Session 4 | The Oxygen Mask Effect: Taking Care of Self to More Effectively Advance Others

Kara Winger: I am once again, Kara Winger four time Olympian in the javelin throw. Welcome back to our afternoon session at the 2023 TrueSport Talks Symposium on Mental Wellness and the Modern Coach.

I’m super excited for the interactive afternoon that we have planned. I know all of you are too. I got to hear from some individuals how excited you are to get up out of your chairs and talk to each other. Continue the theme that we have been discussing, which is leading with vulnerability, having conversations that are open, honest, and effective communication to move all of your teams forward and to protect your own mental health.

I wanted to tell a quick story about the reason that we all matter. Every single person in this room, every single level of sport, your experience matters. We heard from Dr. Alex Cohen before the break about effective communication and also those really difficult conversations, primarily at the Olympic and Paralympic level from his experience. But we all have had those experiences in youth sport, in development, of having to have those really difficult conversations with athletes who maybe have done their best. Everybody’s version of their best is important in sports, and as coaches who are protecting your own mental wellness, it’s really important to keep that in mind.

My story in Tokyo, I was 11 months post-op my second ACL. Again, it wasn’t the dream scenario I had in mind for finishing my Olympic career, and I knew that this would be my last Olympic Games. So sitting in a USA track and field team meeting prior to competition, when the team was asked for nominations for team captain, my name coming from every event group of women in that room was the most humbling thing that I’ve ever experienced.

The women of track and field who are so incredible, diverse, medal winning, so successful, saw me a four-time Olympian, the only four or five-time Olympian in Tokyo from team USA with no medals. I was the only one to have been to more than three Olympics and not be on the podium. They chose me. When that turned into my election by hundreds of team USA teammates as closing ceremony flag bearer, I had the biggest imposter syndrome you can imagine. I knew for a couple days before the announcement was made that I was going to be announced as team USA closing ceremonies flag bearer, and my mind went straight to all the people that would say, “Who the heck is Kara Winger?” And there were a couple of those tweets that happened, but what happened that made me cry even harder than I had been for days, was teammates responding to those messages by saying, “She’s exactly the right person for this role.”

So it wasn’t just my teammates in Tokyo that elected me flag bearer, it was every teammate from every other team that I had been on who said to me in DMs, in public tweets, in person years later, “Your experience, this election made my fellow non-metal winning experience more valid.” That meant everything to me. I was representing everybody who had gone and done their best but not been on the podium. It’s really difficult as an American Olympian, as a kid who gets cut from a team that all of their friends made, as somebody who did their best, but still didn’t win, to know where your place is in sport if you don’t get to talk about it with other people in the room. That experience and knowing exactly who I represented it in 2021, finally understanding that I was already accepted by all of these hundreds of other people who were exactly like me, propelled me into the best season of my life in 2022. I kept them firmly in mind and I know that you as coaches do every day.

So with that in mind, you get to talk to each other in the next three hours here in Colorado Springs, at the Olympic and Paralympic Museum. We have again, those dots on your name tag. There are green, blue, and red dots. So take a look. The green dots mean you’re going to stay here in the atrium, but you do get to move. You will move forward to the first and second rows of this room when I say so.

If your dot is blue, you’re going to the Chapman room and you’ll follow Tammy Hanson who’s waving her hand in the back, out the front doors and around upstairs, up the ramp or up the stairs. If you need an elevator, there is one right over here and we will get people to direct you to the correct room, the Chapman room.

And if you dot is red, you will follow Carissa Gump in the back to the Flame room, and we’re going to walk down the ramp and it’s accessible that direction. If you need an elevator, again, you can be pointed in that direction.

So be open and vulnerable. Our sessions are mental health and emotional regulation, boundaries and balance identity and making self-care practical is possible. So fantastic TrueSport experts who will be the ones rotating. Once you get to your room, you are going to stay there participants in your rooms, and your presenters will be the ones rotating around.

So green stay here, blue follow Tammy, and red going to the Flame room with Carissa. Here we go.

Kevin Chapman: All right. Y’all enjoyed it so far? One person, two people. I’m a little salty because always speaking after lunch is always a struggle, right? So I got my cough drop in just in case, you know what I’m saying? I just ate just like you, right?

Okay, so I’m going to jump right in here first. I’m really excited because number one, I love this. I love you all as coaches. How many coaches do we have? Okay, so what I want to do in this particular breakout is I want to make it really practical. So it’s going to be a combination of things. I want you to talk back at me, I’m going to ask you some questions, but I have selfish intent about what I want to accomplish. I’ve been charged with helping you all think through emotional regulations. So what do you think we’re going to talk about? Emotions, we have to. I’m going to define some emotions, we’re going to talk about that a little bit, but I hope you can have a takeaway that you can apply immediately for yourself.

Typically, when we do these things, we’re often talking to you about your players, but this is for you. But the good news though, is that this will apply to everything you touch as a coach. All right, so let’s jump in with some questions. All right, probably should say Kevin Chapman, licensed psychologist, TrueSport expert, didn’t say that. Director of the Kentucky Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, former two sport athlete in college, and I also work with Louisville FC soccer team and also Racing Louisville FC. I’m their team psychologist. I just want to point that out. All right, cool. All right, let’s go.

Question number one, is it important as a coach to navigate and manage your own emotions?

Audience: Yes.

Kevin Chapman: Okay, somebody tell me why that’s important since you say yes.

Audience: Kids feed off of you.

Kevin Chapman: What’s that?

Audience: The kids feed off of you.

Kevin Chapman: Facts. The kids feed off of it. What else? What’s another good reason why?

Audience: Role model.

Kevin Chapman: Role model. Okay, so the kids feed off of it. Role model. Both of those are correlated, very good. Anybody else?

Audience: Predictability. Better decisions.

Kevin Chapman: Predictability. Better decisions? All very good. You guys are coaches, this is great. Okay, just checking. Just want to make sure we’re in the same page here. Number two, do you feel equipped to manage and regulate your own emotions as a coach? The key word there is equipped. I’m not saying you’re a hot mess. What I’m saying is, do you feel equipped to regulate your own emotions as a coach?

Audience: Yes.

Kevin Chapman: Yes. Okay, so you have the tools, you know what to do, you have what it takes to thinks. Okay. All right. I appreciate that response. Anybody say no? You don’t want to out yourself? Who said no? Somebody want to tell me why? How come? Thank you.

Audience: So I think I’ve been thrown into a lot of situations that there’s not a policy or maybe something that’s standard.

Kevin Chapman: Very good.

Audience: So I’m like, “Wait, why am the person solving this?” And after I got over that, saying, “Hey, then how do I want to react?”

Kevin Chapman: Okay.

Audience: So, yeah.

Kevin Chapman: So it’s a logistical issue, right? No, I appreciate that and that’s what I was really hoping somebody would say no to, is what you just said, so thank you for that. And then the final question I have for you all is what have been your biggest challenges as a coach as it relates to navigating your own emotions? I’m asking you now, what would be the biggest challenges for you? Anybody?

Audience: I think fairness. If it’s not fair, then I get pretty worked up.

Kevin Chapman: Thank you for saying that. Fairness, okay.

Moderator: So when people have questions, if you say the questions so that we can hear it, that’d be great. Thank you. That’s okay.

Kevin Chapman: So she said fairness. Did you all hear that? Okay, so you’re saying you get worked up if something’s not fair, right? Okay, thank you for saying that. You’re a plant in the audience because we’re going to talk about that a little bit. What were you going to say?

Audience: Irrational or just parents in general.

Kevin Chapman: Can somebody give him an amen? So irrational or parents in general. That is an absolute fact. Thank you. So what emotion would you say you experienced when that happened?

Audience: Well, this is year 29. I don’t know what that emotion is.

Kevin Chapman: Okay.

Audience: I’m over it and I don’t know how to put that emotion into words.

Kevin Chapman: Good, I’m glad because part of my role is to give you some skin for that. Good.

Audience: I don’t know if too much empathy is a situation.

Kevin Chapman: Okay.

Audience: But taking on the emotions from them.

Kevin Chapman: So that weighs on you, right? Yep. Okay, thank you for that. Now that’s actually a thing. Rob, yeah.

Audience: I think that I struggle when kids get hurt or when they’re in jeopardy and protective instincts kick in. That’s a challenge.

Kevin Chapman: Okay, how would you say, what emotion would you say you experience when that happens? Do you know?

Audience: A wide range, whether it’s empathy or rage or-

Kevin Chapman: Okay, okay.

Audience: A lot of it.

Kevin Chapman: You guys are answering my question well. All right, one more. What you got?

Audience: Player commitment.

Kevin Chapman: Okay, player commitment.

Audience: Yes, causes frustration.

Kevin Chapman: Player commitment causes frustration. Can anybody relate to that?

Audience: Yeah.

Kevin Chapman: Thank you. At the end of the day, that’s part of our role as a coach, is to make sure that our players are doing what they are supposed to be doing. And yet, if we’re giving them everything we have and they’re not doing it equals what they said, frustration.

All right, so we’re going to talk about that. Thank you for that. Now, here’s my selfish intent. So I kind of primed you a little bit. Here’s were I want to go on the short time that we have, because I’ll be honest with you, I’ve gone back and forth about what I’ve wanted to share with you all because as Jim Royer and others know, I can say a whole lot about a lot of different things, but I’ve been tasked with emotion regulations. So I’m just going to be very simple and basic and give you all some takeaways. Is that okay?

All right. I want you to take away what an emotion is, what emotions we experience as coaches and what you can do to manage. Is that fair? All right, so that’s what this one is, okay? So I want you to avoid burnout and have an emotionally healthy team culture. That’s really my intent, personally, with what I want to share with you all. And let me say this. Here’s a soundbite, if you’re taking any sort of notes. Burnout as a coach is not what you do or how you do it or what you do, it’s how you do what you do. In other words, burnout and emotions are synonymous. You can’t have burnout as a coach without it being emotional to some degree. You with me? So it’s not about what you do, it’s how you do what you do. And if your emotions aren’t regulated as a coach, what you do is going to negatively impact you, your team, your family, and everything you touch.

So my task really is to get you into the mindset of, “Well, what do I do about that? How can we prevent that from happening?” So I really want to talk about just some really key emotional experiences that coaches often have that I see on a regular basis and just kind of give you some skin for that, okay?

So here’s what you need to know. Here’s from my perspective. So when we talk about what we need to know as a coach as it relates to emotion regulation, let’s talk about it like this. First of all, I call this the triad of emotion. You need to know a triad. Here’s what I mean by that. Any emotion you have as a coach, because again, being a former athlete myself, we confuse emotions quite often, and I’m telling you right now, this is very simple, but it’s very powerful. If you can understand as a coach to differentiate what your emotions are, you will, as a couple people said, be able to effectively model this for your team.

So I want to say that to, so say this with me. All emotions have three parts. Say, “Thoughts.”

Audience: Thoughts.

Kevin Chapman: Physical sensations.

Audience: Physical sensations.

Kevin Chapman: And behaviors.

Audience: Behaviors.

Kevin Chapman: Those are all bi-directional. Your thoughts influence your actions, right? Your thoughts influence your physical sensations, don’t they? Your physical sensations influence your thoughts. Your thoughts influence your behaviors. They’re all interrelated. You can’t, as a coach, experience any emotion without these three things. Your frustration, your sadness, your anger, your disgust, your excitement, your contentment, your gratitude, your generosity. It doesn’t make any difference if it’s positive or negative. The bottom line is that any emotion you have as a coach has those same three parts.

That should help somebody right there. Just knowing that, are you with me so far? Know your triad. You’re talking to an athlete, you’re talking to yourself, you’re talking to somebody in your family, someone, a loved one. Know that any emotion you have has these three parts. That’s super simple and you’d be shocked by how few people understand that concept, okay?

So with that being said, see, here’s the key as a coach, emotions aren’t the issue. “Well, what if I struggle with anger?” Well, we’ll talk about that. Emotion’s not the issue. That’s not the issue. The issue is how many of us have learned to respond to the emotions we have. Let me say that again. Anger’s not the problem, frustration’s not the problem. And those are separate emotions. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Anxiety’s not the issue, it’s how I’ve learned to respond to those emotions that are the problem. Anybody with me? Right?

Sport is emotional. Can I get another amen? You’re going to be salty, you’re going to be angry, you’re going to be frustrated, you’re going to be sad. There’s a lot of things that are going to happen in your role as a coach. The key is recognizing it’s not the emotion at the core that’s the issue. It’s how many of us have learned to respond to the emotion that perpetuates the negative cycle of the emotion. You with me? This is for you all, okay?

Now here’s some examples. I want to hear some from you, but these are some examples I know from my own personal experience, but here’s some strategies I often have found that some coaches have used when they have an intense emotional experience. Stonewalling, that won’t help you in your marriage either, by the way, you’re welcome.

So I say that to say, internalizing anger is not effective. Don’t show your anger. Okay, good luck with that. It’s going to increase your blood pressure and you’re going to have more anger, right? Throwing equipment, I don’t have to tell you the problem with that. Going off on a player, I don’t have to tell you the consequences of that.

The consequence that you might not know though is when we engage in strategies like this, here’s one right here. The spending too much time on film. Is that a possibility? Is that something that happens? Absolutely. If it’s being driven by an intense emotion, it’s a problem. Y’all with me?

All right, so I say that to say that, keep in mind these are strategies that I’m using to try to feel better or to manage my emotions as a coach sometimes that backfire and make the emotion worse. Is this making sense? Okay, y’all with me still?

All right. So what are some other examples? These are just some examples, like Family Feud vibes, that I know happen, but what would some of you all say? What are some other examples of things where it’s like, “Thank you.”

Audience: So this is actually my first year that I’m taking off from coaching. I coached for 11 years because of these things.

Kevin Chapman: Okay. Thank you.

Audience: Another one that I really struggled with is not bringing it home. So staying up late, just thinking about, “Okay, what lineup can I change? How can I do this differently? What can I say to this kid to motivate them?” And I would just stay up all night long thinking about that.

Kevin Chapman: Thank you. Did y’all hear that? So basically, essentially worry or overthinking. That’s a strategy. That’s a strategy that she, and I’m sure 15 of y’all would agree with that we often can engage in that actually backfires and makes it worse. But it’s what we do often because that’s what we’ve learned to do. Is this making sense? Thank you for that transparency. Anybody else? Any other strategy? So overthinking, worry.

Audience: Or blame or worried about the past and not focused on the future.

Kevin Chapman: That’s good.

Audience: Control.

Kevin Chapman: Y’all hear that? So blame or worried about the past, not focusing on the future. And I’d even add friendly amendment, the present, right? Because if I’m focused on how I used to do this or how it happened in the past and what it might happen in the future, if I’m not focused on the present, that can impact my ability to make the right call, put the right kid in, all those sort of things. You see what I’m saying? Okay, thank y’all for that.

Audience: I can only be super positive, always.

Kevin Chapman: You have some experience with that, don’t you? Trying to be super positive all the time, only. Is that what you said? So what we oftentimes call toxic positivity, can I say something real quick? So here’s the thing, being overly positive can be as bad as being overly negative because neither one of them are realistic or evidence-based. Somebody needs to tuck that away. Does that make sense? Oh, I got, I’m on a par five. Oh, this is a hole in one.

The kids would say that’s cap or that’s not true. It’s impossible. Super positive, but super untrue, right? That’s the problem. Okay, thank you for that.

So let me give you kind of some basic skeleton here then. So as we think about those are responses to emotions, here’s what I want you to know as a coach, and this is really my intent, is what’s the purpose of an emotion? And I’ll say this, okay, any emotion you have, it doesn’t matter what it is, but as a coach, the purpose of an emotion is to get you to pay attention to two things, both what’s happening internally inside of you and what’s happened externally to then get you to engage in a specific action. Our emotions serve the purpose of helping us navigate successfully. So you saying, Kevin, the sadness and anger and all those are good things? Yes, absolutely, I’m saying that because they’re all important. They all happen in sport and you should not try to push those away as a coach because if you do, it backfires and makes that emotion stronger. Is anybody with me? Okay, so that’s the key.

So what am I saying as a coach? What I’m saying is the translation is coaches. What I’m saying here is this, your emotions, whatever they may be, they’re trying to get you to pay attention to what’s happening inside of you physiologically, what are you thinking and how can you take that emotion and respond to what’s happening in sport in this moment? It might be home stuff, it might be other things, might be interacting with an AD, it might be something else. But the key is that you’re supposed to be paying attention to what that emotion is signaling and then respond to what’s happening in your environment accordingly. You with me? That’s the purpose of any emotion, okay? Any emotion. And as I said, it’s not the emotion, it’s how we respond.

So here’s four emotions we often experience. Would you agree that these are four emotions we’ve experienced as coaches? Yes. Would you add any? Of course you would, but I just want to hear some of them. What’d you say?

Audience: Happy.

Kevin Chapman: Happy. How many people call up a psychologist though and say, “You know what? I’m too happy about winning these games.” Your point’s well taken, though. So happy. What else? Any other negative emotions?

Audience: Stress.

Kevin Chapman: Okay, which is probably one of these, or a combination. So these kind of hit the mark, right? Okay, so let’s talk about these a little bit. I had to do this because I think it’s kind of cool, but boom, anger, right? So let’s talk about anger.

So anger, here’s the definition of anger. You need to know this, okay? Because most people I speak with and I work with coaches on a regular basis and they confuse frustration and anger. They’re not the same emotion. So I want you to know so that you can help yourself but also have a takeaway as it relates to, that anger is the result… Listen to this, it’s important… Of perceived intentional injury, mistreatment or victimization.

Somebody mentioned fairness earlier. If my concept of fairness is violated by someone or an entity, anger typically is the emotional result. Notice it’s directed towards someone or a thing. Y’all see that? That’s important. What are some thoughts? Well, are you freaking kidding me right now? You know that’s not fair. Those are some common thoughts that you might have that would be related to say anger as an emotion. Notice I didn’t say frustration, I said anger, right? We’ll talk about that in a minute. What’s my takeaway? The takeaway is that anger prompts us to defend ourselves or our loved one, and it’s typically directed toward the threat itself. Is this helping anybody? So this is what anger is. Should you be angry? Yes or no?

Audience: I’m just thinking about it.

Kevin Chapman: You processing, which I like. I said something that you thought about, and I’m glad. So what’d you say? It depends?

Audience: Yeah, I think it depends because I’m a person that don’t get angry quick, but I think certain situation calls for anger.

Kevin Chapman: 100%. Like what? You have an example? Put you on the spot.

Speaker 2: I don’t know. It’s like if the team violates one of the cultural norms over and over and over, you got a boiling point.

Kevin Chapman: With that, so if a team violates cultural norms over and over and over, you’re going to reach a boiling point. Anybody can relate to that? Nobody said this, but I’m assuming if there’s a bad call on the field or the court or the, none of y’all ever experienced that in a ball sport? Like blue made a bad call or they threw a flag, and you’re like, “Are you freaking kidding me? That’s not fair, right?” Anybody? Just me?

Okay, anger, meaning anger serves a purpose. Remember, the issue is not the anger. The issue is how I learned to respond to it, which we’ll talk about in a second. So that’s anger. Okay, what about anxiety? And Mahomes isn’t playing. That’s probably the only thing that would make his anxious.

Okay, so anxiety. Anxiety is always a future-oriented emotion that involves thoughts of uncontrollability and unpredictability of future events. So many people that I know confuse fear and anxiety, they’re not the same emotion. Let me say it one more time. Fear and anxiety are not the same thing. I don’t even cover fear in this presentation for a reason because fear is typically not what you’re seeing. You might call it that, but it’s usually anxiety because anxiety is not right now, it’s about what could potentially happen in the future. What if typically is the thought process with anxiety?

The good thing about anxiety though is anxiety is supposed to be helpful, not harmful. I had a coach that always used to say, “If you ain’t hyped something ain’t right.” Think about that. There’s a certain level of arousal I’m supposed to have to prepare for the potential of losing the game, for the potential of going forward on third down and not getting it, the potential of a field position issue, the potential of me running out of time, that’s all normal. Are y’all with me?

So the issue is not whether or not not I should experience anxiety, the issue is how have I learned to respond to it that backfires and makes it worse. So you’re with me. Is that helpful for anybody? Well, what’s fear? Well, you know fight, flight or freeze. That’s when you’re in present danger. A panic attack and fear are actually the exact same thing. By the way, one’s a true alarm, one’s a false alarm. Basically having the fear response when there’s no danger is panic. That’s the difference. Hopefully that helps somebody. So when we say, “Well, don’t be afraid. Are you afraid? Are you fearful?” No. If I’m thinking about the next thing, that’s anxiety. Okay, all right.

Okay, sadness. Now sadness is interesting because this is an emotion oftentimes, especially when we have a hypermasculinity type culture that we oftentimes don’t talk a lot about, and that’s important to kind of break that shell immediately. But sadness is simple. It’s the result of loss or a personal setback. What are some of the thoughts associated with that? Well, “I didn’t want this to end this way. I’ll never get that back.” We all can think of examples of coaches as when sadness is appropriate. Somebody give me one end.

Audience: End of the season.

Kevin Chapman: End of the season is literally number one on Family Feud, right? What else? I was thinking of one, but I won’t say it.

Audience: Athlete injury.

Kevin Chapman: Athlete injury. Thank you, ding. We’re keeping the money for that one, too. What else?

Y’all haven’t said the one I’m thinking. You want me to go ahead and say it? What if you’re graduating? Seniors? It is a personal loss or a setback, meaning this is the end of a chapter in my life. We know sadness is the core emotion as it relates to depression. Chronic sadness, or what I often say, dysregulated sadness is what we talk about when we talk about depression. I’m not meant to really go into detail about depression, I just want to be clear that sadness is a normal emotional reaction.

But here’s the key. Sadness should always be processed carefully so that you can move forward. So often as coaches and people in sports, here’s the thing, we think about sadness. Most people don’t like sadness, so we put our fingers in our ears, right? Oh, “Da dah, da dah. I don’t want to think about it.?We change the channel, we turn down the volume, we change the conversation. But what happens when we do that, coaches, is it backfires and makes the sadness bigger.

So what are you saying? I’m saying we need to take a step back and process the end of the season, process the loss, process the end of the senior’s career, process that while probably cry and be upset. Yes, you will. But if you’re hearing what I’m saying, what happens if you do that effectively? What happens to the sadness? It essentially goes away. Do you see my point? It’s all about understanding the core of what’s happening and responding to those emotions in a way that are going to help me and help these kids or help my family or whatever it may be. See, I care more about you as a person, not just a coach, but I just want to make it clear that if you can understand what I’m saying here, this will help you, period. Y’all with me? Okay, okay. All right.

Then we have frustration. And I like this because many people confuse anger and frustration. And if you take nothing else away, if someone can say, “Well, now I know the difference between frustration and anger.” I did my part.

Okay, now, frustration and anger get confused. And here’s why. Frustration is the result of unmet expectations. Has any of us ever had an unmet expectation? A simple one, Jeff, I shoot a ball, miss it, and I’m salty and upset. What are you? “Oh, I’m frustrated.” Why? “I should have hit that shot. Well, I didn’t, therefore I’m frustrated.” So if I had an expectation that didn’t take place, then frustration is the result.

Now, here’s the key. Look, I shouldn’t have called that play. Should statements. Why did I do that? See what I’m getting at? Notice it’s not directed toward a person. Do y’all see that? Anger is always directed towards something, someone or an entity? Frustration typically is like on me, or it could be on someone else. But the key is that frustration is this unmet expectation. I expected this to work and it didn’t. Therefore, I’m frustrated. Now here’s the takeaway with that. The interesting thing about frustration and why it’s so confused with anger is that it can become anger if we direct it towards someone. Y’all see that? Remember the triad? Can anybody tell me the three parts of an emotion?

Thoughts, physical sensations and behavior. So if I’m, “Oh, I’m upset. Why did I do that? Why did I?” And then I’m pointed at you. “You know what, it’s your fault now. I can’t believe, you should have told me.” Now all of a sudden, I’m angry. Do you see the difference? Unmet expectations. Frustration is a part of coaching, isn’t it? So it’s not the frustration itself, it’s how I respond to it that can oftentimes be the issue. Are y’all seeing the theme here? Okay. All right.

So one thing I want to do with you all, and then I’ll open it up. I want to do this, try to be 21st century a little bit. I want to always try to be as practical as possible. Somebody, if y’all have y’all’s airdrop on, I can send you this. But if you have your airdrop on, I can drop it.

Kevin Chapman: But what if you have your AirDrop on? I can drop this to someone.

Kevin Chapman: So anyway, let’s talk about this for a second. This is a strategy that I want you guys to kind of tuck away and take with you in some sense about. Okay, so Kevin, I’m hearing what you’re saying. I’m seeing that these emotions are important, but we oftentimes talk about mental wellness, mental health, etc. And oftentimes we really don’t have any sort of ways to get good at repetition of changing how we respond to our own emotional experiences of coaches. So I thought what would be helpful to take away to give someone a cue card or some strategy, that’s a hack that you can use to think before you respond?

So this is what we call anchoring, and the way anchoring works is you basically have two parts to it. The first piece is taking a breath. I was talking to someone earlier about that, like box breathing and whatnot. The key is regulating the arousal in your body before you make a decision. So here’s what I’m saying, we’re so big as coaches on repetition. We want our athletes to do reps and to have mechanics and whatnot. The key is in order for us to learn how to respond to our emotions more effectively, we also have to practice.

So here’s the key, anchoring. Anchoring has two parts. The first piece is before I respond to an emotion, I can inhale through my nose for four seconds and then exhale out my mouth for six seconds. That stimulates heart-lung synchronization. It’s like pressing the reset button. Something happens that triggers an emotion, something you can do is regulate your breathing. But once you do that, because so many people I speak to, they’re like, “Well, I took a deep breath, so-and-so told me, and you know what I’m saying? I was still upset.” Well, it’s because it’s not as simple as just breathing correctly, right? Y’all with me? You need something besides breathing. So breathing is one piece, but here’s the second piece. I want you to shoot the three. We’re coaches. We’re all athlete people, right? Here’s the key shooting, the three, the reason I call it shooting the three is because your emotions have how many parts?

Speaker 3: Three.

Kevin Chapman: Y’all with me? You see how I did that? Okay. Thoughts, physical sensations and behaviors. So here’s what I would encourage you to do. You got to practice this though. You’re going to inhale, exhale out your mouth, and then you’re going to say, “Shoot to three. What am I thinking right now?” Literally straight lace, no chaser. Say it. “I’m thinking I want to throw my clipboard at. So-and-so blah, blah, blah.” Be honest with what you’re thinking. What am I feeling in my body where my heart’s doing this? My stomach’s doing this, my blood pressure’s going up. My behavior. What am I doing or feel like doing? Now, here’s where you got to be honest. Don’t lie to yourself. If what you feel like doing is tapping someone out, you should say that. Well, that’s really aggressive. Why should I say that? Because you don’t need to judge the emotion.

You need to pay attention to what it’s trying to tell you. That’s not what you should do, but you should be paying attention to what it’s trying to tell you. So if it’s like, “Oh, I want to do this.” Okay, don’t do that. That’s not adaptive, right? I’m thinking this, I’m feeling this. I’m doing or feel like doing this. You’re being honest with yourself. Once you’ve done that though, then the last part is this. How should I respond to what’s happening right now? What’s a way that I can respond in this moment to that emotion, the frustration, the anger, the sadness, whatever it may be, right now, that’s adaptive in this present moment. Is this making sense? Okay, so it’s not saying push it away. It’s saying what’s the most adaptive way to respond to it in this moment? It could be me taking a 30, right?

It could be me saying, “All right, I’m going to take a fool.” It could be me saying, “All right, I’m going to walk away. Assistant coach So-and-So, you talk to him.” Do you see what I’m getting at? That way I’m not only engaging in some strategy that’s going to ruin things for people around me. Most importantly, you’re not going to let that emotion backfire and contribute to the maintenance of the thing you’re struggling with to begin with. See, that’s the bigger picture, is that when I respond to emotions a certain way, it backfires and it’s a cycle. So the next time I feel that way, I feel like I got to go back to doing what worked, like going off on somebody or screaming or stonewalling or whatever it might be, and what it’s doing, it’s causing negative social consequences. But more importantly, it’s reinforcing the emotion itself.

Does this make sense? So here’s what I would recommend. Practice this twice a day. Why? Because if you don’t practice a strategy like this when you don’t need it, you’re not going to practice it when you do. Many mental health professionals here, we often have people that come to us who want an intervention. We’d prefer prevention. So at the end of the day, we want you to be practicing these things. It’s like, “Well, I’m just sitting on the couch. That’s my behavior.” Okay, that’s fine. But guess what you did? You taught your brain that when I do this, when something is triggering of an intense emotion, now I’m able to take a step back and respond adaptively to it. The emotion regulates itself and I learn something new. Does this make sense? So I would recommend twice a day practicing this so that it’s important when you actually need it. This making sense? Okay.

Here’s another thing I’d say. All right, so here’s something else that’s also important for regulating emotions, and oftentimes when we have intense emotionality, it’s the result of how we’re thinking about a situation. So another hack that I would recommend that you can have as well is this, two types of thoughts lead to me having intense emotions. We have what’s called jumping to conclusions, also known as fortune-telling and mind reading. Here’s some examples. “She’s not going to execute this play.” Oh, you got a crystal ball, right? Or, “His parents don’t think I’m a good coach.” Well, how’s that interaction going to go if I say that to myself, despite whether or not it’s true. The key’s not whether or not that’s true, the key is that what’s that doing to me with my emotional regulation? So there’s that.

There’s also catastrophizing, also known as blowing it out of proportion. This always or never goes as planned. Words like always or never will always backfire. I promise. Somebody got a hold of that. Okay? Does that make sense? So always or never, avoid those, right? This is the worst game I’ve ever coached in my life. That could be true, but there might be other ones that were worse. Is this making sense? Yeah.

Okay, so I just want to make it clear. So how do you get out of this? Because oftentimes we get triggered, but if we as coaches have a thinking pattern where we’re used to thinking this way, this will guarantee us to have an intense emotion. So how do I get out of that? Let me give you some questions. So do I know for certain that this will happen? So that’s an example. You could ask yourself that, that’ll debunk that thought right away. What’s happened in the past? So in other words, if I have one of these sort of thoughts, what can I say to myself to make it not as intense? Do I have a crystal ball? I think you’ll laugh out loud if you say that because you actually don’t. Does blank mean blank? Does him not running this play correctly in the past mean he’s not going to run it correctly again now? See what I’m getting at? Does blank mean blank? What’s another explanation? If this happens, can I cope with that? Am I 100% sure that this negative outcome will occur?

So these are all examples of the types of questions you can actually use to get out of an emotional rut. If you’re saying things to yourself that involve jumping to conclusions or, “Oh, that parent doesn’t like me.” Well, what’s the evidence they don’t like me? Well, it’s because they typically have said negative things in the past. Okay, that’s fair. Does them saying something in the past mean they’re going to say it again? Not necessarily. Okay. Are you 100% sure that they’re going to say something like that? Well, no, I’m not. See, and that will help you debunk the way you’re thinking in that situation.

Okay, so I go back to this original question. What have been your biggest challenges as a coach as it relates to navigating your emotions? My question now real quick is anybody getting anything from what I’ve said? Did you learn anything relevant to your experience as a coach that can help you with some of these challenges? Is that helpful for anybody?

Okay. So let me stop there and just anybody have any questions about anything that I’ve shared? Anything you want to ask me in general as it relates to these sort of takeaways?

Yep.

Speaker 4: So I really related to being [inaudible 00:38:09] a lot of empathy. I’m a crier and I can’t, it just comes.

Kevin Chapman: Okay.

Speaker 4: I can’t stop it. Help.

Kevin Chapman: She says, so I can relate to having a lot of empathy and I’m a crier. Help. In case y’all didn’t hear that.

Speaker 5: Being vulnerable [inaudible 00:38:31] helping you. So I dealt with anxiety my whole life. Two, three years ago, I was standing in front of a group of 16 teenage girls, I was coaching softball time and a panic attack happened on the spot, that I could not control. I couldn’t control it. Maybe the single most embarrassing moment of my life

And we’d won a game. I don’t know where. Well, I had two or three parents that were not happy with me. So I’m assuming that’s where it’s from. But why I’ve told that story is I got home and I just broke down in front of my wife and I was, “I’m not going back, blah, blah, blah.” My wife said something, [inaudible 00:39:13] answer. My wife says, “Isn’t it great that those girls get to see you talk?”

Kevin Chapman: That’s great.

Speaker 5: I said, “I wasn’t ready to process yet. What do you mean?” She said, “Well, now they know you don’t have to hide it anymore. How great for them to see you come back from that?” So what I’ve done from that point on is at the beginning of the year, I just say, “I’m a crier.”

Kevin Chapman: Yeah, that’s good.

Speaker 5: “I’m sorry, but that’s what I’m going to [inaudible 00:39:42].”

Kevin Chapman: No, that’s great. So no, to that point, what that’s really doing. Someone said earlier when I think I asked a pretty good question at the beginning, and that is what’s something that you struggle with and whatnot. But the key is some of you all said modeling and setting the stage of being a role model, I think is what someone said, right? So that’s true. You got to normalize these emotions as coaches, it’s okay for us to be angry. It’s okay for us to be sad. Using those as examples with our kids teaches them that you’re a person and they can trust you now. Does that make sense? Because you’re the emotional barometer of your team culture. Good, bad, ugly, or indifferent.

Okay, I think we’re out of time. If anybody wants me to AirDrop that still or come to me afterwards, I can send it to you. But I appreciate it and hopefully you guys got a takeaway from this. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker 7: What are we doing?

Kevin Chapman: I don’t know what’s going on right now. I don’t care.

Kara Winger: Maybe. Okay, there we go. You guys are staying here. Thank you Dr. Chapman. Yay.

He’s so great. I love talking to that guy. You guys are staying here. Our next presenters will come in the room. It will either be boundaries and balance identity or how to make self-care possible. It’s practically possible. I very much, when I was talking about going in the float tank, me not being able to relax was all emotions that I just didn’t give myself enough time to process, and it truly helped to force myself into that relaxation posture. Also, going into water, float tank, hot tub swimming and that means I can’t bring my phone is super helpful for me to create space to feel whatever the emotion is and move through it.

For the next session, we’re going to have microphones floating around and you guys are the stars today in the atrium green.name tag people. This is the room that is live-streamed, so that’s part of why our presenters are rotating. So thank you for your vulnerability with everybody tuning in virtually as well. But we’re going to get the microphone so that everyone tuning in can hear your excellent questions and great stories. I agree completely with being able to see vulnerability. I had a basketball coach in high school, Mr. Steve Hook. He was phenomenal. His daughter, Carrie was a senior when I was a freshman, and he was really tough. He really laid the law down with the coach’s kid that I had grown up with. She used to ask incessant questions and she always got away with that. I was on her dad’s team and so I watched her be the favorite and that was not so fun for everybody that was on the team. We’ve all been there. But to watch Mr. Hook be like, “Okay, Stephanie a week in, you’re allowed three questions per day. That’s what you’re allowed to do.”

And he always seemed so mean, but I would watch him. He was absolutely wonderful and had those boundaries, had really good stuff. Then I watched him as a freshman console Carrie Hook his daughter after games that we lost, be a dad right after being a great coach that I got to know his ways, his communication style over four years. But to see the human example in person was super, super cool. So keep that great stuff up.

We had some questions contributed at our reception last night, so I was going to read them while we wait for our next presenters. You guys can also tell me to go away and have a little break between sessions and if you want to get up between, do not be afraid to do that. But our presenters are coming in right now, so we just have time for one question. How do we create a practice culture that’s challenging and hold kids and players accountable, but also is a place where kids look forward to coming every day? Does anyone have any ideas? I don’t have a microphone for you yet. Yes.

Speaker 6: One of the things that, oh, go ahead. [inaudible 00:44:05] So that’s something very simple. I made that change a couple of years ago. [inaudible 00:44:20]

Kara Winger: Yeah, compete always. I love that. And maybe even at an individual level, have little competitions for yourself every day. As an individual sport athlete, I always had to do that. What are my real takeaways that I have to do today for it to be a success? And then talk about it if it didn’t go that way. Because that’s okay too, you can’t always win. Yeah, I always thought as a kid, we moved a lot when I was little and I played all the sports because I was shy and that’s how I made friends, which when eventually those friendships turned into the biggest gift of my life as flag bearer, that just was such a full circle moment for me. But it was my friends at practice. So not only the competition part, but the fostering of relationships between your players too, I think can be super important for bringing them back. Yeah?

Speaker 8: I was going to say something I do is I [inaudible 00:45:18] players [inaudible 00:45:21] drill practice [inaudible 00:45:24].

Kara Winger: That’s awesome. Yeah, I love that. Having kids… I’ll just repeat because of the microphone. Having kids bring their own drills to practice, bring their own fitness component to practice and teach their teammates, that’s super fun. Great. I’m just going to bring Adam and Stephanie onto the stage. I don’t know how best to go around. And these will be our presenters on the making self-care practical is possible. The oxygen mask effect. So we have Adam Feit… Fight. Adam Feit. I looked at it, I was like, that can’t be just feet. Yeah, Adam Feit, strength and conditioning coach extraordinaire and Stephanie Miezen who is our registered dietician, true sport expert, to talk to you about our next breakout room. Thank you.

Stephanie Miezen: Thank you.

Adam Feit: Give it up for Kara. Thank you very much. All right, we are on the clock. So you may have heard this before. I’m going to move around and make the camera people work a little bit in this session. Can you keep your eyes on me? Here we go. In the event of an emergency, an oxygen mask will fall from the top of your ceiling. Please grab the oxygen mask, fasten it around yourself. Do not worry, the mask is inflating. Do not help who before you help yourself? But why do we do that? Why do we as high performance coaches, as parents, as managers, why do we continue to, as what some of our guest speakers have said so far, this idea of pouring from an empty cup? We could be attached to it personally, emotionally, could be physically, or we’re simply choosing to ignore the one person that needs to be cared for to make all of these things happen.

We understand this is a life long process, it’s not going to happen overnight. Our goal in the next 30ish minutes, is hopefully for you to reflect on, some of the things that we could do a little bit better. Oftentimes we’ve talked a lot about, in high performance sport, this idea of you made it or you didn’t. What if I could challenge that narrative inside your own head and instead of thinking of the outcome, think about what’s the next imperfect action you can take today? So along with mindset and movement, Stephanie’s going to be up here and talk about nutrition and how we can combine this idea of creating our own manual and move a little bit closer towards the self-care that we all seek for ourselves.

A quick bio from a much younger coach, Adam. I have been coaching for close to 20 years. I have coached at the highest of division one levels and power fives. I’ve coached in the NFL. I’ve coached my kids’ kindergarten soccer team. That didn’t last as long as I thought it would. I continue to move on and coach and use my education and experiences in high-performance sport, now I bring it into the classroom. I’m an assistant professor of exercise science and sports psychology. I went back to school in my mid-thirties alongside my partner Mary Kate, because we all thought that was a good idea. You talk about self-care, two kids, two full-time jobs and let’s enroll in full-time students. I can tell you that cup was emptied, crinkled and in the trash.

But I learned from that and most importantly, I learned what I was capable of. And so I’m not going to stand up here and chastise you for not taking care of yourselves. There are elements, and you all know this as high-performance coaches, that sometimes you have to go to the edge and see what you’re capable of. That’s what makes sport beautiful. But I’ve learned from those experiences and hopefully I can provide some ideas and considerations about mindset and how we can influence the way that we look at movement. So I look forward to spending some time with you.

Stephanie Miezen: Yay. Thank you. And my name is Stephanie Miezen. I’m a registered dietitian, sports dietitian. I’m also lucky to be a TrueSport expert for performance nutrition. Thank you, TrueSport. I started off my career actually as a chef before a dietitian, moved into sport nutrition, and I’ve worked in various organizations, D1 Athletics at the Olympic and Paralympic Committee, minor league baseball, and for recently an organization called Canyon Ranch, health, wellness, performance kind of thing. So I’ve been able to see a variety of types of sport environments. The theme though is high performance, high expectations, of course. So I’m excited to speak with you guys about this today. We have a question for you. We don’t have a ton of time, but we want to collect just a couple of your responses here. What obstacles do you face when it comes to achieving self-care relative to our session here around mindset, movement, and nutrition? Anything come to mind for you?

Speaker 9: Time.

Stephanie Miezen: Time. Okay.

Adam Feit:

That was a resounding agreement.

Stephanie Miezen: Time. What else? Okay, yeah. Yep. One more. Anything else? That’s okay if not.

Speaker 11: Family [inaudible 00:50:35] kids.

Adam Feit: Ooh.

Stephanie Miezen: Okay. So we’re going to tie in these ideas of obstacles a couple of times in our presentation, and this is just to get some ideas going for you. So I’m going to pass it over to Adam and then we’ll finish up with nutrition, the second part.

Adam Feit: Okay. All right, so let’s dig in. All right, this idea of mindset. It’s been said before, it’s been talked about before. When you hear the word mindset, what comes to your mind? Go ahead and call it out. Growth or fixed. Thank you to Dr. Carol Dweck and her research. What else? Your approach. How do we go through the situation? How do we avoid the situation? Excellent. One more.

Speaker 12: Carol Dweck.

Adam Feit: Carol Dweck. Yeah. Legend. I like to refer to mindset, and using and my background as being a former offensive lineman, if you haven’t been able to tell, about a mental stance, how do we position ourselves in a two-point and a three-point and a four-point? With my back turned to the obstacles in front of us, how will I view the world around me? And what decisions will I consciously make? Now we know that we’re going to make some decisions subconsciously.

We can thank those areas of the brain and our lifestyle for doing that. But when we’re exploring this, how do we choose to think about the world around us? Let’s lighten it up a little bit. I remember when lunch was called earlier, everybody went over to go take care of themselves. I was like, “I’m going to be a good presenter. I’m going to let the attendees get there filling first. Don’t like to eat too much before I present.” And all the turkey clubs were gone. I hope you enjoyed it, folks. Could have been bitter, could have been sad, could have been upset. I deserve the turkey club. But instead, I reframed the situation as what a great opportunity to get the veggie wrap and if you got the veggie wrap, you know what I’m saying? Okay, that was really good.

I made that decision. I want you to inquire about some of the decisions that you have made to do the thing or not do the thing. If you’ve traveled far and wide, if you’ve been on flights, you had delays, did you still get your workout in? Or did you try to validate or affirm your certain stance on a topic and nothing could move you? We’re going to explore this concept of mindset. And if you get anything with the time that I have left with you today, I want it to come down to this question in itself. This is the keystone question that I reflect back on. This is my north star, this is my true north compass. If you are saying yes to something, have you also considered what you’re saying no to?

I’m saying yes to all of you today. I’m saying no to my 100% exercise science class. Thank you very much. I’m saying yes to making great connections and connecting with world-leading experts in high performance. But I’m saying no to my kids this afternoon. So when we choose to make these decisions about our health, about the movement we choose to engage in or the mindset we take to approach, if we can come back to this question each and every time, hopefully we sleep better. But I am telling you as a gentle reminder, you’re worth it. You can’t pour from that empty cup. You can’t continue to provide if you have nothing left to give. So what do we need to do? I’d like you to think about how we can establish a mindset manual. If you’ve been fortunate enough to have a vehicle, maybe it was relatively new, it came and it smells of beautiful fresh car newness.

We all appreciate that, right? If something goes wrong, you don’t know how it works, you check the owner’s manual. I don’t know what this is. I had a Jeep Wrangler for almost 10 years, got a new truck recently. I have no idea what all these buttons do. Where do I go? Cruise control. My cruise control was I hit sixty-five miles an hour and I knew I was going too fast. But I can go back to my owner’s manual. My goal in the time that we have is to think about how we can approach and use our mindset to influence what we choose to move and how we move. Four key areas we’re going to address. Can we practice continuum thinking? Is everything in or out, black or white, right or wrong? Or can we actually stop being so process focused in the moment to worry about that product at the end?

Number two, managing our goals. I’m all right with goal setting, but I love goal achieving. Do we still rely on frameworks that don’t address the things that need to be addressed? I think so. Number three, how do we establish your BAMs? And number four, this concept of controlling the controllables. We hear it, we say it sticks. Sometimes we’re sick of it. So I’m going to take a different spin on that. And maybe our mindset towards the controllables, our uncontrollables are either this or that.

So whether you’re with us today or you’re online, I appreciate you joining us and staying with us. Think about this idea of a spectrum. On one end, you have your worst case scenario. On the other end, we have our best case scenario. And as we explore this, we have checkpoints along the way. I’m going to use the example of an iPhone. Who would like to volunteer me their iPhone?I cannot guarantee it will not be damaged. You sure about that? This is like an iPhone 97. Look at that camera. I won’t do that to you. I appreciate that though. I’ll use mine.

Okay, all of a sudden I’m talking, I’m chatting, I’m coming out of the bathroom, I bump into somebody and then all of a sudden… Oh shoot, sorry about that. And I pick that up. Or then I’m trying to carry in the groceries and all of a sudden my phone’s kind of in my pocket. But no, it’s not. Don’t worry. I have an upgrade coming, I think. What do we do if I drop my phone? Naturally, I think about, I should probably get some tempered glass on it, right? Maybe I get a case on it. If you woke up and you’re already late, which means you’re stressed and you have a flat tire, are you like, “Oh, shh, shh, shh,” and slash the other three?

I don’t look at my phone and I get one little scuff and I think, nah. iPhone 97, here we come. I judge the circumstances based off what I can do. So I aim for a little bit better. I’m challenging you to think about your own fitness, your own movement, whether it’s exercising, whether it’s working out, or whether it is moving as coaches, because those are on a spectrum of moving your body. Are you caught in the all or nothing approach where you need the latest and greatest and the best scenario and equipment that we have here at the Olympic training centers? Or when you walk into your hotel gym, are you like, “What am I going to do with this?” So do you do nothing at all? What I want you to think about is can you reframe from all or nothing to always something? Can you choose consistency over intensity? Can you choose imperfect action as long as it moves you a little bit closer to your goals? I think you can. And if you’ve forgotten how, just start.

Number two, goals. Whether it’s a gold medal, whether it’s making the team. We have seen some sort of framework called SMART for many, many years. Does anybody know what SMART means? Count it out with me. S.

Adam Feit: Oh, now we’re losing each other. Yeah. Timely. My professional opinion. SMART goals are not smart at all. SMART goals don’t address the two things we need from a mindset perspective for our goals in fitness. And that’s the obstacles that we face and the plan we have to work through them. Think about it. Goal setting’s great. I set the goal, it’s achievable, it’s realistic, I have a time-based component to it. But why haven’t I achieved it yet? And what is my plan to help me do that thing? So I encourage you to think about another framework. This comes out of Gabriele Oettingen’s work called WOOP. I am a coach. I like to think in threes and fours, we’re going to keep it real simple. Okay, what is the thing I want to accomplish? The W. How will I feel adding some imagery and some visualization?

What will that mean to me, my teammates, my spouse, my partners, my family? But the two biggest ones right here. Oh, but what is in my way? And number four, what is my plan to work around it? Because it explores this concept. What’s known as mental contrasting. If I think of this goal and then I actually take a moment to explore my current reality, what has been shown is that it causes us to act. Back to motivation, I think one of us said motivation over here. We can’t wait for motivation. We can’t wait for inspiration. We need to act. And then we become inspired and then we become motivated. Concept number three, establishing your BAMs. You can choose to fill in the A however you’d like, but what are your bare accepted minimums?

Adam Feit: What are your bare accepted minimums? What will you, no matter what hits the fan, be okay with being okay? Is it walking for five minutes? Is it walking the dog? Is it stepping on the treadmill? Is it taking a yoga class? Is it joining your team, in the last couple minutes of practice, in a healthy competition? Because we set our goals for the best perfect training plan, we set our sights for the most amazing workout, pre-workout in one side, protein in another, all true sports certified. Don’t worry, okay? But then, what happens if the machine breaks? What happens if the alarm doesn’t go off? Did you establish a bare minimum, that, “By all counts, I’m okay if at least I hit this?” So look at your worksheet. Think about some of the BAMs that you can set, for this notion of movement, your nutrition, and for some of us, recovery, because it may not require a full body intense workout, it may not require going to the track.

It may require taking a nap. And where is that BAM in context for the rest of your life? And then, lastly, this notion of the controllables. We say it, we hear it, we preach about it. What are the things that we can control? I worked with our in-city softball team, U10, and I started thinking about this concept of APE. I want to keep it really, really sticky. We know, as professionals, we can control our attitude, we can control our preparation, and we can control the effort that we put forth. So the kids loved it. They had apes. The coach bought them a bunch of stuffy gorillas. It’s going all over town. It was awesome, but it became sticky. Because sometimes, we explore just APE, you can’t control that. Don’t even worry about it. That’s like telling our athletes, “Just get stronger. Just get faster. Just don’t do that.”

But rather, I invite you to explore the middle zone. What are the things that you can influence? “I may not control if they say yes to me coming back next year, but can I influence that, in my conversations with others, how I approach the stage? There are some things I need to ignore, and there are some things I’m going to control.” But what if you actually had that middle zone to reflect on? “Are there anything that I can actually influence, to kind of plant the seed for next time?” I go against the grain a little bit in this, and I say, “Yeah, I think there are.” So once we know our BAMs, we can get out of binary thinking. We can explore this concept of obstacles and planning. Well, then, the last part is nutrition, and that’s where Stephanie will come in and explore her methods of making things practical and sustainable, when we’re taking care of us. Because as we know, if we don’t take care of us, who will take care of them? Thank you.

Stephanie Miezin: Awesome. Thank you, Adam. So moving from what Adam’s talking about, when it comes to mindset, we’re going to flow into nutrition and how you can use that to take care of yourself. On the flip side of your handout, your worksheet, you’re going to see the four areas we’re going to walk through when it comes to nutrition. Nutrition is a broad subject here, but what I’ve identified are what I think the four core areas that are going to make perhaps the biggest impact on what you can do as coaches and administrative professionals, whoever you’re are, to make the biggest impact for your nutrition, for how you’re feeling, and those around you. So why nutrition matters. We’re going to talk about the what, but just quickly on the why here. We know food helps us feel energized. It contributes to our wellness. It makes us feel good, so we can be the best version of ourselves and, therefore, help others around us.

The other opportunity here is that what we do, as we’ve been talking about throughout this presentation or the symposium, is what we do can be model behavior for others. We can view that as an opportunity when it comes to nutrition as well. So our behaviors, when it comes to food, eating, nutrition, can influence those of athletes and others around us. That can be a negative perhaps, but I think we can also view it as a positive opportunity. So stress management is a huge one. Many times, when we feel stressed, people respond to that with food or nutrition. How we do that and how we do that around others can influence how they think about the responding to stress themselves. So just try to think about this as we go throughout this exercise here. Okay, core four, when it comes to nutrition, again, there’s a million things we could talk about, but I’m really trying to narrow it down, so you have some key things for yourself.

You’re creating a mini nutrition plan as we go, if you would like, to take home. The first thing is create and stick to a regular eating schedule. Now, we are not talking about rigidity, like Adam brought up. We’re talking about creating a plan and being flexible as we can, but we have to have something to set yourself up for success here. So the key ways to think about creating that timeline for yourself would be, number one, we probably want to be eating something about every three to five hours. Everybody is different, but this is a really good framework to try to operate within. What happens when we wait too long to eat? Hangriness, anybody else? For sure. We’re all kind of human here, so we need to be getting proper nutrition in regularly throughout the day. Second thing is create some eating windows for yourself.

So what I mean by this is not saying, “Oh, I must have dinner at 7:00 every night,” because we all know things change, but creating a realistic window for yourself. So maybe it’s between 6:00 and 8:00 that you want to have dinner for yourself. You’re setting up some realistic expectations, that also are flexible with your day. Third thing here is do not underestimate morning fueling and nourishing. I’ve worked with so many people, and I’ve seen this so many times. For a lot of reasons, we tend to undereat in the morning time and overdo it in the afternoon, partially because we’re not getting enough nutrition in the morning to feel satisfied and fueled and the psychological part of we didn’t have enough or we were good by not having a lot in the morning, so it validates some behaviors with overdoing it in the afternoon. This gets complex, but this is a common thing that we see.

So an example of how to do this and how you might want to set yours up, just as an example, would be something like this. So each of these colored blocks represent the windows that we’re aiming to have these meal periods within. Again, I think this is better than just saying, “I must have a snack at 3:00 PM,” because times change. So we want to have some realistic windows. If you would like, you can think about what that looks like for yourself on these timelines, but this is just one example right here. Okay, we’re going to keep moving, because I want to make sure we get through this. Okay, second part of this core four is eat with purpose, like an athlete, right? Foods have a purpose. They each do different things for us, and so, we can leverage that to make that work for you. There are many, many ways to approach this, but what I’m going to give you is perhaps one of the easiest visual tools that you can take with you wherever you are at in the entire world.

It is this visual right here. I’m sure you’ve seen something like this. So this is a volumetric way of building out a balanced meal or plate. And so, we’re breaking this down here. We can see big area, green area, about 50% volumetrically from our colorful fruits and veggies. That gives us foundational nutrients, micronutrients for health, and just gives you satisfaction from some of that fiber in there. About 25% from our protein rich foods. That’s also important for satisfaction and for muscle,, variety of other things. And then 25% or so of our plate is coming from our starches. This is the main and preferred fuel source for the brain and the body. So if you are not feeling energized, first thing I’m going to look at with you when it comes to nutrition is, are you getting enough carbohydrate in for you? Your brain loves carbohydrate.

Glucose is what your body breaks down all carbs into. That’s the preferred fuel source for your brain. What does this mean in terms of foods? These are just some examples. Hopefully, the coloring, you can see that there. If you would like, the idea is you have a plate here. You can write down some key foods that you really enjoy, that fit into each of these sections. Now, this is not a stagnant plate. And if anybody’s seen the athlete plates visuals, we know we have a couple of versions of that. In particular, we know, if we’re more active ourselves, we want to push over that starches section, so it’s more than 25% to meet our needs for physical activity. But if you’re not sure where to start, this is probably the best visual I can give you. Whether you’re ordering at a restaurant, you’re going through a buffet, can you build your meal with these approximate proportions for yourself?

That’s going to go a long way in helping you feel energized and well-nourished. Third thing is leverage strategic snacks. We’re going to have a cool snack situation here for you to do this, practice this here in a little bit. But has anyone felt that feeling, when it’s like 4:00 to 5:00 maybe, and it’s been a couple hours since lunch, and you’re like, “I am ravenous. I don’t care what’s for dinner in a half hour. I need to eat anything right now, right?” Snack time can help us avoid that situation. So the easiest formula I have for you for building a balanced snack is simply your protein food, plus your carbohydrate food. We had mentioned previously with that plate, protein is your main source of satisfaction truly in a meal. Carbohydrate is your main source of energy. And so, if you combine protein rich foods with carbohydrate rich foods, you’re getting the best of both worlds, and they kind of synergistically work together.

What does that mean in terms of types of foods? In terms of protein, we’re looking at eggs, Greek yogurt, cheese stick, edamame, jerky, stuff like that. Nuts have some protein as well. Carbohydrate, we can get from our fruits and our grains, crackers, pretzels, all that good stuff. Okay, so on your list, if you would like, you can think about, “What are some snack foods or some combos that I enjoy that are in each of those categories?” Planning ahead is super key here. All these things sound great, but if you don’t bring it along with you, can’t eat it, that kind of thing. So that leads us into our next section, which is plan ahead. This is going to help you be more successful and make all of this less stressful for yourself. So as Adam had touched on, a great way to do this is to identify obstacles that you commonly come up or that you see in your life, in your scenarios, and plug in solutions to those that work for you.

So identify your challenges and what is your plan to overcome them. Some quick examples here that we see all the time. We talk about getting hangry before a dinner. This is probably one of the most common scenarios that I see in working with people sometimes. We can relatively easily adjust for that by saying, “Okay, I know I need a snack before dinnertime. If I don’t have a snack mid-afternoon, I will be hangry.” And that’s normal. It’s okay to have a snack. Let’s do that. Let’s bring a snack with you or identify one that you can get with you where you’re at.

Another really big one that I see is tempting restaurant menus, and I want everyone to enjoy all the foods that they want to enjoy. I think that’s all good. But if you have nutrition goals that you’re trying to stick to or a nutrition plan that you’re really trying to aim for, take that decision-making out of the situation. Maybe look up the menu ahead of time or if somebody’s ordering the meals for your team, tell them what you want before you’re looking at the menu, looking at those tempting things. So identify those things are going to be challenges or obstacles for you and plug in that solution to overcome it for yourself. On the worksheet, there is some area to do that, if you would like.

That is it when it comes to nutrition. Kind of ran through that. So hopefully, we have maybe a couple minutes for questions at the end here.

Adam Feit: Five minutes.

Stephanie Miezin: So a couple more minutes? Okay. This is some of our social media if you want to follow us. And we’re also on the TrueSport stuff, but that was a lot of information. Questions for either of us? Hopefully that was helpful. Yeah.

Speaker 14: The question I had is, if you’re dealing with students who are in a Title 1 situation, who have free and reduced lunch and whatnot, it’s really difficult to follow the plan here. They don’t like a whole lot of things, because they haven’t experienced a whole lot of things. How do you go about making sure that they have the right thing that they’re supposed to have?

Stephanie Miezin: Yeah, I think the great thing about nutrition is there’s no one right way to do it. For example, commonly, many kids or many people don’t love vegetables. Over time, we can find ways to address that, but fruits count. That colorful section of the plate, fruits count. So if they love fruits, let’s get those. That is a colorful component of the diet, that is at least something. So I would say, “What’s available? What do you like? And then, can you be open to pushing some boundaries sometimes?” Many times, when it comes to veggies, there’s so many environments that affect this, but it’s all about preparation of them. Like I don’t love steamed vegetables. Anybody really like steamed vegetables?

I don’t know. But roasted, okay, they’re not bad, but roasted vegetables, come on. It’s a lot better, typically. And so, preparation and education on that kind of stuff can make a difference. But I would say, in an environment where we don’t have access to the most delicious vegetables or whatever it is, “What is there that you do like?” Something is better than nothing. It’s not like a yes or a no kind of thing. “What can we do? Where’s the in-between?” If that answers that. Any other questions or… Yes.

Speaker 15: Guidelines on regulating caffeine and alcohol for coaches.

Stephanie Miezin: For coaches. So that’s a big one. So caffeine, we know, can help us feel energized, although it does not give us actual energy like carbohydrate does or fats do, for example. But it kind of tricks our brain into not feeling tired. So that’s how it’s working behind the scenes. Caffeine is neither a positive nor negative inherently. For many people, it can feel good though, it can help. I think the answer is an individual one. It’s not that we should all have two cups of coffee a day or three cups or zero. It’s what feels right for you and paying attention to caffeine intake and how that’s making you feel.

I think, sometimes, when we feel stressed out, especially we just keep chugging it, because maybe more is more. But enough is what we’re looking for. Other emotional regulation strategies or what we need there. Maybe not the caffeine thing. It’s hard to give specifics in this kind of scenario, but I would say pay attention to what feels good for you and make that choice. When it comes to alcohol, my sad news is that it does not help us in any way when it comes to health or performance. I’m very sorry. With that…

Speaker 15: Mental health, it helps [inaudible 01:15:24]

Stephanie Miezin: Mental health. This is a big personal choice. I will say, when it comes to health, research is pretty clear, little to no alcohol is really what we’re aiming for. In terms of numbers here, we’re talking about up to one drink per day for females, up to two drinks per day for males. With that said, you will find some conflicting evidence that will also say zero in both of those categories is probably best, when it comes to decreasing disease risk. We know that both caffeine and alcohol can disrupt sleep, and when it comes to alcohol, it can also disrupt muscle recovery as well.

So it’s something where it’s about personal goals, what’s the priority for you at that moment? If I say, for myself, like last night, for example, my priority was really getting a good night’s sleep, because I had a long travel day. I chose to not have something… I didn’t have an alcoholic drink last night, because I really wanted to sleep well. But another scenario, my priority might be having a good social time, and that might include a drink or something like that. So it’s never a yes or a no completely in my opinion, unless you have other situations going on within that. It’s what makes the most sense for you in that scenario. What are your priorities when it comes to how alcohol or something like caffeine fits into that? If that makes sense.

Speaker 16: How about sugar intake in young athletes? And not so much like… Sugar intake in young athletes, and not so much, we know, well, just get some fruit and try to give them substitutes. But more so you’re not giving them a culture of, “That’s bad.” Where’s the balance there? How can you educate them without making it where it’s taboo and, “Your teeth are going to rot out,” just kind of that balance?

Stephanie Miezin: Yeah, I think this is an excellent question, and a really positive shift that I think the nutrition field has been taking over the past several years is really moving away from good food, bad food, healthy food, unhealthy food. Those terms are not really accurate. It’s the whole dietary pattern that we know has effects on health outcomes or performance outcomes. So I think, when it comes to us being around athletes, and especially young athletes, it’s being conscious with our language. Not saying “Good food,” “bad food,” or, “Is this an unhealthy meal or cheat meal?” Those are not helpful ways to talk about this. So I think being conscious of our own language is number one thing that we can do, and then, we can shift that same mindset into the actual recommendations. So for example, when it comes to sugar, media might say, “Sugar is bad,” but this mindset we have around nutrition says, “Oh, it doesn’t make sense.”

Because there are no inherently bad foods. It’s about the overall dietary pattern, and therefore, it’s about how much of things that you have over time and how that fits into things like physical activity. So it’s about the function of the foods objectively versus subjectively. Sugar is a fuel source for muscles in the brain. Let’s leverage that by having sugar at different times relative to activity. So sport nutrition is different from regular nutrition, where we kind of want to have some sugar before, during, and after the activity, to use that sugar, leverage it, to fuel the activity and to refuel the muscle. And so, if we kind of talk about food like that, versus “That is bad, you’re eating a bad food,” and then, we have that morality attached to that, that’s a whole other conversation, I think that can kind of shift. So talking about the objective actions of nutrients and foods and then, putting a positive spin, “What does that mean for what we can use that food for in different scenarios?” There’s one over there, sorry.

Speaker 17: I had a question for you about…

Adam Feit: All right, here we go.

Speaker 17:

About mentality. So working out. So for me, I am a all or nothing type of person, so help me with this. So I’m a routine person, but I can’t really be in a routine, because it always switches. And you said it’s not really based off motivation. So what would you say for someone who wants to have some sort of consistency in working out, but also, not being in a routine?

Adam Feit: Yeah, that’s a great question. Two things I’ll explore there. One, I think this is good, we should be good here, yep, this idea of rigidity. Stephanie talked about it earlier. You brought up a great word, “Routines.” As coaches, we love routines. We love pre-performance routines. “When this happens, you do this. When we approach here, you do that.” We play the film inside our heads, and we rehearse it over and over and over again. Your routine might be as soon as you get up or it could be after school. The first challenge I would ask of you is to not think in terms of rigidity, but in terms of, as our keynote speaker, Dr. Jake, talked about is this flexibility approach. With athletes, I think about this idea of an ice cube tray. How many of you still have an old school refrigerator and freezer, you don’t have the ice maker? Wave your hand proud. Western Mass, right?

That’s how we do, okay? If I want ice, I have to put the water in the ice cube tray. The ice cube tray has to be rigid enough to give me what I want. I want a cube of ice, but if that tray is too rigid, I can’t bend, I can’t turn. I don’t get the product, which is, for you and me, consistency. So I ask you to reflect on, what are some of the things that you are holding so rigid and so structured and so by the book routine, check the box, flow chart, go ahead here? And ask yourself how that’s working for you, when you oversleep, when something comes up. So that would be number one is, “Can we start looking at our routines of a little bit more flexibility, like an ice cube tray, so that I can still get what I’m looking for, but also move as needed?”

And then, number two, there’s a strategy called implementation intentions, where we build that plan. “If this happens, then I do this.” Or “When this occurs, then I will approach it as such.” And so, I’m all about routines and having an idea of exactly where to go, but there is a reason why the double yellow is over here and the rumble strip is over here. As long as I stay between the double yellow and hopefully the rumble strip, I’m in a good shape. So whether it’s a 6:00 AM workout, if it’s an eight o’clock meal prep, if it’s something that it doesn’t work out perfectly as you had such, I encourage you to lower those expectations for rigidity and choose imperfect action over no action. I think Kara is clapping us up. Kara is clapping us up. We’re all done, folks. We’ll be here the rest of the day. I think we have one more to go.

Kara Winger: I’m just a messenger. I’m just a messenger. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Adam and Stephanie.

Stephanie Miezin: Thank you.

Kara Winger: And we only have one more session left. So presenters are going to rotate. We will stay here again, but I would love for everyone in the atrium to stand up. And we just have one more session left. Our last session goes from 2:00 to 2:35. I love the messages of flexibility over rigidity, a mixture of both. Those are super fun. I also have an undergrad nutrition, fitness, and health degree. Hilarious. I never got the double major, dietetics, but I wanted to teach you, speaking of flexibility versus rigidity, the javelin throw really fast and talk about the fact, the plain and simple fact, that there is no perfect throw. Whether it’s discus, shot put, hammer or javelin, there’s no perfect throw. There are so many things that could happen at any moment.

There’s so much technical precision that needs to occur, that 97% is going to be really good, 90% is going to be really good, 85% on a really tough practice day is going to be really good. So I’m going to teach you right-handed, while we wait for our last round of presenters. You’re going to stick your right arm out straight. I want you to be careful of your neighbors. You, at home, stand up as well at your computers. You deserve the physical movement break as well. Rotate your palm to the sky by trying to point your armpit at the sky and push your fingers as far away from the middle of your body as you can. Now, I want you to bend your right knee, and take your left leg and reach it out to your left as far as you can. So your left toes and your right fingers are as far away from each other as possible.

Then you’re going to turn your right knee underneath kind of your left armpit. And that’s the flexibility through the right side, plus the rigidity of the left side that you’re shooting for, after you sprint down the runway and stop on a dime. Combination of flexibility and rigidity, and that’s exactly how you tear your ACL if you do it wrong. Yes. So I love that message, because we can strive for perfection, but we’re probably not going to reach it. And my kind of overall message is my 6811, second American record of my career, was everything I ever visualized in a throw. And it was my seventh to last attempt that I took in 21 years. It took me that long to really feel like I did something fully, intentionally, completely the way I had always imagined it going in my mind, and it was the result I always dreamed of.

But I also understood at that point, at 36 years old, that I hadn’t reached my ultimate potential. If I could do that at 36 after two ACLs at the end of my career, I feel like I had more potential throughout the rest of my career, and maybe I didn’t have all the right scenarios that came together at the right time. So I had this overwhelming sense of accomplishment, mixed with I know that I did my best, but there’s still this little bit of sting that I left something on the table. I did the best I could with what I had. I strove for perfection. I ultimately got the throw that I always imagined in my life, and it was still not perfect, because it can’t be. But that’s the goal.

You work towards that together, you do your best, and that’s what you’re satisfied with. So mill round, keep moving before people show up, and I’ll come back and introduce. Oh, we’re ready. We are ready. Thank you for these handouts. This is our third and final breakout session. How are we feeling about the interactivity this afternoon? Great, great, great. Very good. You are going to hear from Senior Director of Psychological Services from the USOPC, Jessica Bartleyica Bartley, and Melissa Streno, who owns her own practice in Denver, on boundaries and balanced identity. Thank you, ladies.

Melissa Streno: All right.

Jessica Bartleyica Bartley: All right. So as Kara Mentioned, I’m Senior Director of Psychological Services at the USOPC. My role is to oversee mental health and mental performance for all of Team USA.

Melissa Streno: Great. And I’m Mel Streno, licensed clinical sports psychologist and also TrueSport expert under the realm of body image, self-care, and have been with the program for a couple years. Really excited to be back and here with you all today. So this is our last session. We’re really excited. Has everyone received a piece of chocolate most importantly and then, two handouts? Okay. So with the candy that you have, we are going to start with a quick icebreaker. As Jessica Bartley mentioned, we’re talking about, and as Kara mentioned as well, we’re talking about values, identity, and boundary setting, and how do we all align all three of those? So with the candy that you have, I want you to think of the question of, “What is it that I do that takes care of my mental health, my mental wellness?” And each different of the four that you have, you have Krackel, Goodbar, the yellow, the Special Dark, and the Hershey, corresponds to different value areas that we’re going to talk about today.

So if you have the Krackel, you’re going to be thinking about relationships. “What do I do in terms of taking care of my mental health, when it comes to relationships?” If you have the yellow one, the Goodbar, “What do I do in terms of taking care of my personal health?” And then, if you have the Special Dark, “What do I do in terms of taking care of myself when it comes to leisure activities?” And then, the final one is if you have, which one am I forgetting, Special Dark, “What do I do in terms of taking care of my work and my education?” So I wish we had time for everybody to answer this, but we’re just going to have a couple volunteers to get started, and we’ll go from there. So does anybody want to start with answering that question in correspondence to which chocolate they got? Yes, go for it.

Speaker 18: All right, I can go really quick. So I guess this represents leisure.

Melissa Streno: Awesome.

Speaker 18: And I do not take time for leisure. That’s something that I’ll have to figure out. I’m at a boarding school, so my personal and professional work together, so there’s not a lot of time for leisure. There is time, but there’s not a lot. So something that [inaudible 01:29:01]

Melissa Streno: Awesome. Yeah, great, great transparency with yourself, good awareness. Yes.

Speaker 19: I have a Krackel. So I think that was a relationship question.

Melissa Streno: Yeah.

Speaker 19: I’ll grab this, I guess.

Melissa Streno: Cool.

Speaker 19: Thank you. Appreciate you. I had the Krackel, so the relationship question. We talked about it a little bit earlier today, but just being intentional with my time, where I schedule out time for those relationships in my life, whether it’s, hey, we’re just going to grab lunch or we’re sitting down and watching Netflix, or whatever it may be. But being able to make sure I block off time for those relationships, so I can pour into those relationships and then, again, get filled back up by those relationships. That’s something that I try to focus on.

Melissa Streno: Fantastic. Great.

Jessica Bartleyica Bartley: Thanks for sharing.

Melissa Streno: And I should have mentioned this at the very beginning too. For those of you who are watching from home, grab yourself a sweet treat, candy, something, and think about this question as well. Obviously, the candy is kind of the silly part. The importance is being able to have that awareness to do these check-ins. Like “How am I actually taking care of myself in these realms?” And we’ll get more into how this connects to values and such as we go. One more? Yeah.

Melissa Streno: … and such as we go. One more.

Speaker 20: I have the Mr. Goodbar, so what do I do for my personal health? I have focused on my physical health, so I make sure that I get a workout in. Another one was keeping all my appointments, like my dental, my eye, all that stuff because it was easy to skip or postpone those things.

Melissa Streno: Good one.

Speaker 20: And also, any old injuries that were creeping back up, I started going to PT and doing little things like that.

Melissa Streno: Fantastic. Organized on top of that self-care.

Jessica Bartley: All right, so now we’re going to jump into some values work. So you have a colorful values handout, so I want you to take that one out. For those of you at home, I want you to Google “Brene Brown values”. And so those of you who have the handout in front of you, this is from Brene Brown’s work on values. So she’s done extensive research on values. So, again, if you’re at home, pull this up. Otherwise, we have printed the handouts, and I want you to go through the sheet thinking about what is important to you. So go through the sheet and I want you to circle those things that are really standing out to you, the ones that are like, “Yes, that’s totally me.” In addition, I want you to go through and start marking stuff out like, “Yep, that doesn’t fit. Definitely, don’t want that one in the mix.” So just start to go through the list.

Again, for those of you at home, you could pull up the Brene Brown values work. I will also share that there’s hundreds of these online. Brene Brown has done a ton of work in the value space, and so this one’s pretty comprehensive. I’ll also share that if you’ve done values work or you’re starting to go through that list, you don’t see the one that’s on there, you can just plug that in at the bottom. So other values, plug that in. Take a few minutes to just go through the handout. So a circle, a check, a star if it’s really standing out for you. Go ahead and scratch it off the list if it’s not resonating with you. And some of the questions we’ve got as we’ve gone through this exercise is, is this work? Is this the leisure? Is this personal? Really think of it in an exercise. What we would like to do is to walk you through a bit of some imagery.

So I want you to think about the fact that it is your 100th birthday. So you’re sitting around with all of your loved ones. These are actually going to be loved ones. They could be your grandparents and your parents. They could also be your kids and your grandkids. So 100 years old, you’re with everyone who loves you past and present, what are they saying about you? What are the values that are hoping to be said at your 100th birthday? So again, anyone and everyone you loved, have ever loved is all sitting around. The spotlight is on you. What are they saying? What was your life about? What was the 100 years that you have lived? What was it about out? So keep going through, keep checking, keep circling ones that really stick out. You’re hoping that those people around the table at your 100th birthday, they’re saying those things, and what are the things that just simply won’t matter?

All right. And the goal is going to be to get down to three. Anyone have any anxiety now? You start to have some reactions, some emotions, some things that come up in your body. You’ll literally start to look at those things that you’ve circled or starred and you’re like, oh, it’s not going to make the top three. But you have a reaction, and that’s okay. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. We often find that as you’re going through, you’re like, you know what? I can combine this one and this one, and that’s this. This one’s going to be under this. If I were to somehow capture it, it’s going to go right under this. So you’re going to start to have this process go on a bit and, again, the goal is to get down to three. Do we have anyone that’s down to 10? Anyone under 10? Okay, keep plugging away, keep scratching things out, keep stars, smiley faces. What’s rising to the top?

All right. And so when we’re thinking of values, again, this is who we are. This is our identity. This is who we’re going to hopefully have our friends and family and everyone else talking about us at our 100th birthday. So again, we wanted to start with identity because a lot of times these values help us actually make decisions. And so when it comes down to it, each and every day, we have opportunities to behave in a way that is aligned with these values. We can behave in a way that somebody goes, “That’s loyalty or that’s accountability. That’s dependability.” And so that’s what we’re trying to get to, is trying to understand what these values are and, how do you start to behave in alignment with these values? We’re going to segue a bit into boundaries because then we start to look at, how do we make those decisions?

It’s really interesting because I would be surprised if there is not an opportunity that comes across your board that these values actually come into direct conflict. So how in the world do you make these decisions when things are at conflict or at war, if you will? And so I think it’s interesting to get down to the three and then understand how you start to make decisions or again, behave, which is how we’ll segue into boundaries. So wanted to have a little bit of interaction. Anyone willing to share what their top three are?

Speaker 21: My top three are truth, caring, and courage.

Jessica Bartley: Okay. Hold on. How did you get down to those three? What was your process?

Speaker 21: There was a couple that I circled, honesty and truth and openness, and so really it came down to truth can mean a lot of different things. And then care wasn’t initially in my top three until you said, what is it that you want people to remember? So that was one. And then courage for me because thinking about what I face on a daily basis. And, again, I want to model that.

Jessica Bartley: I love it. Anyone else willing to share? Yeah.

Speaker 22: My three were freedom, integrity, and optimism.

Jessica Bartley: Okay. How did you make that decision?

Speaker 22: I initially went accountability, but I thought integrity summed that up. So I just was doing a lot of combining. It was difficult, but those core stood out.

Jessica Bartley: Yeah. Sometimes you have an actual reaction and it’s a word on a piece of paper, but it’s incredible what kind of reaction you can have to be like, “I’m literally crossing this word off a piece of paper.” But it means a lot, yeah. Anyone else willing to share? Yeah.

Speaker 23: Family, faith, and friendship.

Jessica Bartley: Love it. I like the alliteration too. How did you come to that?

Speaker 23: How people will talk about me when I’m 100 resonated and really what it boiled down to, what are the three most important things in my life, is how I came to that.

Jessica Bartley: Love it. All right, so now we’re going to dive a little bit into boundaries and how we make those decisions. And, again, sometimes you’re going to have these values that really come into conflict. So we’re going to segue to Melissa.

Melissa Streno: Great. Okay. So as Jess said, I want you to think about what came up for you in doing the exercise on values and identity as we talk about boundaries. We know that one of the biggest influencers, one of the most important factors in taking care of our mental health and our wellbeing, and also aligning with our values is the ability to identify and set boundaries, maintain them, and then I think most importantly is be able to have the flexibility to adjust them when we need this. This is not just for your high school athletes or college athletes, Olympic, Paralympic. This is also for the other coaches that you work with, parents, caregivers, sport admin, personnel, whoever is on that team, whoever’s in that circle, setting those boundaries, maintaining them, and like I said, adjusting them is really important.

So just to get some feedback from you all, and for those of you who are at home, be thinking about this as well, when I say the word boundary, what comes up for you? Boundary is a very broad term. You can throw out words. You can throw out types of boundaries, maybe those within your realm. Yeah.

Speaker 24: I see on a bowling alley, there’s bumper lanes.

Jessica Bartley: Yes.

Melissa Streno: Love that visual.

Speaker 24: I get to say it again?

Melissa Streno: Yes.

Speaker 24: The bumper lanes on your bowling alley, and I need those bumper lanes. Those are my boundaries.

Melissa Streno: I like that. I have never heard that and I really like that. That’s a great one. What else?

Speaker 25: I think it’s having respect for myself and having respect for others and having those two simultaneously.

Melissa Streno: Awesome. Great. Great. Yeah.

Speaker 26: I think of the word barrier.

Melissa Streno: Barrier Yeah. Great. Yeah, you’re all listing all different types of boundaries. We have media, we have time, physical, emotional, physical boundaries, emotional boundaries. Boundaries are really relative to what you stand for, what you value, what drives you, what motivates you. I think from feedback we’ve gotten today and in our work, when we think of boundaries, everyone’s like, “Gosh, I should set those more often.” It seems so much more simple, but the reality is when you care about the people that you work with, when you care about your athletes, and I have felt this energy in this room, in different sessions talking last night, today, that you see your athletes as more than just an athlete who shows up at the pool or on the track. You see them as a whole person.

And I think Jessica Bartley and I have talked about this before too, and very much experienced, that’s when those lines flex a little bit and start to bend in terms of really sustaining the boundaries that are important and really speak to who you are and finding that balanced identity and what you stand for. I think the other piece is you’re all probably saying, “Mel, we work, live in a world we can’t just turn off. You don’t work an 8:00 to 5:00 where you close your laptop and you log out of your portal or you turn your work phone off. You have to have a pivoting perspective.” So I always like to think about the basketball metaphor of always having that one foot in the present, and there are times where you’re going to have to pivot forward a little bit and know what’s ahead, what’s coming in that very preemptive, preventative way. And then you also have to pivot backwards sometimes to learn from the past, have that hindsight reflective perspective as well.

I think that sometimes can help in terms of figuring out how, do you set those boundaries and how do you maintain those? So your next handout that you have, you all should have a handout that has a bullseye. For those of you who are at home, this is from Russ Harris, his Act Mindfully work, and he has multiple worksheets, resources, et cetera. Also, just for time’s sake, for those of you at home, don’t worry, you can easily grab a piece of paper, draw a circle, four quadrants. And as you’ll see on here, the four quadrants we have are work and education, leisure, personal growth and health, and then finally we have relationships. So what I want you all to do and looking at these, keeping in mind the values that you identified, those maybe three or maybe a couple more, I want you to mark an X in each one of these quadrants in relation to how much effort, time, energy do you put towards each of these realms?

The target in the middle, the bullseye, obviously being 100%, very well-balanced, I love where it’s at. The outer ring being, I’m pretty far removed from that. My effort, my time, energy, et cetera, resources probably could shift a little bit. So again, you’re just going to mark an X in each one of these quadrants on where you fall. There’s no right or wrong answer to this. This is good information for you to have. I think it’s really good awareness, and it’s a good example of doing something for yourself that you’re role modeling to your athletes, you’re role modeling to other coaches you work with, et cetera. Take a couple of seconds and, then for those of you who are willing to share your experience, and similar to the values identification, things might come up for you, you might feel things, that’s totally fine. We’ll ask if there’s anyone who wants to share.

Jessica Bartley: Any bullseye in the room? Anyone just nailing it? Yeah.

Melissa Streno: Awesome.

Speaker 27: I think I’m nailing it in the work area. I just feel like I’m doing a really great job doing that. I think all of my attention is on that. And I think also the personal growth in health is also pretty good for me, but the leisure and relationships are suffering a little bit. I don’t reach out to other people and stuff like that, so I got to find a little bit more balance.

Jessica Bartley: That happens a lot. It can be a little bit inequitable. You could be knocking it out of the park or a bullseye in one area. So the self-awareness piece is going to be really key here.

Melissa Streno: Absolutely.

Jessica Bartley: Anyone else wanted to share?

Melissa Streno: The authenticity of acknowledging that too is going to help you in the long-term. Better now to know that and be able to figure that out. Yeah.

Speaker 28: All four are pretty either one to two away from my bullseye, but I think that it’s going to change once we get into 2024. So I think for myself, it’s also recognizing, hey, there’s a part of the season. These Xs may be closer to the bullseye and recognizing some may be further away. I intentionally took two months and stayed home and not traveled as much and so just feeling good like, hey, it’s good now, and maybe some of those Xs might be further. But just being okay and knowing, like you said, maybe changing some of those boundaries.

Melissa Streno: Similar to how values shift and change throughout our life for different times and relationships and different life events, I think you’re really talking to and speaking to that ability to look forward and see what’s coming and having that flexibility, that psychological flexibility, relational, physical, whatever that might be. Thank you for sharing. I think I saw the microphone being passed. Maybe not. Yeah.

Speaker 29: So what I discovered is that most of my Xs closer to the bullseye were basically when I started thinking about what I’m doing for other people as opposed to what I’m doing for myself. So when I started thinking about it as myself, leisure and personal growth and relationships, I was way out on the perimeter, but when I was thinking about what I’m doing in relationships with other people and helping them to succeed, then I’m a lot closer to the bullseye. So that was an awakening for me.

Melissa Streno: Great. We did not pay her to name the title of this, but oxygen mask effect, that’s exactly it is. You have to take care of yourself in order to take care of those who are around you. Yeah.

Speaker 30: First of all, thank you for the reference in the worksheets. I’ll be looking that up. But I read the definitions at the top of the page and I was struck by leisure because it’s different than personal growth and health. I work out a lot, I run every day, I’m pretty active, but I don’t know that I do anything for fun. So I’m going to go get a PlayStation or something. I need to do something that’s just joyful, and that was a major mark away from the bullseye, very far for me. So I appreciate that.

Melissa Streno: Fantastic point. All right, a couple of really important things. Any last comments on that or anybody else have burning thoughts they want to share? No. In terms of setting boundaries, it’s really important with the language and communication that not only we’re doing with our athletes, high school all the way through Olympic, is being able to role model to them being very direct with your boundaries setting and very consistent. So making sure you’re setting boundaries with everyone that you’re working with, but obviously those are going to be different depending on the role and the relationship that you have with each person. The other piece is, from the start, make them aware of what your availability is and your role. So speaking of role, know the hat that you have on and know that you’re not alone in that.

You work in a field and in your day-to-day routine where you have a lot of pressure, you have a lot of expectations, challenges, demands coming at you, and often that can feel really isolating and it can feel really overwhelming like you’re on this island by yourself. So make sure you are consistently doing that check-in of, who’s in my support bubble? Who do I have that I can call on when I need a school counselor or when I need a sports psychologist or a dietician or sports med, whatever that might be so, that I know that I’m not tasked with taking all of this on myself? The other thing is knowing the difference between crisis versus something that can wait a little bit. So expect respect of your boundaries and make sure that this is something that you role model to those that you’re working with.

Something that’s a safety concern or a health concern, something that your gut’s telling you, this needs to be taken care of right now, follow that instinct, of course. But also trust that when there are things that you can push a little bit and be able to place, compartmentalize a little bit in the future, that that’s okay too. And then, finally, you are the expert on yourself, so know when those boundaries are being pushed, when they’re being flat out disregarded, and most importantly have a plan in place of how you’re going to address that, whether that’s with the team, whether that’s with the individual, or with the parent. I think that’s it in terms of what we have. We definitely want to open this up for questions, comments, thoughts? I think the conversations in here have been great so far. Yes.

Speaker 31: So when a coach transitions from in season to off season, I think a lot of these quadrants change for us. Do you have any advice on how to make that transition easier?

Melissa Streno: Yeah. I think this reminds me a lot of the comment that we had earlier, is knowing what’s worked in the past. It’s okay to lean on strengths, it’s okay to lean on what’s worked before and really having a plan for when that happens, and most importantly, feeling good about that plan. We’ve talked a lot today about how setting boundaries and identifying them is very much based on the things that are most important to you. So however you decide to use that time and what that transition looks like we hope is based on and really formulated by what’s most important to you, and also how you are going to recharge, refresh during that time.

I think it’s also a great opportunity to role model and to be very, I think, refreshing probably to your athletes or other coaches that you work with, that there is a time and place for me to slow down or to log off as best possible, like we talked about earlier. Hard to do fully, but to take that space, I think it shows you’re human and I think it gives them permission also to do this for themselves. So I appreciate it. Anything you’d add, Jessica Bartley?

Jessica Bartley: Sorry, I thought we had another question.

Melissa Streno: No, go for it.

Speaker 32: How are you thinking about modeling the language for a proactive conversation to set these boundaries? So what language are you using there, what variables are we talking about as far as time goes, and just setting that expectation for boundaries for athletes, for parents, for coworkers, and so on?

Jessica Bartley: Yeah. At the USOPC, I think we’ve really started to train our entire system around, what is a crisis? What’s an emergency? And it actually goes, what’s an emergency? What’s a crisis? What’s a problem? And so we’ve started to have this language around an emergency as immediate, a crisis probably needs to be handled in the same day, and a problem is a few days. And so, as we’re building out our mental health and wellness resources, I think we’ve been very clear on how we’re communicating. What does that mean? We’ve provided a lot of examples like, this is an emergency. So if someone is suicidal, I think Mel said this earlier, if someone is suicidal, if it’s a health risk, you have that gut feeling that you’re like, this is an emergency, it happens immediately. And then a crisis is, they’re probably not doing okay, but again, they’re okay now. We’re not pulling someone out of school. We’re not doing X, Y, and Z.

So there’s a number of things that we’ve started to train our entire system on, and we’re also communicating that to the athletes, and I think the more we role model that, the more we talk about it. And for our system as well, we’ve started to get everyone really comfortable with, how do you ask somebody very directly about suicidality? How do we ask somebody very directly? Because, again, the number of times we ask and they’re like, “Oh no, I didn’t really mean that. I didn’t answer that question correctly,” we’ve been doing a lot of mental health screens, the more that you can have the conversation, be direct, really understand where someone’s at, I think that’s really helped our entire system understand that the reality is this isn’t an emergency and you can get to it at the end of the day.

So I think for someone like myself, I was going to share, I have a six-year-old, a three-year-old, and an eight-month-old, so there’s this window of time that usually my house is absolute chaos. I can usually figure out if somebody calls between 5:30 and 7:30, if it’s a true emergency, I will figure it out. But I’ve also trained people, you can catch me back online after the kids are in bed. So I think there’s these things, because of my values and how we’ve started to set up a system, that have been really healthy. And it has taken some time. So it’s been about three years since I’ve been at the USOPC, but who do they call during that time, especially if it’s a crisis or an emergency and they’re like, “We got to do this now”? So we also start to train up other folks. Or I really need this time off or I’m completely unavailable for this weekend, you start to figure out some of those boundaries. And again, it may take time and it may take a little bit of pushback, but those can be really healthy boundaries to set.

Melissa Streno: When I think about younger teams also, I think about high school, developmentally, they might not even understand what a boundary is. And so I think it can be helpful to use the language around, why? Why is a boundary important? So not only are you making it clear, repetition, consistency, language that you know that they’re going to understand, but also you’re helping role model to them that setting boundaries is really important. So yes, we’re talking about under the umbrella of sport today, but we would hope that they’re using this in other realms of their life as well. So I think the consistency, the directness, and then that why piece, why is this important, can go a long ways as well. Especially I think with athletes who have been around for a long time or they’re more seasoned or more elite, they might have heard the term or even had their own. So two different ranges on the spectrum. Yeah.

Speaker 33: I just have another comment on boundaries. This is pretty metaphorical, but, for me, time is really important to myself and to my players and their parents. And so what I typically do is I set my practice time clock and I run that, and when the practice time clock ends, that is my end of practice. And so I honor that for my players. I’m teaching them the value of time and I’m also honoring it for the parents who are picking those players up, and I’m honoring it for myself. So just a reminder that sometimes, I used to be the coach who would keep the kids around and chatter and wrap up things for 10, 15 minutes easily at the end of practice, but I think it’s important for us to really set that boundary metaphorically and literally with our clocks and keeping track of our time. So I love that.

Melissa Streno: I really appreciate that you brought up parents as well because they can help hopefully reinforce this at home. But sometimes they need to hear that too, and not because they’re intending to take your time or ask you all those questions after the timer’s off, but I think a really good reminder that these boundaries are set for your athletes and, like I said at the beginning, also for parents, other coaches, and people that you work with.

Speaker 34: I’ll just go one more on top of that. I use respect on that, so respect for the kids’ time, respect for the parents’ time, and so on. And so, in my expectation meeting at the front of the season, we’ll talk about the respect. I will respect your time. You pick your children up at the appropriate time. I will be letting them come out at the appropriate time so that everybody knows where we are and what we’re doing and it lessens the problems. It really does, ahead of time, when you talk to parents about those kinds of things. And then the kids get the respect piece also.

Jessica Bartley: And that’s where I think we go full circle with values is, how do we make those decisions and how do we instill some of these values in the system, in our youth, things like that? And so it’s incredibly powerful to think about how values, identity, and boundaries are really intertwined. I think we’re actually at time as well, so to be respectful of time, I know the other groups will be coming back in here, so we’ll hand it back over to Kara, but we really appreciated the conversation and hope you can take away something tangible from this. Thank you.

Kara Winger: Thank you, thank you, Mel and Jess. I really like what Mel just said about older athletes maybe having a better idea of what boundaries are because I had a really hard time setting my own boundaries for a really long time in my career. At 35 plus, I finally went to therapy after I decided that my husband would coach me for my final season. I had tried lots of different sports psychologists, they’d been really helpful, but the fact that whether it was led by me just from what I understood about sports psychology or I just never said out loud, what else can we talk about in these sessions, I was never able to get to the heart of some of the other things that were bothering me. And therapy on my own better help was super helpful for me to go into my final season and be able to protect my own energy.

As an introverted athlete, I spent a lot of time accommodating people who kept me, “Just one more second. Just one more second. Just one more second,” before a competition, and through the therapy process was able to say, “I’m not being rude by saying, ‘Nice to talk to you. Goodbye.’ I am doing what I need to do. And then later in life I can have all of those conversations. But right in this moment, it’s important to me to go be by myself in the dark in my hotel room before I throw tomorrow.” And it was very empowering to understand that, that was helping ultimately me be my best for those people who were really interested in my career. I’m going to let you guys get up too if you want to right before we end this session. Maybe don’t go too far because everyone’s coming back, and we won’t have that much more for you to listen to before we wrap up at the TrueSport Talks Symposium 2023. No. You. No. You.

Kara Winger: Come on back, come on back. Or fill in the sides and listen up. Thank you to those of you at home. I know that endless hours of meetings, even if you’re not participating, are really difficult. So appreciate your mental fortitude, mental wellness and commitment to yourself to show up to the TrueSport Talk symposium today and learn some tools for yourself to create that oxygen mask effect that we’re talking about.

Come on back. So many seats still to fill in here at the very end of the day. I know our virtual audience is locked in. So come on back to our seats. So for one last time, I’m Kara Winger. I have been absolutely honored to be your MC today. I hope that what I brought to the table as an athlete was relatable as a coach as well. All of our experiences are valid, valuable, and really important to the continued greatness that we all know that sports are and can continue to be and even better ways when we work together to benefit our all of our mental wellness. I want to kind of cover some of the full circle moments that I had before handing it back over to Jen. Dr. J Harrison was talking about exploring different aspects of who we are when we choose to see sport as an expression of self rather than a self identity.

So being able to foster different parts of your own personal identity by using sport as an expression rather than who you are. Then I heard Mel Streno in our last round table here in the atrium talk about there are different areas of our lives where values are important. So same concept, different parts of self that you are choosing to honor in different ways and being able to identify those parts, focus on them independently of each other can really help you bring your entire self to the table when you’re coaching, when you’re with your family, when you’re with your friends, when you’re by yourself.

On our coaching panel, I heard some really great stuff. Lead with vulnerability from Leslie, have shared power on teams and treat the vulnerable conversations you’re having with each other as consistent, important parts of what your team dynamic is. Walk the walk, including when you recognize in yourself that you need to take a break so that others get to see that it’s okay to take a break. Vision, value and voice on teams being a guiding mantra, as well as normalizing direct communication, whether it’s on the wheelchair rugby pitch, or in the locker room that you cultivate for yourself amongst your coaching peers.

Practicing effective communication with Alex Cohen, I thought was really fun to witness the role playing conversations. And it struck me that those conversations, practicing them to not just have them with athletes, but using that role play as a tool to develop relationships with fellow coaches can be so powerful as you lead those teams together for years in the future.

Dr. Kevin Chapman normalized emotions for us, taught us how to feel them in our bodies and recognize them as what they are. Then deal with them in sustainable ways.

Adam Feit, one thing that he said that really struck me was instead of thinking about a huge giant outcome, focused on the next imperfect step you can take on the continuum of your journey to who you want to be. Get your always something out of that next little step rather than getting bogged down by the end result. Jessica Bartley, I was really struck by specificity and honesty with ourselves, narrowing it down to three values rather than a hundred values that are important. How can we really hone our focus and honor what’s truly, truly important to us by being honest with ourselves first.

I want to thank TrueSport. This TrueSport Talks Symposium was chockfull of information, but the resources that TrueSport has all the time, I highly recommend you check out as coaches. There are just massive amounts of curriculum that you can access available from TrueSport, that TrueSport and USADA care about so much in empowering coaches, players, parents, and anybody involved in sport to make better experiences for everybody involved. So thank you to TrueSport for today. I was personally very honored to be here as I transition out of sport from athlete life. I’ve always honored coach relationships and it’s so fun to see so many people invested in what I then see as hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of athletes represented in this room. So thank you for the role that you play in your athletes’ lives.