

They know they want to get better. They know they need to get better routines. They need to have better discipline. But it's hard for them to get to the action stage. Yesterday, we were watching a pitcher from Venezuela. We saw him very very young and he had Tommy John surgery and I was talking to the trainer about you know how much he has evolved you know in two years he has grown so much he was he was he was never a bad kid but like

he was on his way he wanted to do things his way and in the last seven to ten months he has been able to get to that action stage he was able to say you know what you know this is the way to do things this is how we're gonna do this started with the way he cut his hair the way he dressed everything and it's just a lot of patience with them especially the younger guys they are trying to find who they are and a lot of that self-awareness and identity search is based how do i handle my ego and and you know like obstacles like injuries and failure at the are the best uh teaching moments for them where they become humble and they're like oh oscar what you got for me or they go to the trainers and he's like i want to improve my routine what can i do in the training room so i can get better faster and i can go and do what i love so i feel like a that those are some strategies that we have used

yeah that's good and what do you think that athlete you were talking about what what was his transition from uh pre-contemplation contemplation to action like what happened for him so i think we talk about motivation right we talk about passion and we talk about uh pursuing and their dreams and goals so for them it's just i got signed wow that's the big step and he got very good money and he's from Venezuela I'm pretty sure like when he was he was very famous where he's from because he got signed and eventually when that fame and people stopped talking and built him up and slowly slowly he realized that okay this is one stage now what is the next the next is to get better move up levels and get to the major league hopefully and he realized that it wasn't easy like he had to train hard he had to be more

disciplined and i i feel like a lot of the things that he did he was very open and vulnerable with us and we did a lot of collaboration with the front office with the medical department, and we set the basis for his growth and then let him grow as the time passed. And now he's just, the way he carries himself, the way he talks, the way he behaves, it seems like he finally found his purpose and knows how to access this support system to continue getting better. Nice. So what I'm hearing is that you were

patient with him as he was growing and really moving to action. So Oscar, one of the questions I usually ask everybody on the podcast is to tell us about a time that they failed and what they learned from it. And I've been on this journey, Oscar, to embrace failure even more in my own life. I just posted yesterday a video on Instagram, Twitter about like, what if your goal this year was to try to fail? And what if the more you failed, it got you closer to your goal? And so that's what I'm trying to do is like embrace that in my own life. And when I say that out loud, it kind of even makes me a little, I have a hard time breathing, right? The idea is, you know, just really embrace failure as a way to grow and learn and get us closer to our dreams.

And I'd love for you to tell us a story that didn't go so great for you and what you learned from it. This is a way for us to grow and learn and to learn more about you from a vulnerable side. So like when you talk about this, we have a presentation to our rehab group and we talk about goal setting and we we see that success is just a straight line we start from point a b and we climb a mountain and life is perfect reality as you mentioned is there is a lot of up and valleys you go up and valleys and up and valleys. So as you were asking that question to me, I remember vividly when I was at FSU, I was working with the women's tennis team. Okay.

And here I was working with a couple of players. One of them was an Asian student from Asia. And Asian culture is way different. And at the same time, I was working with another international student from another part of the world. So when I was with the Asian student athlete, I would talk for the majority of the session and she would listen, she would take notes

and everything was perfect and things were great. And I usually have those sessions because of my schedule at FSU. I had to get one after the other. And I was in that mode. And then I would go to the other international student, and I would start talking, talking, talking. And I saw in her eyes that I kept losing her.

And I feel like we had to go through many sessions until I realized and I started asking my peers and the supervision at FSU and the work that Greg Shaw had done over there allows to become more self-aware and have conversation in a group. And I was like, I feel like we're not going anywhere. I have this Asian student and she's doing amazing. But I have this other international student and she's not doing so great. She's barely making my sessions and I started talking to a couple of ladies that were in my program and they they gave me a very open feedback where they're like Oscar that's not you gotta be conscious that you know the psyche of different countries is different. The way they interact with coaches is different.

And you have to ask more open-ended questions and shut up. You know what we should generally do? You know, we are so passionate about what we do. I think everybody that listens to the podcast they want to create change they want to just go and they have this formula about confidence about motivation about mindfulness and we want to give this knowledge to the world right and there is a beautiful thing about having open-ended questions yeah and just just being able to shut up listen listen, and work on that.

And it wasn't until I was, you know, I had to leave my ego aside. I had to let my peers give me feedback. And then I was like, ah, this makes sense. And the relationship improved slowly and slowly. But it was a great learning moment in my life. And I feel like all of us, all of us, we want to create change. And we've got to go back and look at the stages of changes. And sometimes the athletes are not ready.

It doesn't matter how much knowledge and strategies and resources we have. We need to pay attention to the people we're working with. And we need to understand their human experience. And we need to understand where they're coming from and their cultural biases so we can be able to get in the same page as they are. Yeah, that's a good story. I remember Oscar and I first started doing this work

and I was in graduate school and I was working with a golfer. And he was just kind of telling me about his thoughts on the course. And I think I said something like, well, you're just catastrophizing. It's okay. Or something like that. It was such a big word. When I said it, I think it sounded judgmental to him. And now I'd never say that, you know, and he didn't come back. So I learned pretty quickly, right? Like particularly like no

judgment and, you know, just to normalize everything that we experience as humans. So thanks for sharing that. Do you feel like the big take-home point for you was that just the importance of opening, asking open-ended questions? Yeah, I think that that's huge. I think all of us are different formulas. Like we are different human beings and every player every coach every parent every medical staff you know they are their own experience they have their own formulas they have their own passions their fears so I think we as professionals in the field our job is just to understand what the formula is empath empathize, being able to be vulnerable,

and work with them through that formula. And that's where the real work starts to me. Once you have that humanistic approach, you learn to be on the same page as the person that you are trying to create an impact. Because eventually, I think all of us, our goal is just to learn the best techniques for mental skills training and just to work with the best and allow them to be a little bit better. But we cannot do that if we cannot empathize and be on the same page with them. Absolutely. So one other question I wanted to ask you, Oscar, is just give

us a little insight in terms of like, what do you see yourself and hear yourself talking to your athletes about? Like, is there a concept or strategy or a tool that you find to be repeating over and over again yeah so uh we dr manor charlie charlie with brian and cc and martin in the last couple of years we recognized that when our latin players were coming to Dominican Republic, we were kind of, they didn't know what we were doing. They didn't know, like, there is no mental skills training in Latin America.

You know, when they're getting trained to be signed by teams, they work in the techniques, they work in the physique, they try to get faster, they try to hit the ball harder or try try to command their their pitches but there is no mental skills training whatsoever and the medical department has the same issue so it's like when the players get to our organization they look at us and they're like oh who are they i don't yeah I don't need a trainer to get better. I will never get hurt. Or no, I'm super good. I don't need anything that has to do with the mental side.

So something that we have tried. Like I'm already mentally tough. Exactly. I made it. I've been signed, so I don't need any help. So something that we have done in the last couple of years, we talk about those pillars like growth mindset routines and mindfulness and it's been very exciting the last the last year because of the support of the coaches and the organization we have obviously workshops psychoeducational

workshops where we talk to the players about what mindfulness is the importance the benefits situations where you can recognize yourself being mindful, situations when you cannot. And we started a mindfulness practice. Every time after we introduced this topic, every presentation that we ever had, and we only have presentations of 15 minutes because you can only get their attention for 15 minutes.

The first three to five minutes is just mindful breathing. Just sitting with them, being quiet, mindful breathing in the classroom. And some of them at the beginning were joking around. Some of them were just falling asleep. And as the sessions progressed, they were taking it more seriously. They were taking it more seriously. And the players were giving us feedback. I want to do this.

What if we do that? And we had a program in the off-season last year where we transitioned that to the batting case. And we got all the pitchers and position players, and we laid them because we have different groups working through their rotations and one of the rotations was mindful breathing and we were outside and there were more distractions different than in the classroom you know you hear a major league players training and hitting the balls then you hear merengue and

salsa being played and then you hear so many different distractions and we did this and we thought okay that that was a great experience martin and i we felt very confident we talked to charlie brian and cc and we were like oh this is awesome i think we did something impressive at the end of the year we got to meet with the majority of our players one one we want to evaluate what worked what didn't work it was unreal the amount of number of players that said that they were using mindfulness. And I think we could not find one that said that they didn't use it.

All of them from different things, from different purposes. The majority, a lot of them, used it to quiet their mind before going to sleep because they're thinking so much. They are teenagers. You know, they have so many thoughts and they were telling Martina and myself, Oscar, Martín teenagers you know they have so many thoughts and they were they were telling martina myself oscar martin you know what before going to bed i lay down i tried to i tried to take

three four be a very mindful deliberate breaths and that allows me to just to be able to go and sleep and after every session i will look at mart I'm like, what have we done? This is exciting. And just to see the transition from five years ago, sports psychology was a taboo to now it's a daily practice. It has been nothing but amazing. And that has been the work of the coaches, has been the work of Martina, everybody in our department. I feel like just changing that culture that mindset the culture within the culture of accepting sports psychology as one of the tools that they need to

get better we're just a small puzzle but it's a very important puzzle for them to get to the next levels yeah so two questions i have about the asker. First, like, how did you manage your own self in that situation? Because like I've been in situations where, man, it doesn't seem like the team was getting it, you know, and it's, it's, it's easy to get frustrated. And if guys are falling asleep, you know, it's easy in your brain to say, what's wrong with me? Like, how come I, what am I doing wrong? But really, it's like they just didn't quite, they were in still in pre-contemplation or contemplation, right? So tell us a little bit about how you manage yourself in that situation before they finally got it. So a lot of the work that we do with the Indians, we meet all of us as staff, Cece, Charlie, Brian, Martina, myself, and we talk about the different programs that we run.

Something that I love that Charlie brings is we create programs. We don't create just one session. We want to create a program for the season or the off-season. And Charlie is great in that, and I think he has done so much for sports psychology in baseball because he thinks at the macro level. And we get to execute at the micro level. And a lot of the challenges that we faced through the last years, we talk as a group.

Brian, Cece, Charlie, they all offer very blunt and straightforward advice. And we needed to learn. It's like one example. When I started going, I would have sessions for 30 minutes. And then I realized when Martin got to work with us a couple of years ago, we don't need 30 minutes. We need very good quality over quantity, very good 10 to 15 minutes where we can teach these principles. So something that Charlie talks a lot about is, you know, educating the players before you introduce a technique. Why is it important? What is do i do it being able to answer those three questions and when we

had these psychoeducational workshops uh the players were like some of them were like but because we had the buy-in from other players you know we would rely on those players that really believe in what we did i'm not saying we have a hundred percent acceptance it's a bell curve some of them really buy in some of them don't but they're respectful and slowly slowly the more we do it the more it becomes then it becomes normalized right so yeah what were the things you just said like why is it important you said two more they're really good i missed it so why is let's say why is it important you said two more they're really good i missed it so why is let's say why is breathing important uh what is breathing and how do we do it in the daily basis so all the presentations whenever we have talks whenever we present to the players about confidence

self-talk uh routines we try to answer those three questions. Those are important questions. I think sometimes we forget to ask, right? Like, what is it? How do we do it? Why is it important? And that's the right content of our presentations. And that, you know, like the players, once they understand the why, I think there's so many signs and there's so many books that talk about the why

of something. Once you get the why of something once you get the why their ones become very easy to adjust and I feel like you know some of these players are the best of the best in the world but they need to understand that mine is a tool and sometimes this tool can help them or can just take them to a different direction that they don't want to get into it yeah do you feel like, that started to click for the players because it was more tangible? It was more like hands-on than talking, like more doing than describing?

So I think that that was a great lesson. I did an internship at IMG, and I was fortunate enough to have Dr. Vanessa Shannon, Justin Sua, Josh Livrak, Dr. Angus, all these all-stars, all these legends in the field. And I was just an intern there. And I remember they made us read a book about Make a Stick. Yeah. And a lot of these concepts come to that.

It's like, how do you present an idea? And IMG is very organized, and they have a lot of these presentations. So we had the chance to fail a lot. And we will have these presentations, and we will have to create the content. And I remember, like, my first week, you know, you have Justin Sua, who has an approach of teaching. And then you have Josh Livrak, has an approach of teaching and then you have josh lifrak which is very energetic very passionate and he he just has a way to you know get everybody engaged and vanessa's home is like you can you cannot be either justin or josh you have to find

your own identity and as you create content and you create these techniques, make sure that you are staying true to who you are. So I agree with you. And a lot of it has to be applied. So a lot of it has to be engaged because these were young kids. We're talking about nine, 10, 11 year old campers who are in the summer there. We had to learn to get them engaged, give them content, give them ideas, but still make it fun for everybody. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. So, Oscar, another question I have for you is like when you see the guys that move up, right, like the players right now that you do mental coaching with, what do you see that they do differently? Or maybe another way to ask that same question is what do you see the best of the best do differently from a mental perspective so dr erickson he he wrote a book on the liberal

practice and a big i'm not because he he's from fsu but i'm a big believer about it and i had the chance to see him live and he's a great, great researcher, a great speaker. And when you talk about deliberate practice and you talk about, you know, having a specific goal, having intense focus,

getting feedback and getting out of your comfort zone. So at the younger levels, we call this mental discipline. We call this having a routine. We have seen some of the most amazing, talented players, pitchers that can

throw the ball 100 miles an hour, but they don't move up levels and we end up reducing them because they lack these routines, these mental disciplines, this ability to keep doing the same every day for many years to practice deliberately so they get 1% better after a big chunk of time.

So for me and what I have been able to see, and I think as an organization, when the director of player development would call me and ask me, Oscar, we want to move this player from rookie level to low A. The first question he will ask me is, how are his routines? And we got to be very transparent

and we have really good routines, especially because in Arizona, we have everything. They have everything here. And they come here, they have food, they have gym, they have everything. When you go on the road and you move up levels, you don't have the same food. You have access to McDonald's.

You have access to Burger King. You don't have a gym. So it has to come from you. And if you don't have that discipline, if you don't believe in that deliberate practice, that idea of getting 1% better every day, that's where they fail. Because baseball is such a crime. It's 140 games, and now the new they fail because baseball is such a crime it's 140 games and it's now the new way of doing baseball is we used to have this the season and that would have been in

look it's january and we're working here and i we are not the only organization that is working in the middle of january and we are making these periods of time longer so for a 16 year kid to understand the importance of mental discipline and having routines, that's one of the biggest obstacles to come out of the lower levels. Yeah, excellent, excellent. Well, Oscar, as we wrap up today's interview, first of all, thank you so much for bringing it, you know, just for sharing a little insight in terms of what you do. And here are the things that I got from today's interview. I really liked this idea in our conversation about using the trans-theoretical

model to understand where athletes and people might be in terms of embracing mindset training or mental training. I loved the story about when you actually taught more how to do the mindfulness that the athletes really liked that. I think that's really applicable for everybody who's listening who might not even work in sport, but just, you know, the importance of like doing instead of just telling. And I also appreciate what you talked about, like when athletes move from different countries, the importance of social support. And at the end about these three things to answer you know how do you do it what is it and why is it important so Oscar two questions as we wrap up first tell us a little

bit how people can reach out to you if they are interested in learning more about you or if they like to connect with you in any way so my email my work email is O, as Oscar, O Gutierrez, G-U-T-I-E-R-R-E-Z at Indians.com. And also on Twitter, Sports Psych OG. He's not an original gangster, he's Oscar Gutierrez. So those are two very useful ways that people can reach out to me. I try and I make an effort to tweet to some frequency. I cannot keep up with you. You are elite at this level, Sandra.

But a lot of my tweets are in Spanish because I feel like I'm talking to a lot of the people who are in the industry. And since 2015 to now, we have exploded. There is a lot of bilingual, bicultural mental skills performance coaches. There is a major need for teaching the evidence-based sports psychology in Spanish. There is a lack of content.

There is a lack of information. I would love for somebody like you with your skill set to do this kind of podcast and provide such amazing content in spanish i think the whole industry needs it oh that would be awesome phenomenal phenomenal uh so challenge for anybody who's listening who could do that um excellent what final piece of advice or thoughts do you have for people who are listening i think like we talk a lot about obstacles and challenges i feel like we as mental performance coaches, we need to challenge ourselves.

We need to read, we need to learn, we need to listen, podcast, we need to constantly grow. And whatever we preach to our athletes, we got to do it. I think when we talk about mindfulness and this is something that I learned the last year, Headspace has a mindfulness version in Spanish.

So if you are trying to learn Spanish or you are trying to work, what better option than use like a social proven and a very good app like Headspace. I'm not getting any money to advertise this, so do not worry about it. So use those resources to get better practice and challenge yourself. Like, you know, we demand the athletes to be mindful for one minute a day. Let's do it ourselves. We define, we ask the athletes to have goal-setting skills.

Do it ourselves. Like, this is New Year's. My New Year's resolution was to be in your podcast, and here I am. So I'm done for the year. There we go. Boom. Well, that is pretty awesome. I'm glad that you were on today. I'm grateful for your insight. And, you know, Oscar, I went and saw Tony Robbins last month speak in Florida and I heard him say something and he said, you're either growing or

you're dying. I was like, Ooh, that's harsh. And I was like, well, isn't that true? Because there are times in my life where I felt like I was just stagnant. I really wasn't growing because I wasn't learning. I wasn't fueling myself with things like this. So yeah, good message at the end. So thank you. Thank you so much for bringing it today, Oscar. Kendra, thank you for your passion and your commitment to our field. And it has been an honor to be with you today. Thank you. I'm so grateful that you are here. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you liked 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.