The Podolskiy Method: Parenting an athlete
There is no roadmap for parenting. No "one size fits all". Together we will learn what works and what does not work. Join and listen to doctors, coaches, athletes, parents, and many other guests of all walks of life. Lets take "parenting an athlete" to the next level and give them the right tools for the job.
The Podolskiy Method: Parenting an athlete
The Power of Emotional Management for Athletes and Parents with Pierre DeBar
Unlock the secrets to achieving peak physical and mental performance in athletics with Pierre DeBar, an expert in cultural and high performance, and co-founder of a sports psychology app for hockey. Ever wondered how managing relationships with yourself, others, and your environment can elevate your game? Pierre shares his extensive background in pain recovery and performance coaching, revealing practical techniques drawn from his own athletic journey in hockey and soccer. His insights into high performance relationship management provide a unique perspective for athletes, coaches, and anyone striving for excellence.
Discover the transformative power of emotional management for both athletes and their parents. Pierre dives into the science behind how parents' emotional states can significantly impact their children's athletic experiences and overall well-being. Learn how true confidence can be cultivated through emotional coherence between the heart and mind, and how parents can foster a positive, growth-oriented sports environment. Pierre's exploration of the heart's electromagnetic field and its influence on perception and communication provides a fascinating look at the emotional underpinnings of high performance.
Finally, explore practical tools for managing emotions and stress, from breathwork techniques to mental reframing. Pierre's personal anecdotes about transitioning from coaching with anger to a more connected approach highlight the profound impact of aligning thoughts and feelings for overall well-being. Whether you're an athlete seeking to improve your performance, a coach aiming to support your team better, or a parent looking to create a nurturing environment, this episode is packed with valuable insights and actionable advice.
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We'll be right back. Good evening everybody and welcome to the Podolsky Method Podcast. I'm your host, coach Ilya. I'm a level five UC hockey master coach, coach creator and host of the Podolsky Method podcast. Owner and operator of a skate sharpening shop called Sharpskate, new York, usa Hockey coach developer and a CPA by trade.
Speaker 1:Before we jump into this wonderful episode, I want to give a shout out to our sponsors. Print only with us full printing shop here in New York City, wargate Hockey, this cage for your favorite visor to protect your teeth. You can get 10% off with the code 10PODOLSKIY. Check out HowisHockey and get 10% off with them for your hockey needs with code p-o-d-o-l-s-k-i-y. One zero, of course. Don't forget to check out the junior rangers programming.
Speaker 1:Uh, we are actually starting our fall programs this saturday and actually this it crossed 50 plus rings in the tri-state area, which is absolutely amazing. For under $300, you get full gear for your child and 10 sessions. So definitely check it out If you're interested. Take a look. I am out in Aviator Sports in Brooklyn, in avi, the sport in brooklyn, um, and today I have a wonderful guest who I got a chance to meet at a recently at our usa hockey coach developer um retreat um pierre de bar, and just to give you a little introduction of pierre, he's a director of cultural and high performance. A little introduction of Pierre. He's a director of cultural and high performance, human performance coach and holistic practitioner, educator, co-founder in the sports psychology and mindfulness technology app for hockey, and so much more, pierre, thank you so much for jumping on the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great to be here. I mean, I love that we finally made this happen. It's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's up here. Maybe you could tell folks a little bit about yourself and what you do and I know I said a bunch of things about you, but you could probably do it better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a little bit of a unicorn because I cover a lot of terrain. At the end of the day it's really there's two primary businesses. One is a neural performance center where we do a lot of hands-on clinical work for both pain recovery and performance. That's both athletics and the average athlete person who's recovering from surgery or you name it. The other side of it is human accelerated performance and that's the part that's more facilitation education. We not only do individual coaching with players, we also go in and help organizational coaching.
Speaker 2:We help develop culture, really how to help manage relationships, high performance relationships, because that's where we find a lot of organizations. They want to be high performance, they say they're high performance, but then you look under the covers and you find out the relationships. There's damage being done all over the place. Relationships. There's damage being done all over the place and that's a piece where we continue to see. The frontier of high performance is in that development of how we manage our relationships with self, others and these environments we work through. So that's really a whole that covers a lot of terrain, but we can talk. We can talk everything from. But we can talk everything from development on the physiological. We can talk about emotional and mindset. We can talk about relationship management. We can cover a whole spectrum here. It's really up to see where this goes.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. No, this is pretty amazing. I don't think I've had a guest yet who has been doing both mental and physical attributes of this. You know athletics, but before we jump into the details, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your athletic background and what that looked like growing up.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I was the youngest of four boys. My dad was a. He was an athlete himself and a coach, and a high school coach both tennis and he was an athlete all through his life as well, and it was just built into our culture as a family. We lived across the street from an elementary school in Minnesota and right there we had baseball fields, soccer, tennis courts. In the winter we only had to walk 150 yards and we had an outdoor hockey rink. That was basically our babysitter growing up. We just spent every winter day in Minnesota out there, sub-zero, you name it and so we spent a lot of time there and that just evolved my love of sport, and that sport evolved into two primary categories for myself, and that was in soccer and hockey.
Speaker 2:I ended up being recruited out of high school for soccer and probably went further in soccer than hockey. Hockey is such a competitive, you know, field in Minnesota, but my love of the game transcended so I always played hockey, no matter what, and that's turned into you know, I can probably. I mean I don't even know how many men's leagues games I've played in over the years, but I still play on three or four different teams at elite levels and high levels, and I train for it Every week. I train off ice, I train for hockey. I get meant to use all my mental skills that I use with athletes real time with myself. So I try out all the stuff I'm doing with myself and I'm still at it, still at it, and I'm coming up on 52 here.
Speaker 1:I love it. You know it's interesting cause I do the same thing. I play three or four times a week. You know myself as well as coach and you know I noticed that coaching helped me play better because I started actually reading the game better than I've done before I started coaching. So when you're being coached and when you're actually coaching, it's almost like a whole new perspective and you know you're learning something new and I noticed that you know some of the best coaches are the guys could just learn all the time, like me and you who are doing these seminars that's true and you know what I I want to say about the, even the adult athlete, especially if they come from a background of athletics.
Speaker 2:You know that that student athlete I don't think ever leaves, because I've found, even in my men's leagues, when, when I, when I give suggestions like pre game, you know this is actually where a lot of some of this came from, the source of it. I had already been trained in a lot of methodologies but I started writing these hypnotic emails to my men's league before big playoff games and guys would be like I read that email, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I was so dialed in and so focused before the game and I couldn't wait to get to the rink. And you know this is. These are people that are working professionals and they still have it in them, that athlete is within them and they want that coaching, they want that guidance, they want that focus and it's a part of them that wants that compete and play and never leaves. No matter when you're youth student athlete in college, all the way through, whether you're a pro or not, there's a part of us that always desires that play and compete and it's it's mindful movement.
Speaker 1:It's really puts us in this very compartmentalized, focused state, and I think that piece is what people really love about sport yeah, absolutely, and and you know you mentioned competitive, competitive nature or competition within the sport, even at the adult ages, and I know you know, based on your background, what you talked about. You've coached you, you know professional athletes from NHL and NBA and MLB and NCAA and you've also coached the little kids. What do you see as the biggest, I guess, mental difference between you know, the young athletes and the professionals?
Speaker 2:It really comes down to black and white versus gray. You know the you, the, the teenagers, and that that youthful years it's very black and white. It's up to it's up to us as adults to kind of fill in that gray and create a lot of context. As they move towards the older, into the 20s, you know that that frontal cortex is filling in, that communication network is filling in, so you start to get more analytical at times. I always say the younger athlete, it's such a feeling they're closer to just the experience of being.
Speaker 2:Where you start to get older, they get very caught up in their head and their rumination and their thinking and it just starts to compound in that that difference of identifying with what I am in my head versus when they're younger they're just experiencing life as it is and I think that is where the evolution comes and where you see this growth and mental health issues is really, I would say, just kind of the work I do is help them get back into the body, get back into the experience of my body instead of my head. So no matter what I mean there's a mental skills which has a whole industry around it. I say it's really about the body skills. It's about getting back to developing my experience in my body. How can I use those bio rhythms and information that my body is sensing to really kind of bring me back to the moment, rather than spinning out in the way I'm thinking? So, personally, I just want to say, to add to that it's kind of the bot from the ground up rather than the top down.
Speaker 1:That's how I coach I love it and and you know something you just said that really brought on a question for me, um, where you said that you know, the older you get, the more you you get into your head right, the more you kind of um start thinking or creating those challenges for yourself. So do you think that the mental struggle that some of the older professional players go through is almost self-made, or man-made, if you will, versus something innate or natural? That's a part of your character.
Speaker 2:I do something innate or like natural that's. That's a part of your character. I do, I, I really do, because here here's even working with the the top you're talking the top of the heap athletes they will create, whether they, whether it's on ice, the on ice piece might be there where they're having. That's the easiest part. It's the office, the life, the relationships, the management of these other things. That that is really where they will evolve, as as that's where they'll get their challenge. Their real deep, powerful challenge is off the ice and then they take it to the ice and you'll see their performance up and down. But it's really how they're managing, no matter what they do to prepare. It's also that their life takes up so much more than just that focal point of that sport, and that's where you see a lot of the challenges in the upper echelon.
Speaker 2:Elite athletes is managing that off ice stuff. Elite athletes is managing that off ice stuff and that's the management of personal relationships being a new parent, getting married I'm seeing a lot of athletes go through that transition right now and that can, depending on how you manage that, that can actually make you weak or can make you very strong. As you know, dad, dad strength's a real legit thing. So, uh, I like to say that dad energy is uh, it's, it's a superpower.
Speaker 1:It is a superpower if you want it to be yeah, I mean, you know, if you're coaching and you're a parent and your child is on your team, there's some sort of either favoritism towards your own kid or the opposite the kid gets the most boy and the kid gets the most, you know, the least amount of attention because the coach is trying to avoid that um stigma.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and I feel like over the past 10 years, at least where I am in my organization, that has evolved a little bit. I'm still coaching teams where my kids are playing and you have three kids playing. You know the competitive level all travel players. Now the little one is in and I'm coaching two of the three teams and help out wherever I can with other teams as well. If I'm there, I'll jump on and I'll help. I love being a part of being on the bench or being in practice with other coaches because I steal their moves and learn from them. So I'm always grateful and happy to help out wherever I can. But I feel like that stigma has changed over the past 10 years. Have you noticed something similar in terms of, like parent coaching and how it's viewed by you, know, by the parents and the athletes?
Speaker 2:Well, one. I mean I would say what I my culture. Growing up, I had a great model in my dad and I looked at how I brought that forward in my life and he just had fairness. He was going to develop those kids, no matter those kids that were on the lower end of skill. He was going to make sure they had as much time to develop in-time games as the top players. That was a really important value of his, that fairness piece.
Speaker 2:So I tend to look through that experience, through that fairness, and you will see that the ones that generally have kids, they tend to manage that process. What I see is, overarching, that you'll see more of a fairness approach, that they're not trying to lean too hard. You might see a little challenge with the kids, you know, maybe a little. You know tiny bit of challenge towards their child, tiny bit of challenge towards their child, but overall what I've noticed in the different organizations I've seen is that there's a desire for these parents to really grow as a coach and as a parent and if that's the case, then they're constantly evolving how they're showing up as a coach and that's what I see. I see that part of the industry. Of course we all hear the horror stories of surgeons and I like to think that's just those small little cases, but the overarching is that we have people that are wanting to grow and wanting to evolve with the sport.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and that's a great perspective, I think, talking a little bit from the view of the parent right and I think, before we start the podcast, you and I kind of started touching on that a little bit, on how you know the parents and their energy impacts the athlete but also impacts the other parents around them and maybe the coach and just the atmosphere altogether. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that and how, um, how that works, how that impact carries through not just to a single game but all, maybe a whole season or further well, let me.
Speaker 2:let me ask you a question and you, you can. It's a. It's a little bit of a riddle and I ask a lot of my classes and when I work with groups, I ask this question when are you seeing me?
Speaker 1:Okay, Say that again.
Speaker 2:Where do you see me right now, or where are you seeing me?
Speaker 1:I'm seeing you in a room through a computer screen.
Speaker 2:Okay, there you go. Okay, that's one answer. Could there be another answer?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm seeing you as a specialist in the area of coaching and mental health. I'm seeing you as a trainer, I'm seeing you as a coach.
Speaker 2:Okay, perfect, so these are normal answers. So this is good. Perfect, so these are normal answers, so this is good. Where you're actually seeing me is through your optical like, through your lens, through an optical nerve, the imaging center in your brain.
Speaker 1:So where are you hearing me?
Speaker 2:I guess, through my, through your ears, through your nerves in the auditory part of the brain, through your nerves in the auditory part of the brain, where are you experiencing the clothes on your body, the chair you're sitting in, through your sensory nerves, your skin, and it's being processed in your brain. So everything is happening inside our brain Like what the experience. That's the processing center and the number one influencer into what that brain sees, what it hears and what it's experiencing is what we're feeling. So if we're frustrated and we're angry and we're overwhelmed or we got anxiety, what we see is different, what we hear is different, what we're experiencing in our body, even how food tastes, you start to go into states of more courage or more calm or more balance or patience. You know how do you see things when you're impatient versus how do you see things when you're patient. Same thing listening, talking. So really that's the qualities of the heart. So what we're talking about. You're asking the question of the influence of the parents and how a parent can support their child optimally. And here's the thing the heart is 5,000 times stronger electrically than the brain. It's much greater electrically than the brain. It's much greater electrically than the brain. Anything electrical, has an electromagnetic field. That's how Wi-Fi is communicated, that's how radio signals, everything's communicated through that electromagnetic field. Literally, how we're feeling is being broadcast into the environment around us. And how is that done? Every feeling we have frustration they've now have a specific heart signature rhythm to frustration. They've measured this so literally. When we're frustrated, everybody feels it. If you've been in sport, you can tell when somebody gets frustrated and that one person who gets frustrated can overwhelm a whole bench. A coach that starts to lose their emotions, it can take over a whole bench. You talk about those momentum swings. That's energy, that's emotion, that's a feel, tangible thing. So now what science is showing is that literally what we're feeling is influencing our environment around us. It's not what we're thinking, it's what we're feeling. And that is where we see a lot of distress in the human being. The number one stressor in the human is when the head is saying one thing and the heart is saying something else.
Speaker 2:I wish I would have said no and I said yes. I wish I would have said yes when I said no. Things like that, as simple as that. You know, I, I'm going to put on a. You know I'm going to put on a, uh, a courageous. I'm going to feel confident today. This is classic, for I want to feel more confidence. You're going to. That confidence is a false confidence, because if you're feeling overwhelmed, anxiety, worthlessness underneath, you're kind of putting on this false bravado and people can smell that, people can sense that.
Speaker 2:And so how do we get back to train the system to tell the brain really how to feel and how to process and that's working with the heart, heart feelings, and we can. Oh, there's a whole science behind it, heart Math Institute, which I'm a trainer for. They're an organization out of Northern California. They do all sorts of research on the intelligence of the heart. I highly suggest that we can talk about that for hours. It's my passion.
Speaker 2:Going back to the original question, coach, is what we're feeling, even as a parent. If I get upset and I'm impatient with the way my child's playing hockey, I'm literally influencing their system, their heart. We have direct access to that child. They know us, we have a direct field environment to them. So if we're upset, we're influencing them. It's really up to us parents to find a way to make sure we're regulating ourselves before we have a hard talk with them after the game, before the game, during the game all those things how we hold ourselves emotionally can really influence that child, and science has shown this. Heartmath has done a bunch of research around this.
Speaker 1:That's. You know that's very deep and I feel like a lot of people struggle with it. So, if I heard you correctly, we are saying that feelings drive experience, not the other way around Experience doesn't drive the feelings.
Speaker 2:Here's how the nervous system works in a millisecond. In a millisecond, the nervous system works heart to brain, brain to gut. That's how it works Boom, boom, boom. So when people talk about gut instincts, a lot of times they're they're referencing really hard instincts, the gut instinct is. So here's another question have you ever been in a situation that felt unsafe?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Okay. So in that moment you felt unsafe, something felt off. Then your head, caught up in a millisecond, said, started looking around, going something's off here, something's wrong, and start looking around. Now my mind's catching up to the information from my heart. My heart's picking up on this field environment. A person walks in that feels unsafe. You look and all there's a person. That's what our group. Now my gut instinct kicks in. Do I engage? Do I step away? Do I pause? Do I help? Whatever it is so literally there's.
Speaker 2:The nervous system works really quickly between the heart rhythms, which, which are really regulated, um, whether they're depleting or negative emotions, or positive emotions, they have different signature feeling and the brain's constantly going okay. So when I'm frustrated, it knows, it gets a signal from the heart and says oh, I know this rhythm, it's frustration, goes through the memory banks. This is what I, this is how I act when I'm frustrated. I get angry, I get aggressive, I shut down, I retreat, I get silent. And then what happens? The gut kicks in.
Speaker 2:If I'm in depleting emotions for long periods of time, guess what happens. You pack on weight, you don't process, you don't metabolize well. Maybe your GI system gets constricted. You know you're not eliminating well, or your hyper elimination, whatever it is that all of a sudden the organs start operating differently. So there's a, there's a specific rhythm here, why it's not just physical health, it's. It's not just mental health. We're talking. Emotional health is at a root of a lot of this high performance environment. How are, how are we managing our emotions and how can we do that? Because, again, the body's going to respond to that. How we experience our life.
Speaker 1:It's going to be really driven by that so, if so, is there a way that we can influence how we are feeling, or changing how we feel Like?
Speaker 1:I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:There's a period, you know, 15, 20 years ago, when, coming home from work, I would work in Manhattan, in the city, it was about an hour commute home and I would fall asleep on the train and I would wake up very groggy and frustrated and angry, right, and we just had our first kid with my wife, and I would wake up very groggy and frustrated and angry, right, and we just had our first kid with my wife. And I would come home and I knew that, you know, like a hothead, I would go off the hinges if somebody said something like the slippers were in the wrong spot and you know, that's it, you know. And so I came home and my wife is, she's a child psychologist, she's a counselor and she has like two master's degrees, she works in education and I'm very honest and open with her and you know, thankfully, and they can tell her that, hey, you know, I get really angry when I get home, so I need 20 minutes to myself angry when I get home, so I need 20 minutes to myself.
Speaker 1:And so she was like you know. So, whenever I would come home, she would just kind of like let me be, you know she wouldn't come. You know, right as I walk through the door and just kind of, let me come in, settle in, go down, then we'll sit down. And that was going on for a good six months and then it stopped.
Speaker 1:You know, but I kind of I was able to recognize that feeling I was having but, I wasn't able to actually control that feeling, I wasn't able to change it in, you know, mentally, like just forcing myself to feel different I just had to manage it, almost sure. So when you work with like athletes and in parents and and folks, is there a way that you help them manage those emotions and kind of gain more control around it?
Speaker 2:sure, yeah, absolutely. Uh, you know we joke. We joke in hockey sometimes, especially when I'm at hockey director meetings. With hockey, all roads lead to beer league, you know, no matter what it is. You know I got a guy that just retired, he touched the Stanley Cup, everything and he's playing men's league now in Chicago, right, so it kind of cracks me up.
Speaker 2:Well, in the same vein, all roads lead back to the breath. So the breath really expresses a lot of what's going on. So when we go back to, how do we begin to start anchoring ourselves and managing our responses to the world, both what we're thinking and what we're feeling. And again, those are two different questions. What are you thinking, what are you feeling? Two different answers there a lot of times, and actually they've shown it's two different information centers. This process is information. They've now found that the heart has its own ability to think, feel, process information. So they are two intelligent information centers. The gut's another one has tons of information. That's broadcasting.
Speaker 2:But when you look at it providing those skills, some of those are like what you just described, I think of like a thermostat setting. It's like whatever set you off for a while, whatever you got fatigued, maybe you got overrun or you had too much on the plate. Whatever it was your thermostat's saying, it was probably set towards a little overwhelm, a little, probably, who knows. I mean it could be a couple of those things and sometimes those undercurrents of emotions they aren't really moldable in real time. It's like the real time, in the moment. Emotions we can manage those. It's the undercurrents, the long-term overwhelm, the long-term sadness and grief. Those things sit there for a while and those can't. Those have to be managed. The real time emotions I get frustrated, I get short with something. Listen, that's on me. I can manage that. I can actually transform that. So when kids or athletes have performance, they get stressed before going into a big event.
Speaker 2:Hey, let's not only reframe it, let's really look at how do we harness that. How can we just do some breathing, check in with our heart, acknowledge what we're feeling. I'm a little anxious, but how can we move that feeling, using the intelligence of the heart to say, hey, what would I rather feel? I'd rather feel excited, I'd rather feel courage, I'd rather feel passion and joy. Great, let's just breathe in our heart, take some breaths in it's really imagine a time you felt that. Let's connect with that feeling. Think of people that bring that out in you. You know, let's engage. Can you make a sincere attempt to feel that? And guess what? Just that experience?
Speaker 2:The breath, the heart shifting, the heart rhythms, the brain gets the information and the brain starts to put blood in the front of the brain rather than sitting in the back of the brain. That's those old behaviors. We want to get in the front of the brain. That's what I always say. Just neurologically, we want to keep getting ourselves in front of the brain. So we got to get ourselves out of those old responses which, if we're feeling depleted, it'll keep us in the back. Depleted, it'll keep us in the back.
Speaker 1:Right and so yeah, can you give an example of a breath work one would do, especially? You know, I hear a lot with a lot of athletes at all ages, and especially guys who are migrating into beer league. There are moments and I think we all experience them. Well, I don't want to call them them depression, but it's like moments of sadness and that they will ask for a few days and they're hard to kick. You know, kick it to the curb or control it on your own. So is there a breathing technique that you would recommend to an athlete or somebody who's transitioning out of that professional, constant rigor schedule into more of a luxurious, calm life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's funny, that's true, Because I've worked with a lot of athletes and there's been some serious challenges were coming out of that high. You know NHL players that are leaving a long career behind and all of a sudden they're sitting at home, you know, and just all of a sudden going what's going on? Right, concussions have done it, you know, retirement has done it. You name it Again the qualities of you can accept. Sometimes you think you can accept something in your brain but your heart's not accepting it. You're in resistance to it. You're not there yet. And I think again, going back to that heart-brain connection, when your heart's, your head's saying one thing I need to accept it, but my heart's not ready to accept it, you know. So if I'm not ready to accept it, what can I get to? You know, how can I begin to move this process? I can't just jump from sadness to joy. That's too big of a jump. How can I take these little steps in emotional, sort of emotional steps, to sort of give myself permission to work through this process of grieving? Really, because it's a grieving. It's a grieving of a lifestyle, it's a grieving of an identity, it's a grieving of an experience that brought a lot of meaning to these athletes and that's a piece that anything meaningful is heart. That's the heart stuff, you know. That's the heart qualities, that's the heart stuff.
Speaker 2:You, this technique I call the U technique and it's really just think of the letter U. You start on one end and you kind of circle down and come up so that U technique really stands for at the top. You're basically thinking about something. You're ruminating. I'm ruminating about some issue, if you can acknowledge that, wow, I've been thinking about this issue for like two days and it's just I'm thinking, thinking, thinking this is where you use the you technique. Come down, you drop down. What am I really feeling around? What I'm thinking? I'm feeling sadness, I'm feeling grief, I'm feeling upset about this. You know I'm irritated. Okay, so you acknowledge what you're feeling behind that rumination. Now I'm at the bottom of the you. This is where the heart comes in. Take some breaths.
Speaker 2:As you breathe, you know, imagine the breath is flowing in and out of your heart, the center of your chest, and as you bring awareness to that part of your body, you start to access that heart intelligence. And from there you would ask what would I rather feel? And usually the heart gives us a texture. It says you know, I want to feel acceptance, I want to feel willingness to let go, I want to feel, you know, some compassion for myself that I'm going through this, some empathy, some care, you know so.
Speaker 2:And then, if you can just breathe that in and work your way up that you to the other side of the you, now how am I thinking? Hey, it's going to be okay, it's going to. I need to reach out to a friend, I need to call somebody and just, you know, check in and maybe have them make me laugh. Or a buddy Like you see, how, just that small little exercise, using some breath not doing box breathing, not doing all these other performance breaths, just, really, just breathing and bringing awareness to the heart and accessing that infinite intelligence that and really the seat of our intuition is. They've shown us the heart.
Speaker 2:Yeah you know, this is great.
Speaker 1:And I really liked how you said you know, specifically I caught the word acknowledgement and acknowledging the fact that you're feeling a certain way and really giving it a minute, you know, to kind of simmer and understand what you're feeling and how you want to feel. I feel like, you know, inadvertently, I mean, you know I haven't thought about it in this, in in terms of how you just described it, or in the pathway, but I have kind of done something very similar in over the years in my personal life and even working with kids, right right, if a kid gets hurt. I had an instance a few weeks ago. I was working with little kids and a kid fell and naturally they went to the boards and tried to talk to their father and the kid is just hysterical.
Speaker 1:For a good five minutes I called the kid over and I'm like what happened? And I fell. I said, okay, are you hurt? Yes, where. And then I fell. I said, okay, are you hurt? Yes, where, yeah. And then I said, okay, breathe with me. They just breathe through the nose, out through your mouth, three times and just like feeling better, you know. And then we kind of acknowledged it yes, it happened, but you're a hockey player, you're tough, you, you're fine, let's breathe together. And the kid was ready to go and then the father came over to me after practice and goes what'd you tell him? How'd you? What'd you say?
Speaker 1:that he just stopped crying. He said I just acknowledged that he's hurt. You know, I didn't. There was, you know there wasn't a confrontation. It's like hey, get up and get it together, you know, and let's go play, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, it's beautiful and you know you think about. Even in men's league I see somebody get hurt, I'm the first one. I jump over the boards. We're right over there. I put my hand on them, just say take a breath, you know take, you know. Breathe into my hand, just to bring awareness out of their pain. I want to bring up something right there. I often ask this question and these are some of my greatest hits that I'm throwing out there what's the difference between a hug and an embrace? What's the difference between a hug and an embrace.
Speaker 1:I guess a hug is physical and embracing sounds more emotional.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that answer. That's a great answer. So it's a little bit more connected, right? I'm going to take it a step further into physiology of breath. A lot of times when people hug and it's not uncommon they hug and they hold their breath. You know you hug and you might even hold somebody for 15 seconds and you let go and they're like they start breathing as soon as you let go. Compared to an embrace, there's an exhale, there's a softening of the heart. You know an embrace is like something where you know you think about embracing somebody before they cry, like it looks like they're holding on, they're in pain. All of a sudden you hold them and they exhale. And that embracing the emotion all of a sudden lets the emotion come out. Or, in this case, somebody's having an intense pain response they're upset, their breath is really constricted, they're upset, their breath is really constricted. So giving them permission to acknowledge just the experience and letting go and embracing the pain or embracing the emotion really is a big part in that exhale, exhaling out, just allowing this, that breath out, to exhale and embrace the experience.
Speaker 2:I stubbed my toe a couple days ago. I swear I broke it and in the past, I would have held my breath and just every you know word would have come out of my mouth. I would have been red, and in that moment I've spoken about this so much I exhaled and I immediately embraced the discomfort and pain and I was able to work through it way faster and continue on with my process and not I don't know not disrupt my nervous system so acutely. I was able to kind of like work with it really quickly and morph it, and then I think my body didn't hold onto it as intensely. You know, I think that's the piece of that.
Speaker 2:Mental toughness is really, I believe, coming back to our brain, our breath and our managing how we breathe in our current situations. And if we can manage that breath, we can manage our nervous system, we can manage our heart, which is telling our brain what to see, what to feel, what it's seeing, what it's hearing, and hence that's the work I do with athletes and with organizations it's helping each other, giving even each other feedback. How do you give feedback when you're angry? Well, that's not a good time to give feedback. Sometimes you just got to set yourself, breathe, exhale, then begin the feedback loop, right. So all of a sudden that might change what you say, the words that come out of your mouth, and even how the person receives it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's such a great point. And you know, as you were talking, I was thinking about my own experience, because you know, that's really how we perceive things, as you mentioned earlier. Right, it's through ourselves. When I started coaching, I was very loud and I would yell at the kids, I would yell on the bench and I was, you know, because I felt like I had to prove myself to everybody and prove my spot, and it was all about me. It was all about winning games and I got great results with the kids, but at the expense of um that kind of like just rage you know,
Speaker 1:and and just kind of anger approach right. And then, um, I think, a few years in it, there's other other coaches, my friends and the director of my organization, and I spoke to a lot of different people. I spoke to parents, you know, obviously family and I started realizing there's got to be a better way, because I didn't feel good afterwards, when I got off the bench or when I left the game. I didn't feel good about winning. Yeah, I felt like, even though I got the result I wanted, but it wasn't in a way that I wanted it.
Speaker 1:It almost, you know, and a lot of times you feel guilty in that situation. And then and then the reason why I thought of that is because when you were talking about embracing, that's kind of what changed it for me I embraced the fact that it's not about me and whether I win or lose, that is not a reflection of how good of a coach I am or how good of a parent I am. And as soon as that happened, that transition occurred, my whole style changed Almost within weeks. And, yes, I'm demanding and I try to still discipline in the kids, but it's not through the rage, it's more through connection, it's more relationship and it's just a completely different feeling.
Speaker 1:And now, when I come off the bench, whether we win or lose, I feel good because I connect, as opposed to force and push.
Speaker 2:This is so rich, that is rich with material that we can break down. That's beautiful, first of all, and kudos to you for being willing to change. You know it doesn't surprise me. I mean, your energy is, you know, it's very contagious, first of all. But you talk about embracing. You know, embracing just like that, just like that, that exhale, it's like letting go, letting go of the tension, letting go of the pressure. You let go of the tension of needing to do something right. You let go of that, you embraced. You embraced the change, and what I hear from my lens and my experience is you really got connected to your heart.
Speaker 2:You were in conflict between your head and your heart. Your head wants to win, win win. Your heart's saying no, this doesn't feel right, I feel guilty. I feel this doesn't feel right, I'm doing damage, or whatever it is, to myself. I can only imagine your nervous system probably really shifted a lot after that change. I can imagine just how your cortisol works and everything just sort of. You know, it just was more regulated, I guess. But what you're talking about is really qualities of the heart. You change the way you listen to your heart. Your heart was screaming, saying it's too much, too much, too much. Your head's like no, no, no, okay, I guess I got to let go. That's how I hear it. That's how I hear it through the lens of the heart and brain communication. That's how I hear it. That's how I hear it through the lens of the heart and brain communication.
Speaker 1:That's great. It puts so much in perspective that it kind of happened in my eyes. It just happened because of the course of action that occurred, right, but listening to you and you speaking to it, it all makes perfect sense. To you and you speaking to it, it all makes perfect sense. And understanding that that's how we can go through transformation to positive connection between heart and brain, that will put us in balance. I feel a lot. I feel also that drives you to happiness, right. And if you think about pursuit of happiness as the goal, right, and you want to feel happy, you want to feel accomplished and acknowledged, and I think you pointed it out so perfectly because if you have that disconnect between your heart and your brain, you have an imbalance and you cannot feel that happiness, you feel frustration and it's difficult to manage that. Do you think that something similar can be applied to parents? We see that all the time, right In the bleachers and in the stands.
Speaker 2:I do and I don't want to lose this thought because I think it's really valuable. Yeah, I do and I don't want to lose this thought because I think it's valuable. What we do when we, when we disconnect from that head, that head, heart communication is, you know a popular term is gaslighting. We literally gaslight ourselves. Don't feel that way, don't think that way, don't like, we literally beat ourselves up and a lot of that you know.
Speaker 2:You look at the mental health crisis. That's why I say this is a mental, emotional health crisis. That communication system. When we discount what we're feeling and we try to override it with our thinking, right there we're out of alignment, we're creating dissonance. And if that goes on long periods of time, our body shows that, our psychology shows it, or our natural lens of how we view the world changes. And I think that communication system is so essential to well-being and they've shown that the autonomic nervous system goes right through that heart. So what the heart's feeling? If you're feeling depleting emotions, your autonomic nervous system, it's like a inefficient driving. It's like driving with one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake. You know, when you're feeling renewing or more calm or balanced emotions, your body goes into balance.
Speaker 2:So where I'm going with that is as a parent. We talk ourselves. I'm a parent. I got a 10 and 12-year-old. My son plays hockey Like, trust me, I have good days, I have bad days. I'm not perfect at all and I teach this and coach this. And there's some days I have to go off into a corner and find a way to regulate myself and get myself into a place that I'm not freaking out or not getting upset, and a lot of things play into that. Other life experiences. It's not just this, it's what I'm carrying into the rink and a lot of times are putting me in those states.
Speaker 2:I just think that, listen, you said a big word connection. Connection's the heart. It is. How many times have you had conversations and it's an analytical conversation and you walk away and it's like, oh, that was interesting, but there's like no connection. You really are wanting to know. That's a connection.
Speaker 2:People feel that and as a child, they can tell when you're there or not. And as a coach, this is what I see. I'm going right. I'm leaving tomorrow to work with a Division I college program and then work with coaches and the coaching team and here's the thing they feel when you're connected to them. They feel when you care, they feel when you're in in their best interest, and damage can be done or resentment kicks in when they feel like they don't care about you. And that's the piece where the evolved athlete and where it's going is really going to come down to.
Speaker 2:We're getting these intelligent young kids coming up and they're they're more emotionally, social, emotional, aware, they're being, they're coming out of a lot of upheaval. There's more awareness around it in the overall arcing education system. We're going to have more aware kids and they're going to be able to feel when you're there or not, when you're distracted or when you're actually truly listening, and the greatest gift you can give your child is just to know like, hey, I'm connected to you, I'm here for you, no matter what Good or bad judgment, no judgment, I'm here, I love you. I love watching you play.
Speaker 2:They always say that's the greatest thing you can say to your child. I love to watch you play. Good or lose or win, just love to watch you play, move, compete, do your thing. So I think that's where we got to get back to and whatever it takes to get there an exhale, a breath, check in with your heart. Really, is this necessary? That's going to override the brain and give a different signal to the brain to say it's not that important, it's not that big a deal. Put it in context. But when you're upset, you're in the back of the brain going. This is the most important thing in the world. This is the most urgent thing in the world. It is so important that's the old system work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's such a great analogy. I really really enjoyed that. I think you put that in perspective so well. It reminded me of a scene in the movie it's a Russian movie, it's called Brother and there's a scene where the guy comes to America and he's walking, you know he meets this lady, he's talking to her, he's like what does it mean when people say how are you? And she says you know, that means they're asking you how you're doing in Russian, like she translates it for him and he goes like do they all want to know how I'm doing? And she says no, they just ask yeah, and then you know they brought that scene back to me because you're saying you know, because how often do you pass by somebody in the hall and go, hey, how you doing, and keep walking. Often do you pass by somebody in the hall and go, hey, how are you doing, and keep walking, how often does that happen?
Speaker 2:This is one of our primary skills that we bring into organizations and teams. Is the check-in an authentic check-in? Because how do you know how this person's showing up? How do you know your teammate Whether he can go to battle? We jump into battle and start competing and then you know somebody's throwing a stick at somebody, somebody's crying in the corner, pouting in the bench, whatever it is. You could have got ahead of that just by checking in, having a formal check-in process as a team, like where are you on a warrior check-in right now? Oftentimes that gives you know.
Speaker 2:It's not uncommon me checking in with the high school team. Half the team might be at 50%, maybe even a little down. They got other things, they got schoolwork, they got challenge. They stayed up last night. Things are rough at home, whatever it is. That's how they're showing up and I'll have the team look around. Did you know that person was feeling that way? No, no idea. Can you support that person? Yeah, I can. Great, right there, you got the connection. Right there you show care and concern for your fellow human and that's compared to like hey, how are you doing?
Speaker 1:I mean how many?
Speaker 2:times, I still do it. How are you doing Great? Very transactional, not transformational.
Speaker 1:Very true. I actually recently had an experience in the spring. I was coaching Junior Rangers and I had a little kid who was probably about four or five years old and you know we're going towards the end of the practice. He's obviously tired. He starts crying I want my dad, I want my dad. I was like, well, daddy's watching you. You're almost done, you got 10 minutes, let's go, let's get done. He's like, no, I can't see him. I can't see him. I was like I'm sure he's somewhere around. He could see you. You, you know, I can't see him because he's, he's dead. Hmm, and you know, obviously, you, you kind of a little bit stunned. When the five-year-old says that to you, it's again with biggest hug and I said I'm sure he's still watching. You know that let's skate together. And so we finished all the practice.
Speaker 1:And, to your point, every single one of these kids, whether they're five or 35, they all have a story that they deal with. And sometimes they show up to the ice and we don't know which way they're feeling or what's going on in their head or their heart. You know where are they that day? And instead of asking, we kind of jump on their case and hey, you're playing bad today, you. You didn't pass the puck to me, you're not looking, you're this right? We escalating the situation beyond what it needs to be instead of being supportive, maybe in that moment because that's what that person needs, and so it's so easy to forget that emotional connection it's brilliant, that's brilliant and it's so true.
Speaker 2:and that's again. They feel that care and concern, right. They feel that genuine desire to understand how they're feeling. And it might be the first person to ask him authentically in a long time, even as an adult, because of that, hey, how are you doing? And it might be the first time they're checking in with themselves authentically in a long time. I find that to be the case too. It's like wow, I haven't checked in with myself in a couple of weeks even. I've been just going, going, going, going going. So, yeah, that's great stuff, that's really good stuff.
Speaker 2:And you know that check-in process is one of the easiest things you can do. We actually have a project. Hap has been working with USA Hockey at the presidential level, executive level, all the way down to, you know, different affiliates. We work in New York. Actually, We've got a project with the New York State Board of Amateur Hockey and you know that's one of the primary tools. We do is like, hey, check in, it takes about this much effort and you get about that much return because you're honoring the humanity in each other. If you can honor that humanity just for a second, that that immediately starts to begin that bridging those disconnects I.
Speaker 1:I also feel like when you do something like that, it makes you feel better as well. You know, and a friend of mine and I actually had a very interesting discussion about ultra and being truly altruistic, right, and being just being able to give without anything in return, and my point was that that doesn't really exist, because when you do something nice for somebody, you feel good about it, so you're doing it in return, you get the feeling of, hey, I called somebody, I helped somebody, you know, and so you know you're kind of talking through the definition of that word and what does it really mean? If it's like an ideological state, it doesn't really exist, but it's something that we utilize to just acknowledge somebody giving something to somebody without an obvious reason of return.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you nailed it. And what you're saying is what's happening inside your body is hey, if I'm being compassionate to somebody else, I am compassionate. So my body's responding in a regulated state, my brain is regulated, my cortisol, I'm releasing positive hormones in my system, my nervous system's in balance. So you're giving yourself a gift by expressing compassion to somebody else. So it is ultimately something that you're choosing to be and in that being you're giving. You know, you're sharing yourself, you're sharing your vibe, you're sharing your care, whatever it is. You're broadcasting that experience, and then you use your words or whatever not. So you're right on with that man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I appreciate that. The one thing I know we're coming up on the hour here, but I didn't to go a little bit longer here because there's so much good stuff you're talking about. I wanted to talk a little bit about fear, because I feel like the fear is the driver of a lot of negative emotion and rage and the frustration that we see with parents and even coaches, where you're afraid that you will be judged based on the performance of your child right or your player, and ultimately that becomes the negative driver and ultimately that becomes a negative driver in the way you deal with people and the way you deal with kids and speak.
Speaker 2:Have you had any experience where you're helping folks and parents and athletes get through their underlying fears and gain some of that confidence that we talked about earlier? Well, I think of a couple of things. So let's go back to COVID. When COVID happened, when COVID first started taking over, think about what they were showing on TV. They're showing everybody's running to the grocery stores, taking everything off the rack.
Speaker 2:There's panic, panic, fear, all that stuff. Right, that's about the most extreme unregulated emotional experience you can have. That's about the furthest point of rage and panic are about as far away from being grounded as you can possibly be. So you are being overwhelmed by a feeling and it's got you in your most reptilian responses in your brain. And again now we're identifying with, with old behaviors, with old uh needs and and and the need to be accepted, the need you know all that stuff comes into threat and and I think that's the piece where acknowledging being able to, being able to catch yourself, like a lot of times. Here's the thing, here's the question. Here's one really solid question that will help you walk through the fear. How do I know this is true? Do I know this is true?
Speaker 2:I like that because most of times I don't. I don't know if this is true right there, that question and can alter the way you're responding to any environment. How do I know this is true? I don't. That's usually going to be the answer. You know that catastrophic idealization where you're like oh, that person hasn't. I've texted them four times, they haven't responded back. Oh, they must hate me, something like that. Everybody's got that stuff. Or that person doesn't like me anymore.
Speaker 2:In reality they're probably busy most times or not, but you got a fear like oh my God, I'm rejected or I'm in that primal fear of being rejected is kind of at a core of a lot of that fear base. Your wife probably knows this from a lot of her training, but I would say, going back to it, it's when we can ask ourselves thoughtful questions and have a couple of those core questions we can just ask ourselves in those challenging times how do I know this is true? Do I know this is true that all of a sudden forces blood to the front of the brain? Now our higher functioning brain and our higher sort of analysis can kick in and say well, wait a second, what's really going on here? What do I need to do, because usually we're operating out of a primal spot when we're in that fear, and a lot of this goes back to whether it's an athlete, whether it's a parent, whether it's an organization, whether it's an organization, it still goes back to that indoctrination of how can we train ourselves to not let that keep me from taking a step forward, because doubt's always going to pause you.
Speaker 2:How can I acknowledge what I'm feeling and then be able to take a breath, step into courage and move forward and ask a hard question, go find information to fill in that gap of what I don't know? How can I go have a hard conversation and maybe do it, you know, vulnerably, and build that trust with somebody and you know, maybe, and deal with, maybe an answer I might not like, but, you know, acknowledge it and work through it. So I think there's a lot there that you have to acknowledge what's happening in your body. First, I'm feeling tension, I'm feeling stress, I'm feeling upset, I'm feeling fear, like how can I shift that? A lot of times asking good questions, taking a breath, will start to begin that process and morphine to be able to take a step forward into the fear, into the concern. That's where I'm coming from. Is that helpful?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely no, this is great.
Speaker 2:We could have a whole book on this. So there's a lot more to it. I'm simplifying it to one tool. There are a lot of other ways to manage that process, but that's just one I would throw out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's wonderful.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1:I think that thinking about breathwork and I think that's been the theme of a lot of things that you've been saying and how practical that is in application tool that I feel that folks need to start putting into their back pocket, whether they're a parent on the bleachers or whether they're a coach on the bench or maybe even an administrator or, you know, a ring staff or an athlete themselves in managing the way that they approach their response.
Speaker 1:You know, and you know, I do that in my daily work as well, when I I work with people as a CPA and I do internal audit and compliance work and there may be things that feel frustrating to me, and I just kind of take a breath, take a moment and calmly discuss the issue instead of kind of escalating it or getting frustrated in that way. So it's very professional and you're trying to solve a problem. You're not trying to call somebody out, you're not trying to put blame on anybody. You're trying to add value to people and help them work through issues and again, it gives you that gratifying feeling that we talked about earlier, where you didn't come there to reprimand, you came there to become a team and help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to me that sounds like your optimal self. When you think about being an optimal human. It's a high functioning, high relationship, high connection, calm under pressure, being strategic, being able to problem solve in real time. It's what they call operational coherence, that ability to have a calm system and a calm brain and and that's an optimal place to be, and you're just describing it. You just gave a bunch of descriptors of that optimal self and, again going back to it, that's a feeling that that's generating in that millisecond my heart's feeling, something my brain's following and my, my gut instincts are supporting that. So awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, I think we're gonna have to do another show because we have yeah, I think so too, man, we got.
Speaker 2:We got a whole other electrical energetic side we gotta talk about in team building and other things. I mean, we could keep going on this, of course, but we'll do another one.
Speaker 1:I love it. So, before I close out, I always like to do a little rapid fire with a few questions, so we'll start with the first one, which is just what motivates athletes.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say to evolve, to be on their cutting edge, to experience themselves in a new way.
Speaker 1:Nice. Next one is if you could name three character traits that you notice in successful athletes, what would they be?
Speaker 2:A desire to grow, a willingness to receive feedback so they can change their behavior, change their skill and, I think, just a desire, a willingness to do the hard work Chop wood, carry water. They're willing to get up and do the hard work when others might not.
Speaker 1:Love that. Totally agree with it. And the last one here is if you could name three things that can hold an athlete back, what would they be?
Speaker 2:When they become egocentric, when they become a lot just themselves rather than the group. The group is what can make them a super athlete. Another is when they blame others, when they become a victim and ultimately, when they become a bully, like when they have bully behavior and it's it's within all of us and something. When we get tired, lonely, angry, tired, all those things, we, we go to those old behaviors. So I sit there and go. When people start to blame, become a victim and then they start to become a bully, those are sort of the ones that really will hold people back from evolving.
Speaker 1:You know, that really resonated with me personally, because I've actually recently had a conversation with my kids where you know, if I asked one of them to do chores and he's like, well, he didn't do it, my brother didn't do it, and so you know, I had a whole conversation about them taking ownership of their own responsibilities and not worrying about what somebody else did or did not do. And the more ownership you take, the more growth you're going to get. I always tell the kids when I coach, I like to tell them that you never want somebody else to steal your mistakes. Own your mistakes, that is, own yours and all your buddies next to you. And the more you take on, the better you're going to get, because if you don't have a problem to solve, you're never going to grow.
Speaker 2:You're never going to get better, because you need something to, to solve you need.
Speaker 1:You know, if you're perfect as is, then there's nothing else to do. Right, where are we going? You could just keep doing what you're doing, but if your own mistakes and be might not be yours, but you could still take it on and change it and do something different, even if you weren't on the ice or you weren't in the game at the moment where the goal was scored or something happened. What could I have done? Yeah, what did I see? What can I do? How can I help? You know the guys that were on the ice, you know what can I change. And when you take ownership, I feel like that gives you growth and ability to really expand your range.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the antidote to being a victim and a bully. The antidote is owning it, owning your experience, not putting it on others, not willing it, but you taking ownership of that. Yeah, I couldn't agree more and that's part of that, that's part of that transformation, and I would say ownership is probably, you know that would be a good answer and you know it makes successful athletes they, they own their development yeah, love it, sweet man this is great.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate it. What a great. I mean again, time flew. We could talk for hours about this stuff. Yeah, I really appreciate it. What a great. I mean again, time flew, we could talk for hours about this stuff yeah, I absolutely love it for those folks that.
Speaker 1:uh, thank you everybody for tuning in and listening and, uh, please do share the podcast uh around. I appreciate, um, spreading the word and the purpose of this podcast. It's absolutely free, so please share it. Hopefully it resonates with folks and helps people deal with some of the mental and physical issues that they're going through, and hopefully we can be a part of that. If you guys have questions for Pierre Pierre, where can people find you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the Mental Skills Coach on Instagram. You also can find me, pierre Debarra, on Facebook. I think I'm the only Pierre Debarra Maybe there's another one on there, but you'll see my face and then haptrainingcom. You can go to haptraining and see what we're doing as an organization to support a relationship, and you can find us there, or find me there as well.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Again, pierre, thank you so much for joining me today. We'll definitely schedule another one. Thank you everybody for joining. I did want to, just before we say bye. I did want to mention I just did another one of these Hockey Helps 24-hour tournament in Dix Hills. They're wonderful with alumni and I think we raised over $500,000 this year. So if you'd like to donate to a great cause they support suicide prevention, cancer research, a lot of charities for the kids, so definitely give them a look on Instagram. You could donate on the kids. So definitely give them a look on Instagram. You could donate on the internet. It's Hockey Helps and they do this 24-hour marathon, which is pretty spectacular. So take a look. It's a wonderful thing. Well, thank you again. This is absolutely great. I got some folks saying thank you for the new perspectives.
Speaker 2:You bet.
Speaker 1:And so we'll definitely have a rendezvous at some point. Thank you so much, Pierre, and thank you for joining.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. Okay, see you soon.