June 1, 2022 • 27 mins
Former starting quarterback Joel Stave led the Wisconsin Badgers for 31 wins between 2012 and 2015, and to this day, Stave remains the Badgers’ all-time winningest quarterback. But success isn’t only about the wins or the completed passes, and in one of the lows–and highs–of his life so far, Stave battled and overcame the yips. And although only some athletes will experience the yips or the twisties, all athletes will confront life after sports. For a perspective on making the transition from a life-permeating identity to whatever comes next, host Justin Su’a talks with Adriana Duffy-Hörling, a former gymnast and current professor of law who competed for Puerto Rico on the world stage.
- Adriana Duffy-Hörling, a former gymnast and present day professor of law at Santa Clara University School of Law
- Joel Stave, former quarterback for the Wisconsin Badgers
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Losing Control, a podcast from Sports Illustrated
Studios and I Heart Radio. The beauty of sports is
that will It'll test you physically, but it will test
you mentally more than I I would have ever imagined.
That's Joel Stavi, a former starting quarterback who led the
Wisconsin Badgers for thirty one wins over the course of
(00:20):
his college career. Joel remains the Badgers all time winning
his quarterback look left right, fires middle touchdown. To be
a successful quarterback, you have to fully be in the
here and now, performing with as little conscious thought as possible.
Your present and you're in the game. So you can
(00:42):
probably imagine that for a quarterback, the yips not only
make it seemingly impossible to throw the football, but also
completely dismantles the mindset you need to be successful. Joel
Stavi experienced it firsthand, and that's what we're talking about today.
But we're also digging into another experience which all athletes
(01:05):
will face. What happens when their careers come to an end,
whether it be on your own terms or feeling like
you had your jersey ripped off your back. What does
life after sports feel like? And in the second half
of today's episode, you're going to meet Adriana Duffie Hurling,
whose gymnastics career came to an abrupt end after a
(01:27):
life altering injury, and who from the courtroom to the classroom,
built a new life for herself as a litigator and
professor of law. It's the Yips and Life after Sports
today on Losing Control. I'm justin Suah and this is
Losing Control, a podcast about one of the strangest phenomena
(01:48):
in sports, the yips, or when an athlete or a
lead performer suddenly finds themselves unable to do the thing
that they do better than almost everyone else on the planet.
If you're sitting for the first time, welcome, But if
you want the full experience, head back to episode one.
Losing Control is a podcast told through conversations with athletes, coaches, neuroscientists,
(02:11):
and more, and it's in order. Each episode features a
first hand perspective that contributes a piece to the puzzle
that is the yips. Along the way, you'll learn about
some of the challenges that high performers face and the
mental work that enables them to do what they do.
Not only that, you'll hear how you can incorporate these tools,
strategies and mindsets into your own life, because it's not
(02:33):
just about losing control, it's about getting it back. So
let's get started. I'm back with Joe Stavi. Of all
the highs and the lows, Joel, what are you most
proud of? Yeah? I definitely had my fair share of
ups and downs over my career. I wasn't always a
fan favorite. I guess you could say I had to
(02:55):
follow our buddy Russell Wilson, so needless to say, I
wasn't as good a layers he was. Russell Wilson won
a Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks and is one
of the most talented quarterbacks in the NFL today, and
he had an incredible year at Wisconsin back in two
thousand and eleven. Yes, Russell Wilson is a tough act
(03:15):
to follow. When the other quarterback in the stage is
Aaron Rodgers. You know, they got some some easy people
to compare you to and be like, well, he's not
as good as that guy. They're They're not wrong, but
they're not right either. And Joe Stavy was a solid
quarterback who had an impressive track record all time winning
(03:36):
his quarterback at Wisconsin, like I mentioned earlier, and he
passed for seven thousand, six hundred and thirty five career
yards and through forty eight touchdowns. That's quite the resume. Yeah.
I definitely had my my ups and downs. I had
my own mental battles that I kind of had to
get through, and that was what I went through at
the start of my junior season. Was for sure the
(04:00):
extreme low of my career. But being able to come
out of it on the other side was not even
not just a highlight for my career, but really for
my life for me as a person, to go through
kind of what I went through in the public eye
and to come out on the other side and be
able to even play again, it was something I was
(04:22):
really proud of. What was it that you experienced? Yeah,
So a situation often referred to as the yips is
what I went through, and it was a bizarre thing
for me because it kind of kind of started out
of out of nowhere. I had. You know, you have
a day where it's hot and sweaty out and you're
(04:43):
the ball slipping out of your hands and you try
and fix it it wasn't quite working. And then you're
thinking about it the next day and you start missing
some throws, and then it can just snowball on you,
and you're get in your own head, and things as
easy as throwing a five yard out to a tight
end was like, how am I gonna do this? How
am I gonna make? How am I going to make
(05:04):
this throw? And these throws in things that I've been
doing for not just my entire college career, but my
entire life. You know, something as easy as throwing a
ball to someone ten yards from you, I always felt
like I could put the ball wherever I wanted And
it really throws you off, and it really kind of
makes you question, how how do you? How do how
(05:25):
do I throw it? How when do I release it?
Like things that like you should never be thinking about,
all of a sudden start running through your head and
then it's snowballed on me, and I just I couldn't
throw the ball where I wanted to. When you say
the yip snowballed on you and all of a sudden
you couldn't throw the ball where you wanted to, what
was that like? Can you talk about that? It was
(05:47):
almost like I was like disbelief, kind of surprised, like
what what what is going on here? What was that?
How did that happen? And like then you get frustrated
and like I haven't thrown a ball like that her?
And then you do it again. You're like what is
going on? Like it's it's amazing the way that it
can snowball, and like you'll be in warmups to start
(06:09):
and you're throwing fine, and you're kind of trying to
like fight your way through it, and then you get
to like a little bit more meaningful throwing practice and
you miss it. It's like what is going on here?
And so just kind of trying to find your find
your way how to fight through it and not get
too down on yourself. But it was really easy to
(06:31):
get down on myself at at my lowest points. How
did you get through it? What was your mindset? You
can look at it two ways, Like the pessimistic way
of looking at it is that like you mentally were
not strong enough to avoid something like this happening. You know,
like oh you were just you're weak, Like how could
this have happened? But then the way that I try
and look at it, and what I really believe is
(06:54):
that I was mentally strong enough to get through something
that could have very easily and in my career. If
I wasn't willing to put my head down and just
fight through it and knowing that I would be able
to come out on the other side, that could have
been it. And I wanted to prove to myself that
I was strong enough to not let this thing win.
(07:16):
Did it affect you off the field? Surprisingly not as
much as I would have thought it. It's it certainly did,
But I had my my school work, I had my
roommates who I lived with were also kind of my
best friends, and my family and the people close to
me in my life who I kind of leaned on,
and that and then my faith being able to lean
on that and know that regardless of what happens in
(07:38):
this I'm gonna be all right. Like this is not
a life or death situation. I've got a family who
loves me, I've got friends around me. As big as
it felt, I tried to keep it, keep things in
perspective and remind myself that there are things out there
that are bigger than football. You don't have a ton
of time for personal life when you're in college and
you're trying to get an engineering degree and play quarter act. So, um,
(08:02):
I gotta just put my head down and stay busy
like I always had been for my entire career. I
had been in Madison, So so yeah, my my personal
life was kind of stayed relatively consistent. We've talked about
what the yips feel like, we've talked about your mindset,
we've talked about how the yips impacted you off the field,
but we haven't touched on what worked for you. How
(08:25):
did you learn to manage your yips? Try to focus
on my breathing, like throughout the course of a practice
or game, and then more than anything, just keep my
mind quiet and clear. I never got big into the
positive self talk. It just felt disingenuous to me to
be telling myself like, Hey, you're the you're great, you're
(08:46):
the best, Like I just I didn't need that. I
just needed to stay away from any negative thought patterns,
and so just doing everything I could to keep my
mind quiet and clear, stay away from new get your thoughts,
and I don't know, just make it a game again.
And yeah, it certainly wasn't like like, oh the switch
(09:08):
flipped and I'm back to normal, like it was a process,
and I'd have my miss throws that like everyone misses throws,
But when you have a a guy running a hitch
and you miss one that you make of the time,
that's when you kind of have to just take a
deep breath and try and clear it out and don't
let yourself go back down the rabbit hole of the
(09:31):
couple of months I've been through before. How did focusing
on your breathing help you get your yips under control?
I felt that when I was focusing on my breathing,
you couldn't think about other things. So just trying to
control your mind and where it may go if I'm
breathing in and I'm just thinking about like the actual
(09:56):
process of taking the breath in and letting it out
and then just moving on to the next thing that
you have to focus on, because obviously to play quarterback
you have to focus on a lot more than just
your breath. You have to focus on the play call
and the defense and where everyone's lined up, and there's
there's a lot that goes into it. So making sure
(10:16):
my mind was quiet so that I could focus on
those things. So that's where I found in between throws,
in between plays, if I took three seconds to just
and just kind of reset, that was a helpful tool.
Focusing on your breath is a way to anchor your
attention and clear your mind. It can also relax your body,
(10:39):
slow your heart rate, and put you in an optimal
state of mind to compete, and it's part of what
helped Joe Stavi manage his yips. I asked Joe what
advice he has for any listeners out there who might
be going through the same thing that he did. Breathe just,
I guess just take a breath and know that it
(11:00):
will pass, but you have to be willing to go
through it to get to the other side. For me, personally,
the path at least resistance was not what was right
for me in this situation. Mental issues come in all
shapes and sizes, and in a lot of cases, identifying
that issue and removing yourself from that situation very well
could be the best option for your mental health. But
(11:23):
for me personally, in this situation, it I felt I
needed to go through it and come out on the
other side. And I think that's the beauty of sports
is that will It'll test you physically, but it will
test you mentally. More than I I would have ever imagined.
And I think that people are a lot more resilient
(11:44):
than they maybe give themselves credit for. And if you're
willing to go through it, I think you'll be able
to find yourself out on the other side, and you'll
learn a lot about yourself and you'll be a better
person for it. I believe from your experience with the
gifts to your touch down passes. How do you look
back on all of this today? I look back on
(12:04):
it very fondly. You know, there was a there was
a while where, like anybody, unless you have a Brett Favre,
Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Drew Brees type career, you always
feel like, man, I would have liked to have made
a little more out of that, But I look back
on it very fondly. I look back, especially on my
time in Madison. Some of my best friends came out
(12:27):
of that, and I got to play a ton of games.
I got to play with some really, really good players,
some of the best running backs in college football when
I was there, between you know, Monty Ball and James
White and Melvin Gordon, and just having to having the
opportunity to be a part of those teams and those games,
and game when it was snowing at home against Nebraska
and Melvin Gordon ran for four hundred plus yards. You know,
(12:50):
I was the guy who got to hand him the
ball for all those four hundred plus yards. Like that's
a that's just there's a lot of really positive memories
and like really cool experien us is that I got
to have that. I feel very fortunate to have had
the opportunity to be a part of those, to have
those memories and have those opportunities, and yeah, all in all,
I I do. I look back on it very very fondly,
(13:12):
and yeah, I I like to think I was a
I was a pretty good player, had a great high
school career, that's for sure. What do you have to
say about life after football? Life after football has been
It's been good. So it was in May of eighteen
when I decided, like, you know what I'm gonna I'm
gonna go ahead and wrap this football career up and
(13:36):
and move on. So so I did, and by July
ofen I started working for a construction company in based
on a Nina, Wisconsin kind of in the Appleton, Green
Bay area. So I'm working as an engineer for for them,
and I got married and I got a one year
(13:56):
old baby boy at home, and yeah, things are good,
and so life after football. It really is hit me
fast in the last couple of years, married, bought a house,
had a kid, started at a job, and now things
are starting to I guess, settle more into place. But
it's it's been good. Sports can provide truly one of
a kind experiences, but you know what, so can the
(14:20):
rest of life. And there's a lot of life out
there to live. We'll be back with Adriana Daffie Hurling
after this. This is losing control and I'm justin sua.
My next guest has a unique story and I'm grateful
(14:41):
that she was open to sharing it with us. Meet
Adriana Daffie Hurling. Well, my name is Adrianna Duffy Hurling
and I was once a gymnast. It was quite a
long time ago. It almost feels like another lifetime and
currently I'm a clinical professor of law at Santa Clara
University School of Law. I know it was a long
(15:03):
time ago, but is there an event or competition that
has stayed with you, and if so, how do you
look back on it? Today. Oh yes. Probably at the
top of the list is the seven World Championship. That
was a real eye opener for many of us because
it was the first time that the Puerto Rico women's
(15:26):
team ever competed at a World Championships. And to be
in the context of gymnasts from all over the world
and see all of them, not just the ones that
you see on TV or read about in the magazines,
was special. That was really something. It's you know, a
(15:48):
couple of hundred just on the women's side, people who
are involved in the same very dedicated activity that most
of us I hope at least loved and are devoted to.
But it was also seeing that so many of the
gymnasts who were so good and competing internationally are kind
(16:09):
of like you. There. It was kind of an eye
opener that we could do this too. We weren't as
good as most of them, but we could be. And
most of them weren't what you think of as the
top gymnasts, the very most skilled out of the ordinary.
Everybody else was really good, but they were, you know,
(16:31):
they were just other regular girls like us, And that
was eye opening, I guess is the word that keeps
coming to mind, regular girls just like us. And that's
so true, no matter the sports, no matter the competition.
But because this is losing control, I asked Adriana if
she'd ever heard of the gymnastics yips the twisties. That
(16:54):
term is not one that I had heard before, but
I am very familiar with the concert behind it, which
is losing your sense of where you are in the air.
And there's also a related phenomenon of just losing the
ability to do a skill that you could previously do,
even if that's not necessarily related to losing your air sense,
(17:17):
but you can imagine that in gymnastics, not knowing where
you are in the air is a very dangerous thing,
and it's something that many of us experience at one
time or another. Did you ever experience it? Yeah, you know,
I don't specifically recall on such and such a date
this happened, but it is an I can remember experiencing,
losing my sense of where I was in the air,
(17:38):
for sure, as well as losing the ability to do
certain skills that I had been able to do, and
you have to work your way back to being able
to do them again. Every single sport carries some risk
of accident or injury, and gymnastics is no exception. Adriana
(17:58):
had a gymnastics accident in bed resulted in a life
altering injury, and to be clear, it had nothing to
do with the twisties. Could you please talk about your
accident and share with us what happened. Sure, absolutely. The
accident being referred to as a spinal cord injury that
I had during training podium training as we call it,
(18:22):
at the World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany. And for those
who don't know what podium training is, major competitions have
the equipment up on some platforms and those are the podiums.
Competitions that aren't as major will typically have the equipment
on the ground, so every team and the individuals who
(18:45):
everybody competing has an opportunity to practice on the equipment
that's up on the podium and you warm up practice
first in an adjacent warm up gym, and then you
go and have your podium training. And it was during
the podium training for this World Championships when my team
(19:06):
and I were vaulting that I did my vault and
my hands were too far back on the horse, so
I was too far back my hand slipped and then
I kind of tried to make it around but only
made it as far as my neck and dislocated my vertebrae,
which caused a spinal cord injury. Um, you know, paralysis,
(19:26):
all of that. There's an obvious physical experience here, But
how did you navigate the aftermath of this accident and
the shift in your identity it brought about? How did
I navigate that? So I, of course I went to
rehab and then I went back to college, and I
had other things to do, right, I had studies, I
(19:48):
had other activities I got involved in, And I do
think finding something else to do is part of transforming
your identity from I'm a gymnast or whatever at leader
activity that you're significantly devoted to, to doing something else.
I remember kind of hanging onto the gymnast identity a
(20:11):
little bit, like I wanted to know, like, could I
also have one of the team jackets for this year,
which I didn't get, by the way, And I think
that was a little bit of me trying to sort
of be part still be part of that team, even
though I was obviously no longer a member, you know,
competing member of a team. So yeah, I think there
was a little bit of a period of time of
(20:36):
how can I describe this? Can I hanging onto it
and figuring out how to let go of it? But
I also found it up, especially once I was back
at college. I started doing other things right, occasionally visit
the gym. But I think, you know, key part of
making the transition from such life permeating identity of from
(21:00):
an activity you do is to find something else to do.
You were back in class at Stanford just four months
after your accident. What would you say to listeners who
are tackling a shift in identity following an accident or
other life changing event. Well, in terms of advice, I
think the first thing I think of is that there
(21:22):
is a lot of life and world out there, a
lot of great things to do, And even though your
world for such a long time was this one thing,
there are a lot of other things and you have
to give yourself some time to try things and figure
it out. But something else that I did was that
(21:44):
I did stay involved with gymnastics and finding other things
to do in that world. If you love it so much,
I think it's also a nice thing because you still
feel connected and part of that community. You know, I
feel part of that community to this day, even though
I'm not to lead really doing anything other than showing
up to meets, which you know with COVID, I'm not
even doing that. But finding another way to give and
(22:09):
give back and stay involved with the sport or the
activity that has been such a big part of your life,
I think is another way to help yourself transition to
the new things that you're doing in your life. And
some of it life just forces on you. Right, Life
goes on, and other things to do and become part
of your identity happen. Life happens. What do you think
(22:35):
the law and gymnastics have in common? If anything? What
an interesting question that I don't think is any something
I've ever given any thought too, but probably have I
stopped to think about it. With with teaching, there's a
certain aspect of performance, which so you know, gymnastics has
(22:57):
as well, although the performances are very different, right, and
when you're teaching, you're talking, but there is a certain
amount of performance and as far as law that I'd
have to give some thought to. Nothing springing to mind.
We follow it up with Adriana after the conversation what
do lawn gymnastics have in common? Not a lot, which
is actually part of the story. There's so many different
(23:20):
and distinct things that you can do in life. I
had one more question for Adriana. Does she ever do
gymnastics in her dreams? Yes, not for a long time,
though I can't think of any dreams recently, well to
the extent that I remember dreams, because that's the other
you know, Often they just just, you know, kind of
(23:41):
fade away right after you get up. But yes, I
have had dreams where I'm doing gymnastics. I've had those,
Like I said, not recently, but I had them for
you know, decades, i'd say, after my own injury. And
the interesting thing is that in most of those there's
some problem, like I can't kind of run right or
(24:02):
have difficulty moving properly, I suppose, unsurprisingly, but that's that's
been a common theme. You might be wondering, what does
all of this have to do with the Yips. Well, actually,
a whole lot part of the Yips story is about
reckoning with an all consuming identity. You're a quarterback, a gymnast,
(24:25):
a picture, you name it. The Yips take away the
thing that made you the person that you were, and
then suddenly you're faced with questions, what does life mean anymore?
When you can no longer do the thing that you
had once dedicated yourself to doing. And more than that,
who are you? How do you make meaning after a
big change. We'll all confront these questions one day or another,
(24:49):
And what I love about Joel and Adriana is how
matter of fact they are. You just do it, You
just get started, no matter how difficult or how daunting
it may see, there's a lot of life out there
to live and no reason not to live it. If
you've been listening to Losing Control, we're eight episodes in
and from mistake recovery routines to visualization, we've covered numerous tools, strategies,
(25:14):
and techniques that elite performers utilized to stay on top
of their game. But there's at least two things we
haven't covered. It's meditation and the power of humor. On
the penultimate episode of Losing Control, a sincere thank you
to our guests Adriana Duffie Hurling, a former gymnast and
(25:36):
current professor of law at Santa Clara University, and Joel
Staby winning US all time quarterback for the Wisconsin Badgers.
Thank you so much for listening, and don't forget to
rate and subscribe. I'm Justin Suah, your host, and you
can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Justin Sua.
That's j U s t I N s u A.
(25:59):
You can also picked me out on the Increase in
Your Impact podcast. Losing Control is a podcast from Sports
Illustrated Studios and I Heart Radio. Original music by Jerem Sua.
Michael McDowell is our producer. Editing and mixing by Will Stanton.
This episode was fact checked by Zoey Mulloch at s
I Studios. Max Miller is supervising producer, and Brandon Getchus
(26:23):
and Matt Lipson are executive producers at I Heeart Radio.
Sean ty Toone as our executive producer. Special thanks to
Luisa Cardoza. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. This podcast does not provide medical advice,
and nothing you here on this podcast is intended or
(26:45):
implied to be a substitute for professional medical consultation, diagnosis,
or treatments. Always seek the advice of your physician or
other qualified health provider with any questions you may have
regard in your health. Never disregard profession, no medical advice,
or delay in seeking it because of something you have
heard on this podcast m HM
You're listening to Losing Control, a podcast from Sports Illustrated
Studios and I Heart Radio. The beauty of sports is
that will It'll test you physically, but it will test
you mentally more than I I would have ever imagined.
That's Joel Stavi, a former starting quarterback who led the
Wisconsin Badgers for thirty one wins over the course of
(00:20):
his college career. Joel remains the Badgers all time winning
his quarterback look left right, fires middle touchdown. To be
a successful quarterback, you have to fully be in the
here and now, performing with as little conscious thought as possible.
Your present and you're in the game. So you can
(00:42):
probably imagine that for a quarterback, the yips not only
make it seemingly impossible to throw the football, but also
completely dismantles the mindset you need to be successful. Joel
Stavi experienced it firsthand, and that's what we're talking about today.
But we're also digging into another experience which all athletes
(01:05):
will face. What happens when their careers come to an end,
whether it be on your own terms or feeling like
you had your jersey ripped off your back. What does
life after sports feel like? And in the second half
of today's episode, you're going to meet Adriana Duffie Hurling,
whose gymnastics career came to an abrupt end after a
(01:27):
life altering injury, and who from the courtroom to the classroom,
built a new life for herself as a litigator and
professor of law. It's the Yips and Life after Sports
today on Losing Control. I'm justin Suah and this is
Losing Control, a podcast about one of the strangest phenomena
(01:48):
in sports, the yips, or when an athlete or a
lead performer suddenly finds themselves unable to do the thing
that they do better than almost everyone else on the planet.
If you're sitting for the first time, welcome, But if
you want the full experience, head back to episode one.
Losing Control is a podcast told through conversations with athletes, coaches, neuroscientists,
(02:11):
and more, and it's in order. Each episode features a
first hand perspective that contributes a piece to the puzzle
that is the yips. Along the way, you'll learn about
some of the challenges that high performers face and the
mental work that enables them to do what they do.
Not only that, you'll hear how you can incorporate these tools,
strategies and mindsets into your own life, because it's not
(02:33):
just about losing control, it's about getting it back. So
let's get started. I'm back with Joe Stavi. Of all
the highs and the lows, Joel, what are you most
proud of? Yeah? I definitely had my fair share of
ups and downs over my career. I wasn't always a
fan favorite. I guess you could say I had to
(02:55):
follow our buddy Russell Wilson, so needless to say, I
wasn't as good a layers he was. Russell Wilson won
a Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks and is one
of the most talented quarterbacks in the NFL today, and
he had an incredible year at Wisconsin back in two
thousand and eleven. Yes, Russell Wilson is a tough act
(03:15):
to follow. When the other quarterback in the stage is
Aaron Rodgers. You know, they got some some easy people
to compare you to and be like, well, he's not
as good as that guy. They're They're not wrong, but
they're not right either. And Joe Stavy was a solid
quarterback who had an impressive track record all time winning
(03:36):
his quarterback at Wisconsin, like I mentioned earlier, and he
passed for seven thousand, six hundred and thirty five career
yards and through forty eight touchdowns. That's quite the resume. Yeah.
I definitely had my my ups and downs. I had
my own mental battles that I kind of had to
get through, and that was what I went through at
the start of my junior season. Was for sure the
(04:00):
extreme low of my career. But being able to come
out of it on the other side was not even
not just a highlight for my career, but really for
my life for me as a person, to go through
kind of what I went through in the public eye
and to come out on the other side and be
able to even play again, it was something I was
(04:22):
really proud of. What was it that you experienced? Yeah,
So a situation often referred to as the yips is
what I went through, and it was a bizarre thing
for me because it kind of kind of started out
of out of nowhere. I had. You know, you have
a day where it's hot and sweaty out and you're
(04:43):
the ball slipping out of your hands and you try
and fix it it wasn't quite working. And then you're
thinking about it the next day and you start missing
some throws, and then it can just snowball on you,
and you're get in your own head, and things as
easy as throwing a five yard out to a tight
end was like, how am I gonna do this? How
am I gonna make? How am I going to make
(05:04):
this throw? And these throws in things that I've been
doing for not just my entire college career, but my
entire life. You know, something as easy as throwing a
ball to someone ten yards from you, I always felt
like I could put the ball wherever I wanted And
it really throws you off, and it really kind of
makes you question, how how do you? How do how
(05:25):
do I throw it? How when do I release it?
Like things that like you should never be thinking about,
all of a sudden start running through your head and
then it's snowballed on me, and I just I couldn't
throw the ball where I wanted to. When you say
the yip snowballed on you and all of a sudden
you couldn't throw the ball where you wanted to, what
was that like? Can you talk about that? It was
(05:47):
almost like I was like disbelief, kind of surprised, like
what what what is going on here? What was that?
How did that happen? And like then you get frustrated
and like I haven't thrown a ball like that her?
And then you do it again. You're like what is
going on? Like it's it's amazing the way that it
can snowball, and like you'll be in warmups to start
(06:09):
and you're throwing fine, and you're kind of trying to
like fight your way through it, and then you get
to like a little bit more meaningful throwing practice and
you miss it. It's like what is going on here?
And so just kind of trying to find your find
your way how to fight through it and not get
too down on yourself. But it was really easy to
(06:31):
get down on myself at at my lowest points. How
did you get through it? What was your mindset? You
can look at it two ways, Like the pessimistic way
of looking at it is that like you mentally were
not strong enough to avoid something like this happening. You know,
like oh you were just you're weak, Like how could
this have happened? But then the way that I try
and look at it, and what I really believe is
(06:54):
that I was mentally strong enough to get through something
that could have very easily and in my career. If
I wasn't willing to put my head down and just
fight through it and knowing that I would be able
to come out on the other side, that could have
been it. And I wanted to prove to myself that
I was strong enough to not let this thing win.
(07:16):
Did it affect you off the field? Surprisingly not as
much as I would have thought it. It's it certainly did,
But I had my my school work, I had my
roommates who I lived with were also kind of my
best friends, and my family and the people close to
me in my life who I kind of leaned on,
and that and then my faith being able to lean
on that and know that regardless of what happens in
(07:38):
this I'm gonna be all right. Like this is not
a life or death situation. I've got a family who
loves me, I've got friends around me. As big as
it felt, I tried to keep it, keep things in
perspective and remind myself that there are things out there
that are bigger than football. You don't have a ton
of time for personal life when you're in college and
you're trying to get an engineering degree and play quarter act. So, um,
(08:02):
I gotta just put my head down and stay busy
like I always had been for my entire career. I
had been in Madison, So so yeah, my my personal
life was kind of stayed relatively consistent. We've talked about
what the yips feel like, we've talked about your mindset,
we've talked about how the yips impacted you off the field,
but we haven't touched on what worked for you. How
(08:25):
did you learn to manage your yips? Try to focus
on my breathing, like throughout the course of a practice
or game, and then more than anything, just keep my
mind quiet and clear. I never got big into the
positive self talk. It just felt disingenuous to me to
be telling myself like, Hey, you're the you're great, you're
(08:46):
the best, Like I just I didn't need that. I
just needed to stay away from any negative thought patterns,
and so just doing everything I could to keep my
mind quiet and clear, stay away from new get your thoughts,
and I don't know, just make it a game again.
And yeah, it certainly wasn't like like, oh the switch
(09:08):
flipped and I'm back to normal, like it was a process,
and I'd have my miss throws that like everyone misses throws,
But when you have a a guy running a hitch
and you miss one that you make of the time,
that's when you kind of have to just take a
deep breath and try and clear it out and don't
let yourself go back down the rabbit hole of the
(09:31):
couple of months I've been through before. How did focusing
on your breathing help you get your yips under control?
I felt that when I was focusing on my breathing,
you couldn't think about other things. So just trying to
control your mind and where it may go if I'm
breathing in and I'm just thinking about like the actual
(09:56):
process of taking the breath in and letting it out
and then just moving on to the next thing that
you have to focus on, because obviously to play quarterback
you have to focus on a lot more than just
your breath. You have to focus on the play call
and the defense and where everyone's lined up, and there's
there's a lot that goes into it. So making sure
(10:16):
my mind was quiet so that I could focus on
those things. So that's where I found in between throws,
in between plays, if I took three seconds to just
and just kind of reset, that was a helpful tool.
Focusing on your breath is a way to anchor your
attention and clear your mind. It can also relax your body,
(10:39):
slow your heart rate, and put you in an optimal
state of mind to compete, and it's part of what
helped Joe Stavi manage his yips. I asked Joe what
advice he has for any listeners out there who might
be going through the same thing that he did. Breathe just,
I guess just take a breath and know that it
(11:00):
will pass, but you have to be willing to go
through it to get to the other side. For me, personally,
the path at least resistance was not what was right
for me in this situation. Mental issues come in all
shapes and sizes, and in a lot of cases, identifying
that issue and removing yourself from that situation very well
could be the best option for your mental health. But
(11:23):
for me personally, in this situation, it I felt I
needed to go through it and come out on the
other side. And I think that's the beauty of sports
is that will It'll test you physically, but it will
test you mentally. More than I I would have ever imagined.
And I think that people are a lot more resilient
(11:44):
than they maybe give themselves credit for. And if you're
willing to go through it, I think you'll be able
to find yourself out on the other side, and you'll
learn a lot about yourself and you'll be a better
person for it. I believe from your experience with the
gifts to your touch down passes. How do you look
back on all of this today? I look back on
(12:04):
it very fondly. You know, there was a there was
a while where, like anybody, unless you have a Brett Favre,
Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Drew Brees type career, you always
feel like, man, I would have liked to have made
a little more out of that, But I look back
on it very fondly. I look back, especially on my
time in Madison. Some of my best friends came out
(12:27):
of that, and I got to play a ton of games.
I got to play with some really, really good players,
some of the best running backs in college football when
I was there, between you know, Monty Ball and James
White and Melvin Gordon, and just having to having the
opportunity to be a part of those teams and those games,
and game when it was snowing at home against Nebraska
and Melvin Gordon ran for four hundred plus yards. You know,
(12:50):
I was the guy who got to hand him the
ball for all those four hundred plus yards. Like that's
a that's just there's a lot of really positive memories
and like really cool experien us is that I got
to have that. I feel very fortunate to have had
the opportunity to be a part of those, to have
those memories and have those opportunities, and yeah, all in all,
I I do. I look back on it very very fondly,
(13:12):
and yeah, I I like to think I was a
I was a pretty good player, had a great high
school career, that's for sure. What do you have to
say about life after football? Life after football has been
It's been good. So it was in May of eighteen
when I decided, like, you know what I'm gonna I'm
gonna go ahead and wrap this football career up and
(13:36):
and move on. So so I did, and by July
ofen I started working for a construction company in based
on a Nina, Wisconsin kind of in the Appleton, Green
Bay area. So I'm working as an engineer for for them,
and I got married and I got a one year
(13:56):
old baby boy at home, and yeah, things are good,
and so life after football. It really is hit me
fast in the last couple of years, married, bought a house,
had a kid, started at a job, and now things
are starting to I guess, settle more into place. But
it's it's been good. Sports can provide truly one of
a kind experiences, but you know what, so can the
(14:20):
rest of life. And there's a lot of life out
there to live. We'll be back with Adriana Daffie Hurling
after this. This is losing control and I'm justin sua.
My next guest has a unique story and I'm grateful
(14:41):
that she was open to sharing it with us. Meet
Adriana Daffie Hurling. Well, my name is Adrianna Duffy Hurling
and I was once a gymnast. It was quite a
long time ago. It almost feels like another lifetime and
currently I'm a clinical professor of law at Santa Clara
University School of Law. I know it was a long
(15:03):
time ago, but is there an event or competition that
has stayed with you, and if so, how do you
look back on it? Today. Oh yes. Probably at the
top of the list is the seven World Championship. That
was a real eye opener for many of us because
it was the first time that the Puerto Rico women's
(15:26):
team ever competed at a World Championships. And to be
in the context of gymnasts from all over the world
and see all of them, not just the ones that
you see on TV or read about in the magazines,
was special. That was really something. It's you know, a
(15:48):
couple of hundred just on the women's side, people who
are involved in the same very dedicated activity that most
of us I hope at least loved and are devoted to.
But it was also seeing that so many of the
gymnasts who were so good and competing internationally are kind
(16:09):
of like you. There. It was kind of an eye
opener that we could do this too. We weren't as
good as most of them, but we could be. And
most of them weren't what you think of as the
top gymnasts, the very most skilled out of the ordinary.
Everybody else was really good, but they were, you know,
(16:31):
they were just other regular girls like us, And that
was eye opening, I guess is the word that keeps
coming to mind, regular girls just like us. And that's
so true, no matter the sports, no matter the competition.
But because this is losing control, I asked Adriana if
she'd ever heard of the gymnastics yips the twisties. That
(16:54):
term is not one that I had heard before, but
I am very familiar with the concert behind it, which
is losing your sense of where you are in the air.
And there's also a related phenomenon of just losing the
ability to do a skill that you could previously do,
even if that's not necessarily related to losing your air sense,
(17:17):
but you can imagine that in gymnastics, not knowing where
you are in the air is a very dangerous thing,
and it's something that many of us experience at one
time or another. Did you ever experience it? Yeah, you know,
I don't specifically recall on such and such a date
this happened, but it is an I can remember experiencing,
losing my sense of where I was in the air,
(17:38):
for sure, as well as losing the ability to do
certain skills that I had been able to do, and
you have to work your way back to being able
to do them again. Every single sport carries some risk
of accident or injury, and gymnastics is no exception. Adriana
(17:58):
had a gymnastics accident in bed resulted in a life
altering injury, and to be clear, it had nothing to
do with the twisties. Could you please talk about your
accident and share with us what happened. Sure, absolutely. The
accident being referred to as a spinal cord injury that
I had during training podium training as we call it,
(18:22):
at the World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany. And for those
who don't know what podium training is, major competitions have
the equipment up on some platforms and those are the podiums.
Competitions that aren't as major will typically have the equipment
on the ground, so every team and the individuals who
(18:45):
everybody competing has an opportunity to practice on the equipment
that's up on the podium and you warm up practice
first in an adjacent warm up gym, and then you
go and have your podium training. And it was during
the podium training for this World Championships when my team
(19:06):
and I were vaulting that I did my vault and
my hands were too far back on the horse, so
I was too far back my hand slipped and then
I kind of tried to make it around but only
made it as far as my neck and dislocated my vertebrae,
which caused a spinal cord injury. Um, you know, paralysis,
(19:26):
all of that. There's an obvious physical experience here, But
how did you navigate the aftermath of this accident and
the shift in your identity it brought about? How did
I navigate that? So I, of course I went to
rehab and then I went back to college, and I
had other things to do, right, I had studies, I
(19:48):
had other activities I got involved in, And I do
think finding something else to do is part of transforming
your identity from I'm a gymnast or whatever at leader
activity that you're significantly devoted to, to doing something else.
I remember kind of hanging onto the gymnast identity a
(20:11):
little bit, like I wanted to know, like, could I
also have one of the team jackets for this year,
which I didn't get, by the way, And I think
that was a little bit of me trying to sort
of be part still be part of that team, even
though I was obviously no longer a member, you know,
competing member of a team. So yeah, I think there
was a little bit of a period of time of
(20:36):
how can I describe this? Can I hanging onto it
and figuring out how to let go of it? But
I also found it up, especially once I was back
at college. I started doing other things right, occasionally visit
the gym. But I think, you know, key part of
making the transition from such life permeating identity of from
(21:00):
an activity you do is to find something else to do.
You were back in class at Stanford just four months
after your accident. What would you say to listeners who
are tackling a shift in identity following an accident or
other life changing event. Well, in terms of advice, I
think the first thing I think of is that there
(21:22):
is a lot of life and world out there, a
lot of great things to do, And even though your
world for such a long time was this one thing,
there are a lot of other things and you have
to give yourself some time to try things and figure
it out. But something else that I did was that
(21:44):
I did stay involved with gymnastics and finding other things
to do in that world. If you love it so much,
I think it's also a nice thing because you still
feel connected and part of that community. You know, I
feel part of that community to this day, even though
I'm not to lead really doing anything other than showing
up to meets, which you know with COVID, I'm not
even doing that. But finding another way to give and
(22:09):
give back and stay involved with the sport or the
activity that has been such a big part of your life,
I think is another way to help yourself transition to
the new things that you're doing in your life. And
some of it life just forces on you. Right, Life
goes on, and other things to do and become part
of your identity happen. Life happens. What do you think
(22:35):
the law and gymnastics have in common? If anything? What
an interesting question that I don't think is any something
I've ever given any thought too, but probably have I
stopped to think about it. With with teaching, there's a
certain aspect of performance, which so you know, gymnastics has
(22:57):
as well, although the performances are very different, right, and
when you're teaching, you're talking, but there is a certain
amount of performance and as far as law that I'd
have to give some thought to. Nothing springing to mind.
We follow it up with Adriana after the conversation what
do lawn gymnastics have in common? Not a lot, which
is actually part of the story. There's so many different
(23:20):
and distinct things that you can do in life. I
had one more question for Adriana. Does she ever do
gymnastics in her dreams? Yes, not for a long time,
though I can't think of any dreams recently, well to
the extent that I remember dreams, because that's the other
you know, Often they just just, you know, kind of
(23:41):
fade away right after you get up. But yes, I
have had dreams where I'm doing gymnastics. I've had those,
Like I said, not recently, but I had them for
you know, decades, i'd say, after my own injury. And
the interesting thing is that in most of those there's
some problem, like I can't kind of run right or
(24:02):
have difficulty moving properly, I suppose, unsurprisingly, but that's that's
been a common theme. You might be wondering, what does
all of this have to do with the Yips. Well, actually,
a whole lot part of the Yips story is about
reckoning with an all consuming identity. You're a quarterback, a gymnast,
(24:25):
a picture, you name it. The Yips take away the
thing that made you the person that you were, and
then suddenly you're faced with questions, what does life mean anymore?
When you can no longer do the thing that you
had once dedicated yourself to doing. And more than that,
who are you? How do you make meaning after a
big change. We'll all confront these questions one day or another,
(24:49):
And what I love about Joel and Adriana is how
matter of fact they are. You just do it, You
just get started, no matter how difficult or how daunting
it may see, there's a lot of life out there
to live and no reason not to live it. If
you've been listening to Losing Control, we're eight episodes in
and from mistake recovery routines to visualization, we've covered numerous tools, strategies,
(25:14):
and techniques that elite performers utilized to stay on top
of their game. But there's at least two things we
haven't covered. It's meditation and the power of humor. On
the penultimate episode of Losing Control, a sincere thank you
to our guests Adriana Duffie Hurling, a former gymnast and
(25:36):
current professor of law at Santa Clara University, and Joel
Staby winning US all time quarterback for the Wisconsin Badgers.
Thank you so much for listening, and don't forget to
rate and subscribe. I'm Justin Suah, your host, and you
can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Justin Sua.
That's j U s t I N s u A.
(25:59):
You can also picked me out on the Increase in
Your Impact podcast. Losing Control is a podcast from Sports
Illustrated Studios and I Heart Radio. Original music by Jerem Sua.
Michael McDowell is our producer. Editing and mixing by Will Stanton.
This episode was fact checked by Zoey Mulloch at s
I Studios. Max Miller is supervising producer, and Brandon Getchus
(26:23):
and Matt Lipson are executive producers at I Heeart Radio.
Sean ty Toone as our executive producer. Special thanks to
Luisa Cardoza. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. This podcast does not provide medical advice,
and nothing you here on this podcast is intended or
(26:45):
implied to be a substitute for professional medical consultation, diagnosis,
or treatments. Always seek the advice of your physician or
other qualified health provider with any questions you may have
regard in your health. Never disregard profession, no medical advice,
or delay in seeking it because of something you have
heard on this podcast m HM
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