Speaker 1: 1:12

Welcome back to the Raising Elite Competitors podcast. I'm Coach Bree, a mental performance coach for girl athletes, and I'm excited that you are here, whether you are a parent or a coach or maybe an athlete listening to this. This is kind of a different episode because I'm reflecting on my high school volleyball season that I just got done coaching, where we ended as four-time state champions, and I'm honestly still a little shocked that I'm saying that I've had to re-watch the film about three times now just to verify and make sure that this actually happened, and I'll tell you why as we go through the episode. And not that I doubted the ability of my team, but we had a lot stacked against us this season in some ways. So I'm going to go through all of that today and kind of give you a look behind the scenes Again. Whether you are a parent who's just interested in what's possible when your daughter trains the mental side of the game, or maybe you're a coach that's super interested in looking behind the scenes of okay, what did you actually do in your season? How did you set up a team that was successful like this? What did you do for mental training? What did you do for practice planning, like. All of that I'll kind of dive into, because I had a little question box on one of my Instagram stories and I got a ton of great questions from you in the crowd and maybe you're an athlete and maybe you're one of my players who's like I want to hear it from your perspective. So you're all welcome to listen, and a lot of this is just going to be some reflection as I process the season a bit. So you get to process with me and then I'm also going to obviously lean heavily into the mental training that prepared us for the biggest, most Epic win, I think, in program history.

Speaker 1: 2:48

So, before we get into it, I do have a player of the week shout out. So, brinley, I want to give you a shout out on this episode. She is an athlete inside our program, the Elite Mental Game. This is our signature self-paced mental training program for girl athletes to strengthen their mental game and confidence. And she texted us recently and said hey, my school team won all around season champs, won the conference championship, we had an undefeated season. So, brinley, it sounds like you had also an amazing season.

Speaker 1: 3:17

And we asked her what were some things that helped, how did you get this result, and she said one key thing that helped me was the highlight reel visualization. I really saw a difference in my playing using it the night before a game. So that's pretty cool. Now I'll get into it a little bit in this episode. It's not ever just one thing, right? Oh, I just did this visualization. All of a sudden. I'm'm this new, different player and I'm winning state championships. But those things, when done consistently and when athletes prioritize mental game, that's when it can really shine through in the moments where it matters most. So, really, congratulations. I'm so happy that was one of the tools that you used.

Speaker 1: 3:50

The Highlight Real visualization we actually did in our season, too, a couple times. This is where athletes are recalling some of their best playing moments, and I always recommend that they do it the night before a big competition because it kind of helps ingrain images of themselves being successful, and the fact that these are actual experiences of this being successful reminds them that they are a sum total of all the successes that they've had in their playing career so far. And a lot of times we have athletes. This is just a very normal part of our human nature. We tend to focus on what could go wrong, the worst case scenario, we tend to see ourselves sometimes in the worst of lights. Like you know, I screwed up at practice yesterday. What if I'm going to do that in the game tomorrow? And so helping replace that image with a reminder of, yeah, that could happen, but guess what also could happen, what has happened in the past, and reminding them of who they are and what they're capable of is really great, just to have that highlight reel kind of going on in their mind before they enter into big competition. So congrats, brindley.

Speaker 1: 4:46

All right, let's get into today's episode. I'm going a lot of different directions today, so just kind of bear with me. Normally, I have like outlines that's very structured, and I'm not as today. I'm just kind of riffing a little bit. Okay, let's set the stage a little bit on this season. We have won state for the past three years, and you might be thinking, oh well, okay, well, that seems pretty easy that you would probably just do it again.

Speaker 1: 5:10

This season was different, though. Not only did my team have the pressure of the three-time state championship expectation on their back, it was also a brand new team, with one notable exception. I have one senior that's been a part of all of the championships. She's my senior captain and is phenomenal, okay, but she's one player. Everybody else was stepping into new, more significant roles or it was their first time. On varsity, I had seven total returning, but many of them were not key players in the match and in the season. Now, obviously, on a team and we make sure we communicate this with our athletes that, like every role, is important, but they weren't. The fact of the matter is they weren't starters and they weren't key contributors to last year's success. And so I had a new libero, I had a new setter, a new outside, a new middle, I had a new DS. So, for all intents and purposes, like, this was a new team, okay, but they still had the target on their back. They still had the expectation of defending championships and titles that they, frankly, weren't part of, and so that's where we started our season.

Speaker 1: 6:20

Now. We weren't like getting hung up on that. It was just like, yeah, that's just the reality and we're going to see what we can do this season. And when it comes to mental training, I've been doing mental training with my team for the past six years now, so they're used to it. This is a part of what they do.

Speaker 1: 6:36

I get a question a lot from coaches like how do you get your athletes to buy into mental training? And so, yeah, at the very beginning, when I first did this with my team, there were some people who were skeptical of it. Not everybody, and even now, like not everybody's bought in. I will say most of the varsity is because they see the success like they see it working. But not everybody in the program is a hundred percent bought in, like I can tell when we're doing visualizations they got their eyes open or they're like peeking and they're just like not totally bought in. And I don't actually spend a whole lot of time worrying about that because the people who are going to take it seriously and have goals and we had a clear vision of what we wanted this season they're going to pull out all the stops and they're going to invest in everything to make it possible.

Speaker 1: 7:15

And one of the ways that we get athletes that I get athletes bought into it is to help them connect it to their goals, what they want that season and realizing that what typically holds them back from their goals is not their physical game. We train the physical game. We have very intentional practices. They have opportunities to get a lot of reps, it's mostly like they get nervous or they make mistakes and don't know how to come back, or they start to doubt themselves. And once they start to realize that a lot of what's holding them back isn't just the physical game, it's like their own thoughts and their own inability to perform in the moment, that's when they're like okay, yeah, let's do something about this. And so at this point, though I will say like I've been doing it for six years, will say like I've been doing it for six years, like, including our seniors, they've been doing this since their freshman year. So even if they weren't totally like bought in in the beginning, like by the time they're seniors and juniors, like this is just part of what we do, and I'll tell you some stories about how my girls kind of speak about the mental game and all this is just pretty cool and hopefully we'll give some of you hope for the coaches who are starting this.

Speaker 1: 8:12

We have a program called Plug and Play Elite Mental Game for Teams, and we have a few hundred high school programs and some club programs that are implementing that in their seasons. And if you're doing it for the very first time, the advice I give you is just be consistent with it. If you're consistent and you take it seriously, your athletes will too. So that's where we were at. We start every season with vision setting. This year we did vision setting. We explored what they want for the season. What's holding them back. We actually did a little vision board party.

Speaker 1: 8:40

We teach them their daily mindset routine, which is called 3-2-1 brave. It's something that we do before every practice, where they write down their three affirmations, which are determined based on what they want for their season. So there's a whole process they go through. This isn't just like these like you know affirmations. Look at yourself in the mirror and say I am confident, I am strong. It's not like that. It really is exploring like what do you want as an athlete, what do we want as a team? And then pulling out specific things and turning those into positive first person present tense statements and then learning how to visualize those things, because not all athletes are, I don't know, inherently like knowing how to visualize. So we teach them how you visualize these things so that we can bring them to life. So that's the three. The two is two minutes of journaling. So we give them journal prompts that help them kind of get things out. That journaling is a great way for athletes to kind of sort through what's going on in their mind. They write down every day one thing they're grateful for one piece of evidence that one of their affirmations is coming true and then we do something called the brave visualization every day. So that includes breath work, their reset words, their affirmations and visualizations. This whole process three, two and brave takes about six minutes, so I'll talk. There was a good question that was submitted about my practice planning and things like that, so I'll tell you how we incorporate that into practice as well.

Speaker 1: 9:51

At the very beginning of the season, within the first couple of weeks, athletes also learned something called their snapback routine. So athletes inside our individual program learn all of these skills as well. Inside of the elite mental game. Athletes inside or whose coaches are using plug and play, also learn this. So the snapback routine is their really quick routine that helps them come back to the present moment If they made a mistake, if they're getting like caught up in worrying about the future or the past, just there, it's a combination of a breath, a reset word and a reset signal that helps ground them in the present moment. All of these are rooted in sports psychology, by the way, so they're not just things that are pulled out of thin air. They're backed by science on how athletes can help just their locus of control they can get in the present moment, because we know athletes perform their best when they are in the present moment. So a lot of these strategies just help them with tools to fall back on when they're not, so that they can get back in the present moment. So we started the season with a lot of that, as we normally do.

Speaker 1: 10:43

As I progress through the season At this point can expect what we're going to be facing. You know, the mid-season slumps, the post-season kind of feels like a new start to the season, and so that's when we really hone in on, like nerves, pressure, the expectations of post-season, and so we do some things around how to manage nerves, how to manage pressure, athletes learn their pre-competition routines, there's. All of this is just ingrained into our season and, without getting too far ahead as far as structure, I spend 20 to 30 minutes once a week kind of diving into something specific. So we typically do that on Mondays and then every day they do their three, two, one brave every before every game, we do a visualization and we do some breath work.

Speaker 1: 11:19

When we come into post-season, we're doing a little bit more of like highlight reel, body scan, just some other more specific things, so that they are prepared for more of the pressure that they're going to be feeling. And the key thing about this is that this is something that is consistently in their training. It's not, ooh, okay, we've got a big game, let's like throw in some visualizations, let's talk about self-talk now. No, like they're consistently being aware, like being made aware, of their self-talk, of what they're telling themselves, of their snapback routine, so that they have those things in those moments and they're prepared with them and they have things to fall back on, not things that are introduced to them for the first time. So that's why it's just so important that mental training is consistently a part of the training and it doesn't take a whole lot of time.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Like you know, when I say 20 to 30 minutes once a week, I'd say we did that more at like the beginning of the season and then once we kind of get into a routine, and then, once we kind of get into a routine, it's really only a couple of minutes before practice, and I will also make note that mental training is not a replacement for physical training. We had hard, intense, intentional practices. We had game plans. We had scouting reports. We also have the athletes that can execute. We have talented athletes, and so I want to make sure that I'm not confusing that with mental training is the only reason why we were successful, but when we get to it, I will mention that it was one of the reasons why we were successful in pressure moments, and there was a very stark difference between us and our competition in that side of the game, when it came to the moments where it matters most and that's really where it counts, like we're building all these skills throughout the season and as we play teams in our league that maybe aren't as strong.

Speaker 1: 12:57

You're not going to necessarily see like a lot of the mental training in those games, but you are going to be able to see it when those nerves start to come up, when the mistakes start to happen, when the game is on the line. That's when they have tools to fall back on, and the other thing about it is my athletes do have the capabilities. They have the ability to perform at a high level. Okay, so do yours probably. I'm talking to coaches and parents. So do your athletes right, so does your daughter. Okay, the ability to do it and actually doing it are two different things. The ability to win a state championship and actually winning a state championship are two different things.

Speaker 1: 13:34

And when you get to that level, when you get to post-season, when all the teams are good and all the players are good, like we hit up against some tough competition. Right, that is where you need something else to separate you. That's where you know, yes, strategy can come in, but oftentimes comes down to those pressure moments and the difference between winning and losing is very small. The margins are small. We added up the scores of our game. So when we get to that final game, yeah, we won three out of five sets, but we only outscored them by one point. It was a 102. We scored 102 points and the other team scored 101. And so one play, one moment. And that's really where it can make a difference when an athlete is telling herself don't serve the ball to me, I don't want to screw up, I'm going to lose this for my team, versus serve the ball to me, I'm going to finish this, I am capable, I am a good defender, you know those things really are. Where are the difference makers? Okay, so that's kind of to set the stage of where we were as a team.

Speaker 1: 14:38

We kind of we lost our first match of the season and that wasn't great. We were like I, honestly, in the back of my mind, was like are we even going to make it to state this year? We'll see, you know, we didn't spend too much time dwelling on that, but I think it was a good, well-timed loss for us. We made it through, though the rest of the season kind of turned things around, just constantly got better. Constantly we're doing the consistent things with mental, a few tough matches as we went through league in terms of tournament play and some games in our league too. Some of it we did to ourselves, you know, just by making it harder, harder on our side of the net.

Speaker 1: 16:34

And then we get to post season and, honestly, like the whole season not that I pay a lot of attention to rankings, but our league uses, or our state uses, our RPI ranking system and we were constantly like five, seven, you know we weren't number one the whole seat like we never broke through the top three, the coaches polls, to same thing. We were, like always behind a couple of other teams. We just weren't we weren't necessarily like favored to win, and what is also a little bit interesting is, like, in past seasons, I would always have like reporters ask, emailing me and asking me about the team and, like you know, just kind of had this vibe of like you guys are likely going to win it. And no, I mean, I wouldn't say every year, like 2021 was a very unexpected year as well, but 22 and 23, like you'd look at a roster and see what we had, and it was like okay, yeah, like we're very strong this year, not one, not one reporter, not one like info. You know, hey, hey, coach, like who do you have on your team? That's going on like nothing, and so we just didn't really have this like expectation on us, that like we might do it. And I, though, was like I think, when I have glimmers of us like playing really well, I'm like I think we've got a shot. But as I had eyes on some other teams in the state, I knew it was going to be tough.

Speaker 1: 17:43

As we got closer into post-season, we were right into like midway through and like halfway up the RPI. Not great. We were seeded number three going into state. We did win districts, we played we're playing really well, like at the end of the season, but had lapses and had moments of inconsistency because we had a newer team and we had people playing roles that were they were filling big shoes and so we would still play really well and then maybe we would have an inconsistent set and when it comes to the post season, not playing well the wrong times has grave implications on your you know your chances of going far, like when you get to state, you've got to win them all and so we didn't really have time to have bad sets. When I say sets, I mean, like in volleyball, we play best three out of five sets and that's how you win a match, okay. And so while I saw us playing pretty well, then we would, you know, we would fumble a little bit, and that's what happened in our first round of state. We didn't play our best, but you know, we got through the first round.

Speaker 1: 18:39

Second round was tougher because we were playing a team from our league that we had a lot of history with and they're a great team. We that we had a lot of history with and they're a great team. We played them in the past three state championships, like for the title, and in district championships, like we just have a lot of history. Even before that it was always just a battle with this team and they bring a lot of energy. I think every time we play them it's just kind of this, a little bit of a rivalry, and so there's just a lot more like emotion in that game. And that was a tough. That was a tough match, but we played well.

Speaker 1: 19:09

We won that, got into the semis and we were facing a team that was ranked ahead of us and that we had beat for the past three years in the semifinals, but they had our number. I think they wanted some revenge and so we spent a lot of time scouting, we spent a lot of time just coming up with a game plan for this team based on what we saw and what we could do. And as we're going through state the mental training that we continue to do 3-2-1 Brave we continue to visualize like the night before matches. We did some other more specific visualizations, which I'll talk about in a second. I have a fun story at the end about one of them. But we got into this match within the semis and it was intense.

Speaker 1: 19:47

We did end up winning to make it to the championship and honestly, I was a little bit shocked at that point too, if our players listening, parents listening, maybe you were too, but I was just like. You know, I knew that was going to be tough and to make it to the championship. I remember I texted my sister-in-law, who is the co-founder of our company, and I was like, oh my God, I don't know, like Ellensburg, it was the team that would play the championship. Williamsburg, it was the team that would play the championship. They look tough, like looking at their roster and hearing about them. I have the roster in front of me. They've got six, four, six, one, six, one, six, one. That's their, you know their front row. And then they're just dominant, like they had been dominant through the whole tournament, through the whole season. And I was like, honestly, I just I need to watch a little more film and kind of see where their vulnerabilities are. But I'm just hoping we can go out and battle and just see what happens. We'll just see what happens. And so we get to that match and get in the locker room before and, honestly, that locker room before.

Speaker 1: 20:41

One of the questions I had was like how do you prepare for the biggest match but not let the nerves overtake? And my answer to that is we've prepared for it. There's nothing that you can do right before if you haven't already given your kids the skills to be able to meet that moment. And they had the skills to meet the moment. They had earned this. We talked about how, like, you deserve what you've gotten. You deserve how far you've gotten because you've earned it. And also you have the tools, you have your breath, you have your reset word. We've visualized this moment. Pressure is a privilege, all of those things we've already laid the foundation for. And so we got into the locker room and it was kind of a moment of like, hey, we're just going to take a moment of gratitude for this experience that we've gotten here with this team, with the girls that you will never play again with in this capacity. This team will never be again, and so there's just a lot of gratitude. There were tears, just because it's amazing when you get to this point.

Speaker 1: 21:36

We did a visualization as well. We do our normal kind of pre-competition visualization, but this time I had them visualizing how the match was going to go. I had them visualizing themselves making a mistake and coming back from it and how they're going to do that. I had to visualize the success of another player. I had been hesitant to doing this the whole season and so I hadn't. But at this point I had them visualize winning the match and visualize the trophy coming out and like just the dog pile. I had them like visualize all those moments. And I had a question that was like, was there something that you had to pivot or something that didn't work? And I just had hesitated to visualize winning a state championship because I didn't want to put that pressure in their minds or have this be a thing that then, if it doesn't end up happening that they're I don't know. I just didn't feel like, I just wasn't feeling like doing it. But at this point I was like, hey, we're in the match, so let's visualize it and it. But at this point I was like, hey, we're in the match, so let's visualize it. And so we had them just like experience all those details and get the goosebumps and and just feel what it's gonna feel like. So we did that. We just did our normal locker room thing.

Speaker 1: 22:40

We talked about how it's just another turkey dinner. That came from my college coach, this whole analogy that you know, on Thanksgiving you eat turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, whatever. But it's like you could eat that stuff any day. But for some reason, on Thanksgiving it's like this big special event and grandma and grandma come over and you've got to dress up and it's got all these like feelings around it. But when it comes down to it, the contents of the meal are the same it's turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, whatever. You could eat that literally every day. And so we talked about how it's just another turkey dinner and the girls would say that as well, because it's just volleyball, like you literally do this every day, you've done this, you've had millions of reps doing this. When it comes down to it, yes, it's the state championship, yes, it's Thanksgiving, like that the whole kind of analogy there. But when it comes down to it, it's just volleyball, it's just another turkey dinner. I don't know. That could be something, coaches, if you want to use that.

Speaker 1: 23:24

But yeah, and then we just went out and we won the first set. I had this like eerie calmness about me, like normally I'm pretty nervous, you like on the inside, but everyone says you look so calm when you're coaching, but I'm like my aura ring would beg to differ, like it's alerting me that I'm having a heart attack. But yeah, I just had this eerie calmness of just like. Here we are, like let's just throw everything we've got at it. And so we won the first set and went into the second, got dominated in the second, what? We were discombobulated and ellensburg was coming into their own. They were looking like the team that they had been looking like the whole season. And so we head into the third and let me make sure I'm getting yeah, getting this right. Yeah, we head to the third. We were like leading but also tied for most of the way to the third. We lost the third as well, but it was close. We lost it on a questionable call. So we head into the fourth and it's here we are, here's our, here's our moment. And we go into the fourth.

Speaker 1: 24:21

The thing about my team as we were going through, like we never backed down, we had probably every reason to like, okay, yeah, they're a dominant team, like they are showing that they are six, four on the other side of the net, we are getting shut down, right, but they never stopped swinging, they never stopped pursuing the ball, like they just the fight that they had. They were never out of it. And what I love about that is like, yeah, we were down, we were down as much as you could be, but they were never out. And so we got into the fourth and this is kind of where things got interesting. So we had led and then eventually it was tied at 23.

Speaker 1: 24:53

All you have to win 25 out of 25 to win and called the timeout and we come out of the timeout and we shank our pass. So that means like went to one of our passers and we couldn't convert, like it was gone. So now ellensburg has 24. We've've got 23. They have match point. They have not won a state championship since 1988. Their fans are on their feet. They are like you know, we're going to win this For some luck of volleyball gods.

Speaker 1: 25:21

I had another timeout, so I called another timeout, went at match point for the other team and I remember in that huddle we did this frequently throughout. We took a deep breath and said our reset words and the girls would actually lead that on their own too. Like I would see them out on the court. They would come together and put their arms around each other and they would like have this collective breath, inhale, exhale you could like see their bodies doing it and so we did that. We're like we're going to say our to us. We're in the best position that we could possibly be in right now to win this next point and we're only going to focus on this next point.

Speaker 1: 25:59

So they go out again, ellensburg serving for the state championship. Pass the three that means a perfect pass goes to our outside. One of our best hitter. She's over. They dig it. Okay, they dig it. Their setter sets a not a great ball, but their setter sets their top hitter on the other side that's committed to go D1, but she doesn't get a good set. They set her a little bit outside the antenna and she has to send a down ball over. So an easier shot. We easily dig that set. Our best hitter. She just puts the ball away, no hesitation, we win that point.

Speaker 1: 26:33

So now it's tied up and you've got to win by two. So two points away I have my sophomore, who is first year on varsity, serving Okay, and she goes back there and she looked like she, she could handle this. You know, I was like dang okay, it was looking good, she looks confident, she goes out there, she great, serve serves in. They kind of have a scramble play and hit the ball in the net. Their other star player hits the ball in the net. All right, 25, 24, us we are now serving to stay alive. Okay, If we win this set it goes to a fifth where we can win. Ava serves again, they have a scramble play, they free ball the ball into the net. Okay, that's like not common. Not common, especially from really good teams. We win that set. Now we get to go to a fifth and we the fifth set is out of 15.

Speaker 1: 27:23

And oh my gosh, like the the feeling of that winning that fourth set when the state championship was on the line, like I can't even describe it. I've never been in that situation as a coach. And so, long story short, I don't want to go like too long winded on this, but we ended up just coming out in the fifth and the game was ours, like we had kind of sucked the wind out of them. We were dominating I wouldn't say dominating, that's maybe not the right word but we were swinging away, we were not backing down, we were taking this fifth set and the other side of the net. It looked. I know how that feels as well, and but I will say that this is where this is where the mental training shines. When you don't have skills to fall back on. That's where it can really make a difference. And so we end up winning that fifth set, like the feeling is indescribable of just how happy I was for those girls, for those sophomores. I looked at the court one time. We had three out of six, half of our players were sophomores on the court, those new players who stepped up in big roles. Like I, seriously I was just bawling so happy for them. And to go out in that way like yeah for Pete or not, like just that season for that group, was amazing. So that's how we finished it. And yeah, I still don't have the word subscriber. So I'm only two days post, post championship. That's kind of how it all went down.

Speaker 1: 28:42

But I'm going to answer a couple of questions that I received from my DMS that I think are amazing questions that I'm going to dive into now. All right, this first question might be more specific to volleyball coaches, but I am going to answer it in a way that applies to all coaches. So somebody asked. Actually, a coach in our league asked this question. So, whitney, if you're listening, this was yours.

Speaker 1: 29:02

I was just curious about how I structure practices. Is it like a weekly planning session, daily planning, all of that? And so I will start with kind of the layout of how I structure. And, honestly, practice planning is one of my most favorite things. Maybe that sounds right. I don't know if other coaches are like that, but that's where we get better and I just love being so intentional with how we practice, the things that we do, the groupings that we have. I just love it because that's where the work happens. Out there on the court I'm like, if I've done my job right, I am not actually coaching a whole lot. Now this year I did have to do a lot of coaching, but you know, for the most part it's like they're out there doing like I'll coach strategy and we'll do game plan and things like that, but the work really has been done in practice leading up to it. So, anyways, my practice layout goes as such we do pre-practice every day, and so athletes come in about 15 minutes before the start of practice, nuts are up, there's a pre-practice on the board. I live and die by the whiteboard. So we have an enormous whiteboard that I fill both sides of every day for practice for a couple of different reasons, but one of them to keep us on track and just also to eliminate wasted time. So as soon as athletes are in the gym they're doing their pre-practice. I'll talk about what that means in a second. We also do setter tutor during this time. So setters come in almost every day before and we do, we do tutoring with them, so we give them extra reps and then we, as soon as athletes are done with pre-practice, that kind of aligns and we start all this with the full program. So I have three teams in my program. So you've got about 36 girls and they're all looking at the board doing the pre-practice.

Speaker 1: 30:40

Pre-practice. I rotate through. I have about four pre-practice like things that we do activities. Some of it will be just like ball control based. We always include some serving, so it will be like blocking footwork, transition footwork. Um, some of it's like team connection. We do a check-in as part of pre-practice as well, like a mental health check-in once a week. So basically just like whatever I want them to do that day, like I write on the board for pre-practice, and pre-practice takes about 15 minutes.

Speaker 1: 31:03

When the whole program is done, the pre-practice and I'm done with setter tutor, we bring everybody together to the board and we do our mental training. So on Mondays we do a little session for mental training. Basically we key in on what, like the focus is for that week. So maybe we're doing like something specific on self-talk, maybe we're doing something specific on nerves, pre-competition, maybe I'm teaching the snapback routine. But all of these things that I teach for, like our longer 20 minute ish session of mental training once a week, is inside our plug and play elite mental game for teams. So coaches that are doing that and have that program and I'll provide all the links for that below Basically they get their team together in a similar way and they just press play and I'm teaching your team and then you have a little lesson plan to lead some discussion, questions For parents that are listening. All of these things are also inside our program for athletes, the Elite Mental Game. So I'll leave the link for that below. But every single thing that I do for mental training with my team is inside my program and inside is inside the Elite Mental Game and it's inside Plug and Play Elite Mental Game for teams. So no gatekeeping here. You can access all of it. So I'll give you the links for that inside the show notes.

Speaker 1: 32:07

So we do mental training together, I do any announcements and then we break off. Now I will say if it's not a Monday, so if I'm not doing like some specific thing, then our mental training is only about six minutes. We do three, two, one brave, and then we're off to our teams and then we are with our teams. We do about two hours of just practice with our individual teams and how I structure that is we do some sort of ball control small group like warmup together. That typically has some sort of challenge on it, like we need to get a certain number of this or that in order to complete the drill.

Speaker 1: 32:38

We do serving. We spend a very big chunk of our time serving and passing. That's where our games are won and lost. We controlled a lot this season in terms of just being able to stay in system on our side because we serve tough and we pass well. We spend at least an hour serving and passing. Now that's not just we're going to serve, we're going to pass, serve, pass, like it's structured, but throughout the practice. At least an hour of it is spent on serving and passing in some capacity, and then we have some sort of daily focus. So that just depends on what we need to work on, and so we'll spend a little bit of time either doing breakouts on that daily focus, so we'll we'll split off the middles and the setters together or the outsides, or we'll kind of split off, or we'll do it as a team, and then we spend the last 45-ish doing some sort of six on six. That's like full team practice, but it's never just okay, we're gonna just play game at 25. They're very specific things that we do to emphasize what our daily focus is.

Speaker 1: 33:32

Overall philosophy, though, is we practice as much as game-like as possible. So if we're doing any blocked drills, if we're learning a skill for if we want to refine a skill or learning it for the first time, we might do that for 10 minutes, but as game as possible, because athletes are it's a little bit pointless at our level to, you know, do just like blocking reps without actually seeing a live set and the timing that's associated with that. So we just try and like really make it as game-like as possible, and we're always competing, always competing. Every, almost every single drill is scored. They have all their scores go into something called the competitive cauldron, so they're constantly racking up points. We wipe it every week, so they get a new cauldron score every week, and so they're constantly racking up points. We wipe it every week, so they get a new cauldron score every week, and so they're comparing their scores within their position group on how they're progressing.

Speaker 1: 34:22

Now you have to present that in a very intentional way. There's a lot of mindset that goes around that, because it can easily be something that, like they tear each other down because they're competitive and they want to, like get a better score than whatever. But we basically introduce this as an opportunity for you to push your teammates and also just to take a look at where you're at. Like your score doesn't define you, but if at the end of the week you're the last person in the cauldron, that's just information for you. Your goal is to improve your score for next week, and so we're always scoring things. We're always competitive.

Speaker 1: 34:49

We're also very intentional back to the whiteboard with groupings and transition time. So everything is written up ahead of time so that there's as little transition time as possible. Not only is the drill drawn up but exactly where each person is in the drill. Everybody competes with and against everybody in practice. So we have player groupings. Everybody has like their player number in practice and they're grouped intentionally so that athletes are competing with and against everybody in their team. We know the iron sharpens iron. So we rarely I don't think we actually ever have done starters versus non-starters. Everybody's making each other better and we make sure that the player groupings are random. It's not like I'm just making up the player groupings.

Speaker 1: 35:30

I follow a structure so that by the end of the week everybody has played with and against everybody. And that also helps make the cauldron more equitable, because if you're always just putting like your top players together and they're just always winning, then that's just like I mean. They typically do come out on top of the cauldron anyways, but we want to see like, can you win with this person? Can you make this team better, even if it's not all starters? And the cauldron is weighted too, so they get more points for a win on a six on six game than a small group game, than an individual like position tournament game. Anyways, that might be a lot more than what you're looking for, but that's how. That's how we structure our practices.

Speaker 1: 36:04

Some of it, like I rarely do weekly plans aside from okay, we can probably determine like what our pre-practice activities are going to be and what our setter tutor focus is. But for the most part I've tried because I'm like, okay, how can I be more efficient? I've tried in the past to be like okay, here's what the weekly plan is, but it just I get so much feedback from the game the previous day that determines what our practice should be and then also just knowing my athletes to like what we need that day in terms of also like how much energy they have, and that determines that kind of the the activities that we do as well, like we're doing more transition stuff which is gonna tire them out versus like, hey, you know, we just had like a tough five setter and we need to eliminate some of the transition and the jumping. All of that goes into that as well. But as far as the mental training in there, that's also pretty standard. Like I have a whole plan and plug and play coaches, you also have a plan inside your program where you just go week by week. We have 12 to 13 weeks in our program and so I just this week we're focusing on this for mental training I front load a lot more of it at the beginning of the season so that as we get through the tougher parts of the season and we're kids are getting overwhelmed with schoolwork and all of that, like we have less, it's just more of reinforcing their skills and doing 3-2-1 brave, so that stuff can be pretty standard and planned ahead of time. So, yeah, that's how we do it, okay.

Speaker 1: 37:19

Another question anything that didn't work and that you had to pivot your approach on. I mean, I think as coaches we're always pivoting. We're always like not talking physically mental training. We did have to make a very minor but significant lineup change going into state. That, I think, helped us out a lot, and those are always things that you never know how it's going to work until it all plays out. But yeah, we made a lineup change that we thought was necessary. Part of it was actually like we had to so just for one specific reason. But we decided to go with it and stick with it and just based on how people were performing and anyways, that seemed to be very, very good for us.

Speaker 1: 37:56

But one thing I guess my approach I kind of mentioned this like visualizing winning. I always struggle with that, even as, like a performance coach myself, like I always struggle with visualizing winning, because I don't want to put some sort of added pressure, like we actually can't control whether we win or not. So, yes, we do want to visualize those impossible goals, those big goals, the BHAGs, the big, hairy, audacious goals that we have as teams, because our vision will pull us forward to that and we'll align our actions to get there. However, we also want to balance that with focusing on what's in our control, and we know that if we can focus on our own contribution in terms of, like, our self-talk, our energy, our attitude and also what we're supposed to do, what our job is on the team, then we're going to likely have better outcomes. So, anyway, I just battled with myself the whole season about that and I didn't actually end up visualizing any sort of winning until the state championship match. So I don't know if that's necessarily what you're looking for, but and I'm not saying like, we had times where we were down. We had times where we were down, we had times where we lost sets, we lost games at various points throughout the season.

Speaker 1: 38:56

That doesn't necessarily mean that mental training didn't work. When it comes down to it, sometimes it can be the difference maker. I think it did in the championship match. I think absolutely. If you look on the other side of the net and see what we were going up against and some of the mental errors that they made in those moments as well, it's like, yeah, it was pretty clear that there were some. We had an advantage in terms of our mental training when it came down to it. But, yeah, there were times where we had to have tough conversations as a team. There were times where, like just like any team we had, you know, there's personality, dynamics, there's leadership that needs to be developed. There are times where we had to have tough conversations between players that we facilitated.

Speaker 1: 39:30

So I don't know if that's necessarily like it didn't work, but you know, as things come up in the season, you can prepare as much as you can and then you just have to also be like here's our reality, what do we need to do now? So, okay, how about this one? How do you prepare for the biggest game but not let nerves thwart? I think I talked about that a little bit, but preparation like you, you cannot expect to have athletes use skills that they don't have. I can't expect to never teach my athlete how to run a slide throughout the season and then, in the big game, be like hey, let's run a slide on this, okay. Same thing I can't expect my athlete to. I never teach them skills on how to recognize when their nerves are getting to be too much and tools like breathwork, snapback routine, self-talk Like if I haven't taught them how to use those tools, and then in the championship match, when they're nervous, to be like, hey, make sure you do snapback routine, like that's just not gonna work. So preparing them and as best as possible for those moments happens ahead of time.

Speaker 1: 40:28

So nerves also. We talk about how nerves feel, the same as excitement in the body. It's all with how we label it. Nerves mean that it matters. You know kind of like reframing what nerves are. I think it's helpful as well, but the reality is you should have nerves and it's going to be. Yeah, I was nervous, everybody was, and so to be able to reframe those as like this is energy and this is my body preparing me. I think it's also a really important, a really important message as well.

Speaker 1: 40:53

Okay, stay in mental game mode. That was a question Like how do you just stay in mental game mode? And I don't really know exactly what this means, but what I interpret it is like, you know, when stuff is going off the rails, when things aren't going as expected, like we were down in the second set by a lot, we were getting just crushed. And like, how do you stay present? And I don't even want to use the word positive because I don't expect my kids to stay positive all the time. That's unrealistic how do you stay present? How do you stay neutral? How do you stay productive?

Speaker 1: 41:21

And again, it comes through preparation. And then, and like anticipating these moments, like even in practice. Sometimes we would stop practice and we'd be like, okay, we're, it's an, we also design practice to be challenging mentally, where they have some goals that are like just outside their reach, like as a team, we need to get 20, you know in a row of this. And it's like, okay, we keep failing at this, we keep failing, we keep failing. Okay, we're going to stop, we're all frustrated here. What are we going to do, you know?

Speaker 1: 41:44

And so preparing in that way as well, like using those opportunities in practice, is really important, but staying in mental game mode. It. It's just a practice of coming back to the present moment every time. What are we going to do? This play, you know this moment, okay, that moment's gone Now, this moment, that moment's gone Now, this moment.

Speaker 1: 42:01

It's just that's how you stay in it and when done right, you shouldn't actually athletes shouldn't be thinking very much Like they're just flowing and and then when they do get kind of flustered or, you know, they get down or they get in a situation where they're frustrated. That's when they can lean on their skills to come back to the present moment and awareness is huge. A lot of athletes don't have that awareness of oh my gosh, now I'm spiraling and I have no way out. Athletes who have trained and prepared, they can recognize that before it happens and they can start to notice in their body that like I'm feeling a little off, now I need to use my breath. And I have some stories too of athletes now that we're doing, like we're in the process of doing our post meeting, our post season meetings with athletes which are just like so great Athletes are just like crying at all of these meetings. They're just like this is the best season ever, so it's just super special.

Speaker 1: 42:47

But I just had one last night and with the player who was serving, when it was 24, all in the fourth set, and I was like what's going through your brain? You looked so confident out there and she was like, honestly, I was doing my breath and I was doing my reset word, like that just helped me so much. And so athletes are using these skills in the big moments, when it matters. I always also say like it can't hurt us, like who knows if that contributed to the win I think it did, but it honestly can't hurt you. So why, you know, why wouldn't you if it, they can only help you.

Speaker 1: 43:15

And just other moments one of my other players, just in the car right to the state championship, she was talking with everybody else and I just about the conversation came about like athletes and nerves and the athlete experience they're actually talking about the Simone Biles documentary and some other, just like documentaries with athletes. And she was like honestly, I can't believe that other coaches don't do what you do, brie, it's so important. Like I love what we do, like when it comes to mental training, like it's helped me so much. And she's like I just can't imagine not doing this. Like why don't other coaches do this? And I'm like, because they're not trained, they're not taught? It's actually not your fault If you're a coach listening to this, like it's not your fault that you don't do it. Like I had to go back to get certified. Like it takes time, it takes money, it takes resources, and so that's why we made it really easy. That's why we created the plug and play elite mental game for teams, for coaches to just like do this with their teams. And that's why we've created the elite mental game.

Speaker 1: 44:05

For, if you're a parent listening for individual athletes just to go through, we make it as simple as possible so that they can just like log in, do the trainings, so they have skills that they can come back to. Because all athletes get nervous, all athletes deal with pressure, all athletes are going to have that moment where they're doubting themselves, all athletes have negative thoughts. Let's not think that your athlete is a unicorn and doesn't, but instead let's give them skills on how to handle it. So another just other moments, like throughout all of this, when it was actually in practice leading up, one of my athletes was struggling a little bit and another one, one of her teammates, was trying to help her and she was like hey, like I just overheard her, she goes hey, well, what's your reset word? And she's like my reset word is calm. She was like, okay, like that, just come back to that. And I just I think that's like the biggest testament is when, as a coach, I think with any skill that you teach, but with some of these skills that sometimes athletes can be skeptical about, first thing, to hear them reminding each other of that, like you know, it actually makes me pretty emotional. You know, just to like hear them out there, like using that as something that they're falling back on to help their teammates, is is pretty cool.

Speaker 1: 45:08

Another last story I'll tell you. That was cool. I was talking to a parent and this parent was like you know, we we actually hired a sports psychologist like leading up to the season. We're kind of pulling out all the stops to help our athlete and with some of this she was an athlete that wasn't previously on varsity, so she was her first season on varsity and I asked her the dad asked after, like, did it help? Like the sports psychologist help? And the athlete was like, nah, but what really helped was, you know, the night before the state championships like Brie, took us into a room.

Speaker 1: 45:37

We went to a team room in the facility, turn off all the lights and did just like a body scan visualization, where I had them visualize a color, kind of like coming up through their body and whatever color they wanted to represent what they needed. So, whether that be like energy, calm, fire, you know whatever they needed. And this athlete said, like I just imagined the color that came to mind was red and this red color was like filling my body and I was like on fire and locked in, ready to go. And you know, when I was on the court, I was just imagining this color and it allowed me to just be that and play, locked in. And the dad was like, are you serious, all of this money that I spent as a psychologist and you're just saying that Brie and her visualizations is what helped you play better? I was like, okay, I'll send you the bill later, but anyways, just a testament to like when athletes, even if they're a little bit open to this, work like it, it helps them, you know, especially because they typically don't have things to fall back on and so they're going to fall back to what's comfortable and that is spiraling. You know that's just what they're used to.

Speaker 1: 46:41

So I don't know, like, if you're listening, as a parent, as a coach, I know that this episode was a little bit different and I feel like I just rambled the whole time, but hopefully you're taking away some nuggets.

Speaker 1: 46:51

If you are a parent listening, you're like hey, I want that for my daughter. I, in the show notes, I will leave a link to our program at a discount. So there's a little bit of a discount when you follow the link in the show notes. And then for coaches, if you're like hey, I want to do this with my team. We've got plug and play, the elite mental game. And again, it's just, it's simple, it's literally plug and play. You just play the videos, you have a little lesson plan and you've got Athletes can download them to their phone or you can read the script if you're into that. So I'll leave the links to all of that for you to find more information. Thank you for listening, thanks for following along, thank you for helping me process and relive this season, which will go down in history as one of the most impressive, shocking and just phenomenal seasons and groups that we've had here in the program and I will see you in the next episode of the Raising Elite.