October 17, 2025 • 25 mins
In this episode of the Packers POV podcast, the Packers director of performance psychology and team behavioral health clinician Dr. Chris Carr talks about leading an NFL performance psychology program, details the importance of the player-only meditation room at Lambeau Field and shares his trusted mental health techniques that can be utilized by athletes at any level.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Packers POV, a podcast that aims
to shine a light on the human behind the helmet.
I'm your host, Taylor Rogers, and we're here inside historic
Lambeau Field. This is a very special guest. He's the
Packers Director of Performance Psychology and team behavioral Health clinician,
now in his sixth season as a full time member
(00:27):
of the Packers. He's consulted with teams in all the
top pro sports leagues, and he's an athlete himself, playing
four years of football at Wabash College in his home
state of Indiana. Doctor Carr, Welcome and thanks for making.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Time you bet Taylor, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Absolutely I do want to go right back home because
your college football experience was special from the looks of it.
I mean, you guys were in the business of winning.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, you know when you look back at an athletic history,
and I've had many years to look back, and you know,
my senior year and I school, I'm a five to ten,
one hundred and sixty five pound offensive guard. So needless
to say Division I schools weren't recruiting me very hard.
But I love the game and I had done wrestling
as well, and I loved what athletics brought to me,
just personally and development, confidence, those types of personal issues,
(01:19):
and so playing even at the small college level for
me was going to be a big step. My father
had attended Wabash, he had graduated and been a two
sport athlete there. It's a small liberal arts school in Crawfordsville, Indiana,
and my senior year in high school, Wabash football played
in the National Championship for Division III football, and watching
a Division three team on ABC was pretty cool. Had
(01:42):
the opportunity to go recruit some small colleges and you know,
it's no scholarship. You're going there to be part of
a team. There's probably one hundred plus guys, and it
was a great experience for me, and winning was an expectation.
We lost three games in four years. I was very
fortunate that I started kind of maturing later in life
once I got into college and started two years as
(02:03):
an offensive guard. Ended my career with a knee injury
in my last game, which I think was another kind
of planted seed for the career I pursued. But for me,
the love of the game and just being able to
compete at that level was just something very unique and
very special, And maybe I thought when I went to
Ball State for my master's degree and was a graduate
(02:24):
assistant football coach there, at one point I thought maybe
coaching was going to be a career. As fate and
other things have it, it just kind of played out
not to be the case. I didn't do a lot
of on the field coaching at Ball State. I did
a lot of drawing plays, cutting film. These were the
old days where you had film strips that you had
(02:44):
to cut and edit. There was no computers at that time,
and it was all the boring stuff, and that got
me more interested in the field that I was studying,
which was counseling. And I look back at those experiences.
Some of my best friends are my teammates from those years,
and football became kind of my identified sport that I've loved.
(03:04):
I've always embraced it. I've worked with it at the
collegiate level in my career path. I was Buddy Ryan's
team counselor for a year at Arizona Cardinals. But to
really have the opportunity to kind of end up here
in Green Bay has been very special and connected to
going through the things I went through as a Division
III athlete with three a day practices and limited water
(03:25):
and sports medicine care was almost non I mean, it
just didn't exist. And to look at where the mental
part of the game became important in my own development,
I think I didn't learn about the tools. I think
I just kind of did it out of desperation and
survival at times. But I look back at those years
very fondly.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, and you've never really left the game. It seems
you mentioned the Cardinals, and you made an interesting choice
to go back home after you graduated college to get
your masters at ball State and also coach, and you're
basically the same age as these players were. There some
lessons learned as a young.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Coach, absolutely, and I think for me, separating a little
bit from having been a player to a coach, you
have to learn humility and also have the confidence to
know that you know what you're talking about. Yeah, because
you incorporated it. And I think I was really good
at just being a resource for the players. And I
think there's always been that kind of nature of being
a good listener, of being attending to the human side
(04:26):
that often gets forgotten about with these athletes. But you know,
at the end of my Masters, it was just I
chose a different path. I didn't want to go cut film,
and as fate had it, you know, I had done
a rotation and an inpatient addictions unit, and dealing with
individuals who had chemical dependency issues was very challenging, and
I think I liked that challenge as a counselor, and
(04:50):
I think that's what kind of pulled me into that field.
And doing that work for four years, two years of
it doing direct care and counseling, and then two years
doing prevention work. Beknownst to me at that time, that
kind of prepared me for going back to get my PhD.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And you would go back and get your PhD in
nineteen ninety two, also at Balls State.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
YEP.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And you've worked with teams now in the NFL, the NBAWNBA, MLB, MLS,
and then you've worked with individual athletes at the Summer
and Winter Olympics. So I'm curious as to your approach
to solo versus team sports.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
For me, every sport has elements of individual first, because
it is about the individual athlete, whether they operate within
a team culture or a team system like team sports
or they're going out and representing a team. Like at
the Olympics, you represent your country, You're part of Team USA. Now,
(05:48):
when a downhiller gets into the gate at the two
thousand and two Winter Olympics up in Snowbasin, and I'm
in the gate area with them and they're pushing out
to ski the downhill or the Giants alumn they are
compared as an individual athlete, but they're representing a larger team.
I think what makes team sports unique is the interactions
and the communication and the necessity of being able to
(06:10):
compete with one another. And I'll say this now that
I think football to me is one of the last
few really truly team sports. In basketball, I watched games
in thirteen years in the NBA, I watched games where
one or two players could take over a game. In
baseball the five years I worked with Kansas City, if
a pitcher had his stuff going that day, the right
(06:31):
fielder could literally sit down because if the pitcher's on,
they're on. I did that in literally right exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
That was my role on the team, whether the r
right field you know, backup maybe ten on the lineup.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Yeah, they call that beehive baseball and beehive soccer where
if you watch little kids play, they just kind of
travel on a pack. Yeah, And in baseball if they're
in the outfield, that means they're counting the dandelions at
their feet. But in football, you can have a eight
block and if the other tackle isn't blocking well, the
play goes for not right. You have to operate as
a unit. And so for me, every athlete, individually, every
(07:10):
player that I work with, is an individual that has
their own individual attentional style, their own confidence issues, their
own emotional regulation, and to master that and to get
that at an optimal level only enhances than the team component.
I think the whole structural process of team versus individual
is really unique and a whole separate kind of topic.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
I think since you mentioned football being the ultimate team sport,
let's talk about the Green Bay Packers, who are just
one of eight NFL teams with a full time counselor.
Can you share what you offered to Packers' players to
help optimize their performance?
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Right? So, in twenty eighteen, I started consulting with the Packers.
I was at a practice in Indianapolis, Indiana, just north
of Indianapolis, and was working with the Indiana Pacers in
my eighth ninth year as their team psychologists. I was
working with college athletic departments. I'd been in collegiate athletics
for thirty something years, including five years as the psychologist
(08:08):
at the Ohio State University Athletics department and working closely
with their football program, so I'd always been involved with football.
In twenty nineteen, the last CBA between the Players Association
and the NFL, they mandated every team has to have
a designated mental health clinician and that was the first
(08:28):
time in the history of the NFL where it was
a mandated position. I think teams over the years have
had resources, but they're typically outside of the building and
very crisis oriented rather than being proactive and bringing psychology
into the integrated care of the players. And at the
end of twenty nineteen season, the Packers offered me the
opportunity to be full time. We became the second full
(08:50):
time position. Kansas City had been the first. They had
hired their person in twenty nineteen at the start. Full
time to be one of eight full time programs is
pretty unique and special, and interestingly enough, my colleagues with
other teams we all kind of do it differently, and
my training as a licensed psychologist in counseling psychology. My
PhD is in counseling psychology, but my miner was in
(09:12):
sport psychology. So I just have created a bigger toolbox
as a psychologist to deal with performance as well as
kind of personal issues. And we call it performance psychology
here specifically because everything in these players' life is about performance.
Their relationships, their families, their social connections, that all has
(09:36):
an impact on their performance on the field, as a
performance on the field has an impact in those other relationships.
So our players come in and everything is voluntary, there
is no mandatory. We spend some education time with our
rookies obviously, and then any player that wants to utilize
me on an individual basis, which is all confidential, so
I don't speak about players because of that confidentiality. We
(09:59):
do a weekly mindset class where we're taking a topic
in sports psychology and presenting it so players have some tools.
We do some guided imagery exercises, we have handouts resources
available to them on their team issued iPads. In December
of twenty two, we built a meditation room, so we
actually have now in the new locker room area, a
(10:21):
designated space where players can do mindfulness, relaxation, imagery practice
in a soundproofed and secluded space. The idea is to
give the players every resource that they can have to
optimize their mental performance. And when we talk about that,
we talk about confidence, composure, concentration skills, and there's a
(10:41):
lot of depth behind those areas. But in my opinion,
there are only a few teams that really have the
degree of programmatic integrated resource. And I'm integrated with our
sports medicine, our athletic training staff, our player engagement staff,
our strength and conditioning staff, just wonderful professions in this organization,
(11:01):
and just the way the Packers have done everything. It's
for me at this stage in my career. It's been
phenomenal to be able to build what I'm trying to
build as an elite mental health and mental performance program
for our players.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Outstanding offerings, and the meditation room specifically stands out.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Why did you create that space so interestingly? And if
you look into the whole sports psychology field, you're going
to see lots of topics goal setting, managing nerves, self
talk strategies, visualization and imagery. You're going to see all
these interventions and techniques talked about, but if you really
look at the science behind those techniques and actually the efficacy,
(11:41):
do they work or not? The number one intervention in
this large they call it a meta analytics study, which
is where they take thousands, literally thousands of research papers
and go through and they statistically analyze and in a
meta analysis of interventions for athletic performance, the most effective
intervention was metaation and mindfulness, and those are very oftentimes
(12:03):
structured interventions. So what I want to do is create
a space where we could have those offerings and our
players could utilize that and they individually work on their
own tailored programs or we have those tools available in
that room that they can do it. We also use
it a little library. There's a number of books I'll
put in there. Players often recommend a book they read
that they like and will make them available for our players.
(12:26):
The idea is to remove any kind of limitation they
may have outside of the building, so that they have
the tools and resources inside the building. And I've been
very pleased with the utilization of it, and I think
this past year on our active roster, over eighty percent
of our active roster guys have utilized some aspect of
our psychology program. Now I'm going to be happier when
(12:47):
we get closer to one hundred percent of utilization. As
I know, one hundred percent of our guys use the
weight room and one hundred percent of our guys to strength,
conditioning and rehab and all those elements of support. But
we have so many resources. Is I also get it
some guys have been doing mental skills since their college
years because more and more Division one college programs have
this resource, so now they're a little bit more accustomed
(13:10):
to it.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
That's fantastic. And that eighty percent number, just from listening
back to some of your interviews over the years, sounds
like the highest season to date.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Is that correct? Yes, not this season, but a year
ago at this time, it was about sixty eight percent
of our active roster players were utilizing the resource, and
so we definitely have seen growth of utilization. That doesn't
mean eighty percent come in my office, but it does
mean that of that locker room players are utilizing the
(13:40):
meditation space, they're utilizing the app that we have, they're
utilizing the tools that are on their iPad, or they're
coming into the mindset class, or they're doing the focus
session we do the night before game. So making different
touch points related to their mental preparation and the mental
aspect of the game is my whole idea of a
programmatic implementation instead of just you got to come see me.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
That's incredible the fact that they can utilize the app,
they can come see you or participate in the weekly
class that you offer as well. And I think this
is a great opportunity to talk a little bit about
some of those techniques that over the course of your
career you found super beneficial to athletes at any level.
(14:26):
Would you be able to walk us through briefly, just
some of those main techniques that you trust.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah. Absolutely so. My practice prior to coming to the
Packers full time, I would see high school athletes, I
would see collegiate athletes. I would see Olympic athletes trained
in central Indiana. I even had CEOs who would fly
into a little airport north of our building in the
county north of Indianapolis for their individual work. So it's
been a range of clients that I've worked with. I'll
(14:53):
summarize it, and folks that are interested can clearly go
find more details. The first and foremost is motivation to change.
What's your internal motivation versus your external motivation? And I
think there's obviously developmental differences between a thirteen year old
athlete and a twenty three year old athlete. My initial
point is what's your motivation to change? Is it an
(15:14):
external reason because you got cut from a team or
someone said you can't do it, or you're going to
do it for another person, or is it internal drive
to push yourself to be better than you thought you
could be. And that motivation is the fuel that triggers
doing the mental skills. Once an individual has kind of
committed and they want to move to a plan, then
(15:34):
we start with goal setting. And goal setting to me
is kind of the foundational mental skill because to even
practice mental skills, you have to make it a goal
to do it. And I don't mean an athlete that says, well,
I want to get better. If a player comes in
and says I want to get better, I'm going to
ask them, well, what does that mean? What is getting better?
And be specific. The second kind of skill that you
(15:55):
add in there is arousal regulation or emotional management, in
other words, how to get your butterflies to fly in
formation because getting nervous before competition is normal. In fact,
it's desirable because it means there's a state of readiness.
It's all attached to our central nervous system, our fight
or flight mechanism. I still feel it, I guess, you know,
(16:16):
even when I go into the stadiums or when I
come out before the players onto lambo. I mean, yeah,
you put a heart rate monitor, it's going to be
a little elevated and I'm not going to run out
on that field ever. So it's the idea of as
an athlete learning how to control that intensity and that
energy because that impacts your performance. Yes. The third kind
(16:36):
of skill we talk about then is the focus and
attention skills, and that's where imagery and visualization tie in.
We know that if you try to visualize a performance
and you're under too much tension and stress, you're more
likely going to visualize the mistake and what you don't
want to do instead of being able to visualize the
appropriate technique. And obviously there's very sports specific domains. If
(16:59):
you're a power you can have a certain energy level
compared to a golfer, so you have to have some
background in theoretical understanding of how these domains impact each other.
But when you go from kind of energy management to
focus and concentration skills, now you've kind of with goal
setting and the other two, you've kind of created a
foundation of mental skills practice. And then the fourth element
(17:21):
I call is basically mental routines, and that's the idea
of having a consistent and regular mental plan that you're
utilizing in practice in your pregame approach, in your postgame approach,
in your off season, or your rehab. If you're injured
and you're going to miss time, we're going to use
those same tools, but we're going to use them in
(17:42):
the context of rehabilitation and recovery and using skill sets
like positive self talk, using tools like staying in the moment,
resilience factors. The psychology of grit. If you look at
what psychologists do, there's a tendency to look at psychology
is it only treats when someone's depressed or when someone
has anxiety, and that can be part of human condition
(18:05):
without question. We're trying very hard to destigmatize that. But
I would say our psychology model is more built on
strength and helping individuals even when they struggle to better
understand it and then use cognitive interventions, thoughts, emotional regulation
to manage that. So if I start with a young
(18:25):
athlete and they come in and they really want to
get better on their mental skills, typically what I would
do in my practice after I kind of assess and
make sure there's nothing else going on, I would give
them a notebook and then I would tell them their
goal for the next month is to write in that
notebook two times a week about how did they do
that day, how did their training go, how did their
(18:47):
competition go? Well, what should I add to it. I'll
give them a very brief mental training manual and say
you're going to read this and we'll find out in
a month what you wanted to practice. And I think
there is an almost prescriptive plan, but it's it's like
the metaphor I love, and I think an athlete taught
this to me years ago. With my body type, if
I go into a Macy's and get a suit, I
(19:07):
could probably buy one off the rack, but it's not
going to fit really good. But if I go have
one tailored where they're going to measure me, I get
to choose the cloth and the material. And by the way,
I've never had a tailored suit, but if I had one,
having worked in the NBA, those guys all have tailored
suits because they definitely can't at seven to two go
buy one off the rack. It gets measured, it takes time,
(19:30):
it costs a little bit more money, but when they
put it on, it fits perfect. And so any sports
psychology book, it's kind of like going to shop off
the rack. But the tailored approaches when you make the
investment of time. And I think a good mental skills
practice is going to be about thirty five to forty
minutes a day, a very intentional practice and if a
(19:54):
person's willing to put that time to get a little
bit better, they'll see positive outcome. They may not see
it immediately. There are developmental contexts. So for our players,
the idea is just to be a resource to help
them if they want to develop those areas of.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Their performance that's outstanding. And it sounds like motivation is
kind of the starting point, yes, And then to summarize
goal setting, emotional management, focus, and mental routines. Those are
some of the key techniques that you would advocate for.
And you also mentioned self talk. Yes, I'm really curious
(20:29):
about that. And for listeners who also might be interested,
how do you recommend starting self talk?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Self awareness is the first step in any of these journeys.
So you have to become aware because you're talking to
yourselves all the time. Whether you want to hear it
or not is another story, right, But oftentimes the self
talk is representative of your confidence. It's representative of your
self efficacy, your internal deeper belief in yourself. It also
(20:55):
represents your anxiety and your stress. When we do self
talk war and when I've done self talk work with individuals,
the first step is to kind of take a baseline,
like over the next week, monitor what you're saying to yourself,
identify that, and then where do you need to change that?
And we really want to shift from outcomes to process,
like what can you do tomorrow with three positive self
(21:18):
statements that aren't related to I am the best, but
related to more something that is controllable. And that's where
comparison to others is really kind of a negative mental focus,
because when you compare yourself to others, you're never accepting
yourself where you're at, and that makes it very difficult
to embrace those moments when you actually have performed very well.
(21:40):
So to help athletes to be able to kind of
find that part is starting with understanding their self talk.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Great recommendations there and I like the three positive self statements.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I think that's a good starter.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
And to have that positive conversation with yourself.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It's important.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
It's how you treat other people. Now, for a regular
joe athlete like myself, is there anything you would challenge
me to do before or after, say, going for a run.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I think any person who's engaged in any kind of
athletic activity, what's the goal of the activity? Is your
goal to go out and have a twenty five minute
run or run five miles at a certain pace? What's
your goal for that activity? You know, I'm at a
point where I have absolutely zero aerobic capacity in my body.
I am an old offensive lineman. I'd rather push the
bus than run and catch the bus. But I've learned
(22:28):
over time you have to maintain that cardiovascular training. So
I like to do walks. I do long walks, and
then I incorporate steps in that. My only goal is
for a certain amount of time. Now, as I continue
to develop it, I start thinking about how far did
I get over this week, and then maybe next week
I want to go a little bit farther. And the
idea of being a regular athlete is that idea of
(22:49):
self improvement. Are you doing the activity to improve yourself?
Are you doing it for enjoyment? If you like to
play golf but you're a twenty five handicap, maybe you
should re establish what your goals are when you go
out there and play and just say, if my goal
is fun, then you should never have to throw a club.
You should be able to laugh at your balls and
go in the water. But I think what's interesting is
(23:10):
often people have a mismatch between what their outcome goal
is and what their actual process is. So I think
for a regular athlete, just being able to incorporate some
of these mental skills, taking a deep breath before a
performance task, just a deep breath then and a deep
(23:33):
breath out, learning how to practice that. There are so
many apps that you can add to kind of teach you,
and I think sometimes a little too many, but there
are apps out there that people can utilize. I'm a
big advocate of journaling, and we'll have players that do
writing and I forever have had athletes journal because I
think there's nothing better than capturing your own thoughts and
feelings when you reflect on it yourself instead of someone
(23:55):
else write about it. And what's really cool about a
journal is that when an athlete as a really good
moment and they're reflecting on it and they're writing about it,
maybe a month later they're not feeling it, but they
go back and read that entry and they can remember
that feeling it triggers a subconscious connection. And journaling has
been proven to be a really good therapeutic intervention, and
(24:17):
so it's part of a performance domain and anybody can journal.
You just got to get a book and make a
commitment to it and understand that it helps you identify
your goals and what you want to accomplish from your
activity and take those moments that are really enjoyable and
capture that.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
These are some incredible techniques. And thank you so much
for taking the time to walk us through and very
clearly explain a very complicated but important part of this
Packers organization. Doctor Carr, thank you so much for the time.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Me Bet Taylor, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
And thank you for listening to Packers pov IF you're
interested in learning more about mental health. One resource doctor
Carr recommends as the NCAA Sports Science Institute, and they've
posted some mental health best practices that can be found
at NCAA dot org slash mental health. Thanks again for
taking the time to listen and see you next time.
Hello, and welcome to Packers POV, a podcast that aims
to shine a light on the human behind the helmet.
I'm your host, Taylor Rogers, and we're here inside historic
Lambeau Field. This is a very special guest. He's the
Packers Director of Performance Psychology and team behavioral Health clinician,
now in his sixth season as a full time member
(00:27):
of the Packers. He's consulted with teams in all the
top pro sports leagues, and he's an athlete himself, playing
four years of football at Wabash College in his home
state of Indiana. Doctor Carr, Welcome and thanks for making.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Time you bet Taylor, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Absolutely I do want to go right back home because
your college football experience was special from the looks of it.
I mean, you guys were in the business of winning.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, you know when you look back at an athletic history,
and I've had many years to look back, and you know,
my senior year and I school, I'm a five to ten,
one hundred and sixty five pound offensive guard. So needless
to say Division I schools weren't recruiting me very hard.
But I love the game and I had done wrestling
as well, and I loved what athletics brought to me,
just personally and development, confidence, those types of personal issues,
(01:19):
and so playing even at the small college level for
me was going to be a big step. My father
had attended Wabash, he had graduated and been a two
sport athlete there. It's a small liberal arts school in Crawfordsville, Indiana,
and my senior year in high school, Wabash football played
in the National Championship for Division III football, and watching
a Division three team on ABC was pretty cool. Had
(01:42):
the opportunity to go recruit some small colleges and you know,
it's no scholarship. You're going there to be part of
a team. There's probably one hundred plus guys, and it
was a great experience for me, and winning was an expectation.
We lost three games in four years. I was very
fortunate that I started kind of maturing later in life
once I got into college and started two years as
(02:03):
an offensive guard. Ended my career with a knee injury
in my last game, which I think was another kind
of planted seed for the career I pursued. But for me,
the love of the game and just being able to
compete at that level was just something very unique and
very special, And maybe I thought when I went to
Ball State for my master's degree and was a graduate
(02:24):
assistant football coach there, at one point I thought maybe
coaching was going to be a career. As fate and
other things have it, it just kind of played out
not to be the case. I didn't do a lot
of on the field coaching at Ball State. I did
a lot of drawing plays, cutting film. These were the
old days where you had film strips that you had
(02:44):
to cut and edit. There was no computers at that time,
and it was all the boring stuff, and that got
me more interested in the field that I was studying,
which was counseling. And I look back at those experiences.
Some of my best friends are my teammates from those years,
and football became kind of my identified sport that I've loved.
(03:04):
I've always embraced it. I've worked with it at the
collegiate level in my career path. I was Buddy Ryan's
team counselor for a year at Arizona Cardinals. But to
really have the opportunity to kind of end up here
in Green Bay has been very special and connected to
going through the things I went through as a Division
III athlete with three a day practices and limited water
(03:25):
and sports medicine care was almost non I mean, it
just didn't exist. And to look at where the mental
part of the game became important in my own development,
I think I didn't learn about the tools. I think
I just kind of did it out of desperation and
survival at times. But I look back at those years
very fondly.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, and you've never really left the game. It seems
you mentioned the Cardinals, and you made an interesting choice
to go back home after you graduated college to get
your masters at ball State and also coach, and you're
basically the same age as these players were. There some
lessons learned as a young.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Coach, absolutely, and I think for me, separating a little
bit from having been a player to a coach, you
have to learn humility and also have the confidence to
know that you know what you're talking about. Yeah, because
you incorporated it. And I think I was really good
at just being a resource for the players. And I
think there's always been that kind of nature of being
a good listener, of being attending to the human side
(04:26):
that often gets forgotten about with these athletes. But you know,
at the end of my Masters, it was just I
chose a different path. I didn't want to go cut film,
and as fate had it, you know, I had done
a rotation and an inpatient addictions unit, and dealing with
individuals who had chemical dependency issues was very challenging, and
I think I liked that challenge as a counselor, and
(04:50):
I think that's what kind of pulled me into that field.
And doing that work for four years, two years of
it doing direct care and counseling, and then two years
doing prevention work. Beknownst to me at that time, that
kind of prepared me for going back to get my PhD.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
And you would go back and get your PhD in
nineteen ninety two, also at Balls State.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
YEP.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And you've worked with teams now in the NFL, the NBAWNBA, MLB, MLS,
and then you've worked with individual athletes at the Summer
and Winter Olympics. So I'm curious as to your approach
to solo versus team sports.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
For me, every sport has elements of individual first, because
it is about the individual athlete, whether they operate within
a team culture or a team system like team sports
or they're going out and representing a team. Like at
the Olympics, you represent your country, You're part of Team USA. Now,
(05:48):
when a downhiller gets into the gate at the two
thousand and two Winter Olympics up in Snowbasin, and I'm
in the gate area with them and they're pushing out
to ski the downhill or the Giants alumn they are
compared as an individual athlete, but they're representing a larger team.
I think what makes team sports unique is the interactions
and the communication and the necessity of being able to
(06:10):
compete with one another. And I'll say this now that
I think football to me is one of the last
few really truly team sports. In basketball, I watched games
in thirteen years in the NBA, I watched games where
one or two players could take over a game. In
baseball the five years I worked with Kansas City, if
a pitcher had his stuff going that day, the right
(06:31):
fielder could literally sit down because if the pitcher's on,
they're on. I did that in literally right exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
That was my role on the team, whether the r
right field you know, backup maybe ten on the lineup.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Yeah, they call that beehive baseball and beehive soccer where
if you watch little kids play, they just kind of
travel on a pack. Yeah, And in baseball if they're
in the outfield, that means they're counting the dandelions at
their feet. But in football, you can have a eight
block and if the other tackle isn't blocking well, the
play goes for not right. You have to operate as
a unit. And so for me, every athlete, individually, every
(07:10):
player that I work with, is an individual that has
their own individual attentional style, their own confidence issues, their
own emotional regulation, and to master that and to get
that at an optimal level only enhances than the team component.
I think the whole structural process of team versus individual
is really unique and a whole separate kind of topic.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
I think since you mentioned football being the ultimate team sport,
let's talk about the Green Bay Packers, who are just
one of eight NFL teams with a full time counselor.
Can you share what you offered to Packers' players to
help optimize their performance?
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Right? So, in twenty eighteen, I started consulting with the Packers.
I was at a practice in Indianapolis, Indiana, just north
of Indianapolis, and was working with the Indiana Pacers in
my eighth ninth year as their team psychologists. I was
working with college athletic departments. I'd been in collegiate athletics
for thirty something years, including five years as the psychologist
(08:08):
at the Ohio State University Athletics department and working closely
with their football program, so I'd always been involved with football.
In twenty nineteen, the last CBA between the Players Association
and the NFL, they mandated every team has to have
a designated mental health clinician and that was the first
(08:28):
time in the history of the NFL where it was
a mandated position. I think teams over the years have
had resources, but they're typically outside of the building and
very crisis oriented rather than being proactive and bringing psychology
into the integrated care of the players. And at the
end of twenty nineteen season, the Packers offered me the
opportunity to be full time. We became the second full
(08:50):
time position. Kansas City had been the first. They had
hired their person in twenty nineteen at the start. Full
time to be one of eight full time programs is
pretty unique and special, and interestingly enough, my colleagues with
other teams we all kind of do it differently, and
my training as a licensed psychologist in counseling psychology. My
PhD is in counseling psychology, but my miner was in
(09:12):
sport psychology. So I just have created a bigger toolbox
as a psychologist to deal with performance as well as
kind of personal issues. And we call it performance psychology
here specifically because everything in these players' life is about performance.
Their relationships, their families, their social connections, that all has
(09:36):
an impact on their performance on the field, as a
performance on the field has an impact in those other relationships.
So our players come in and everything is voluntary, there
is no mandatory. We spend some education time with our
rookies obviously, and then any player that wants to utilize
me on an individual basis, which is all confidential, so
I don't speak about players because of that confidentiality. We
(09:59):
do a weekly mindset class where we're taking a topic
in sports psychology and presenting it so players have some tools.
We do some guided imagery exercises, we have handouts resources
available to them on their team issued iPads. In December
of twenty two, we built a meditation room, so we
actually have now in the new locker room area, a
(10:21):
designated space where players can do mindfulness, relaxation, imagery practice
in a soundproofed and secluded space. The idea is to
give the players every resource that they can have to
optimize their mental performance. And when we talk about that,
we talk about confidence, composure, concentration skills, and there's a
(10:41):
lot of depth behind those areas. But in my opinion,
there are only a few teams that really have the
degree of programmatic integrated resource. And I'm integrated with our
sports medicine, our athletic training staff, our player engagement staff,
our strength and conditioning staff, just wonderful professions in this organization,
(11:01):
and just the way the Packers have done everything. It's
for me at this stage in my career. It's been
phenomenal to be able to build what I'm trying to
build as an elite mental health and mental performance program
for our players.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Outstanding offerings, and the meditation room specifically stands out.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Why did you create that space so interestingly? And if
you look into the whole sports psychology field, you're going
to see lots of topics goal setting, managing nerves, self
talk strategies, visualization and imagery. You're going to see all
these interventions and techniques talked about, but if you really
look at the science behind those techniques and actually the efficacy,
(11:41):
do they work or not? The number one intervention in
this large they call it a meta analytics study, which
is where they take thousands, literally thousands of research papers
and go through and they statistically analyze and in a
meta analysis of interventions for athletic performance, the most effective
intervention was metaation and mindfulness, and those are very oftentimes
(12:03):
structured interventions. So what I want to do is create
a space where we could have those offerings and our
players could utilize that and they individually work on their
own tailored programs or we have those tools available in
that room that they can do it. We also use
it a little library. There's a number of books I'll
put in there. Players often recommend a book they read
that they like and will make them available for our players.
(12:26):
The idea is to remove any kind of limitation they
may have outside of the building, so that they have
the tools and resources inside the building. And I've been
very pleased with the utilization of it, and I think
this past year on our active roster, over eighty percent
of our active roster guys have utilized some aspect of
our psychology program. Now I'm going to be happier when
(12:47):
we get closer to one hundred percent of utilization. As
I know, one hundred percent of our guys use the
weight room and one hundred percent of our guys to strength,
conditioning and rehab and all those elements of support. But
we have so many resources. Is I also get it
some guys have been doing mental skills since their college
years because more and more Division one college programs have
this resource, so now they're a little bit more accustomed
(13:10):
to it.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
That's fantastic. And that eighty percent number, just from listening
back to some of your interviews over the years, sounds
like the highest season to date.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Is that correct? Yes, not this season, but a year
ago at this time, it was about sixty eight percent
of our active roster players were utilizing the resource, and
so we definitely have seen growth of utilization. That doesn't
mean eighty percent come in my office, but it does
mean that of that locker room players are utilizing the
(13:40):
meditation space, they're utilizing the app that we have, they're
utilizing the tools that are on their iPad, or they're
coming into the mindset class, or they're doing the focus
session we do the night before game. So making different
touch points related to their mental preparation and the mental
aspect of the game is my whole idea of a
programmatic implementation instead of just you got to come see me.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
That's incredible the fact that they can utilize the app,
they can come see you or participate in the weekly
class that you offer as well. And I think this
is a great opportunity to talk a little bit about
some of those techniques that over the course of your
career you found super beneficial to athletes at any level.
(14:26):
Would you be able to walk us through briefly, just
some of those main techniques that you trust.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah. Absolutely so. My practice prior to coming to the
Packers full time, I would see high school athletes, I
would see collegiate athletes. I would see Olympic athletes trained
in central Indiana. I even had CEOs who would fly
into a little airport north of our building in the
county north of Indianapolis for their individual work. So it's
been a range of clients that I've worked with. I'll
(14:53):
summarize it, and folks that are interested can clearly go
find more details. The first and foremost is motivation to change.
What's your internal motivation versus your external motivation? And I
think there's obviously developmental differences between a thirteen year old
athlete and a twenty three year old athlete. My initial
point is what's your motivation to change? Is it an
(15:14):
external reason because you got cut from a team or
someone said you can't do it, or you're going to
do it for another person, or is it internal drive
to push yourself to be better than you thought you
could be. And that motivation is the fuel that triggers
doing the mental skills. Once an individual has kind of
committed and they want to move to a plan, then
(15:34):
we start with goal setting. And goal setting to me
is kind of the foundational mental skill because to even
practice mental skills, you have to make it a goal
to do it. And I don't mean an athlete that says, well,
I want to get better. If a player comes in
and says I want to get better, I'm going to
ask them, well, what does that mean? What is getting better?
And be specific. The second kind of skill that you
(15:55):
add in there is arousal regulation or emotional management, in
other words, how to get your butterflies to fly in
formation because getting nervous before competition is normal. In fact,
it's desirable because it means there's a state of readiness.
It's all attached to our central nervous system, our fight
or flight mechanism. I still feel it, I guess, you know,
(16:16):
even when I go into the stadiums or when I
come out before the players onto lambo. I mean, yeah,
you put a heart rate monitor, it's going to be
a little elevated and I'm not going to run out
on that field ever. So it's the idea of as
an athlete learning how to control that intensity and that
energy because that impacts your performance. Yes. The third kind
(16:36):
of skill we talk about then is the focus and
attention skills, and that's where imagery and visualization tie in.
We know that if you try to visualize a performance
and you're under too much tension and stress, you're more
likely going to visualize the mistake and what you don't
want to do instead of being able to visualize the
appropriate technique. And obviously there's very sports specific domains. If
(16:59):
you're a power you can have a certain energy level
compared to a golfer, so you have to have some
background in theoretical understanding of how these domains impact each other.
But when you go from kind of energy management to
focus and concentration skills, now you've kind of with goal
setting and the other two, you've kind of created a
foundation of mental skills practice. And then the fourth element
(17:21):
I call is basically mental routines, and that's the idea
of having a consistent and regular mental plan that you're
utilizing in practice in your pregame approach, in your postgame approach,
in your off season, or your rehab. If you're injured
and you're going to miss time, we're going to use
those same tools, but we're going to use them in
(17:42):
the context of rehabilitation and recovery and using skill sets
like positive self talk, using tools like staying in the moment,
resilience factors. The psychology of grit. If you look at
what psychologists do, there's a tendency to look at psychology
is it only treats when someone's depressed or when someone
has anxiety, and that can be part of human condition
(18:05):
without question. We're trying very hard to destigmatize that. But
I would say our psychology model is more built on
strength and helping individuals even when they struggle to better
understand it and then use cognitive interventions, thoughts, emotional regulation
to manage that. So if I start with a young
(18:25):
athlete and they come in and they really want to
get better on their mental skills, typically what I would
do in my practice after I kind of assess and
make sure there's nothing else going on, I would give
them a notebook and then I would tell them their
goal for the next month is to write in that
notebook two times a week about how did they do
that day, how did their training go, how did their
(18:47):
competition go? Well, what should I add to it. I'll
give them a very brief mental training manual and say
you're going to read this and we'll find out in
a month what you wanted to practice. And I think
there is an almost prescriptive plan, but it's it's like
the metaphor I love, and I think an athlete taught
this to me years ago. With my body type, if
I go into a Macy's and get a suit, I
(19:07):
could probably buy one off the rack, but it's not
going to fit really good. But if I go have
one tailored where they're going to measure me, I get
to choose the cloth and the material. And by the way,
I've never had a tailored suit, but if I had one,
having worked in the NBA, those guys all have tailored
suits because they definitely can't at seven to two go
buy one off the rack. It gets measured, it takes time,
(19:30):
it costs a little bit more money, but when they
put it on, it fits perfect. And so any sports
psychology book, it's kind of like going to shop off
the rack. But the tailored approaches when you make the
investment of time. And I think a good mental skills
practice is going to be about thirty five to forty
minutes a day, a very intentional practice and if a
(19:54):
person's willing to put that time to get a little
bit better, they'll see positive outcome. They may not see
it immediately. There are developmental contexts. So for our players,
the idea is just to be a resource to help
them if they want to develop those areas of.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Their performance that's outstanding. And it sounds like motivation is
kind of the starting point, yes, And then to summarize
goal setting, emotional management, focus, and mental routines. Those are
some of the key techniques that you would advocate for.
And you also mentioned self talk. Yes, I'm really curious
(20:29):
about that. And for listeners who also might be interested,
how do you recommend starting self talk?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Self awareness is the first step in any of these journeys.
So you have to become aware because you're talking to
yourselves all the time. Whether you want to hear it
or not is another story, right, But oftentimes the self
talk is representative of your confidence. It's representative of your
self efficacy, your internal deeper belief in yourself. It also
(20:55):
represents your anxiety and your stress. When we do self
talk war and when I've done self talk work with individuals,
the first step is to kind of take a baseline,
like over the next week, monitor what you're saying to yourself,
identify that, and then where do you need to change that?
And we really want to shift from outcomes to process,
like what can you do tomorrow with three positive self
(21:18):
statements that aren't related to I am the best, but
related to more something that is controllable. And that's where
comparison to others is really kind of a negative mental focus,
because when you compare yourself to others, you're never accepting
yourself where you're at, and that makes it very difficult
to embrace those moments when you actually have performed very well.
(21:40):
So to help athletes to be able to kind of
find that part is starting with understanding their self talk.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Great recommendations there and I like the three positive self statements.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I think that's a good starter.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
And to have that positive conversation with yourself.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It's important.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
It's how you treat other people. Now, for a regular
joe athlete like myself, is there anything you would challenge
me to do before or after, say, going for a run.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
I think any person who's engaged in any kind of
athletic activity, what's the goal of the activity? Is your
goal to go out and have a twenty five minute
run or run five miles at a certain pace? What's
your goal for that activity? You know, I'm at a
point where I have absolutely zero aerobic capacity in my body.
I am an old offensive lineman. I'd rather push the
bus than run and catch the bus. But I've learned
(22:28):
over time you have to maintain that cardiovascular training. So
I like to do walks. I do long walks, and
then I incorporate steps in that. My only goal is
for a certain amount of time. Now, as I continue
to develop it, I start thinking about how far did
I get over this week, and then maybe next week
I want to go a little bit farther. And the
idea of being a regular athlete is that idea of
(22:49):
self improvement. Are you doing the activity to improve yourself?
Are you doing it for enjoyment? If you like to
play golf but you're a twenty five handicap, maybe you
should re establish what your goals are when you go
out there and play and just say, if my goal
is fun, then you should never have to throw a club.
You should be able to laugh at your balls and
go in the water. But I think what's interesting is
(23:10):
often people have a mismatch between what their outcome goal
is and what their actual process is. So I think
for a regular athlete, just being able to incorporate some
of these mental skills, taking a deep breath before a
performance task, just a deep breath then and a deep
(23:33):
breath out, learning how to practice that. There are so
many apps that you can add to kind of teach you,
and I think sometimes a little too many, but there
are apps out there that people can utilize. I'm a
big advocate of journaling, and we'll have players that do
writing and I forever have had athletes journal because I
think there's nothing better than capturing your own thoughts and
feelings when you reflect on it yourself instead of someone
(23:55):
else write about it. And what's really cool about a
journal is that when an athlete as a really good
moment and they're reflecting on it and they're writing about it,
maybe a month later they're not feeling it, but they
go back and read that entry and they can remember
that feeling it triggers a subconscious connection. And journaling has
been proven to be a really good therapeutic intervention, and
(24:17):
so it's part of a performance domain and anybody can journal.
You just got to get a book and make a
commitment to it and understand that it helps you identify
your goals and what you want to accomplish from your
activity and take those moments that are really enjoyable and
capture that.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
These are some incredible techniques. And thank you so much
for taking the time to walk us through and very
clearly explain a very complicated but important part of this
Packers organization. Doctor Carr, thank you so much for the time.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Me Bet Taylor, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
And thank you for listening to Packers pov IF you're
interested in learning more about mental health. One resource doctor
Carr recommends as the NCAA Sports Science Institute, and they've
posted some mental health best practices that can be found
at NCAA dot org slash mental health. Thanks again for
taking the time to listen and see you next time.
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