Summer Confidence Series (Part 1 of 4): The Unintentional Ways Parents Lower Confidence In Their Athlete (and what to do instead)

Hey sports parents! Are you wondering how to boost your athlete's confidence this summer? Join me as we discuss some crucial insights to help your girl shine on the field.

In this episode, we unpack the unintentional ways parents can unintentionally hinder their athlete's confidence and what you can do instead.

 What’s Covered:

• Hear a heartwarming success story from Brittany's daughters, showing how mental tools can turn setbacks into triumphs.
• Learn about common traps like expecting confidence to grow naturally with experience.
• Discover why relying solely on coaches for mental training might not be enough.
• Understand why viewing challenges as just phases might limit your athlete's potential.
• Explore how confidence truly starts in the mind and impacts on-field performance.
• Learn about the Elite Performance Formula – combining sport knowledge, physical training, and mental skills for athlete success.
• Get a sneak peek into our upcoming Summer Confidence Series episodes focusing on practical strategies to empower your athlete.

Ready to help your athlete reach new heights? Tune in to the full episode and empower your parenting game!

Episode Highlights: 

[00:28] Goal of the Podcast Series. Discover the purpose of this podcast series, focusing on building confidence in girl athletes through mental performance coaching.

[01:35] Member Highlight: Brittany. Highlighting a success story from our program, Brittany's daughters overcame competition nerves and setbacks using mental training tools. It illustrates how effective mental strategies can transform performance under pressure.

[03:55] Common Traps for Sports Parents. Discussing pitfalls like expecting coaches to handle all mental aspects, assuming confidence grows naturally with experience, and viewing challenges as temporary phases. These misconceptions can hinder an athlete's potential.

[10:25] Importance of Mental Training. Exploring how confidence starts in the mind and impacts performance on the field. Negative self-talk and unmanaged emotions can significantly affect an athlete's ability to perform at their best.

[12:28] Elite Performance Formula. Introducing our approach that combines sport knowledge, physical training, and mental skills as essential components for athlete success. This holistic formula enhances performance and resilience across all levels of competition.

[18:07] Upcoming Summer Confidence Series. Previewing future episodes focusing on practical strategies: overcoming mistakes, flipping negative mindsets, and becoming a supportive safe space for athletes. These insights aim to empower parents to actively support their child's mental growth.

Next Steps:

• Join our FREE Training for Sports Moms - How to Strengthen Your Athlete Daughter's Mental Game so She Believes in Herself as Much as You Do
• Enroll in The Elite Mental Game - our self-paced training program proven to strengthen your athlete’s mental game and confidence with a $400 discount here!
• Visit our podcast website for more great episodes

Thank you in advance for joining us on our mission and leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Welcome back to the Raising Elite Competitors. I'm Coach Brie, a mental performance coach for girl athletes, and I'm so excited that you're here. Whether you are just new to this whole sports journey or you have a lot of seasons under your belt, this podcast is for you, to help you know how to raise a confident, mentally strong girl athlete. That's exactly what we do here at the Elite Competitor through our podcast, through our program, the Elite Mental Game, which is our self-paced training program for girl athletes, proven to strengthen their mental game and confidence. Let's get into today's episode. This is actually part one of our summer confidence series, so I'll be doing four episodes over the course of the next four weeks where I'm diving into how you can build confidence in your athlete, the things that she needs to be doing, the things that you can do to support her so that she can use this summertime to strengthen her mental game and head into her next season mentally strong and not held back by the same struggles as last season. Now, before we get into part one today, where we're talking about the unintentional ways that we, as parents, end up actually lowering our athlete's confidence, I have a favor to ask If you have not already gone to the podcast subscribed. That's number one. And then if you enjoy the podcast or it's helpful to you if you could rate and review the podcast, it actually helps us out a lot and it helps you out as well, because then we can get into the ears of more people, we can bring on amazing guests and our reach and our mission is expanded. So if you enjoy the podcast, it really would help us out If you would leave a review. Also, send the link of one of your favorite episodes to another sports parent. That also helps us out. One more thing I want to bring up before we dive into the episode is a shout out to a mom in our community. Brittany, if you're listening to this is for you. Brittany texted us the other day. Her daughter is inside our program, the elite mental game. She said this we had theater on ice nationals this week. My older daughter, who we brought the program for, fell during her short program and was very upset afterwards. However, she popped up so quickly and skated so well the rest of the time that the judges didn't even notice and she skated beautifully in their long program. The following night. My younger daughter was close to tears before the short program due to nerves, but skated both programs very well and is super excited. I love this, brittany, because it is the classic it's not if you fall down, it's how you get back up type of situation here, because it's going to happen Like your athlete, whatever sport they play, whatever they compete in, they're going to fall down, they're going to mess up, they're going to have setbacks, and the fact that both of Brittany's daughters had the skills to get back up and to manage those emotions, manage the nerves very quickly and finish out the routine is amazing. So congratulations, brittany. I'm sure that was just awesome to watch and can't wait to see their progress throughout the rest of the program.

Speaker 0: 2:43

All right, let's get into today's episode. We are talking all about the unintentional ways that parents lower confidence in their athletes and what we can do instead. Now, first, I want to say this as sports parents and just as parents in general, we never have ill intentions when it comes to what we say to our athletes, what we're doing to help them. Really, I truly believe that we're all coming from a place of wanting to help, and the problem is that there typically is no like manual when it comes to sports parenting. Now, that's what we have created in our program and also how we educate parents. So we do actually have a roadmap and a manual for you, but for the most part we're just winging it out there, like we're trying to figure out what we can say, what we can do to help our athletes show up confidently, compete as well, as you know their potential is right. So we're all just kind of figuring that out. Now you don't have to wing it anymore. So that's part of our intention with the Summer Confidence Series is that you're learning tangible tips and you can kind of understand what's going on in your athlete's mind, kind of like literally what neuroscience is going on and how you can give her the tools to help. So let's get into it.

Speaker 0: 3:52

There's three kind of main things that, as sports parents, we believe and the traps that we fall into to help build your athlete's confidence. Here's number one. The number one thing that I hear is that her coach should teach her how to play with confidence. Her coach is responsible for the mental training, right? And maybe you've had a coach say to your athlete well, she's really talented, she just needs to work on her confidence right. Have you ever heard your daughter's coach say that, or she has all the physical skills. It's just her mental game holding her back. Or maybe you've even said that you're like gosh if she could only believe in herself, then she would play better. If she wouldn't go into practice with this negative mindset, she would actually maybe be more confident and play better, right? So maybe you're seeing this and maybe your coach has seen it as well, and in the back of our minds we're like well, can you teach her how to do not know how to teach the mental side of the game?

Speaker 0: 4:45

I would say most coaches believe in it and need their athletes to be mentally strong. Also, speaking as a coach, I don't have a lot of time to wait for my athletes to get over mistakes, and I mean that's why I teach mental training inside my program, my volleyball program that I coach, and that's also why I spent my own time, money and resources to become a mental performance coach. But I had to go seek that out. I did not know how to do this in my coaching career, like it's not part of the training. It's not part, I mean training side note. Like what training? Okay, and so your daughter's coach wears a lot of hats, they're responsible for a lot of things and they specialize typically in the physical part of the game.

Speaker 0: 5:26

And, regardless of whether or not you think that coaches should be mental performance coaches and should teach these skills, most of them are not, because they don't have the time, they don't have the money, they don't have resources, they don't know where to start, and so relying on your daughter's coach to teach her the mental side of the game is not going to work out well for you, right? You're going to be waiting for a long time, all right, you're going to be waiting for a long time, and then you're going to place all this like kind of blame and bitterness on the coach and be like, oh, they should be the one teaching. No, we're going to take the onus back on ourselves as parents that we need to provide the opportunities for your daughter to devote these parts of her game. And really it's not just for her sport, these skills, that you're giving your athletes the ability to believe in herself, the ability to come back from mistakes, ability to handle pressure, nerves, negative teammates, bad coaching, like all of that is just a reflection of what she does in her life. Right, sports? I love them because they are reflection, they are a mirror of your daughter's life. So if she's not advocating for herself in her sport with her coach, if she is not speaking up, if she is not taking risks, if she's not feeling confident in herself, likely that is transferring over to other parts of her life and also for her future, and so we want to make sure that she has these skills, and sports is honestly the easiest way for you to give them to her right, for her to practice those skills that transfer out. But we can't rely on your daughter's coach to teach those things. Okay, so that's number one. The unintentional mistake that we make is we just put all of this expectation on the coach to teach this part of the game, all right. Number two believing that your daughter will just naturally build more confidence with more experience. This is a common trap too, and I totally understand why we would think this, but just kind of thinking well, when she gets to the next level, or like, well, we'll just kind of wait this out, she will just build more confidence. And here's why this is not true. She will just build more confidence, and here's why this is not true.

Speaker 0: 7:05

The higher your daughter goes in her sport, right, the more time that passes, the more will be expected of her. Okay, I've experienced this as an athlete myself. I played all the way through college and I'll tell you right now like I'm. When I made varsity as a freshman, the pressure was not less than it was in eighth grade. It was more. You know, when I made the top club team, when I transitioned to college, more was expected of me in those situations, not less.

Speaker 0: 7:31

And so, thinking that your daughter is just going to naturally rise to the occasion, the opposite is true. We actually fall to the level of our systems and our experiences. That's where she's going to go back to, and so we want to equip her with the skills, we want to preload these skills so that she is ready for the next level, and we're not just throwing her into the deep end of the pool without actually teaching her how to swim. So she's not going to naturally just build that confidence. Yes, she will get more confident as she gets more competent in her sport. That's absolutely true. That's where the physical training also can increase her confidence.

Speaker 0: 8:05

But for the most part, like she's going to have less time to get over mistakes, more is going to be expected of her out there in competition, not less. So that is number two. Number one is expecting her coach to teach them on the side of the game. Number two is she's just going to like naturally figure this out on her own. Okay, I'm going to do this like hands-off approach and see what happens. And then number three is very similar to, but thinking that this is just a phase. It'll just the next team that she's on will be different.

Speaker 0: 8:34

This is just something that maybe everyone goes through and you could be watching from the stands and you're like oh yeah, she's. She's really not feeling confident in herself or she's really not responding to the coach very well, or that teammate struggle is just like it's really impacting her. Or she's feeling super nervous before a game and it's causing her to freeze and she's taking a long time to get over mistakes. But you know what? It's just a phase and very similar to what I was just talking about. This is not a phase. These are skills. This is how she's showing you, how she's dealing with those issues, and so what's coming out? It's not the environment necessarily that needs to change.

Speaker 0: 9:08

Now I'm not saying that you can't ever change teams or coaches or all of that. There is obviously valid reasons to do all of those things. However, she's going to take with her the skills that she has, and so if she doesn't have the skill to get over a mistake because mistakes are going to happen no matter what team she's on If she doesn't have the skill to manage pregame nerves because she's going to feel nervous before games, and that's actually okay, but how does she deal with it Then that's going to happen on her next team. If she doesn't know how to talk to her coach, right, that's also going to transfer with her. So these skills, kind of like, she packs them along with her, and so we want to make sure that she has the skills to face all of those same things that she is going to face on her next team.

Speaker 0: 9:47

Okay, it's not just a phase Like this is literally her skills that she is showing that she has or doesn't have. So those are the three unintentional ways that we actually end up lowering our daughter's confidence and actually keeping her in a situation that's below her potential is we're just kind of waiting for the coach to do something, expecting the coach to teach them outside of the game, just hoping she's naturally going to build with time and that, you know, believing that this is just a phase and it's just going to maybe get better with the next team or the next coach. Okay, here's the thing that we really need to know moving forward. All right, the thing is that confidence is actually developed in your daughter's mind first. Before it's visible in her sport, it really does start in her brain, and her brain can both limit her and allow her to achieve more than she ever thought possible, and we know this to be true in our own lives.

Speaker 0: 10:32

And when you hear your daughter speaking negatively about herself and she's oh, I just can't do that or I don't belong here. This and that and why that really grinds your gears, is because you know what she is saying to herself and how she's talking to herself impacts how she plays, her energy and the results that she gets. And so that's why it's so frustrating when you hear her be so negative, because that actually does impact her. And you're absolutely right and you have reason to worry, because you and I both have heard what's been coming up in the media around athlete mental health and some of these unimaginable things that are happening to our athletes because they don't know how to regulate their emotions and when you even say, necessarily regulate their emotions. They don't know how to deal with challenges and deal with hard times, right, because their brain is telling them like, well, this is happening to me and very normal things in their sport that are happening to them, like pressure nerves. Well, this is happening to me and very normal things in their sport that are happening to them, like pressure nerves, anxiety, teammate dynamics, coach dynamics all those things. They don't know how to navigate them, and so they're internalizing them and then they're becoming more anxious or displaying some depression, things like that. And so we are hearing this and thankfully we have some big name athletes like Simone Biles who are speaking out about this, victoria Garrick, like they're talking about the struggles that athletes face with their mental health.

Speaker 0: 11:47

But the thing is, your athlete can use and learn these skills before it ever becomes a catastrophic problem for them in their life. And so her mind is really where it starts. It limits her, it tells her she can't do something, it tells her she's not good enough, and that's how it shows on the court or the field, but it also is the way that can allow her to show up as the athlete she is and she can be. And she won't reach that potential until she trains her mind. It really does start there again, for her sport, but also for her life, and we really lean on what's called the elite performance formula in order for our athletes to achieve their goals, play to their potential and be happy in their sport. Now, they're not going to be happy all the time, but we do believe that there needs to be some level of enjoyment in their sport in order for them to avoid that burnout, in order for them to actually enjoy their sport for a long time. All right, and so the elite performance formula relies on three things for a long time. All right. And so the elite performance formula relies on three things knowledge of the sport Okay, so her like tactics, strategies, her physical training and her mental training all three of these things.

Speaker 0: 12:49

It's like a three-legged stool. We need all three in order for that stool to stand. But also it's like the multiplication problem. All three of these things amplify one another. That's why I was saying when she increases her physical performance, she's going to get more confident. Her mental training improves Okay. Her mental training, though her belief about herself, how she handles setbacks, how she handles a bad call, how she handles disappointments or mistakes in her sport, like all that kind of buckets into mental training. When that improves, her physical game improves as well. So does her knowledge of the sport. But when we throw a zero into a multiplication problem, so if any one of these things are an area where she's not working at all or working very little, then the whole equation turns into zero. And obviously we know that to be true for physical training If she doesn't do physical training, she doesn't go to practice, she doesn't train, she's not going to reach her goals, she's not going to play to potential. But the same is true for mental training. If we throw zero into that category of mental training, she also is not going to reach her goals. She also is not going to play to her potential. That's like the missing piece right there. She can be playing okay, but below her potential, and then at worst she's going to end up maybe walking away from the sport that she loves, saying she's burnt out.

Speaker 0: 14:02

That was my story as an athlete. I was a highly recruited athlete, very talented, but I didn't believe in myself and I wouldn't be able to articulate that when I was in high school. But I'm looking back now and seeing it very clear. But it was this pressure to perform. It was a pressure that I thought I was carrying by myself. I thought I was the only one that dealt with pregame nerves. I thought I was the only one that felt this pressure of having to carry the team and letting everyone down when I made a mistake, and that pressure became so much that I decided to actually quit, walk away from my sport. Hey, I said to everybody that I wanted to just focus on academics when I went to college.

Speaker 0: 14:34

Now, long story short, I actually got another shot. It was a walk-on at the college that I ended up going to, which had an amazing volleyball program, division two national runners up like really great situation. And that's really where I learned the power of the mind. Right, I had a coach and a program that prioritized the whole athlete, and so I was able to tap into some of these skills. I also studied sports psychology as part of my undergrad and realized that, hey, like I'm not the only one and there's actually tools to help me through this. And by the time I was a senior, things were a lot different. Right, I was actually a full ride scholarship athlete. I was playing and having fun. I was enjoying my sport, so it was a turnaround for me.

Speaker 0: 15:10

But your daughter doesn't have to wait until that point. I mean, that's a very rare story, right, but these skills are accessible to her when she's a in middle school, she's in high school. That's exactly why we exist and the problem is that most parents and most athletes actually think that the key to confidence is more reps. I've got to get her in the gym, we got to do all these things and, yeah, like I said, you can't neglect the physical training. Okay, but confident athletes and parents actually know that it really does start in the mind. That mental training and how she's talking to herself and having the skills to navigate the normal parts of being an athlete really are where you can allow that investment that you're putting already all this time, money and energy and into her sports and to her equipment and all of these things. That actually allows it to pay off and get a return on your investment.

Speaker 0: 15:58

All right, training her mental game. We always say it's like an insurance policy all the time, all the money that you're already investing in her sport, you're going to really allow that to pay off If she is able to believe in herself, she's able to respond to setbacks, respond to challenges, okay. So, instead of kind of these things we typically do as parents, hoping that her mental game is going to improve right, relying on the coach is kind of waiting it out or hoping, like with the next team or the next coach is going to be different we're going to do things a little differently and we're going to get into this throughout our summer series, right? So each lesson or each episode is going to dive into one of these parts, okay. But basically, there are three main ways that we're going to build your athlete's mental game and confidence.

Speaker 0: 16:43

The first is teaching her to overcome mistakes. This is the number one thing and, honestly, it's the fastest thing that athletes implement, because mistakes and setbacks happen all the time in her sport, and so I'm going to break down what's happening in your athlete's brain when she makes a mistake. That's going to be in part two of our series and the main tool she needs in order to help her overcome mistakes. Then we've got flipping her negative mindset. So that is number two. How is she talking to herself? And a lot of you say, well, it's super negative and it really bothers me as a parent, because I know that that's not helping her, and you're absolutely right. So we're going to dive into what's going on in her brain when she is speaking negatively to herself and also tools to help shift that negative self-talk.

Speaker 0: 17:24

And then number three, for our last part in the series, is how to be her safe space, and you were like what does that have to do with anything? Okay, our approach to mental training is a little bit different, because it works. We highly prioritize the role of the parent in all of this. Okay, we know that athletes do best when they have parents who know how to support them. So we're going to talk about how you can maintain that role and how to be her safe space and what to say, what to do before competitions, after competitions, so that you are that space for her to come to, and competitions after competitions, so that you are that space for her to come to and she can actually be more confident after she interacts with you, instead of shutting down, shutting you out. So that's where we're headed.

Speaker 0: 18:01

And the next part of this series we're going to talk about overcoming mistakes, slipping into a mindset, being her safe space, so that we can not just rely on these myths that some of us have been hinging onto up until now to hopefully you're like crossing your fingers that maybe this will build her confidence right, we're not going to rely on her coach anymore. We're not going to just hope and cross our fingers that things get better with time and we're not going to believe that this is just a phase. We're actually going to empower her with tools. All right, moms, I'm coach Brie, a mental performance coach for girl athletes. I hope that this was helpful as a start and I cannot wait.