← Youth Inc. with Greg Olsen
Youth Inc. with Greg Olsen
Steve Magness on the Mental Side of Youth Sports and Peak Performance
00:44:41
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- [00:00]
A
Make sure you subscribe to both our YouTube channel and our RSS feed for all future conversations here at youthink. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode here on youthink. And today we have an episode that I am really excited about. One of my favorite authors, one of my favorite speakers, thought leaders of Steve Magnus, the author of Do Hard Things, his new book, Win the Inside Game. Steve, really a big fan of everything you do, everything you preach, especially in the world of youth sports, and really appreciate you joining us here today on.
- [00:33]
B
Youth Inc. Yeah, thanks so much. I love the work that you do. So it's an honor to be here.
- [00:38]
A
Wow, I appreciate that. So I want to start with, you know, one of your more famous, one of your most well known pieces, the book you wrote, Do Hard Things. And I want to talk to it through the lens of youth sports. You know, in the book you really challenge the idea that the old school idea of toughness and what does that mean and how do we teach kids to be quote, unquote tough? How would you frame that through the context and in the lens of the youth sports experience?
- [01:07]
B
Yeah, I think youth sports is the perfect thing to capture that because I think often we have this idea that, oh, the way that we instill toughness and discipline and grit and all those things that we want from sport is essentially to be kind of the hard ass old school football coach or basketball coach. And if you look at the research in the data, it just doesn't play out. And chances are you know this as an athlete or as a student or as an individual, because what happens is the people who are ridden who are like, you know, have the parent or the coach who says, like, do this or else you're going to be punished or run laps or do burpees until the end of time or what happens is that changes their motivation. They start doing the thing only because the coach, the teacher, the parent is there telling them and they're performing out of fear. And when we instill that motivation out of fear, the only reason I do this exercise is to not get punished. We don't instill long term motivation. That creates good habits, that creates good motivation, that creates the grit that creates that, that ability. When there's no parent there, when the coach isn't there, you're in the game and you have to figure out how to navigate this difficult moment by yourself. To do that, we need intrinsic motivation. So out of wanting to get better, joy of the sport, seeing how good we can be, and that is nurtured by Putting people in a position where, yes, they need to do hard things, but they also have the support to be able to try things and potentially fail and get back up and try again.
- [02:53]
A
Well, there's a lot there that I want to unpack. I want to state, and I want to talk about internal and external motivation and I want to talk about habit building. So I want to get to all that. But stay with this conversation. So I'm going to. We're going to do an experiment here. I'm going to frame me and my dad and a bunch of my old teammates, Luke and Stu. We coach a middle school football team. We. Anyone who's ever played for us. No one's ever going to say, oh, it was easy, it was casual, they were very, hey, it's okay, get back up and try again. We are really hard on our kids. But let me frame it to you in our perspective how we're very honest with the families and the kids, and you tell me if we're on the right track. We have very high standards for our kids. It's not okay. Not. We always say, not everything's okay. Right? Like, we really ask them to do things that in their brain, right away they're thinking, I can't do this. And we sit there saying, yes, you can. We are going to hold you to this every single day. We are going to pour into you, we're going to do extra reps. If you mess it up, we're going to do it 100 times. And, yes, you can do it. And right now, you don't think you can, but we promise you that you can. And we are going to grind them and grind them and grind them. And our message to them is we coach you because we believe that you can do it. If we didn't think you could do it, we would put somebody else in this position. So when we're on you about whatever it is, your route, your blocking technique, where your helmet is your first step, like all the little details that we wear them out about, we then bring them together at the end and we. And we remind them every day, why do we coach you hard? Why do we push you hard? And they'll to a man say, because you know we can do it, because you know we can do it. Like, that is the framework of everything we do. Now is it the put our arm around and hug them? Not really. But I think at the end of the day and at the end of the season, our kids know no one believes in them more than us. No one loves them more. Than us. No one lives and dies with their success and failures more than us. And I can see over the course of the year, their confidence, they stand taller. The way their body, like everything about them grows because they're held to such a standard that all of a sudden they start doing it and they go, wait a minute, I am better than I thought I could ever be. Like, are we at least somewhere in the realm of what you're putting together here? Like, and you can be honest with me. You can't hurt my feelings.
- [05:20]
B
Yeah. So I think the best way to answer this is actually to look at the research not in coaching, but in parenting, because we have about 50 years of research and psychologists have simplified it. If we. If we plot what we call demandingness and responsiveness on two different axis. So demandingness, you think. You hear that. You think, okay, that means you're going to be like hardcore and high demand. But what it really means is exactly what you said there. Expectations and standards. We're going to set a standard and we're going to hold you to the standard. If it's not throwing food at dinner, that is the standard we have. And if you break that standard, there's some sort of consequences. But on the other side, you also need what we call high responsiveness, which is essentially the other part of what you identified there. We are here to help. We care. I care about you, not just in your athletic performance, but in getting you better as a human being. Like, we are on this journey both in sport and life, to help you. And what research overwhelmingly says is we need both of those things. We need the high demandingness or expectations or standards, and we need a high level of responsiveness. Where people go wrong is they hear things and they say, okay, people are too hard. I don't want to be that. That old school 1970s football coach. I'm going to go another way and have no expectations. No, that's what we'd call permissive parenting. And the kid learns like, hey, I can do whatever I want. There's no standards, so we don't want either of the extremes. Permissive, no standards or high standards. And no responsiveness, which is essentially, I'm just going to be a jerk or a hole and, like, not really care about your development. And you'll know that. So it's really. The magic happens when we combine those two things. And I think from what you're describing is like, that is. That is what you are giving high standards. But also we care about you and we want you to get better.
- [07:24]
A
It's funny. We always try to frame it like we can't coach you hard until you know we love you, right? And the more I love you, the harder I'm going to push you and the more I'm going to coach you. And I am very. I'll look our kids right in my own kids, obviously they know this. They leave this all day. But like the other kids that now we kind of look at as an extension of our own kids because we coach them in multiple sports. I've known them since they were five years old. They've grown up with us now through the school that now we're all playing together at our school as a middle school program. And I look them in the eyes and I say, guys, no one is going to love you more than me, but I am going to coach the hell out of you because that's what you should want out of me. Like, if I had this big talk with the kids the other day after practice, like every day we try to leave them with at the end of the day after we fix this and we coach footwork and we do this, we what is our message? That they go home to mom and dad about like, I want to just put a bow on the end of the day. And our message to them is the day we stop coaching you, you should tell your parents that we're not the right program for you. The day your teacher stops giving you your time, the day people, your boss stop every once someone gives up on you, you'll know it. And that should be your biggest fear, is that the day you walk in and we don't say a word to you, we don't fix you, we don't tell you to play hard, we don't tell you whatever the corrections is, you should be concerned then. But if one day we come in and we're all over you, it's because we want you to be the best version of yourself. And we see something in you that we're not getting all the time, but it's in there and we're going to pull it out come hell or high water. Like, that's just the model in which I was raised. It's the only way I know. And I'll tell you, boots on the ground, real time experience. Like the kids, these boys, they're old enough to do it. Like they get it and they, most of them, the vast majority of them respond to it.
- [09:15]
B
You know, My wife was an elementary school teacher and now she's elementary school ap and I love picking her brain because she was also a world class athlete. But you can see the connection there because in the classroom what happens is if a teacher gives a kid a path, says, I believe in you, you can solve this, you can get good at science or math or reading or whatever. The thing is, even if they're pressing that kid, if they give that kid a path, they're going to stay motivated. The worst thing that can happen in a school is exactly what you outline there is the teacher kind of gives up and goes through the motions because the kid picks that up and the kid says, what's the point? Why try? I don't have a path forward. There is no way to progress. I am who I am. I'm not good at math, science, reading, whatever it is, I'm just going to coast. So I think our job as a coach is very similar, is especially with you sports, you are the adult, you have the wisdom and perspective. Kids don't have that long term view. They can't see what they're capable of. Your job as a coach is to open doors and pathways and say, hey, if you follow this, if you commit to these ideas, this training, this coaching, whatever it is, we're going to open some doors. We don't know exactly where they are or they're going to lead, but we can tell you this, they are going to help you long term, both in sport and in life and set you up. And I think that's kind of what it's all about, is coaches. I almost see it as it's our job to widen the perspective or lens of that kid, to make them see that they are capable of more. Because when you're whatever age, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, like, you just don't have their wisdom to see that you need someone else to bring it out on you.
- [11:11]
A
Oh, it's so true. And I want to stay here, but in a slightly different angle. What's up guys? Do you want custom fanware like this cricket shirt? For Charlotte Christian School, we've got premium apparel from your favorite brands. The best part about it is I don't have to just wear it to Charlotte Christian's events. I can wear it to golf, I can wear it to lunch. It's turned into my uniform. Go right now over to youth.in Sign up for our newsletter. It talks about our podcast for that week, our interview guests, all the breaking news across the landscape of youth sports. And you can win one piece of merch for your school by going to sign up today. And remember, it's not.com, it's youth.in now back to our episode. You brought up internal versus external motivation.
- [11:51]
B
And.
- [11:52]
A
And that was something I really wanted to dive into, like the science behind it. And we can. Again, I go. We go through it on our own house. And at times it's really. And my kids are all middle schoolers, so I have an eighth grader and I have twin seventh graders. So we're still young in the maturity stage, and we're still building those perspectives. And there's a lot going on now in their lives, which I. Which I'm sure you understand. Well, you understand from a science perspective, your kids obviously are a little bit younger. But let me ask you this. Like, the science of motivation tells us what? Because some days I look around at my three kids and I'm like, they get it. Like, everything we've taught them about, like, process orientation, we're not worried about outcomes. We are not outcome driven. We are process. If we do the right processes and we put the hard work in, we give ourselves a chance of success. We don't guarantee success, but that's not like, that's everything. We try to harp on them. And at times I see that autonomy. I see them going through, you know, doing their homework on time, doing their drills in the basement, in the batting cage or stretching or whatever. Whatever we build that we say are important habits if they want to do the things that they're involved in. And then other days, we're pulling teeth. Hey, did you guys do this? No. Hey, did you remember? No. What does the science behind motivation tell us, especially at the youth age?
- [13:09]
B
Yeah. So I think here's where people often get it wrong, is they see it as like an either or. And in reality, we should see it as almost like a seesaw. It's a balancing act. None of us are like monks and got to be perfectly intrinsically motivated. Like, we're going to have that internal motivation because we want to get better. We have that sense of competency and belonging and mastery and seeing progress. Like, none of us are going to have 100% that. But what the research overwhelmingly shows is that we need that seesaw most of the times to be balanced, where we have just a little bit more internal motivation than external. And that's what it. That's what it is. And the thing here I want to make a point in is that the reason we harp on this so much is because especially in youth sports, everything else in the world is pulling them towards having that external motivation. I want to get validation from. If your kids are on social media, you know, from TikTok or Instagram or whatever, you know, I want my friends to see that I'm good at this. I want to win that trophy, that award, that championship, whatever have you. Everything in the world is pulling them in that direction. That's going to be natural to some degree. But if we don't have a counterbalance, if we don't have coaches and teachers and parents saying, hey, yeah, I get this, but this is why you need to fall in love with the process. This is why this matters. This is why we need to come back to this. Over time, then what happens is naturally your balance is just going to tip to that extrinsic. And what research shows, from sport to prodigies of math and science and whatever, is that if that external balance shifts too much, we tend to lose motivation over the long haul and we tend to burn out. And in fact, when I was a college coach, I did a little experiment where I took every kid that I recruited and signed for the team and looked at their internal versus external motivation coming out of high school. And then I looked at their performances four years later and their performance improvement. This is in track, so very objective sport. Their performance improvement was directly correlated to their internal motivation when entering college. If they had higher internal motivation than external, they got better over the long haul. If they didn't.
- [15:40]
A
How did you quantify that? Like, give us an example of how you quantified that. Is it a Q and A? Is it A? Like, how did you. You asked them questions?
- [15:48]
B
Yeah, so I used a psychology validated questionnaire and then paired that with, paired that with coaches ratings because I wanted both ideas, right. What they thought and then what their coaches thought of how they did, you.
- [16:01]
A
Often find that those were aligned.
- [16:03]
B
So this is what they were aligned. Whenever the kid had higher internal motivation. Okay. Where you often saw a disconnect is that kid who often. I'm going to paint with broad generalities here, but, but that kid who, who knew the right things to say. But then when you talk to mom or dad, you realize, oh, they're kind of driving the ship. When you talk to the coach, they said, you know, this kid is really good, like he's talented, but like he's never, he's never been in a position to have that autonomy to choose like mom and dad, make sure he is at everything, doing everything. And the reason that that's important, especially going from high school to college is, guess what? You go to college, it's like, yeah, you got coach, but there's not that hand holding that there is in high school. So I think when we bring it back to youth, as a parent, you look at where is my kid on that seesaw? And then am I developing the right habits and orientation so that when I'm no longer in the picture, like they have that ability to thrive and do it on their own?
- [17:13]
A
We, we. What we try to talk about a lot here is, and everything you just said, I want to like clip it and I'm just gonna like, when my kids come home from school, I'm just gonna like play it on the television and be like, see, it's not just dad, listen to Steve. But like we, I actually. And you can tell me if I'm wrong. I'm not a huge believer in goal setting. And I know that's a deeper, longer conversation. But like what I found, and again, this is just through my own personal experiences and the people close to me is the issue with goal setting is there's the. Then what? Right? Like, my goal is to make the varsity baseball team. I made the team, then what? My goal is to get a college scholarship. My goal is to get a big NFL contract. My goal is all these. I want to make this team showcase, All American, whatever it is. Then the question becomes, okay, well let's say you reach your goal, then what? Like, does the work stop? Like, that's why your point about like processes and we're just falling in love with the work and we're just falling in love with what does that day's work look like. It is really hard to convince a 14 year old, a 13 year old kid that I have in my house that that is the best path forward, right? It's very hard. But in my mind, in my experience, everything that I know, like, I think it's the only way, like that is the only way for long term success, right? You want momentary success. If your goal in life is to make the varsity baseball team, there are things you can do to manipulate the system to make the varsity baseball team. And if that's the end of the road, mission accomplished. I tell the boys all the time, I don't want to hear that you want to be a college, this a high school, this play on this team, let's just say we're going to be as good as humanly possible and get as good as we can indefinitely, wherever you make it. Maybe it's JV baseball, maybe it's varsity football, maybe it's college, something. Who knows what that is? You succeeded. Like they don't get it, but those are the try the habits that we try to preach. What does the. What, what does the science. What do the studies show like with that approach? Yeah, I'm like testing, I'm like testing my parenting knowledge on you here. So, yeah, help me out.
- [19:25]
B
Let's go. No, I'm, I'm actually in agreement and I'll give you the science in a second. But I'm gonna give you a little personal story. Where I think that is really important is I hate goals. Because for myself, goals backfired. I was a runner. I was the fastest miler in the country. My senior year in high school, I ran a 401.
- [19:43]
A
401? Yeah.
- [19:44]
B
I saw that my goal was to break the four minute mile barrier. That goal at first was motivating, but then when I ran 401 and 402 and 403 about a dozen times, that goal shifted from something that was motivating to almost this, like, oh, dear God, I'm gonna go through, you know, three quarters of the way of this race and be on pace. Am I gonna get this goal? It became like this fear, right? Can I do it? And I never did. And I think this is one of those another moments or demonstration of like goals create endpoint where we have no idea, no idea where the actual endpoint is.
- [20:25]
A
I couldn't agree more.
- [20:26]
B
You know, that's what it is. And I tell. I would. Whenever I was coaching college and even professional athletes and high school kids, I'd always tell them this. We really suck at predicting talent. And you don't have to take my word for it. Just go look at all the stories of the kids who weren't that great in high school and then made the pros, or go look at the people who are supposed to be phenoms and make it all the way to be a star. And they didn't quite make it. They didn't make it. We're not very good at predicting talent. So if I sit here and say like, hey, you're gonna make the varsity team or you're gonna make it to, you know, be drafted in the NFL, I'm just blowing smoke up you. I have no idea. So the best thing that we can do is say, okay, what gives us a chance to fulfill our potential? See how good we can be? And that is the process. And again, I'll go to the science. Now, there was a meta analysis. So a study of studies that looked at tens of thousands of participants across studies and they looked at different goal settings. When we look at performance or outcome goals, meaning I want to win this race or I want to run this time. The effect was so small, it was almost non existent on performance. When we looked at instead having a process orientation, it had a moderate to strong effect on performance. So the point is your experience, my experience, others experience aligns with the science which says, like, I get it, we all want to set these big audacious goals, but often those become the roadblocks or the endpoints where we get to the okay, what do we do now? I've accomplished my goal and now I don't know what's next. What we want is a never ending path towards how good can I be? Let's see what I can do. And the last bit of science I'll give on this is psychologists studied elite swimmers. So swimmers who had won an Olympic medal or better and what they found that at some point early in their career, they switched from what they called a performance mindset to a quest mindset. All that means is they switched from judging themselves solely by the time on the clock to I'm going to see how good I can be. I'm gonna put myself in a position to explore my abilities. And those are the people who made it to the Olympic medalists. Literally the top of the top. So however you want to frame it, I'm 100% in agreement. We need things to allow us to see how good we can be instead of stop signs that say, us, okay, we've hit this point, now what do we do?
- [23:15]
A
Yeah, get better forever. Exactly right. Like it's the easiest way I can frame it. And I think this really takes to another really important conversation that's going on in the youth sports world right now and, and something that we try to share and we try again. I just take my own household, for example. I tell my kids all the time, right now we're living in a moment where we are trying to make it a race. We have expedited the path of development to being so young that instead of it being a race to 18, where we go, okay, let's see what everyone looks like as a junior and senior in high school. We probably have a better picture of what sport you're good at. What college level are you capable of playing at if that's in your path? Or typically, like that was the age group where people started to separate themselves. We've now expedited that path of development to 12 years old, sometimes even younger. So the question becomes, at any given moment, if we just took a freeze, just a snapshot of time, I say to My kids. Well, you might not ever be the best at any one finite moment, but if the goal is to get better forever, you might not pass everyone by until you're 17. You might be 24. You might be improving yourself in the workplace as a dad at 31. Like improvement doesn't just mean fielding, hitting, throwing, catching. It could just be your ability to learn, your ability to take on new tasks, your ability to have a job, career change, whatever it is. Like. But the problem is right now we are evaluating everyone at snapshots of time. 12 year old baseball, 14 year old soccer, 16 year old football. Like we, that is the way we evaluate kids. We're ranking kids in the class of 2034 and it's bananas. And what we're telling these kids is okay, you're ranked in the class of 2034, you're in fourth grade. Oh my God, I must be really good at basketball. That's where my identity lies. I'm really good at girl soccer, that's where. And all other things get put on the back burner or just get knocked off the table. Like how do we combat that? Like how do we go out there and champion the message of wide berth of experiences, wide berth of high standards. And then let's just let this thing play itself out through an never ending quest, in your words, of improvement and development and growth. And then it'll all sort itself out when it gets to the appropriate time. Like how do we get that message out there?
- [25:42]
B
That is the, that's the hard question. Greg. I wish I had a great answer, but I think that the answer is this is first. It starts with educating and understanding why it occurs. Why it occurs is because parents want the best for their children. We get it like we're parents, we want the best for our kids. And often you don't know. You are ignorant to the world of sports because let's be frank, like most people weren't professional athletes like yourself. Most people haven't coached at a high level. They don't know. And again, I see this all the time with the kids and students at my wife's elementary school. They hear that I've worked with high level athletes and they come around and they say, hey little Johnny, Susie is in third grade. Can like we get some private coaching and like ability to do this? I'm like no, they're in third grade. Just let them play a bunch of sports and have some fun. But the reason is that parent is trying to do the best that they can. What we need to do is Educate them and say, I get it, I see where this is coming from. But if you look at, let's just have a hypothetical and we said we want your kid to be professional. What sets them on the best stage? We know this from years and years of data across sports. It is that wide berth, that diversified sports that not specializing until they're ready to. That's what sets us up best. Both from a physical development because we have more tools in our toolkit, but also from a psychological development because what we know is if we cement our identity around soccer player, football player, baseball star, when we're 10, we've shut off identity development before. It should like we should be dabbling in expression, exploring who we are. And when we don't dabble and explore and we become a soccer player at 10, we have a fragile identity because if we can no longer see a path towards soccer player, it literally shatters who we are. We're like, this is who I am. What do you mean? I can't be this. What am I going to do in life if instead we see ourselves. I love sports, I love athletics. Well, guess what? When soccer doesn't work, maybe we switch to track or we play golf or whatever it have you we're able to shift. So I think step one is educating people and say the path you think you're going down to help is actually going to backfire. Like we need this other path which might seem like it's not gonna help in the short term, but over the long haul it's gonna keep kids a in the sport and then be developing those motivations and that identity that allows them to become a robust and resilient human being. Because no matter how good you are, even if you're the star of stars, you're going to go through a rough patch. And if you don't have the tools to handle that rough patch, guess what? It's not going to be fun.
- [28:45]
A
Well, it leads me to something I wanted to talk a lot about which is how the idea of failure at the youth level. Right, right. Like I think everyone comes to grips with professional athletes. You throw the game, you know, you throw the game ceiling in, in interception, you're going to be on the front cover of the paper and there's going to be scrutiny and every talk show is going to be ripping you and like you kind of understand what you sign up for at the college and cop pro level. Like it is an outcome oriented business. Like that's. If you don't like it, then don't enter that World, like that's pretty much. But at the youth level, what I see boots on the ground is. And Michael Gervais, Dr. Michael Gervais has become a friend of mine and he actually gave me this idea. He said it's called, we used to say, like helicopter parenting. He's like, now we call it Zamboni parenting. Right where we're out in front of the kid and we're smoothing the ice for them to follow in behind us to make sure they're on the right team and they get the right playing time and they're playing shortstop or they're batting in the right order in the lineup or they score the most goals. But in reality what we're doing is we're just creating an environment where there never is any setback. There is no failure. They're always the best player on the team. They don't. And, and the example, I like to always kind of remind myself and tell my kids, like right now my kid goes out on the mound and he gives up three home runs in the first inning. No one's thrilled. Everyone, you know, you're upset for your kid, it's nerve wracking. You don't like it. But you know what? They come home to your house, they're 12, they have tears, there's conversations about why they go to bed, they wake up the next day, we had breakfast and we move on. If that. If you never put your kid in those situations to have failure, to have setbacks, if they. It's coming, it's coming in sport, it's coming in life, it's coming in some aspect there is going to be setbacks and roadblocks. I'd much rather those kids experience those moments. For the first couple times in my home as a young kid where they lay on the couch crying with mom, then as an 18 year old high school senior or a 21 year old kid who loses his first job, or the 27 year old kid who unfortunately gets divorced or something happens in his life and they have no skills to ever put the fires out. Like why are fam. Like what is. What is the psychology and the science behind? Why are we so fearful to let our kids be in tough situations where the outcome is not guaranteed?
- [31:11]
B
Because it's uncomfortable. I mean, it's uncomfortable for the kid, but it's also uncomfortable for a parent. Think about it like this. I have a toddler, okay? And if she falls off the couch or something really small, what's my natural instinct? Run over and be like, oh no, are you okay? Like, yeah, but if I do that in every situation, and there's research on this, but I'll tell you from a parent too, if you do that in every situation, your toddler looks up and says, okay, if something bad happens, slightly bad, mom and dad are gonna save the day and I'm gonna externalize my coping strategy to be dependent on mom and dad. Right. Instead, again, I'm not talking serious situations, but if they fall and scrape their knee or something like that, and you say, oh, that hurts little bit, but it's okay, like, we can get up and link and keep playing, guess what they learn? They say, oh, this isn't that bad. I can cope with this. I'm going to develop. The same thing happens with youth kids, whether we're five or 12, okay. We have to learn the skills to cope with negative feelings, emotions, physical pain, discomfort. And we can either learn to cope with them productively, which generally has what we called approach orientation, Meaning I'm going to approach the problem, I'm going to solve it, I'm going to deal with it. Yeah. Sometimes I'm going to cry my eyes out and feel the thing, but I'm going to be solution oriented. Or we can have an avoidant mindset, meaning, this pain sucks. I'm going to do whatever I can to get rid of it. In this moment, as a parent, like, you're instilling how your kids deal with things. So if you never let them go through those struggles, if you always bulldoze down that path ahead of them, guess what? They don't get the reps. And like, anything like, you know, it's just like training a muscle in the gym. If we don't do the reps, we don't get the strength improvement. If we don't do the reps on the mental training, on the psychology, on the dealing with failure, on the dealing with tough situations, we never develop those coping strategies to get through it. So I think as a parent, like, one of the best things that you can do is essentially realize, hey, it's not my time to step in. I'm gonna let this, I'm gonna let this play out a little bit and then, yes, I'm gonna be there to comfort my child or help them navigate or after they've cried at home, to be there to be like, okay, lend that perspective so that we can like, learn, grow and move on from this.
- [33:51]
A
Yep.
- [33:51]
B
But if you immediately step in all the time, guess what? No learning and development is going to happen.
- [33:58]
A
That's so interesting. Let me ask you this do I want a kid who, after he has a bad game to be really upset? Like, it really bothers them? On one extreme. Do I want a kid who walks out of the gym and goes, I know I stunk, don't really care. I'm going to go home and ride my bike? Like, do we want our kid to be upset or do. Or do we look at the kid and go, Like, I have a hard time wrapping my head around that. Like, at sometimes I want my kids to feel the discomfort of failure and say, I don't want this to happen again. What can I do to prevent it? And that's where I get into, like, my whole, like, soapbox about, like, the outcomes. The outcome. What did you do leading up to it? Like, forget how the game went. Did you do things leading up to that game that really put you in position to have success? If the answer is no, then why are you upset? You set yourself up for failure. If the answer was yes, then maybe it was just a bad day, or maybe we need to reevaluate our approach. Like, all that stuff is super. We can practice that. We can apply that, like, to me, those are solution oriented. But on the other end, like, you see some kids that walk out of the gym and they lost by 100 and they don't really care. I have a hard time. Like, where. Where are you on that spectrum? Like, what is this? What is the happy medium between caring enough that it's worth. You're going to fight through it, but also not caring so much that you're going to just crush. You're just going to crumble and fall apart. Like, I don't know where is the right balance of that? I mean, because I'm the one. I'm the one. It's like, we lost. I was terrible, and I'm like in a coma for two days. When I was an athlete, like, it took. It ripped my heart out when I did not do my job well. And now it was also incredibly internally motivating where, like, that next practice, I was going to do everything in my life to reevaluate my habits of the week to make sure that never happened again. But I sure as hell didn't walk out of the gym, out of the locker room and go, well, just not my day. But it's all good. I'm gonna be great. Like, that's never been me.
- [36:12]
B
Yeah, me neither. But I think what it gets at is less of how they handle that failure and what comes next. Okay, so here's how I'd look at it is if you. If that kid is walking out and be like, ah, no big deal, like, whatever, doesn't. Doesn't matter. And they're using that as almost a protective mechanism, right? Where it's like, I'm gonna downplay this and make it seem. Seem like I'm not. I don't care. That way I get to protect my ego. It's almost like the. The cool kid in gym class, like middle school gym class, who doesn't try because they're afraid of getting beat by like, whatever the nerd.
- [36:52]
A
You beat me, but I wasn't even trying.
- [36:53]
B
Yeah, exactly. If that is what's coming out of that, if that is why they're doing this act, then that needs to be addressed. Okay? On the flip side, if you have the kid who is like, so motivated and cares so much like yourself, or like I was when I was athlete, that it hurts a lot, what comes next is the key is if that motivation is fueled into the process, into the productivity, you're probably okay. If instead, if that. That stewing on the failure starts to make it be where they start instilling a degree of fear of like, oh, no, is this gonna happen next time? Do I want to be in this place where my whole world is shattered again and it starts making them hesitate and avoidant and not taking the necessary risks on game day, then that needs to be addressed. So I think that the answer is there's probably a happy medium. People are going to cope with things in different ways. But what I think matters more is, like, what happens after you get out of that initial, you know, couple hour period or one day period where the loss stings or it doesn't. And what are they doing next? Are they getting back to the work productively or are they getting in that avoidant or fear or like, you know, spot where it's not going to help them over the long haul.
- [38:23]
A
That's well said. At the end of the day, if you don't know what to do, work is always a pretty good option. Before we get back into the episode, a quick reminder to follow us across all socials. We're posting daily content centered around youth sports. All right, let's hop back into it. Last thing I want to talk about with you, because I think this is. All of this is just incredible. I could ask you 5,000 questions, but I'm going to, for the sake of time. I want to talk about one last thing. A little bit of a different topic right now. I know. Just raising three kids and the families and the friends that we have, our kids lives are super scheduled. There's school, there's team practices, there's competition, there's individual training, there's training at home, getting ready to train. Like there is a lot of stress and demand and time. I know something that you've written a lot about and you've talked a lot about is the relationship between rest and, and play, between work and recovery. It seems like in the world we're in now, it's so much play, so much practice, so much competition, so much training. And we go, they're young. They, you know, how much break do they really need? They're young. Like, what are you seeing? What is the sign saying? Like, what can we as parents and what can we as youth coaches do to find a better balance to allow our kids more free play, more rest time, more days? They get to come home after school and not have to be rushed to a training, to a practice because we are building better young athletes. You said it earlier and it stuck with me. Like kids are better athletes at a younger age now just because of the system we're creating less long term, high level athletes. That's the negative outcome. So like, what can we do practically as parents that we can fight that urge?
- [40:12]
B
Yeah, I think, I think first off it's understanding that you're not gonna break the laws of biology, which is like, you need to like, stress demands rest. And we know this, even elite athletes, like, what do we do? We have lighter days or recovery days, or we rest before game day to make sure we're repaired and ready to go. It's even more important at a youth level when kids are developing and growing and that have you. So the way I like to look at it is like as a parent more than ever, you've got to protect some of their days or their afternoons or evenings because if you don't, they're going to be filled in. So just like as parents and adults, we protect some of our afternoons, evenings, weekdays from overworking because we can work 24, 7 now because it's, we don't even have to go to office a lot of times. We can just work all the time. We've got to protect that time. Do the same with your kid. The second part of it, which I think is as important as we need unstructured play, as you mentioned, which is different from parent led, coach led. And the reason is this is unstructured play takes some of the pressure off and, and it moves them in an environment where instead of, it's like A top down learning. It's almost like experimentation and creativity.
- [41:36]
A
Yeah.
- [41:37]
B
And if we look at, especially in sports like soccer, they often find that the elite soccer players often had more unstructured play and a little bit less coach led or parent led instruction early on. And it's that unstructured play that allowed them to have that creativity that we now see in their game as a person. So as a parent, what I'd like to say is like, we need to get a little bit more of that, you know, when you and I grew up that like sandlot baseball or, you know, street football or street hockey or what have you and allow that to flourish. So don't think that you have to structure and schedule every aspect of their sport instead, especially, you know, over summer or winter breaks or what have you. Think of it as like, let's get all the kids together at the park, parents, we're gonna go walk some laps or what have you. Throw a ball out there and let the kids do whatever they want and they'll figure it out. We don't need mom or dad or coach directing them. Let them figure it out.
- [42:41]
A
It's so true. I don't know if you're familiar with the book talent Code, but they dive into the whole like, why is there a hotbed? They use different sports, but soccer in South America, you know why? And they get into the. The idea of free play versus guided learning and whatnot. It's a pretty fascinating topic, but we probably all need to do a better job. And like, I'll raise my hand and say, I'm not a great. Just like roll the ball out there and let them go. Like, even when my kids are in the driveway, I'm like giving them pointers like, no cross. Why are you not defending? Get in a stance. And my wife's just like, would you just let him play? I'm like, you're right, I have to be better. So everything you're saying, I'm taking like mental notes here saying like, okay, these are great areas of improvement. Parenting a. And then obviously as an extension, what we're doing, coaching youth. But Steve, your wisdom, your experience, both firsthand and obviously now, just through your studies and through the work that you've done your post athletic career, I have a lot of stuff I'd love to pick your brain on on track and field. I have a daughter that's recently got into track and field. We're gonna have to have you on for a second episode because I'm not done with the things I want to talk to you about. So. But for the sake of your time, I'm gonna let you go. But again, Steve Magnus, author of Do Hard Things, his new book, Win the Inside Game. Steve, I can't thank you enough for joining us here on youthink and giving some unbelievable wisdom and experience to all of our listeners.
- [44:06]
B
Thanks so much for having me. This was an absolute blast.
- [44:09]
A
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