She has the skills. She's been to practice. She's put in the reps, but the second the pressure goes up in a game, something shifts, she freezes. Maybe she spirals one mistake, and then she's like mentally gone for the rest of the competition. That is not necessarily a confidence problem in your athlete. Daughter, it's not necessarily a toughness problem. Her brain is actually doing something very specific under pressure and nobody has ever taught her how to work with it, and that's exactly what this video is about. If I haven't met you, I'm Coach Bri. I'm a mental performance coach for athletes. I've also spent the last 14 years. As a head volleyball coach and helping athletes perform and compete at a high level, and the thing that I kept seeing over and over was that the athletes who fell apart under pressure weren't necessarily the ones with less talent. They were the ones who had never been taught what to do with what's happening in their brain during competition, especially under pressure. So today I'm breaking down six brain facts backed by actual research that explain what your daughter is experiencing in her sport, and more importantly, what you can say and do as her parent to help her use these things to her advantage rather than fight against them. So let's go. Brain fact number one is about visualization visualizations. When your daughter visualizes making a play, her brain actually fires the same exact way as if she's actually making it, which is pretty cool. So the Cleveland Clinic has pub. Publish research on this. When an athlete mentally rehearses a skill, like a pass, a free throw, a dive, a sprint of the blocks, those type of things, the neural pathways activate the same way that they do during the actual real thing. So her brain cannot tell the difference between a vividly rehearsed mental imagery and actually doing the physical rep. That means that the two minutes before she competes are not just like downtime, they are training time. Her brain is firing. The question is, what is it firing on, right? Because sometimes athletes visualize negative things happening on accident because they're worried about things happening. So we can actually train her brain to visualize what we want to have happen. And here's what you can say to. Before your game, you can try and close your eyes, see yourself making the play. Not hoping you make it, but actually seeing it. Feeling what your body, your body would do like run through it. It only takes about 30 seconds and the more that she rehearses that success in her mind, the faster her brain will be able to build that pathway to make it real in competition. And this is not just visualization as like a feel good exercise. This is actually how performance. Prep works. This is what I do with all of my teams. Um, it's what we do with athletes inside our program. The elite mental game. It's visualization is just one of those like basic sports psychology tools that we use for athletes to help them perform under pressure. Okay. Brain fact number two in this one stops moms in their tracks every time I share it. It's very interesting. Anxiety and excitement create the same exact physical response in your athlete's body. Racing heart, shallow breathing, tight chest, stomach flipping, that's identical. Whether she is terrified or if she is fired up about something, the physical sensation is the same. So Harvard researcher, Alison Woodbrook, studied this and found something that changed how I actually coach pre-game nerves with my athletes. So athletes who told themselves, I'm excited. Instead of I'm nervous performed. Measurably better not calm down, not just focus on the positives. Those strategies try to reduce arousal, which you actually cannot do before a competition. Same feeling, different label, different performance. So the next time she says, mom, I'm so nervous on the drive to the game, please don't say you'll be fine. Don't be nervous. Just relax. Say this, your body is getting ready to compete. Tell yourself you're excited. That's the actual science backed swap one word. Like that's literally the shift. And I share this with athletes on our athlete welcome call. For those that are joining our program, the elite mental game, I share this tip with them. And just that is enough to be like, oh my gosh. Okay. That's a really cool little like mindset hack that I can be using in my next game. And if you want to learn more about how to help your daughter with these skills, make sure you check out our free training for sports moms. That's that. Train her game.com. I go over some of these skills more in depth how you can help her. And we also talk about our program that over 6,000 athletes have been through the elite mental game. Um, and there's a little discount for you when you go to the training. Okay? Brain fact number three, your daughter's brain believes what she repeats. Not what is actually true. Now, this is something that comes from the heaven theory, the neuroscience concept. That neurons fire. That the neurons that fire together wired together, right? So the more a thought gets repeated, the stronger that pathway gets. Which means if she walks into every competition. With a thought of like, I always blow it when it matters. Running on loop in her head, her brain is literally wiring that as her reality. And before you tell me, she doesn't say that. She does not have to say it out loud. That inner voice is super strong and it's going constantly, and I promise you that she does have a soundtrack going on in her head during games. The question is, what is that soundtrack saying? And so here's the habit. Pick one phrase. Something like, I trust my training, or I'm built for this. Simple, short, have her say it every single day, not just on game day every day. This sounds too simple to be real, but it's not just a motivational hack. This is how you rewire a neural pathway. Simple, done consistently is what changes the brain, and that is the science behind it and in our program. We have athletes do something on every day. It's called their daily mindset routine. Takes about five minutes and it's called three, two and brave. And part of that is repeating their affirmations every single day. Because again, we want those neural pathways to fire the we want, we want what's wiring in her brain to be what's productive. Okay. Brain fact number four, outta six. We're almost getting there is, um. This is the one I actually wish all parents understood. Your daughter's brain strengthens whatever pattern she practices most. Okay, so this is similar to three, but we think that practices about physical reps to get better at this skill. Yes. But during every single. One of those reps, her brain is also practicing her response to mistakes. If she errors in practice and spirals drops, her head gets tight, makes three more errors. She's practicing that response. She's literally wiring mistakes, equal shutdown. And that pattern, it will show up exactly when the pressure is highest in competition. So. Neuroscience research is clear on this. The response rehearsed in practice is the response that will fire in games. So the pattern you want her building now is not the one that maybe she's doing in practice. You want her to be able to like make a mistake, breathe, reset, refocus every time, not sometimes every time, because that's the repetition that will wire. So here's something that you can do that costs nothing. You can model this yourself. When something goes wrong at home. Okay. Which things do you can in front of her model, what your response is? So you spill your coffee, you miss the exit, whatever you say out loud. Okay. Breath reset. You are showing her what recovery tools look like and athletes learn more from watching than from being told what to do. So her mistake response is being trained right now. Um, and yeah, you can model it. We also know that athletes need a skill to be able to do this. So that's why we teach something called the snapback routine. Inside our program, this is a two second routine to help athletes get over mistakes fast, because typically they're gonna be spiraling, um, if they don't actually have a way to get back fast from those mistakes. So the snapback routine for us is a combination of a breath to engage their parasympathetic nervous system, a reset word at the top, and then a reset signal on their exhale. And again, that takes about two seconds and it gives athletes an actual, tangible skill to respond to mistakes. Okay. Brain fact number six, the negativity bias. Woo. Your daughter's brain remembers failure, um, more strongly than success. And I probably don't need to remind you of how this works, right? Because, um, she probably is pulling out all the negative things that have happened to her during competition. And you're like, what? But you did a lot of other good things. It's not really her being dramatic. It's not her being too sensitive. It's not a character flaw. It's literally just how the human brain is built. Negativity bias research shows that our brains hold onto n negative experiences longer and more vividly than positive ones. It is a survival mechanism. It's kept humans alive for thousands of years. In sports, though, it means that she can play a strong game with only one rough moment, and that moment is what replays. The entire car ride home. Okay? She made five great plays and all she can think about is the one that she missed. And you've seen this. Well, this is why, and here's the habit that helps after every practice, not game, um, but practice, have her write down three wins. Not just highlights, just three things that she did well, I communicated better. I recovered faster. Um, from that air, my footwork felt solid. And on the drive home, instead of how did it go, ask her, what were your three wins for today? You're not sugarcoating performance. You're helping her train her brain to scan for progress instead of just defaulting to mistakes. And that is a skill and you can help her build that. In the car ride home. And athletes in our program also do this as part of their 3, 2, 1 brave that I was talking about earlier. Um, the three, the two, the one all stand for something different. And the one stands for one piece of evidence that one of your affirmations is coming true. So it's literally like rewiring her brain to be able to find the evidence that. She is getting better. She is pro progressing, which will actually help her create those results more in practice and in competition. So again, if you wanna learn more about how that all works, go to train her game.com. It's our free training for sports parents where we break all this down in depth and we go over our program. Um, that is specifically for girl athletes. Okay? We are at Brain Facts number six. Okay, and this is the one I want to have you really sit with. Okay. The brain is trainable, just like the body. We invest so much in our kids' physical game, club fees, private lessons, tournaments, equipment. We develop her skills and we show up for every rep. But the mental game, the visualization, the anxiety reappraisal, the self-talk, the mistake response, rewiring the negativity bias. Most athletes never get taught any of this. These six things I just talked to you through are not just tips. This is how it works. These are real documented brain functions, and every single one of them is trainable with the right tools and the right consistency. And here's what I need you to hear. You are not helpless in watching her struggle under pressure. You have more influence over her mental gain than most parents realize, not by coaching her harder from the stands, or finding the perfect thing to say after every mistake, but by understanding what is happening in her brain and helping her build these skills over time, both by what you say and what you introduce at home, and the questions you ask on the car ride home. How you are modeling things, but also by giving her the tools that she needs to be able to respond and use her mental game to her advantage in her sport. And that's what you can do by giving her opportunities to train the mental side of the game. We tell athletes it's like you're going to the gym for your mind, your mind gym. Um, you go to the gym, gym to practice your. Skills. You go to the weight room to get stronger and faster, you go to the mind gym. And really it only takes like 20, 30 minutes a week if that. Um, that's what our program suggests for you to be able to develop, develop these skills that will serve you in your sport and in your life. Okay, so I'm gonna recap what our, our six brain facts were. Okay. Number one, visualization. Fires the same neural pathways as the real thing. Two minutes before a competition. Use that time to train, um, and visualize. Number two, anxiety and excitement. Feel identical in the body. Teach her to say, I'm excited instead of I'm nervous. Number three, her brain believes what she repeats. Give her one phrase to really build that daily habit. Number four, the mistake response she rehearses in practice is the one that fires under pressure. So breath reset, word reset signal. Five negativity bias is biology. Three wins after practice trains her brains to to scan for progress. And number six, the brain is trainable, right? She was not born confident or not confident. She can learn this and you can help. So again, go to train her game.com if you wanna go further into this. Um. It was, you know, a game changer for my athletes when they started to learn these skills. They could show up, perform under pressure in the big moments, especially state championships, when it's like we don't rise to the level of the competition. We actually fall to what we have trained. So we have to train this stuff if we want it to show up. All right, moms, I hope this was helpful. I'm Coach Bree, and I'll see you in the next episode of The Raising of the Competitors podcast.