Welcome back to the raising unstoppable girl athletes podcast. I'm coach Bri and elite competitor coach for female athletes. And I am so happy that you're here. If you are just getting started on this sports journey with your daughter, or if you have a lot of seasons under your belt, and you're a seasoned sports mom, or you're somewhere in between this podcast is for you to help you know, how to help your daughter compete with confidence, play to her potential. And for you both to enjoy this sports journey, because. That's what it's all about, right. All right. Today's episode is all about how to fit mental training into your busy schedule, because let's be honest, you are busy, your daughter is busy. You likely know how important training the mental side of the game and her confidence is, but where does it fit? So I'm going to be talking about some practical tips to make it really easy for you and your daughter to incorporate this really important part of her training into her busy schedule. Now, before we get into it today, I have a shout out from a mom in our community. I was super excited when this mom posted this in our private group for moms and athletes going through our elite competitive program. She said that. My daughter is a perfectionist. She's always afraid of disappointing others. Yesterday. She had to try out for a national team and came home with a smile and said, I did not cry. That's a first mom. I embrace this as a huge victory in my book. That's enormous progress. And I want to, I want to unpack this a little bit because if you have an athlete who is. Emotional that is okay. And we have worked with hundreds of athletes who, do have very emotional responses when they are playing their sport. And sometimes those come out and manifest themselves in tears. And that's okay. It's okay to cry, but that came, it really be something that hinders athletes. If those tears are happening in competition or in big moments, right. For obvious reasons. And so we help athletes regulate their emotions so that they can remain calm again, not to say that having emotions and crying is, is not wrong. It is okay. We want our athletes to experience these things, but there's an appropriate time and place for them. And so being able to regulate emotions. When athletes are out there competing and they need to. put their best face forward and they need to play well without being hijacked by their emotions is so important. So, Nicole, I am super proud of you. I'm super proud of your daughter for the progress that she's making in the program. I can't wait to hear more. All right. And let's get into today's episode. Actually. One more thing before we do that, super helpful for us. If you rate, review and share the podcast. So if you have a sports mom, In your life, I'm sure all of you have sports bond friends. Go ahead and send them the link to the podcast. Like texted to them. I always text my friends podcast episodes that I really love, I just text it to them and super easy so that they can be listening and we can expand the reach of the podcast and bring amazing guests on for you. So if you could do that for us, we would greatly appreciate it. All right. Today's episode, we're talking about mental training and how to fit it into your busy schedule. So let's get into it. First a couple of things. There are two kind of overarching beliefs. If you will, around how to prioritize anything that matters to us. Now, I am going to tell you three of our most popular, tangible tips on how athletes and moms in our program are making this work. But a couple of things before we dive into those first, we make time for what's important to us. I know you've heard that. But it's so true. We make time for the things that matter. There's no way around that. It's the same thing that happens when we decide that we're going to prioritize anything in our life, like fitness, our relationships, what we're eating, like any time that we focus on something that we deem important, we make time for it. And I know I'm speaking to the choir here. When I say like, yes, schedules are full. you are probably spending more time in the car. Transporting your kids from place to place, then anything hear you and I get it, but we also know that if something matters to us, We will make the time and we will find those pockets of time and we'll find the areas of our life, where we can be a little more efficient with how we are spending our time. And I'm going to again, give you some, some tangible ideas on how you can do that, but that's kind of like belief number one is that if it matters to us, we will make time for it. We will. it just happens. Okay. The other thing that I want you to know is that investing your time and mental training for your daughter actually saves time. What do I mean by this now, how much time have you already spent likely trying to convince your daughter that she's good enough. That she should stop beating herself up and being so hard on herself. How much time have you already spent? In the car ride home after a tough game, not really knowing what to say to her. And she's kind of spiraling over there being really negative. And you're trying to pull her out and it's not really working. How much time have you already spent where your daughter. Is upset or, you know, disappointed in how she's playing and it impacts the rest of the evening. Like it's hard to even have a family dinner because certain people are in grumpy moods. you know what I'm talking about? you have already wasted and already spent a lot of time in this area where a little bit of time spent on the mental side of her sport would actually save all of that time later. But you could actually have a productive car ride home. You could have a dinner where she is not super grumpy and impacting the mood of the entire family, because she knows how to productively process her performance. You know what to say in the car, ride home, you know what to say even before she plays her game to help her not spiral out there, she knows how to get over mistakes so that she is not dwelling on them. all of those little things that she learns actually saves time later. And so that's why the saying the time will be spent either way. Well, In reality, you actually don't have to invest very much time and mental training to get a big return on your time on the backend. And so that's why I really want athletes and moms understand is that. It actually saves you time later and you don't have to stay stuck in this spot where you're wasting time spiraling over and over and over having the same conversations. Not really getting anywhere. You save time by investing a little time in the beginning and. Plus it's actually not that much time, but we're talking like in our program specifically. We're talking, it's a 10 week program and the lessons are between 30 and 40 minutes long. So that's a week 30 to 40 minutes a week. And when I tell athletes that we're like, you know, can we shave 30 minutes a week off of like to talk or. You know, Instagram or, you know, just, just sitting like, could we, could we maybe take some of that time back and invest in something that's going to pay off for you down the road? And the answer is clearly yes, I have 30 minutes. I can find in my week. that's how much time it takes. And that's not very much time. We also have athletes do a daily mindset routine that takes between five and seven minutes. And we tell them to stack it on to something they're already doing, like brushing your teeth after you brush your teeth, before you start your homework before your practice, if you're in the car ride on the way to practice, we're kind of getting into some of these tangible things. But like I said, it's not that much time when we're talking about an investment in this 10 week program. 30 to 40 minutes a week, five to seven minutes a day. And then after you get through those 10 weeks, it's just maintenance mode. Hey, so it's not that much time. It actually saves you time later. Okay. So those are the two overarching things. I just want you to, to kind of shift your mindset around that. Like we always make time for things that matter to us. It's just amazing when you're like, okay, I'm really going to focus on whatever it is, my health, my relationships, blah, blah, blah. All of a sudden, you find times you find that pocket of time in your day or in your week to make it happen. And then also investing in mental training actually saves you time later. You don't have to spend that time. in the car, just wasting it, talking, running around with your daughter, trying to figure out, trying to Google tips and tricks on how to get her to be more confident and play to her potential. Like you don't have to spend all that time. Doing that to anymore. Like you actually can save all of that and enjoy more of the sports journey. Okay, let's get into the three practical tips. That athletes in our program have used that moms in our program have used as well. Two. invest the mental training and get it done. The first tip is to calendar it, right? I'm sure you've heard this phrase before, put it on the calendar, what gets scheduled gets done. And so what we advise athletes and we advise moms to do when they jump into the elite competitor program is okay. Look at your week. Where do you have 30 to 40 minutes to put on the calendar? That you're going to do the elite competitor program. All right now, whatever. Whatever that looks like for you. And maybe it's like, okay, this week, it's not going to work. That's okay. Like we also tell athletes moms, like you have lifetime access to all of this content. If this week is like, you're traveling the entire week and there's just literally no time. sometimes that happens then. Okay. Let's do it the following week. All right. Now we don't want to suggest that you do that every single week, but look at your week ahead of time. literally put it on the calendar as you would like a doctor appointment, a practice. Hey it like Wednesday at 6:00 PM. I'm going to take 40 minutes. Let me sit down. I'm going to do. My mental training for that week. Okay. it's kind of amazing once you actually see it on the calendar, it's not something that's an afterthought. It's something that is treated just like anything else that gets put on a calendar. And so we have athletes, mom's like, okay, we're gonna put it on the family calendar. I'm gonna put it on my personal calendar. I'm gonna put it on my Google calendar, whatever works for you. Put it on the calendar because what gets scheduled gets prioritized and gets done. Okay. So that's. Practical tip number one for prioritizing mental training is put it on the calendar, right? Okay. Number two, make it something to look forward to. So something that's really cool about, this program is that if you choose to do it this way, it could be a really fun mom daughter bonding experience. And so we've had athletes who. they go into the program. Mom's doing the program and they decide like one day a week, they're going to go out to coffee together and they're going to get a treat and it's going to be like their special mom daughter time. And they're both going to watch their parts of the program. And so if you're not familiar with how ECP works, there's the mom or a parent side of the program. And then there's an athlete side of the program. some moms and athletes find it really helpful just to be like, Hey, I'm, you know, we're going to have a date, Our or whatever, built into our schedule. We're going to go somewhere fun. Or we're going to go get something. yummy to eat and mom will say, I'll do my part of the program. I'm going to listen to my training this week. And then you athlete listen to your part of the program. We can talk about it. Boom. We're done. And it's actually something that you both look forward to doing. And some of the younger athletes in the program. And we've we find this really successful with some of the younger ones, too, like moms in, daughters can actually just watch the athlete part together. So sometimes moms are like, I want to know what you're learning too. I want to make sure that you're tracking along with it so you can both watch it together. there's a variety of ways that you can do that. we also have a family going through the program right now. daughter, son, mom, dad. And they sit down on Sunday nights they airplay it up to their TV and they just do it as a family. So they watch the athlete part of it just as a, as a family. it takes the nagging out of it. It's not like, okay, when are you going to do your mental training? You know, Sometimes we can fall into that as moms like, Hey, when are you going to do it? And we're putting all the onus on the athlete when, Hey, let's make it easy for them. Like, we're just going to do this for. 40 minutes on a Sunday night. Like you don't even need to think about it. Just show up. I'm going to press play. We'll have popcorn. We'll make it happen. Okay. So make it something that, that you could actually look forward to. And as athletes get a little bit older into the program, sometimes the, older athletes or the high school, college athletes like to do their part on their own. And that's fine too. Like you don't have to do it with your athlete. that's just a way that has worked for some of the athletes and families in our program. Okay. So number one is calendar it, put it on the schedule. What gets scheduled gets prioritized, gets done. Number two, make it something to look forward to. All right. You know, food always brings an element of something to look forward to, at least for me. So make it yummy and to make it something that's fun or like afterwards, we're going to do this, so that you can attach it to something that you can look forward to. all right. Practical tip number three, I actually was just talking to an athlete two days ago, and this is what she said. She stacks it on as something she's already doing. this is a very smart thing to do. If you've ever read the book atomic habits, by James clear, this is a strategy that he talks about and so stack it to something you're already doing. So she'll say I asked her explicitly, I was like, how do you fit this into your schedule? You're playing club volleyball, playing high school volleyball. you've got a social life. AP classes, how do you do this? And she's like, well, when I'm folding my laundry, I have to do that. It's one of my chores that I have to do. And so I watch my mental training when I'm folding my laundry. So I'm already having to do that. So I put that on as well. So I can kind of do two things at once. now we don't want to like multitask too much, but that's something that's like monitoring is kind of mindless and that can be on in the background as well. She also said I have a free period at school and you know, your daughter may or may not have that. She's like, I usually am kind of with my homework. And so I use once a week, I use that free period to do my ECP. So this athlete is a student athlete is very smart. She's very diligent. but also most athletes have those pockets of time in their week. Where they can, put that training in there. Okay. and then for moms and athletes can do this too. Moms say, I just listened to my training, like a podcast. I put it on, we have the program on an app. And so, you know, she's like, I just put it on in the car, like when I'm driving somewhere and athletes can do this too. If they're athletes where they rely on their parents to drive them places, I just put it in my headphones. I'm on the way to the tournament. That's when I do it. And moms say the same thing, I just listened to it like a podcast. And it's just there. kind of in the background and I can absorb it and then I can continue to listen as I go. So that's a really, really practical way to get this in as well as like put it into something that you're already doing. So there you have it. Those are the three practical tips. Again, these are from athletes and moms who are doing the program. This is how they're making it work. And like I said, a little bit of investment on the front end actually saves a ton of time on the backend. So number one, put it on the calendar. Number two, make it something to look forward to number three, stack it to something you're already Doing. Put it on as a podcast, put it on in the background and just remember it this actually doesn't take a lot of time. if we're talking about the elite Benatar program. It's a 10 week program. However, you can go at your own pace. 30 to 40 minutes a week, not talking to day, even just a week. Can you find 30 to 40 minutes in your week to prioritize this part of the game that pays off massively for your daughter? I'm not exaggerating when I say that, because you already know how it's been up until this point. You already know how hard you were trying to help your daughter? I get to the next level, play with confidence, believe in herself, as much as you do and likely Googling these things, trying to convince her of these things, having that same conversation over and over and over again is probably not working. So let's set aside some time. Let's be intentional for those 10 weeks, 30, 40 minutes a week. Put it on the calendar, make it something fun. Incorporated into your day, what you're already doing so that you can save all that time on the backend and actually enjoy her sports journey. and, so that she can do the same. All right, moms. I hope that this was helpful. And I hope you are walking away with some practical ways or some things that you can think about to be like, okay, actually, this is possible. It's not just another thing that I'm putting on my daughter's place. It's not another thing that we have to do. This is actually something that is enriching our lives and enriching my daughter's experience, not just in her sport, but in her life. All right. And moms, if you haven't already checked out our free training for sports moms, where you can learn exactly how to strengthen your athlete, daughter's mental game and kind of these basics of how to incorporate mental training into your life. Go ahead and check that out that's at train her game.com. again it's free we have trainings daily you can choose your date and time and that'll really get you started on this path of mental training what it looks like and you can kind of visualize how you can incorporate this into your schedule There you have it. Moms I'm coach Bri and elite competitor coach for female athletes. And I will see you in the next episode of the raising unstoppable girl athletes podcast.