E53 | Ashley Kuchar: Compassion over Criticism

[00:00:00] Donnie: Welcome to the team behind the team podcast. I am your host, Donnie Maib. This is the monthly show focused on building conversations around the team based model approach to athletic performance, strength and conditioning, sports medicine, sports science, mental health and wellness, and sports nutrition.

Hello, and welcome back to the team behind the team podcast. I’m your host. Donnie Maib and coach Joe Krawczyk right across from me in the house. Big Joe, what’s up? What’s going on, coach? How you doing? I’m good, man. This is 2024, coach. Looking back. How’s 23? How was it for you? How was it? 23 is great.

[00:00:43] Joe: Good stuff, right?

Little man’s getting bigger. Uh, he’s two now and, uh, 24 has got a lot of promise. January is always fun. Got the clinic coming up and, uh, and it’s track season indoor coming up. So that’s going to be great too, to see the kids

[00:00:58] Donnie: compete. I agree. 23 was great, but man excited for this year. And today our guests couldn’t have a better person on board to, to meet with us and talk shop.

Then Ashley Kuchar. Ashley, welcome to the show again. Just let’s get right into it and talk about your company fell better. How and why did you start the company and how’s it going so

[00:01:20] Ashley: far? Yeah. So I’ll tell you kind of why I started it, which goes back to why I got into this space of mental performance and sports psychology in the first place.

Um, when I was growing, I grew up. playing sports my whole life. I was really hard on myself. I was really perfectionistic. I also performed pretty well. And, uh, and when I got into college, I was studying psychology, learned about some of these mental skills that changed everything for me and taught me that I don’t know that being hard on myself was really that helpful.

The fear of failure, I didn’t know how to manage that. Even though I competed at a high level, I still had a lot of fear of failure. And, um, and so when I was in grad school, Studying these kinds of things, creating, creating the RESET program that’s you, that you mentioned, uh, the last couple years of grad school, I decided that I wanted to start my own business and help athletes who were like me, those who maybe understood the stigma around mental health, who were scared of, of talking to a therapist, those who were interested in increasing their performance, also having a good time, uh, at the same time having both high well being and performance.

And so started, started the company right Uh, as I finished my PhD and it’s been awesome. It’s, uh, a challenge to start your own thing for sure, but I had a lot of great support and it, it’s been going great, really looking forward to this new year, and I think this year is gonna be really good.

[00:02:40] Joe: That’s awesome.

Was there, was there ever like a moment in your athletic career where you’re kind of like, I gotta do something to kind of fix, you know, maybe, maybe it was anxiety or maybe it was, you know, I don’t know, just, just a mood one day, you know, was, was there ever like a specific game or something where you’re just like, no, I need to do something to

[00:02:57] Ashley: fix this.

Yeah, honestly, I thought it was normal. And so I didn’t really know anything different. I knew I didn’t love the fear of failure. I recognized and acknowledged that I had really high fear of failure and that I was really perfectionistic. But in that time, and some ways still it is today, that’s perceived as a good thing.

Yeah, be really, really, I had a coach actually tell me because I was trying to lock in all my emotions. And he was like, When you make a mistake, I want to know that you’re mad. And I was like, Oh, buddy, it’s all in my head. I don’t know that you want me to be showing it because I was doing everything I could, at least to keep it in.

So, um, there was that aspect where I, I just didn’t know what to do. And then when I was introduced as my junior year, I think in college, I was introduced to mindfulness. I was introduced to self compassion and I was like, hold up. What, what is this? This is very, very different from the culture that I was brought up in where mistakes are bad.

You’re bad when you make mistakes. Show that anger. Show that frustration to, yep, mistakes happen. It’s a data point. Learn from it. Move on. And not only that, that step further with self compassion to be like with your teammates or your friends or your colleagues, we don’t yell at them. Usually when they make mistakes, we try to encourage them.

What would happen if you flip that around to you? So I think that, that was the moment I was hooked and I was like, this is important. Um, the language felt a little uncomfortable to me, but I knew the concepts were very, very meaningful and I, and I knew I wanted to study it and figure out how to bring it to others.

Like me. That’s

[00:04:26] Donnie: awesome. That’s great. Great. Uh, question, Joe and Ashley, you made me think of like, cause I I’m, I played in the eighties, early nineties and We were taught back then, you just kept everything inside, like, well, you just said it when you’re angry, frustrated, you don’t talk, you just manage it yourself, but you’re, you’re like a, you’re like this anger, you know, bottle walking around with, you spray it on people.

But, um, you know, it’s interesting the culture where the times have changed the vulnerability and the compassion piece versus just the toughness. And I know we’ll get into toughness later. So I’ll, I’ll say this about me and be vulnerable growing up in my home. The way I managed the, it was dysfunctional, divorced family, uh, blended family, craziness.

We could have easily been on MTV, a reality show back then. We would have made a lot of money doing that because it was so whacked out. So I brought a lot of my upbringing. Into my sport in college and that pressure got more intense and I didn’t handle how much so my question for you, how much of what we’ll get in today goes into you bring or taking the context and athletes kind of the way they were raised and parented or lack of when you’re dealing with how much?

[00:05:43] Ashley: Yeah, quite a bit. And at the same time, what’s interesting is no matter how we got there, there’s a lot of athletes who are really hard on themselves. There’s a lot of athletes who keep it all inside. There’s a lot of athletes who have a really hard time receiving feedback. And so yes, context matters, especially when there’s trauma involved.

We gotta make sure there’s some, uh, kind of protections in place so they don’t get too triggered. And at the same time, what I love about the mental performance is I can teach you some skills no matter how you got to that place that can help you get there. So whether it’s a team concept, a team, um, context where I’m working with a whole team, right?

I’m not catering to the individuals necessarily and they’re improving, they’re learning, they’re growing. And at the same time, if I worked with you one on one, yeah, we would get at some of those things, some of the roots and be able to heal some of that through, through your sport, which is pretty powerful.

Yeah.

[00:06:39] Joe: Yeah. And in some of your work, you talk about building resilience and athletes from self criticism and mistakes, which, um, you know, I feel like kind of, we were just talking about blends perfect during our next question, you know, can we talk about viewing mistakes and setbacks as an opportunity, you know, rather than a

[00:06:53] Ashley: threat.

Mm hmm. So this is one of my Favorite things to talk about. And part of the reason why I named my company fail better training. So fail is, is not a word that athletes and coaches like so much. We try, we try our absolute best to avoid failure. And also the reality of any sport is you will fail depending on how you define it.

You will make mistakes. If we can at least say that you will push your body to its limits. And so no matter the context, whether it’s sport or, or some kind of performance or work, you’re going to, you’re going to make mistakes. And so once we can acknowledge that now we can learn what is going to happen, how, how do I respond in a way that’s actually going to be productive for me?

So. To me, that’s kind of what resilience mean. When the hard stuff happens, how do you respond in a way that’s going to boost your well being and also your, your performance at the same time. And so if we can see mistakes as opportunities to learn, now You can manage it, you can do something with it, you can grow from it, uh, and it could be something simple like playing basketball, right?

If I’m shooting short, I could just beat myself up, and then that’s not super helpful, and I’m like, well, I’ll just stop shooting, and I don’t get better at it, I’m really just avoiding the situation, or I can say, oh, I’m shooting short, well, let me go back to my technique, or let me go back to trusting my instincts, now I’m gonna get better at that thing, like.

And so really it’s an opportunity for growth rather than evidence of something that you are a failure. It’s just a mistake. It’s just a challenge. Let’s use it as an opportunity to bounce forward. It’s the term that I use rather than take it and not know what to do with it. For

[00:08:30] Donnie: sure. So good, Joe. I think, so you may, you kind of triggered me right there.

I’m sorry, I had to use a little language. You made me think of even like just athletes over the years in my mind, when I hear like fail, because I’m hard on myself for sure. That’s kind of my coming out of the home that I was in. And you know, if you messed up, you were, you were personally a failure. And so I had to work through that growing up.

So the word that comes to my mind when I hear you talking, Ashley, is the word value. And I feel like athletes that are super hard on themselves, they get a lot of value of their other performance. And so if they play great, They feel great. They look great. They’re confident. And then once they start struggling, right, it’s like they go in the tank and they spiral and they don’t think, you know, they don’t want to be around people.

They kind of, you know, they recluse a little bit or whatever, or they, whatever it may be the, the habits. But, um, so what do you do or what’s kind of your, how do you work with an athlete that really struggles to attach that value of what kind of human being they are? Based on the performance and how do you kind of work through some of

[00:09:39] Ashley: that?

Yeah. First of all, we talk about that exact thing because there are a lot of athletes where we attach our value and our worth to our performance. And then you do have the roller coaster because we’re not going to perform at our best every single day. It’s just not how things work. And so first of all, just acknowledging that and being like, Hey, you are probably attaching your value to your performance and that’s why you’re experiencing the roller coaster.

Something that can be really helpful is to get at what’s underneath why we play sports in the first place. I’ve asked this question to a lot of athletes and I don’t know if I say, Hey, why do you play basketball? Why do you why’d you play hockey? Oh, maybe I’ll see that Joe. Why’d you play hockey growing up?

What did you like about it?

[00:10:16] Joe: Um, I think you know, I guess just was the one of the first sports I was ever introduced to is like a really little kid and I just I just loved how fast the kid the guys were moving on the ice and My dad had hockey stuff. So just it’s like kind of fascinating to me as a kid I wanted to mess a lot my dad’s stuff.

Mm hmm Um, but then I got out there when I actually learned how to skate. I mean, it was like It’s like you’re free. I mean, you just, you go, so you, you can really get going and it’s, it’s a whole different feeling than running. Um, and the game moves so fast and I don’t know, it’s just, uh, just got hooked.

Yeah. It’s almost hard to describe, but like, um, but yeah, you just, once you can really get it down, like it’s, it’s pretty awesome. Yeah.

[00:10:58] Ashley: So I’m, I’m hearing some like connection in there, like connection with your dad, some like maybe growth or learning, would you say, like learning new skills? Cause he said like, once you get it, it’s like really fun.

So obviously there is some performing is, is fun too. Um, there’s a, there’s a lot of reasons. Sometimes it’s exercise, it’s learning something new. And I could ask you the same things about. Uh, you know, the sports that you played. So there, there’s a lot of reasons underneath why we play those sports. And if we can connect to that, you know, for me, when I go out and play, especially if it’s a new place, and I can say, my purpose here is to build relationships.

Get better at something and work hard. Now, I’m probably gonna play better. First of all, if I’m focused on those things. But when I detach from an outcome, which is out of my control, and attach to something that is in my control, like working hard, that’s pretty much in my control. Building relationships with people is mostly in my control.

Um, Then then now my my worth and self esteem is not going to rise and fall. I can just acknowledge and if we can acknowledge Hey, you have value. I have value just because period then when we detach from the outcomes We usually get the outcomes we want and we can have more of that stable mood and and self esteem at the same time But it’s it’s a lot to work through Because it’s deep.

It gets us into shame real quick. So, yeah.

[00:12:19] Donnie: Yeah. I’ve got a quote too, before we go to our next question, uh, and I’m going to botch this quote bad, but it goes something like this. It’s like the most mentally resilient people know how to go from success to failure, to success, to failure. success to failure without loss of momentum.

And if you think about that, and the guy that comes to mind, obviously, is Michael Jordan. Uh, this guy could make mistakes, mess up, but then flip around and make the game win the shot, not let it beat him up, you know? And I heard it said one time, because this episode today is about the mental side of performance, not just the mental health piece, but the performance side.

There’s been other athletes that are way more Uh, genetically gifted than Michael Jordan, but his mind, like his mind is, it was like a engine that could not be stopped. He was so strong mentally that if you could take his mind and implant that into different athletes that were physically more talented, he would have, there would have been plenty more.

And I mean, you know, Ashley and Joe, you too, like you can see athletes that are so talented physically and genetically, but just mentally, they’re just. They’re just beating themselves up and they’re holding themselves back. So it’s interesting. It’s interesting topic

[00:13:35] Ashley: for sure. And what’s cool is you can almost create your own journey, right?

So with someone like Michael Jordan, if he’s going with the mindset of, um, I’m confident, I know what I’m capable of, I know I have value, he’s going to perform better. And then when he performs better, that also builds his confidence. If we have these other athletes who are like. Um, only have value. People only love me when I perform well, that’s creating a lot of pressure and we have too much pressure.

Then we usually falter in some way. And then when you falter in some way, now you have less confidence and it creates this new cycle. And so a lot of athletes will think I have to perform well to have to have confidence when really it’s actually if you have the belief in yourself first. Let’s work on the belief and then you’re going to perform better and you’re more consistent and then and then it reinforces that cycle.

Yeah.

[00:14:21] Joe: So you kind of just touched on it just there like, you know, we all have our internal criticisms, you know, and you, you said like, you know, people only love me when I play well, it’s, it sounds a lot like there’s a lot of external criticisms too. There’s fans, um, first and foremost, just coaches, you know, coaches are, um, depending on the coach, it could be a lot on, on some athletes, you know, and Can you talk a little bit about, you know, self compassion and how do, I guess, how do we empower athletes to, to use that to kind of overcome some of the external criticisms they receive?

[00:14:52] Ashley: Yeah. So, yeah, let me say first that if we can create a cultural environment, that’s going to be the best for our athletes, right? If we can include the coaches, if we can include the parents, if we can include the staff where they’re also learning these, these adaptive ways of, um, coaching, then that’s going to be the best for the athlete.

That said, we can’t always do that. It takes a little bit more time to have that culture shift. And so for the athletes, self compassion, the idea of self compassion is a couple of things. One, it’s the, it’s mindfulness. It’s that awareness, the present moment awareness, the nonjudgment, common humanity, just recognizing that setbacks, mistakes, challenges are, it’s part of being human.

We all experience pain and suffering and then that self kindness, which we typically treat others better than we treat ourselves when, when someone else is struggling, we’re pretty quick to encourage with ourselves. It’s a little different. And so it’s taking these three different concepts towards ourselves.

And so the power in that, if you can learn to be your own advocate, if you can really develop that self love, that self encouragement, that resilience, then even when you have a coach who’s yelling at you. Rather than getting that feedback and saying his, his or her feedback, their feedback means I’m not good enough.

You already know that you’re good enough. You already know you have value. You already know that you are loved. And so that can create almost like a barrier to where you can take the pieces of that criticism and feedback that are going to help you grow. And the parts that aren’t helpful, maybe the sharp tone or the edge, it kind of just bounces off.

Now that takes. Work. It takes energy. We got to be in a good place to be able to do that, which is why I do what I do is to prepare athletes for those situations so that when it comes, they’re, they’re ready to handle it. They’ve already practiced it just like you would in a performance setting, lifting weights or in practice shooting, right?

We don’t just expect ourselves to be good shooters. We have to go out and put the time and work in. Yeah. And I

[00:16:49] Joe: feel like that’s so important because And you’re right, it’s got to take time because I feel like a lot of times when athletes hear that, they only hear, like their filter at the time only receives the sharp, edgy criticisms rather than like the point that’s, you know, supposed to be helping them build and, you know, and it’s on us coaches as well, strength coaches, all of us, you know, to, to communicate better too, to, so you don’t have to maybe filter that.

But, um, yeah, that’s, it’s just intense that, you know, how much time it takes where athletes probably just all they hear is the sharp stuff and they’re like, yeah. Oh, well, that’s

[00:17:23] Ashley: not good. Yeah, and it’s hard. It is really natural. It’s that that survival instinct where the inner critic is all about threat.

It’s protecting you from a threat. And if you have an authority figure giving you feedback that could be. Uh, affecting you, right? Maybe you don’t, you don’t get a play. Maybe it leads to injury. Maybe it leans to separation and isolation on the team. And that inner critic is, is not super rational. It’s going to go to the extreme ends to where it will go from the coach says, Hey, adjust your shot.

And the athlete deep down is thinking I’m not good enough. No one loves me. And so we have to learn to make that shift and it does take some practice. Sometimes, honestly, it just takes one session and they’re like, Oh, I get it. But it’s, it’s, it’s really important to work on both ends where yes, the coaches are learning to communicate better.

And also y’all probably know this, I’m working with athletes too. You could say something in the best way possible and they still might not take it great. So we got to work from both ends so that they’re learning to regulate their own challenges and activations, I guess, too. Absolutely.

[00:18:25] Donnie: Yeah, um, that’s good stuff.

Shifting gears. I want to kind of jump on a little different topic here and talk about toughness. And if I’ve heard this once, Ashley, Joe, I know you’ve heard it. I’ve heard it a million times. So and so talking about an athlete. They’re just soft. They’re soft. And they’re just not strong. They’re not tough.

And I grew up in a football culture where You know, yelling, shouting, berating you, cursing, oftentimes, um, made you tough. That was, and if you were, if you were talking in a normal tone, you’re being too soft on an athlete in a football culture. So a lot, you can hear it on a lot of the talking heads today.

Like the way these athletes are coached today, they’re so soft compared to the way it was back then. And part of me thinks sometimes like. No, that was just abusive, you know, so anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts. How can you kind of create, well, can you create an environment where there’s some positivity and some toughness in there?

Just speaking to that.

[00:19:32] Ashley: Yeah, definitely. Because one challenge, I talk about this a lot with athletes, um, Well, let’s say an athlete makes a mistake and we hear this all the time to kind of the goldfish mentality or next play, next play, next play, which can be helpful for sure, because we’re at least not beating ourselves up.

And also you might not be making performance adjustments. If we always just say next play might not be getting better. We just are moving on on the flip side of like my coach, who was saying be harder on yourself. That also wasn’t helpful. No, that was making me play play worse. So there is definitely.

There’s a time and a place for everything. There’s a time and a place for us to be constructively critical and evaluative. We want to be evaluative. Honestly, I don’t know if it’s ever helpful to be harshly critical. And if you do see it, coaches will see it work for a moment. It could be a short term strategy, sure.

It’s not going to be helpful in the long term. It’s creating more problems. If you’re telling an athlete, they’re not good enough, I’m going to pull your scholarship. If you don’t perform well, Because those things are out of the athlete’s control, right? I don’t get the control if I make all my shots. I can put the work in, I can put the time in, but when that ball leaves my hand, you know, if it was in my control, I’d make them all.

I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t miss. So, I think one, yes, there is a time and a place for it. The harsh criticism is not, not a long term strategy. And each athlete is also going to be a little bit different. There’s going to be some athletes where yelling at them is just not helpful. And so you could keep yelling at them and at some point it’s either going to break them or they’ll develop this air quote tougher skin.

But what’s happening underneath, is it actually helping? So I think it’s important to learn. What is helpful for the athletes to what balance there is some encouragement, um, and, and some feedback. And like we were talking about with the criticism earlier, the athletes also need to learn how to handle different approaches, right?

Because not. Not every coach is going to meet them exactly where they need because you got 15 different people who all receive things a little bit, a little bit differently. So yeah, that, that’s what I would say. I say there is some room for that toughness where you just got to push through power through.

And also there’s a time where you need to step back and, and do something

[00:21:49] Donnie: different. Yeah. I think you, you maybe think one of my favorite sayings is like words are containers of power and Man, the words you use with kids and people, uh, can either bring death or life. You know, I, that was one of my favorite Proverbs is like, life and death is in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruit.

Right. And so I totally believe that, that like, you’ve got to really be careful with the words you use and choose, especially if you know, you’re, you’re speaking into an athlete that maybe has, they lack that value in themselves because there’s trauma or something there. They’re not going to hear your.

Criticism, if it’s really harsh and sharp versus somebody who’s maybe they just, they know they’re valuable without you telling them. And so again, I think, I think that’s so good, good stuff. Yeah. And even

[00:22:36] Ashley: going back to where you’re saying with Michael Jordan, you know, I don’t know, people say, I don’t know what’s true and what’s not, but he would read the comments, whatever those were in the back day, right?

The negative comments that people would say about him before games. And so I’ll have athletes bring that up of like, well, I play better when someone’s yelling at me. The difference though, is that’s because they believe in themselves. Michael Jordan is reading these comments and he’s saying, watch this, I’ll prove them wrong.

That’s really different from an athlete who’s reading that and it’s seeping in. And I bet there were moments that he didn’t want to read those negative comments. Where, where he was in a spot where that was not helpful for him. And so we got to learn for ourselves, there’s a time when we need, like, a kick in the butt to get going.

I’m not saying we should always be easy on our athletes, we need to push them. And also it doesn’t need to be demeaning. It’s not helpful. If you can do that with love, you show them that you truly, truly care about them and you’re able to push them, then they will work harder. by increasing their value, not

by

[00:23:29] Donnie: killing a horse.

Again, Joe, you can chime in on this, but I don’t know if there’s any research or validity to this, but it’s like the Mark Twain quote of for every negative word you say to somebody, it takes seven positive words to kind of like negate that or bring it back to balance. And I do, I believe, uh, you know, that again, I had, I literally changed positions in college because I had an O line coach that never played football.

And was so critically sharp with his words, I just didn’t have a lot of respect for him. So you’re going to be that hard and sharp with me with your tongue and you’ve never played this sport. Once I found that out, I was done. And I changed over to a position playing defensive line under Coach Steve Greer, who passed away, I think a couple of years ago.

He’s an awesome coach. He was really hard on me. with his words, but guess what? There was more compassion in his coaching style because he was an all american defensive lineman back in the 60s when he was undersized and small and he was a stud. And so he could coach you differently because he’d been in your shoes before.

So there was a different level of how he would deliver his criticism. And so you could receive it better. So it was good.

[00:24:44] Joe: Yeah, I know. I mean, that’s the quote is honestly. probably pretty accurate. I mean, I’ve seen some athletes, I’ll won’t say who, but, you know, doing something like an Olympic lift or it takes a lot of, there’s a kind of a lot of moving parts, you know, with those.

And, you know, some, some kids get a little, um, not scared, but, you know, they lose a little belief that they’re going to catch that clean or catch that snatch. And, and, um, and sometimes, you know, I’ve seen one kid, they got the cue, you know, Hey, don’t be scared. Like, yeah. You know, let’s, let’s get it, you know, and then they’re, they’re thinking, they’re thinking, uh, oh, I’m, I’m always scared, like, like probably what they heard, you know, if I had to perceive it that way is, oh, I’m scared, I suck.

And then it’s like, you know, it took like a couple weeks to, a lot of positive reinforcement with that individual to, to kind of get them back where we wanted them. And it’s like, dang, like that really wasn’t even, Yelling at him or anything, but it was just enough like one negative or what they perceive you negative comment Took a couple weeks of positive reinforcement just to to get back where we were, you know

[00:25:48] Donnie: So so to to Joe’s point actually, what would your advice be for the listeners?

They’re working with athletes as a sharp coach That’s what would what would you tell him? How would you tell them coach them through that? Yeah for the athletes Yeah, what would you tell the our listener? To help that athlete kind of work through that with that head coach or assistant

[00:26:06] Ashley: coach. Yeah, yeah.

Well, one, they’re going to be needing to do a lot of positive self talk, building their own confidence. If they can’t rely on a coach, if the coach is going to be bringing them down, then they got to, one thing I would say, one of my favorite things is a confidence journal. That’d be at the end of every day, or if you got a real tough situation, maybe a few times a day, writing down one thing you like about yourself and something good you did that day.

So then they’re starting to build their own confidence. When it comes down to it, if you can have a confidence that is so deeply rooted, it doesn’t really matter what other people say. It’s hard to say, yeah. That said, you also got to surround yourself with good people, right? It’s really challenging. If you have a coach, you’re in front of that coach a lot, and they’re, they’re berating you, then you got to develop a lot of self love, a lot of connections, a lot of social support, so that it’s not taking over to kind of balance things out a bit.

So, I would say be really intentional with who you surround yourself with. And With the negative comments from that coach, you got to be real good at finding their intention. I don’t, I don’t know that most coaches are just trying to be rude, right? They might not know better. And so to try to find the intention, what’s the coach trying to teach me?

And use that as your filter. Uh, because it’s, it’s going to be hard another way if you’re, if you’re stuck in that position.

[00:27:23] Donnie: Quick story. Uh, this is like crazy story. I remember, uh, was I was working with football here many years ago and we had this kid on the team. Uh, his nickname was Megatron and it wasn’t because he acted like Megatron.

He just, his body, he was just a freak physically. And now the kid had some issues. Growing up and stuff. And this hard nosed coach came in just hot yelling, cursing. And then one morning, this individual, this guy was huge. He was probably six, three, six, four, two 50, two 60. I mean, stuck, ripped strong, fast explosive.

And he was just. Uh, late to the workout one early, this off season and decides to rip him in front of everybody. And this kid blew up. I mean, I thought he was literally going to stomp this coach’s rear end right there in front of all of us. I literally saw it. Thankfully it didn’t turn out to anything bad, but it escalated quick.

I moved to another end of the. The warmup line was like, I’m not going, I don’t want to be on this one. And, um, Megatron, this athlete finally calmed down. We got back to normal. I saw that coach from that point on changed his coaching style because that kid couldn’t, for whatever reason, that was not, you know, embarrassing, screaming at him and cursing him out in front of the whole team.

He was not going to have it. And, uh, from that point on, he would always pull them aside or he’d call him and have a meeting with him privately. And we didn’t have more issues with him, but again, that was not going to go well

[00:29:01] Ashley: with that kid. Well, because the other thing I was going to say is advocate for yourself.

This is really scary for athletes though, because there’s a power dynamic, and that could be really challenging. So, if you do have a coach who you know cares about you at some level, if you can advocate for yourself and step up, learn some communication skills of being like, hey, coach, I want to make sure we’re on the same page.

I want to let you know, here’s what’s really helpful for me. This isn’t so helpful. Can we talk about, Like how to reach some common ground because it’s hard for coaches They got however many people and they’re trying to tailor it right in a different way. They got their own stuff They got a change. So that is a it is really challenging with the power dynamic.

Yeah,

[00:29:36] Donnie: you got it Yeah, you got to throw it out. And I think what I see a lot of time in coaching. I just wonder yeah I’ve wondered like The way you coach your athletes, would you respond well to that if somebody yelled and screamed and berated you? I don’t know question. I don’t think I don’t i’ve never met anybody that thrives under that kind of environment or culture You know now I think you you do need to be tough on your athletes and you need to hold them accountable But I don’t think to your point coach coach.

Ashley like you got to watch kind of how they’re responding to it So yeah,

[00:30:10] Joe: and I kind of wanted to redirect a little bit. I want to know about, we all have strengths and weaknesses as athletes and coaches and whatnot, you know, and it seems like we wrote usually pretty self aware of our strengths are, but no matter how many strengths we have, the few or many weaknesses seem to always kind of like take over for either major competition or a major event they’re about to do, you know, how How do we overcome those weaknesses?

You know, what, like, what is, what does that process kind of look like? You know, is that self talk? Is it game planning, goal setting, you know, how, how do. We know what’s like a preferred way to go about that. Yeah.

[00:30:50] Ashley: There’s a lot of different ways. Some of it would be just like you said, working at it from the self talk perspective.

I actually had a session today with a team where we talked about strengths and it can be really uncomfortable actually for athletes to like, if I walked up to you and I said, hi, what’s your name? Tell me three strengths about yourself. Might feel a little awkward, comfortable to acknowledge them. So I think one, increasing our awareness around our strengths.

One of my favorite ways to do that, that helps them feel more comfortable and connected, is to think about the people in your life who’ve helped you develop those qualities. So whether it’s a tangible skill, like I’m a good shooter, a good passer, or I’m hardworking, I’m determined, and thinking about all the people in your life who’ve helped you develop those qualities.

That’s one gonna just kind of open your circle up a bit more. That inner critic is really strong for most people and we also have a negativity bias. So we got to really work hard and be very intentional with thinking about our strengths versus our weaknesses because that’s just, that’s just automatic.

And so I think, um, there are some ways that you can use your strengths to actually help your weaknesses. So for example, um, I’m not, I, I didn’t grow up being a super patient person. And one thing I’m really good at is working really hard and I care a lot about people And so if i’m focused on my weaknesses in relationships and i’m like, oh i’m just not patient I’m gonna beat myself up for that.

I’m gonna isolate myself more and that’s what i’m trying to get better at my weakness So I just gotta be more patient It’s not super fun. But if I think about connecting with people and loving people and I’m like, you know, I just want to get better at that today, then being patient is way easier because I’m, I’m, I’m directed towards my strengths.

So I think being intentional about what are the, the ways that you can use your strengths by just focusing on them and actually increasing them, then naturally your weaknesses will become. Better or less, however you want to phrase that. So that, that could be really powerful. I think, I mean, having a coach again, this is why I have this job because it can take a little bit more to work through what is your self talk?

When is your inner critic showing up? Let’s work to turn the volume down on that inner critic and turn up the volume on our inner coach. And that can come in a lot of ways, journaling, the self talk, regulating our emotions, all that kind of stuff. For

[00:33:09] Joe: sure. Yeah, there’s, um, I can’t remember her name. Um, she was about to fight for the UFC title.

Um, can’t remember the weight class either, but they showed a video of her and she was using self talk before the match. So she’s standing on her end, you know, throughout, you know, it was ready, ready. Um, and I think at the time they’re, they’re calling out their names, you know, um, where they’re from and all that.

And in the whole time, it had to be like five minutes. She just kept saying like, you could read her lips. She’s going, you’re the best, you’re the best. Yeah. You’re the best. And it was like, she’s just blocking out any negativity, weakness or whatever. And she’s just focused and she ended up winning the title, uh, I think by first round knockout or something like that.

I mean, she, she went and dominated, but was just a really cool example. You almost like never really see self talk, you know what I mean? Like, it’s mostly just kind of in our head, you know, stuff we kind of run through and I just, I just thought that was

[00:34:03] Donnie: pretty cool. I’m not the brain person here, but I’ve read enough books on this topic, the retinocular activating system.

I’ve always, that’s a big fancy long word, but I always took it as to what you guys are saying. It’s like, I don’t know if you remember the old days where you would burn a CD. Once you burned a CD, you couldn’t burn it again. It was like, whatever’s on there is on there. I feel like that in your mind, you have these like, these little messages and beliefs that are kind of burned into your brain.

And some of these. You know, these self kind of value statements you have about yourself kind of helps rewire that one of the authors, one of my favorite authors read, I highly recommend this book is called soundtracks by, uh, what’s his name? Johnny cuff and I just read it and I’d love to hear your thoughts on overthinking.

And so he talks about it in the book, how he goes through different, like. You know, thing, different, different ways we overthink stuff. And I see this in our athletes. And typically you see, uh, like I work with our men’s tennis team. We’ve got definitely a guy on there that high performer, like he’s amazing, but then sometimes he can get so deep in the weeds of something and he starts overthinking it and now he’s kind of getting off track of, you know, what we’re trying to actually to accomplish.

But this guy mentally resilient, but just speak, I know it’s not on our script today, but overthinking, what is your go to with overthinking? Yeah,

[00:35:30] Ashley: there’s a lot that can be there. I like peeling back the layers of what are they overthinking about right there. They’re ruminating and getting at the root of it, which usually some level of anxiety, some negative self belief, right?

I’m not good enough. What if this? What if that? And kind of going back to what you said before about the don’t be scared. Here’s one tip of that. If we can give people something to focus on rather than avoid, because if we hear don’t be scared, then we’re going to be scared. They don’t shoot, I don’t think I’m going to shoot, right?

And so, what’s the opposite of not being scared? Like, hey, be brave, you got this. Then now, that inner critic can’t show up, and same with what you’re, what you’re saying, rather than trying to overthink. And, and work through the anxiety is like, what are you trying to do? Let’s approach that, focus on that.

Because anxiety is all about threats, all about that, that avoidance. How do we protect ourselves? It’s just the best way to do that is to be proactive. And so that could be one way to switch, switch gears a bit. That’s good.

[00:36:26] Joe: Yeah. Another quick question, you know, social media, I mean. Our athletes are, and I’m, I’m probably the same way or we’re all glued to our phones these days.

I mean, it’s almost impossible. You mentioned Michael Jordan earlier, you know, he, he looked at his critics, you know, maybe some athletes back in the day could just, just don’t read the paper, you know, but now it’s like, we’re going to see it. No matter what, you know, how, how, I guess, how do you work with athletes and helping them block a lot of those things

[00:36:55] Ashley: out?

Yeah, some of it is going to be finding those, uh, ways to self regulate, right? Is it turning off notifications? Is it, is it being real? You have to be proactive. And also even with putting those kinds of safeguards into place and being proactive about how you want your social media use to be and how it’s going to be filling for you.

Probably you’re still going to have those negative things come. So learning and making a game plan for when those things come, what are you going to do about it? How can you again, build that self confidence, who are your safe network of people who you trust and really, really care about because it’s going to happen and the higher the level, the more it’s going to happen, the quicker it can spread.

And so, yeah, that is definitely something that’s worth. Yeah, making a plan

[00:37:38] Donnie: for good. I think so. I want to piggyback Joe. Give us nuts and bolts. So today it’s just so apparent There’s this strength and conditioning piece right the physical piece. There’s this nutrition piece We’ve got the sports science where we’re collecting data.

Talk about how do you practically to our listeners? Mental game. How do you lay out a good mental game for an athlete? That’s something that’s low hanging fruit, uh, something that can be repetitive and, and to Joe’s point, I mean, athletes, I think I read a couple of years ago, um, this book, I forget the name of it.

Um, Marie Florio, whatever, anyway, she’s an entrepreneur, but she breaks down how much time we’re on our phones in there and she just gets into the, the weeds of like, if you just took a portion of that phone time and put it towards whatever your goal or dream is. You’ll get so much better. So, so for athletes, if they would just spend a small portion of their phone time doing mental game stuff, it would be so, so give us some, some low hanging

[00:38:40] Ashley: fruit there.

I mean, one, I would say get a coach, but get a mental coach, right? We have the sports coaches. We’ve got the nutrition coaches, get someone who can work with you. Um, the second thing, it could be some journaling. If people like to write, then that could be something that’s really helpful. Like I mentioned that confidence journal.

I mean, that can transform people. You’re building awareness, you’re thinking about your day, you’re building your confidence, what you like about yourself, what’s going well. The other thing I would say is, is creating that game plan. Like, identify those situations that are really hard for you. What, what are the situations where the anxiety shows up, the nervousness shows up, and even just thinking about how How do you want to respond?

Journal that out, make a game plan, right? Use some visualization if you want to do that kind of stuff on your own. The other, like, one of the easiest tools in terms of self talk, if you, if you’re one of those people who, uh, are really hard on themselves, when you catch yourself in that moment, or ahead of time, make a game plan for, what do you say to your teammates that you care about?

Or think about your ideal coaches, what would they say to you in that moment? And The biggest thing I feel like for me in the mental space is about gaining perspective. That inner critic, get our narrow focus, we’re in that threat state and we get a really narrow perspective. So, whatever ways you need to gain a greater perspective, maybe it’s talking with loved ones, talking with coaches you care about, it’s journaling, it’s gratitude.

That’s going to help you a lot.

[00:40:01] Donnie: Joe, what I hear her saying, this is an absolute phenomenal read. It’s worth every Secondary time. The book’s called Generation Z Unfiltered. Dr. Tim Elmore, the highest and number one skill that kids today lack, not just in sport, but just kids because of social media, they don’t have the ability to reflect reflective thinking.

It’s all consumption. I’m just scrolling and taking in and I’m going through life and when I’m, so when I make mistakes and I’m always looking for likes and comments of positivity, when you fail, there’s got to be this piece of like, okay, what happened? What are the lessons learned? And you’ve got to kind of get back from it and you’ve got to reflect.

That’s what journaling is. That’s what looking at the big perspective. What can you learn from? And then you’re not always just consuming and taking in your brain doesn’t ever get anything out of it. There’s no change in the, in the way you see things. So I think the reflective pieces, anything you can do to teach your kids to reflect more is going to be huge.

[00:41:00] Ashley: Yeah, it is huge. And then at some point, like there’s a lot that we can work out. And when I talk with athletes, honestly, they have the answers inside of them. For the most part, but they have to find a way to unlock it. And that is the power in coaching in whether it’s strength and conditioning or technique or whatever is we got to unlock it.

[00:41:19] Joe: Yeah. And in putting everything together, it feels like utilizing all of this for sport and performance to translate very well to, you know, a life after athletics, you know, not all of our athletes continue on to be professionals. Uh, you know, which industries have you found this to be, you know, the need for resilience and self compassion, you know, what, what industries.

Probably need the most.

[00:41:38] Ashley: Yeah. All of them. I think, uh, this is something I love about my job is, is we can use sports to help in any performance domain, which is everything. It’s, it’s school, it’s work, it’s business, it’s medicine, it’s home life and relationships. And so like performances everywhere that negative self talk shows up in lots of different areas.

And so the beautiful thing about sport is, is every single day. There’s several moments where you’re making mistakes and failing in school. It might not be as frequent, and so it’s a good place to practice, but it’s totally applicable anywhere. Yeah. And

[00:42:14] Joe: well, in the professional world too, you know, a lot of people, they, you know, you’re, you’re making money.

You could have a family, kids, house, all the adulting things, you know, the, I’d say the stakes are a little bit higher. Uh, in, in a lot of ways, you know, does your approach differ at all with, uh, you know, with folks beyond athletics or is it kind of just, um, similar

[00:42:36] Ashley: but different? Yeah, it’s similar. The context changes obviously, but the practices and concepts are the same.

It’s still developing that belief in yourself. It’s still working through self talk, but yeah, the context does change a little bit.

[00:42:50] Donnie: Awesome. Good stuff. Well, for time’s sake, we’re going to have to land the plane here. Um, if our listeners want to reach out. And work with you, learn more about you, inquire what’s the best way

[00:43:03] Ashley: to find you.

Yeah, website, failbettertraining. com, also on Instagram, LinkedIn, you can find me there, failbettertraining, uh, on Instagram, and then LinkedIn, Ashley Kutcher, Ph. D.

[00:43:14] Donnie: Awesome, and then what’s kind of the different ways you work with people? Give us a little bit of

[00:43:17] Ashley: a Yeah, so I work with entire teams, whether it’s professional, college, high school level, one on one, it could be virtual, can be in person, and then also doing workshops and speaking, whether it’s corporate events or particular clubs and organizations like that

[00:43:33] Donnie: as well.

Yes, and I’ll say Ashley came in and did a About an hour and a half training with a lot of our staff and did a phenomenal job. So thank you, uh, definitely enjoyed it and got a lot from it. So that’s why you’re here talking today. So, uh, anyway, you know, we wish you success and hopefully don’t take her too much.

Anybody listening? Cause we want to use it too. So

[00:43:54] Ashley: thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Anyway,

[00:43:57] Donnie: any resources, one resource. Obviously fail, failbettertraining. com.

[00:44:01] Ashley: There’s a bunch on the website. So I’ve got a free download. There’s a webinar that you can watch. Uh, my workbook that, that goes with the reset program.

It’s meant to be a resource. Uh, it’s a good entry point though. So, but yeah, don’t, don’t hesitate to reach out. People can email me too. Everything’s on the website. How’s there. So it’s probably the best place.

[00:44:18] Donnie: Last fun question. Jill, where should she eat in Austin? She’s a newbie. She’s awesome. Like, well, she went to Australia.

[00:44:23] Joe: I got an answer. Okay. Oh, I. I’m a big fan of true food. What’s true food? Where’s that at? That is over, um I haven’t heard that. It’s over by the new library off of, uh, Cesar Chavez. Oh, yeah. Kind of a second

[00:44:39] Donnie: street area. Like Austin High? Area

[00:44:41] Joe: that, yeah. Yeah. Like the electric district or whatever that was.

It’s over there. The old power plant was all, um, it’s really good.

[00:44:47] Donnie: It’s really

[00:44:47] Joe: healthy. Okay, cool, cool, cool. There’s, there’s one in the domain too. There’s two of them. Okay. Yeah. Cool. It’s awesome.

[00:44:52] Donnie: Yeah, that’s right. You were, you got your PC here. What do you like eat? What’s your go-to spot?

[00:44:55] Ashley: I gonna say I, I love chewies.

I mentioned that to you. I love chewies, uh, Jalal. Cheddar or the jalapeno ranch is real good. Yeah, I’ll say my favorite donut shop is in South Austin Casey’s Donuts. Never had it I’m gonna have grazed donuts and uh, the croissant sandwiches. Wait, so you said Casey’s? Casey’s Donuts. Yeah. Mouth watering?

Delicious. South? I’m there. South Austin. I’m going to pick them up in the morning. Their donut holes are the best. I’m going. And their croissant sandwiches.

[00:45:21] Donnie: You

[00:45:21] Joe: sold me. Donut holes, that’s my go to. They’re

[00:45:24] Donnie: so nice, too. I’m a burger guy. Are you a burger guy? Absolutely. You like burgers? I do. Yeah, I like burgers.

Have you had Jew

[00:45:29] Ashley: Boy Burger yet? No, I haven’t. Oh, but I saw it. Which one? I looked it up. I almost had it once. No, I haven’t had it.

[00:45:34] Joe: Is it good? It’s good. It’s

[00:45:36] Donnie: solid. Okay. It’s up there. It’s not far from campus, though. It’s pretty close. It’s about a seven minute drive from campus, so. Anyway, time to get some lunch.

We’re not getting paid for any of this. We just, we

[00:45:44] Joe: like to eat. I think the city’s going to owe us at some point. There’s restaurants. There’s like, there’s like free plugs for all these places. That’s true. That’s true.

[00:45:52] Donnie: Well, hey, uh, we appreciate everybody dialing in and listening today. Coach Ashley. Sorry.

I got to call you mental coach there. It’s just natural. Uh, thank you so much. Uh, great episode today and very informative and eye opening. So coach Joe, always good to have you in the studio. And hey. Thank you so much. That’s the team behind the team, 2024 kicking off with the bang. And we will catch you on the flip side.

Hook them horns.

[00:46:18] Ashley: Thanks

[00:46:21] Donnie: so much for tuning in and listening to this episode of the team behind the team podcast. For future episodes, go to iTunes, Spotify, Google podcast, or Stitcher. We definitely want to keep having great guests on the show and great content. So if you have a moment, please go to iTunes, leave a rating and review and let us know how we’re doing.

I’m Donnie Maib, and thanks so much for tuning in.