April 22, 2025 • 53 mins
Jared here. In this episode of The Nail the Recruiting Process Podcast, I’m joined by Coach Kristin Tullo, the founder of Think Strong Play Strong. Kristin is a mental performance coach, and today we dive into the critical intersection of resilience development and athletic development. With a background in strength coaching and social work, Kristin shares her journey to becoming a specialist in the mental aspect of sports—an area she believes is often overlooked.
We tackle the tough stuff: Why resilience is the true differentiator for athletes, how coaches and parents can help build an athlete’s mental toughness, and the power of letting athletes fail in order to grow. Kristin unpacks her philosophy on "controlling the controllables" and provides actionable strategies to help athletes bounce back faster from mistakes—both on and off the court or field.
Kristin’s approach challenges the traditional notion of toughness, focusing instead on building the ability to respond effectively to adversity. This episode is packed wall-to-wall with insights for athletes AND their inner circle. Simply put - if you want to help a young athlete unlock their full potential, you can’t miss this interview.
__________
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Coach Kristen Tullow, my newest internet friend.
How are you doing?
great, how are you?
I'm doing great.
I'm really, really excited for this conversation.
And I also, you know, the more we get to know each other, the more we realize we have somefun things in common.
We have the future dueling piano band of Miles's, I imagine.
(00:21):
Yep, that's it has to be called Miles's.
Yeah, the miles is.
So, know, I'm jokes aside, really excited for this.
And I kind of want to I want to mission impossible you right off the rip.
I've talked about this with you behind the scenes.
I've talked with a lot of coaches about this over the course of my coaching career and nowbeing on the other side of it.
(00:45):
There's this space between right, there's this space between what coaches want theirathletes to do and then this, you know.
unoccupied, rarely discussed space, and then the athletes doing it.
So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is gonna be the first guest of mine toreally get nitty gritty about that space in between, if you are ready to rock.
(01:10):
I've already decided by the end of this podcast, people are going to either wanna workwith me, like they're gonna be just calling me, wanting my help, or they're going to be
like, I don't want anything to do with her.
So I am ready for anything.
Cause I'm just gonna say it how it is, how I feel, what I see, and I'm not gonna sugarcoat it.
(01:32):
So that's where I'm at right now.
love that, you know, and, you know, I see to me when that's the approach, it always getsfiled under quote unquote educational, right?
That's a dodge.
So we're good.
I want to start with a little bit about you just so that our listeners can get to knowyou.
I know you have a background in athletics.
I also know that you are a strength coach, like you're a certified fitness instructor.
(01:56):
I would love to know a little bit more about how this deviated into mental sportperformance, which is such a needed thing for
the modern scope of athletics.
How did that happen for you?
Like you said, it's much needed.
So I am a strength coach.
I've had a personal training business for, I guess, five or six years now.
I've been a personal trainer for over 10 years, working with athletes, everyone inbetween, youth athletes, college athletes, high school athletes, and then former athletes.
(02:26):
What I noticed from my work in the gym and my work as a coach, I coached soccer and hockeyfor a number of years, was that the mental aspect of it was lacking severely.
I was noticing more kids that needed help because they were crying over goals being scoredon their team.
And the physical aspect of it was like always the main focus.
(02:48):
Like everyone needs to be training in the gym.
Everyone needs to be on the field a certain amount of hours a day.
But meanwhile, all of these other elements are what's really crippling their ability toperform at their best.
And after working with athletes and their parents and talking with other coaches foryears, I just decided
I want to shift a little bit and start working with these athletes and these coachesoutside of the gym and outside of the game, because I think that's where the help is
(03:15):
needed the most.
And I have a background in social work.
I went to school for social work.
And I definitely have a background in athletics.
I was an athlete.
Like most of us were in this field up till high school.
I didn't play college.
I could have had the opportunity to play soccer in college.
Didn't take it because I wasn't really all in on it.
(03:35):
And I think I use what I didn't have as an athlete, and now it's kind of what I want togive to the athletes, the coaches, and the parents now.
Something that you just said that's really interesting is that you leaned into this basedon your own observations.
And I haven't shared this with you, but a lot of coaches know this about me.
(03:58):
When I got out of coaching and I was restricted by illness in terms of the time I couldcommit to work, the easy lane was, well, I'm just gonna scout for colleges.
And I actually turned down a lot of that work once I realized...
problem area and that problem area for me was this huge information gap between what highschool athletes thought college coaches were looking for and what college coaches were
(04:20):
actually looking for.
So then it just became bridge that information gap.
I'm curious for you, you start doing this work, you're interacting with more athletes, hassomething sort of jumped out to you as the problem area?
That you're like, if I'm known for anything, I want to be known for solving that.
I want to be known for solving the fact that mental performance coaching, training,building, is something that can be solved, right?
(04:48):
Like confidence is not something you're born with or you don't have.
It's not something that you can never find.
all of these skills that I teach and I train with, they're all something that you can doon your own.
Right?
So, and, and it's, it's, it's not easy, but a lot of them are going to be simple.
So I always help my clients understand like mental, mental training.
(05:09):
it's needed and it's something that you can train.
I think that that's probably the biggest thing, myths of that it's something that's goingto take years or it's not going to happen.
But I think I kind of help my clients understand that we're going to do it and we're, andyou're going to see that it's going to help immensely.
That's A, really interesting and B, a really good jumping in point if we're going tocannonball into this.
(05:37):
I knew you and had spoken to you at least via text and DM a few times and then I saw thispiece of content that you posted that like jumped off the screen at me based on my own
personal experiences coaching and I had sort of convinced myself like, okay, I coach atthe D3 level and I encounter different challenges and then I'm going to go to D1.
(05:58):
And those challenges are just going to magically not be there because I'm an idiot and Iwas inexperienced.
And then I got there and I was like, the challenges are exactly the same.
Your content speaks to one of these challenges.
And I'm going to quote you.
OK.
The quote the quote you put in this content was your team did not lose because the otherteam wanted it more.
(06:20):
They lost because they didn't know what to do when things got hard.
So I want to.
you a few questions about this with the sort of disclaimer being I'm capable of spendingnine hours on this quote with you so in the interest of what were you gonna say
off, but this post, still, this was posted probably a few weeks ago, maybe a month or soago.
(06:43):
And I'm still getting so many notifications of people liking it or people following mefrom it.
It's just, it's so true.
And also, me and everyone else I work with is guilty of stopping short of what you saidand just saying the other team wanted it more, which is actually where I want to start.
(07:04):
So I want to boil this down to you're clearly talking about resilience.
You're clearly talking about, hey, there's a difference between being resilient whenthings are going well for you.
and being resilient in winning time when both teams are peak performing.
So my first question for you is, why do you think, especially with this generation ofathletes, that some of that core resilience is missing?
(07:32):
See, this is where I said people are gonna wanna work with me or they're gonna hate me.
let's go.
That's by the way, that is completely who I am.
So I'm all in on this.
Yeah.
I think a big part of it is that we allow our athletes to shy away from adversity.
Things get hard, they don't want to go to practice.
We're like, okay, yeah, you don't have to go today.
And we don't let them fail, right?
(07:55):
So when things are good, things are great.
When things start to get harder, we shy away from it.
We don't push them through it.
We don't guide them through it.
And this is not a shot at coaches because coaches do so much.
They're only able to do.
so much too in their season, right?
A lot of times there's not enough resources to help them.
And I don't expect every coach to understand the little intricacies of helping these kidswith their mental toughness.
(08:21):
So I just want to make that clear.
It's a problem, but it's not anyone's real fault.
But I think that we have to work on that aspect of not shying away, letting our kids failsometimes and letting them know like, all right, well, you know what, that sucked.
I remember the first time I was coaching a hockey team and they lost in the championshipand I was happy when I saw them crying because it made me able to see that they cared and
(08:45):
that they were going to maybe do something with that.
Because not everything is always going to be rosy when you're playing sports and you haveto still want to play again the next season and keep showing up.
assuming then based on what you just shared with me that you're gonna tell me this sort oftakes a village.
It's not just the athlete working on something it's it's the core.
(09:09):
So my follow-up is how can that athlete and their support network
work to further developing this mindset outside of the basic be persistent.
So I guess my direct question to you is how do we the village help the athlete become moreresilient?
(09:30):
I think it's a few things, right?
So we have to understand as the athlete, you have to understand what your role is.
I think that's a big part of it too, right?
Your kids playing a sport, they're not getting the minutes they think they deserve.
They're not playing the role or the position that they maybe are used to or they wanna beplaying.
And then we say like, well, it's the coach's fault.
You should be doing that.
(09:50):
Let your kid try different roles, right?
They're gonna build resilience, being able to find themselves in different positions thatare not comfy, right?
Maybe I used to play
Center.
Now I'm being told that I have to play left wing, right?
It's these little, it's not always going to be a huge thing, but it's these little thingsthat we have to push our kids into and let them say, I'm okay being uncomfortable.
(10:12):
And this is going to help me when things become more uncomfortable.
That's part of it.
Just allowing your kid to kind of sit in that and having productive conversations, knowingwhat to say in those situations.
I think we can both agree that one of the
Worst and hardest things for an athlete is that ride home.
(10:33):
Parents don't really know what to say.
They might say the wrong thing inadvertently.
You know, we point out things without helping them overcome it.
Of course, we notice all the mistakes our kids make.
What are you doing to help them overcome that?
You saw your kid fall to the ground crying in tears because his teammate got scored on,right?
(10:54):
Did you just mention that in the car or just gloss over it?
Let's have these harder conversations and open up the door to those things, right?
We can't just pretend it's not happening because it's gonna show up very differently.
So I think all of these things, it's like just, it's adversity, it's challenges, and it'sjust being able to, you'll build the resilience when you're able to recognize it and then
(11:17):
change it.
And I want to build on this because I think what you're saying is really, really importantfor other parts of the ride home circle too.
My biggest regrets in this profession have very little to do with the X's and O's.
(11:39):
can, like the things that caused me to lose sleep, sometimes even 10 years removed fromwhen it happened, are the times where I had really good intentions.
but said the wrong thing to a player that I was trying to motivate.
And for anyone that hasn't had this experience yet, you can tell in real time when you'veshut down a kit.
(12:02):
Like you think you have the answer, you haven't done enough research beforehand, maybeemotions are heightened because it's like during a game or post game and you say it and
then it's out there and they heard it.
And...
As we're talking about resilience, we're talking about athletes that are already in astate where they could go either way.
(12:25):
So I want to put you on the spot here and direct this a little bit to coaches.
Is there anything you found in your experience where you can kind of assess when the kidis in that state?
like, hey, choose your next words wisely because this is going to be really, reallyimportant.
(12:46):
Because while I agree with you that 80 % of this falls on the kids, the coaches are notexempt.
absolutely not.
and if I made it seem like I think anything other than that, my apologies.
No, no, I just, of course, of course, of course.
But yeah, of course it has to do with the coaches too.
(13:07):
Right.
And, I think this could be an example of, of what you might be talking about.
And this is a big thing just in general with my coaching and what I kind of remindathletes of.
their body language, right?
You can tell any, a lot of things from people's body language.
That's just one way that they're communicating with you.
So when you see that kid coming off the court, the ice, the field, whatever it is, you cantell by their body language that they already have an idea things were going wrong, right?
(13:34):
You can see where they're at.
You don't need to bury them because of it.
You have to just choose your words wisely.
And that comes with practice too, just like anything else that you're training theseathletes for.
how you talk to them is a skill that the coaches need to work on.
Right?
So, so just noticing things.
And I've, I think off this podcast, me and you have talked about things.
(13:56):
And I gave you an example of this one time I was coaching a hockey team and there was thisone defenseman in particular that would always come off the ice and she would just make
dead eye contact with me, waiting for me to point out things that she did wrong.
And I knew that if I did point out things that she did wrong, she would, I would lose her,right?
And I needed her.
about now for the rest of the game, right?
(14:18):
Yeah.
Right.
And she's just looking at me and I would say to her, what's up?
And she goes, I know, I know what you're going to say.
And I'm like, I'm not saying anything.
She's like, no, I know what you're going to say.
So just say it.
I'm like, I don't know what, what you're talking about.
You know what you did wrong out there.
You don't need me to say it.
So like, just go back out there, fix it on the next rep, right?
It's not always, not everything has to be a teaching moment, right?
(14:41):
Sometimes the teaching moment is letting them sit in it, think about it and go back outthere and just fix what they already know.
So I think that just,
kind of understanding your players is a huge advantage and can be a huge difference makerin the outcome of what you're gonna get from them.
really really appreciate you sharing this because I feel like in very short time we'vedone sort of a 360 about like okay if if the player's in the middle of this here's what
(15:11):
the surrounding people can do I want to shift our focus we're not necessarily getting ridof the circle but I want to shift our focus for a moment to that dot in the middle of the
circle the buzz-worthiest buzz-worthy
phrase in athletics for what I feel like the last quarter century has been to control thecontrollables, right?
(15:35):
Easier said than done, first and foremost.
But the thing I see is a lot of people that need that sort of control the controllablescoaching also react with anxiousness when they're told that.
And to give you an example of what I see is I see people that
try to abide by that control the controllables philosophy, but the way they actuallyexercise it in practices, they try to control more, right?
(16:03):
I'm not actually letting life come to me.
I'm trying to increase my sphere of influence so that I'm in control of more.
And that's how I control the controllables.
And that's toxic and destructive and also not helpful for the individual.
So what I'm getting at you, I want to learn what
The actual skill development in your eyes of controlling the controllables looks and feelslike.
(16:27):
So I'm guilty of hammering home control the controllables and my athletes probably, and Ialways say, you know what I'm gonna say right now.
You know what I'm gonna say.
That's out of your control.
One of the first things I do with all my athletes and my coaches is go over ourcontrollables and our things that we can't control, right?
And I make them write out columns, can control, can't control.
(16:49):
And I give them a couple of minutes to fill out one side and then a couple of minutes tofill out the other side.
And I tell them, read me all of the things that you can't control.
And once they do that, I say, good, we're done with those.
We're not focusing on those at all.
Right?
Like literally forget that they exist because you're never going to control these things.
There's no point in you putting your energy into it.
And one, one of them that people love to argue with me about either on Instagram or inperson is playing time.
(17:15):
Like, Oh no, you can control how much playing time you get by showing up to practice anddoing this, doing that.
And I'm like, you can influence what your coach decides on your coach.
is in control of your playing time.
You can do all of these things.
You still don't have control of that because I can find us in a position where we need tobe really, really hard on defense right now, but you're more of an offensive player.
(17:41):
I don't need you as much right now.
Right?
So that's not something that you're able to control.
There are things that you can influence, kind of like what you were just saying, likepeople start to almost like micromanage and try to influence as much as they can.
But if it's not something that you yourself
can change, we forget about it.
So then we go through our controllables.
(18:02):
And I honestly don't remember exactly what the question was that you gave me because I'malready on my my tangent, which is what I do when I'm talking about things that I love.
yeah, so then just going into the controllables and kind of breaking those down.
And that's where we're gonna put all of our focus, right?
So.
(18:22):
How you prepare for your games, the attitude you show up with, the effort that you give,your body language, how you're communicating with your teammates.
Those are all things that you are fully in control of so you can change it at any secondwhen you need to.
Let me first tell you, you answered the question.
So great job.
Fridge magnet on the way.
(18:43):
second of all, the last thing you shared is actually most poignant to me because you'resandwiched in between some interviews with a couple of coaches and they all talk about the
most important part of execution is preparation.
And I think a huge myth, I'm going to allow you to tell me if it's the same in soccer andin hockey, which are your,
(19:06):
more experienced areas, but I can tell you for basketball, this idea that we'reimprovising or that like when we call a timeout and we draw up a play on the sidelines
that our players have legit never seen it before, no, we prepare for everything.
It's a dress rehearsal, practices dress rehearsal every day.
So is it similar what you're asking for your players that we are repeatedly working onmental practices so that when you are in crunch time, all I'm
(19:35):
saying to you is hey remember what we've been working on is that kind of what you'regetting at?
Yeah, I mean, when you're drawing up plays, right, you're just kind of reminding everyoneand then you're maybe adjusting things based on what you saw the other team do.
But you're not rewriting the script here, right?
You're these are things that we've practiced.
It's like I'm just instilling in you the confidence that you are.
(19:55):
You've already done this.
You know exactly what you need to do.
We're going to take a breather.
We're going to we're going to write it down and show you.
But you're prepared for this moment that that is in front of you.
It's just I think it's same across the board, I would guess, for most sports.
Right?
You're just adjusting.
Yeah, and you know what?
It almost sounds like we're trying to figure out how to make those small adjustments forthe athletes when they're in heightened states.
(20:19):
Which brings us to, I think, another very buzzworthy word, which is triggers.
While I certainly haven't done the work that you've done in this field, I'm an avidreader.
I constantly talk to my favorite coaches in the basketball sphere about mentalperformance, and I at least assume
(20:40):
that there is a certain amount of stoicism that we're trying to build into athletes,specifically when it comes to stimulus and response.
We're working on the space between stimulus and response.
So I imagine because of that, that you are constantly trying to help athletes spot theirown triggers.
(21:00):
Like, hey, I noticed that this thing happened in you and then I lost you.
Once you've identified a trigger in that athlete,
What happens next?
For my athletes, we go through a reset routine, right?
So something to refocus on.
So you know that we go through the stages of what it would look like, what your bodylanguage starts looking like, the things that you start telling yourself, a number of
(21:28):
things that your body's now going through, your mind is now going through, because youfeel yourself, I missed two layups.
Now I'm starting to really feel the heat.
I suck, this, that.
These are the things that you're telling yourself.
You have to be able to recognize that right away.
And then you only have a few seconds because games are fast, right?
There's not a lot of time to sit and dwell and think, what can I do to get myself throughthis?
(21:50):
Go into it with a routine that you're already ready to do.
So it's something physical.
It's something, it's a deep breath and it's telling yourself something, right?
So for example, if you're a soccer player, you might not need to adjust your sock, butit's there as a habit to tell you, all right, I'm resetting my sock because I know that I
(22:10):
need to refocus.
So I take a deep breath, I adjust my sock, and I just say a word or two to myself, likecalm down.
Right now I'm triggering it to myself, okay, what happened happened, I'm not gonna let itruin the rest of my game.
And then you just keep going.
And every time you feel yourself starting to slip from maybe a green zone to a yellowzone, right, because there's three zones.
(22:31):
Our green zone is like where we start off and we're ready to go.
We're running all over the field, we're communicating with our teammates, we're happy tobe there.
things start slipping, not going our way.
We start sliding to the yellow zone.
I'm fine if you can work through the yellow zone, but if it's a very short range from red,I'm sorry, from yellow to red, we've got to snap you back.
(22:51):
So we're always trying to stay between green and yellow.
So recognizing it is great.
Doing something about it is better.
So the recognition of, feel myself starting to slump.
I'm not standing as tall.
I was sprinting, now I'm kind of jogging.
These are all things you have to start recognizing about yourself and say, all right, Igot to pull myself back.
(23:13):
I'm going to just reset, right?
Take a deep breath, tell myself something positive, do something physical, and I'm back init.
This is an awesome jumping point because what you described when you describe that typicalgreen zone, to me, I would consider that to be a flow state where like you're not you're
(23:34):
sort of instinctively doing what you're supposed to be doing and you're so locked into thegame that everything kind of slows down for you.
That's how I would describe flow.
One of my favorite athletes.
Quick shout out to Amy Fisher was the only athlete to this day I've ever worked with who
could verbalize to me pregame that she was in a flow state.
(23:56):
And much like any human being on earth, she wasn't in the flow state 100 % of the time.
That's not really possible.
But like, she's the only athlete I've ever worked with that would come to me pregame andbe like, I'm on right now.
And then like we would run plays for her and she would shoot like 75 % from three.
And like that was just her thing and just sprint and outwork everybody.
(24:19):
And I...
I'm sharing fish as an example because that to me is flow state.
I would love to know between the athletes you've worked in and your own experience aroundsport, what am I missing?
When it comes to that locked in athlete that's in flow, what are the sort of flow bestpractices for Coach Kristen Tullow?
(24:40):
I think first I want to take a step back because you said something I think is importantthat just because she's in a flow state doesn't mean just like all the other athletes,
we're not going to stay in there the whole time.
Right.
And mental tough, mental toughness, I think gets misunderstood.
It is not always being able to do the hard things and not, not show emotions, you know,and I, I almost hate the term mental toughness because it gives this connotation that
(25:04):
like, I'm so tough.
Nothing is going to like,
hurt me, nothing's gonna get me upset.
I'm always gonna be just like straight faced, ready to go.
And like, okay, that's not the reality of things, right?
So mental toughness is just being able to bounce back when things aren't going 100 % howyou want it, right?
(25:25):
You can show me emotions.
I love it.
I love emotions.
I'm a very emotional person myself, but I need you to not lose yourself to those emotions,right?
I need you to take that deep breath.
process those emotions into what's gonna happen next.
So I just wanted to, I didn't wanna not mention that because I don't want people to thinkthat mental toughness means always being 100%, not being able to show how you're really
(25:50):
feeling or what you're really thinking.
not a character on like the Fast and Furious 9 is basically what we're getting at.
Right.
Yeah.
are, athletes are real humans, right?
We are going to feel things, do things, and they're not always perfect.
And that's perfectly fine.
It's all about the reaction to what's happening, which I think is the most important.
does flow, then mean that your bounce back time is basically the highest it can be.
(26:17):
Yeah, I mean, you see, you could watch a tape of any athlete, a great, like the best ontheir team or the best in the league.
They're going to make mistakes through the game, right?
We always focus on the mistakes we make, but if you sat down and watch tape of someoneelse, you're going to notice their mistakes.
The biggest difference between those athletes and other athletes is that they didn't letthose two, three mistakes turn into 10 mistakes where they completely shut down.
(26:44):
You can make
You can make mistakes.
I don't care.
And I tell my, when I used to coach, would tell my athletes all the time.
The only thing that's going to piss me off is if you don't try.
Fall down.
I do not care if you fall down trying to learn how to skate backwards.
I'm going to be more upset if you just completely ignore that one step and not try.
(27:05):
The phrase I used to use with my players a lot was compounding interest mistakes.
And I want to give, just because this tends to lean towards basketball, I want to give anybasketball listeners a really practical example of what I'm hearing from you.
You take an open three, you miss it.
So you're frustrated.
So you immediately commit a defensive foul, right?
(27:28):
And then the next play.
You want to make up for it because now you're in your head about the foul and the miss andyou immediately take an ill-advised shot, right?
And then you're on defense and now you're just completely broken and you stop talking toyour teammates and you miss a defensive assignment.
And your reality is I've completely, you know, fallen apart and this is horrible.
(27:49):
The coach's reality is nobody actually cared about your missed shot, but you just caused afour to five point swing.
That's a problem.
right, exactly.
It's not the mistake is not the issue ever.
The worst part is that if you don't react in a way that's going to be beneficial for youor your teammates, I think that's probably one of the best takeaways anyone listening can
(28:13):
have.
Miss the shot.
We don't care.
Just go back into the next play without hanging your head.
So this is really important to me.
How can coaches be better for athletes in those moments?
Because those moments happen.
I don't know how much the average person sees this because maybe the average person sees,that was a good defensive player or that was a tough thing.
(28:38):
We're talking about things like this happening dozens and dozens of times every game andevery practice.
So what can coaches do better to keep
that balance between green and yellow.
I think it happens outside of the game, right?
I think that the relationship, the communication that you have open and the accountabilityyou give to your team is going to show in those moments when the pressure is on, they
(29:08):
missed a shot, are they nervous because of what you might say to them?
Are they nervous about something surrounding that?
think that being able to have communication is everything, right?
In marriage and in business and everything.
Communication is always key and it's the same thing with your athletes and your players.
So I think one of the things that coaches can do is make sure that outside of practicesand games, you have those open communications and you stick to check-ins, right?
(29:36):
Everyone likes the idea of check-ins and, we're going to have this meeting, we're going tohave that meeting.
Make sure that you're actually doing those meetings.
Understand like where your athletes are at right now because maybe, maybe so-and-so justbroke up with their boyfriend or their girlfriend.
and like they're already just like, a slump.
And then you don't have to ask them these personal questions, but you hear these thingsaround the room.
(29:57):
Just an example of being able to kind of meet them where they're at, right?
So you're doing these check-ins, do they have a big test coming up?
Are report cards coming out?
Are acceptance letters from colleges coming out?
So keeping these lines of communication open and kind of just having a good understandingof your athletes as a human is gonna help you be able to support them how they need to on
(30:19):
the court.
I don't think that there's one size fits all for that situation.
think that getting to know your athletes, understanding how they like to communicate, whatthey respond best to with communication is going to help you when you see your player miss
that three, all right, I know how she is or what she's going through right now and this isthe support that I need to give to her.
(30:42):
And this is not babying, it's kind of just helping develop your athletes based on notassuming
well this is how I did it with this person so I'm just gonna do it with that person.
I think that that's also kind of a misunderstanding.
It's like well I'm not there to babysit, I'm not there to like baby my athletes.
You don't have to and the athletes don't wanna be babied either.
(31:03):
They just kind of wanna be understood.
think that that quest for understanding is one of the most overlooked parts of collegeathletics.
And I'm very grateful, seriously beyond words looking back at it, that all of my mentorsin the basketball profession strongly encouraged that I looked outward for advice on
(31:28):
leadership best practices and not just basketball coaches.
So some of my favorite books on
navigating leadership change and optimizing a workspace are literally about optimizingworkspaces, not college basketball teams.
And one of the things they talk about constantly is the power of enabling people to act,making them comfortable enough that they feel like they could challenge your process,
(31:57):
making them comfortable enough to feel like they could go to you with anything.
And it's amazing the impact that can make on the culture of a basketball team.
I think the other thing that's really important to what you just shared is, again, we'retalking about prep.
You know, we're not talking about isolating specific moments.
We can identify a specific moment and then remind them of the prep we've done, but notvice versa, right?
(32:22):
It's very interesting to me.
And I think another part of the communication between coaches and players is understandingwhat their role is.
I think that sometimes athletes are a little harder on themselves because they don't fullyunderstand what they should be doing or what's expected of them because the athlete is
like, well, I have to score points because points is what matters, right?
(32:43):
But not every kid on the team is going to get to be the leading scorer.
And I think that there's
Everyone has a specific role.
Like you were put on this team for this or that, and your role could change from team toteam based on systems and coaches and what have you.
But I think one of the first things that I would encourage athletes to do and coaches todo is to make sure that you guys are both clear on what's expected of you as an
(33:08):
individual.
Right?
We have team expectations a lot of times and what we expect of the team.
I think we need to do the same for the individual athlete.
And that's just another way to get make sure that you guys are constantly checking in andmeeting those expectations.
love that.
Now want to flip it.
I know, I know.
(33:29):
Yes.
I want to highlight an anecdote if you're comfortable sharing it that you talked aboutwith me a couple of weeks back off air.
You talked about preparation for coaches, being able to identify specific things that theycome.
None of us are know-it-alls.
Well, don't we have to challenge the young athletes to...
(33:51):
except the fact that they don't know everything either, because I think that is somethingthat a lot of coaches struggle with.
Are you willing to share a fun story about that?
willing to share it because this happened, had to be at least six years ago and it isstill like one of the freshest memories in my mind.
It was just burned in there and I wish I could forget it, but I can't.
(34:13):
But it's a perfect example of a lot of the issues that we see between maybe parents,coaches, athletes.
So I had told you the story about one of the soccer teams that I'd been coaching a fewyears ago.
first day of practice, know, keeping things loose.
Everyone's kind of warming up, stretching, and we're just going around asking everyone,like, what are you most excited about this season?
(34:37):
What are you most excited about to learn or do or experience?
Because it was a new team for a lot of these girls.
And everyone's given these great answers.
And then I get to this one girl and she just casually stands there and goes, I mean, Idon't know.
I already know everything.
And I was just like, she's obviously kidding.
(35:00):
She's an eighth grade.
She can't possibly think she knows everything about the sport of soccer.
So like, was like, there's nothing that you can think of.
And she was just like, I mean, I've been playing soccer.
I like know everything.
Like, okay.
I'm not speechless too many times in my life.
I think that moment, I was just like, all right, let's go to the next girl because what?
(35:22):
Like, and my initial thought was like, what a disservice.
Whoever told this girl that she is like, she's peaked, she's plateaued, she knowseverything she needs to know, what a disservice they did to her because she, if you want
to talk about buzzwords, we're going to say coachable, not a coachable athlete, right?
(35:42):
Because the mentality already was just like, you're not going to be able to show meanything I don't already know.
I think we, anyone listening, and we both know that that is far from the truth.
The more I find out, the less that I know.
Yes.
So.
do we aside from, you know, trying to be humble and receptive to new information, youknow, are there best practices to avoid being, you know, quote, another know it all.
(36:14):
Just understand that none of us know everything, right?
I tell people all the time, clients or just anyone, if we're not learning something newevery day, we're just not paying attention, right?
Because there is something to be learned every single day, no matter what it is, whatyou're doing.
And you can be in a profession for years.
You can be playing a sport for years.
(36:35):
There's always going to be something that you can learn.
And it's not necessarily a tactical skill or anything like that, but just, huh, I neverthought of that.
Or I never realized that.
That's interesting.
And then you kind of rethink plays a different way or how you're going about things.
So I think keeping an open mind and understanding that if you are learning, it's notbecause you suck.
(37:00):
or you didn't know or whatever, you're allowed to not know everything.
People that think they know everything are the ones we should be a little nervous around.
in all walks of life.
Yeah.
When I said that I wasn't even thinking about sports, to be honest, it's like, you say?
(37:21):
And like I said, I'm a personal trainer.
I have clients that I see all the time.
And one of the things that we always say about personal trainers is if you find thepersonal trainer that like has the answer to every one of your pains or questions, they're
not trustworthy.
Not everyone knows everything.
If a client has a problem and they ask me, I might know the answer.
(37:42):
I might just say,
I'm not the best person for that and I don't want to misspeak.
So I will find out for you and I'll talk to someone about it that would know better.
But like, I don't need to have every answer and we shouldn't expect someone to have everyanswer.
Love that so much.
We're in the homestretch here.
I want to shift to a few about the recruiting process itself.
(38:03):
I'm imagining some of our more creative listeners have already been able to conceptualizehow some of your talking points could also impact some of the pain points and stressors
they experienced in the recruiting process.
But I want to do my due diligence and spell it out for them.
Two, the hypothetical high school student that's doing all the right things but
(38:25):
just has not gotten the attention that potentially they deserve yet and is hearing a lotof things from a lot of different people.
What do you say to that kid?
think you need to trust your circle.
Always have people, maybe three people that you trust the most to give you feedback or togive you an honest advice or opinions.
(38:48):
So I think the first person is always yourself.
Understand what you really want, what you need, and what you're looking for.
And then two people, maybe it's a coach or a mentor or a parent or a close friend.
I think when you have those three people, those are the people that you can trust.
And then...
When you're hearing, like you said, you hear a lot of different things from a lot ofdifferent people.
A lot of it is noise.
(39:09):
You stick to those three people, yourself being the loudest voice, and you just trustthose three key people in your life.
love that.
Knowing that your work focuses so much on the sort of end result being more grit, moreresilience, more toughness, real like leadership aptitude.
(39:36):
I want to run a specific data point in my research by you.
Now you knew in advance that I wasn't going to tell you what the data point was.
Okay.
So here is what I decided to do in my research.
I was just kind of sitting back and as I was putting some of my materials together forwork, just sort of recollecting that all of my favorite players that I had coached and the
(40:02):
kids who I felt made the biggest impact in the locker room were never the most skilledplayers.
And I wanted to sort of turn that into like a hypothesis and test it.
So I asked 50 college coaches the following question.
on a scale of one to 10, one being they literally cannot compete at your level.
(40:23):
They don't belong.
And 10 being they are an all-American at your level.
What is the lowest performance level out of 10 that you would take on your team, that youwould offer to be a part of your team if you knew the kid was a 10 out of 10 attitude and
unconditionally trustworthy and reliable?
The average response from both scholarship
(40:47):
and non-scholarship level coaches was a 5 out of 10.
And now I want to give you the kicker before I ask for your input on this.
There was also a correlation between how low a result the coach was willing to give andwhether or not that coach had repeatedly been to the NCAA tournament, won their conference
(41:09):
and advanced the NCAA tournament.
If that was the case, the answer was closer to a 4 out of 10.
Okay.
Given your experience, what we've been discussing here, I would love to get your gutreaction to that because it's a pretty staggering fact.
I love these coaches.
(41:32):
I'm surprised to an extent, but also happy to hear that because I would rather a team fullof fives than a team full of tens all day.
And people think I just say that, but no attitude, everything like that, energy, what youbring to this team off the field, off the court, ice, whatever.
It's, I mean.
(41:55):
I'm a little surprised, but I'm also, like I said, I'm happy to hear that.
Do you think, because I hear that and I go, I want this kid that's maybe been told you'renot talented enough to play at level X, but has a 10 out of 10 attitude, I want that kid
to go for it.
Like that's kind of my thing.
(42:15):
And if a kid displays to me that they have that attitude, I'm like, don't let anybody tellyou no, none of this information is final, go for it.
Would you take away something similar, especially because you're constantly trying toshape the attitudes of young people?
Would you agree with me in that philosophy?
I feel like in all of my coaching at every level or whatever it was, whether it wascoaching on a team, consulting for a team, doing the mental performance training with
(42:43):
athletes, I feel like I'm always more interested in the, we'll say like the middle of theroad kids, right?
They're not super talented.
They almost fall under the radar and they are often the most important pieces.
And one of the things that drives me crazy
is when coaches name captains based on popularity or talent.
(43:08):
Because those are often the kids that don't give a crap about the underclassmen or the newkid or the person that's just not to their level.
That's just something that always drives me crazy.
I was talking with someone other day actually and she was talking about her son's teamor...
(43:31):
or a team, it's not even her son's team, it was a team at her son's high school namedtheir captains and they didn't name one of the seniors as captain.
But he's the best player on the team and he's a senior and I was like, does he deserve tobe a captain?
And she was like, not really, but I was like, no, there's no buts.
Like the parents can be upset and I've gone through that naming captains.
(43:58):
I mean.
the conversations that go on there, I would love to share these stories with you off airbecause they are quite interesting, but I'm sure you can understand it all.
yeah, I mean, there's so many intangibles, we'll call them, that teams need, right?
(44:18):
Because not everyone, like I said before, not everyone gets to be the star player and youneed the girls and the guys that are playing a little bit different game.
This was what a unbelievably valuable conversation.
And I mean, I'm obviously selfishly very excited to continue collaborating with you.
Your information is below in the description.
(44:40):
So people will be able to look and click and see how to contact you.
But for people that don't like looking and clicking, how can we find you, Kristen Tullow?
I am fortunately or unfortunately always on Instagram at CoachKristinTullo.
I have a website, it's thinkstrongplaystrong.com.
There's ways to work with me there.
Yeah, and anyone can just reach out to me on DMs on Instagram or through my website andI'm always happy to chat with parents, athletes or coaches.
(45:09):
I cannot understate this enough because I talk to two bodies of people most often.
I talk to college basketball coaches who are currently doing this and I talk to highschool recruits.
What we have talked about for the last 45 minutes is mission critical to your success as arecruit and your continued success transitioning to college athletics.
(45:31):
It's not easy and mental mastery is extremely important to your continued growth andsuccess.
Coach Kristen, thank you so, so much for your time.
This was a 45 minute knowledge grenade.
I hope so.
hope everyone enjoys it and is able to take something from it.
Thank you so much for having me, Jared.
Coach Kristen Tullow, my newest internet friend.
How are you doing?
great, how are you?
I'm doing great.
I'm really, really excited for this conversation.
And I also, you know, the more we get to know each other, the more we realize we have somefun things in common.
We have the future dueling piano band of Miles's, I imagine.
(00:21):
Yep, that's it has to be called Miles's.
Yeah, the miles is.
So, know, I'm jokes aside, really excited for this.
And I kind of want to I want to mission impossible you right off the rip.
I've talked about this with you behind the scenes.
I've talked with a lot of coaches about this over the course of my coaching career and nowbeing on the other side of it.
(00:45):
There's this space between right, there's this space between what coaches want theirathletes to do and then this, you know.
unoccupied, rarely discussed space, and then the athletes doing it.
So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is gonna be the first guest of mine toreally get nitty gritty about that space in between, if you are ready to rock.
(01:10):
I've already decided by the end of this podcast, people are going to either wanna workwith me, like they're gonna be just calling me, wanting my help, or they're going to be
like, I don't want anything to do with her.
So I am ready for anything.
Cause I'm just gonna say it how it is, how I feel, what I see, and I'm not gonna sugarcoat it.
(01:32):
So that's where I'm at right now.
love that, you know, and, you know, I see to me when that's the approach, it always getsfiled under quote unquote educational, right?
That's a dodge.
So we're good.
I want to start with a little bit about you just so that our listeners can get to knowyou.
I know you have a background in athletics.
I also know that you are a strength coach, like you're a certified fitness instructor.
(01:56):
I would love to know a little bit more about how this deviated into mental sportperformance, which is such a needed thing for
the modern scope of athletics.
How did that happen for you?
Like you said, it's much needed.
So I am a strength coach.
I've had a personal training business for, I guess, five or six years now.
I've been a personal trainer for over 10 years, working with athletes, everyone inbetween, youth athletes, college athletes, high school athletes, and then former athletes.
(02:26):
What I noticed from my work in the gym and my work as a coach, I coached soccer and hockeyfor a number of years, was that the mental aspect of it was lacking severely.
I was noticing more kids that needed help because they were crying over goals being scoredon their team.
And the physical aspect of it was like always the main focus.
(02:48):
Like everyone needs to be training in the gym.
Everyone needs to be on the field a certain amount of hours a day.
But meanwhile, all of these other elements are what's really crippling their ability toperform at their best.
And after working with athletes and their parents and talking with other coaches foryears, I just decided
I want to shift a little bit and start working with these athletes and these coachesoutside of the gym and outside of the game, because I think that's where the help is
(03:15):
needed the most.
And I have a background in social work.
I went to school for social work.
And I definitely have a background in athletics.
I was an athlete.
Like most of us were in this field up till high school.
I didn't play college.
I could have had the opportunity to play soccer in college.
Didn't take it because I wasn't really all in on it.
(03:35):
And I think I use what I didn't have as an athlete, and now it's kind of what I want togive to the athletes, the coaches, and the parents now.
Something that you just said that's really interesting is that you leaned into this basedon your own observations.
And I haven't shared this with you, but a lot of coaches know this about me.
(03:58):
When I got out of coaching and I was restricted by illness in terms of the time I couldcommit to work, the easy lane was, well, I'm just gonna scout for colleges.
And I actually turned down a lot of that work once I realized...
problem area and that problem area for me was this huge information gap between what highschool athletes thought college coaches were looking for and what college coaches were
(04:20):
actually looking for.
So then it just became bridge that information gap.
I'm curious for you, you start doing this work, you're interacting with more athletes, hassomething sort of jumped out to you as the problem area?
That you're like, if I'm known for anything, I want to be known for solving that.
I want to be known for solving the fact that mental performance coaching, training,building, is something that can be solved, right?
(04:48):
Like confidence is not something you're born with or you don't have.
It's not something that you can never find.
all of these skills that I teach and I train with, they're all something that you can doon your own.
Right?
So, and, and it's, it's, it's not easy, but a lot of them are going to be simple.
So I always help my clients understand like mental, mental training.
(05:09):
it's needed and it's something that you can train.
I think that that's probably the biggest thing, myths of that it's something that's goingto take years or it's not going to happen.
But I think I kind of help my clients understand that we're going to do it and we're, andyou're going to see that it's going to help immensely.
That's A, really interesting and B, a really good jumping in point if we're going tocannonball into this.
(05:37):
I knew you and had spoken to you at least via text and DM a few times and then I saw thispiece of content that you posted that like jumped off the screen at me based on my own
personal experiences coaching and I had sort of convinced myself like, okay, I coach atthe D3 level and I encounter different challenges and then I'm going to go to D1.
(05:58):
And those challenges are just going to magically not be there because I'm an idiot and Iwas inexperienced.
And then I got there and I was like, the challenges are exactly the same.
Your content speaks to one of these challenges.
And I'm going to quote you.
OK.
The quote the quote you put in this content was your team did not lose because the otherteam wanted it more.
(06:20):
They lost because they didn't know what to do when things got hard.
So I want to.
you a few questions about this with the sort of disclaimer being I'm capable of spendingnine hours on this quote with you so in the interest of what were you gonna say
off, but this post, still, this was posted probably a few weeks ago, maybe a month or soago.
(06:43):
And I'm still getting so many notifications of people liking it or people following mefrom it.
It's just, it's so true.
And also, me and everyone else I work with is guilty of stopping short of what you saidand just saying the other team wanted it more, which is actually where I want to start.
(07:04):
So I want to boil this down to you're clearly talking about resilience.
You're clearly talking about, hey, there's a difference between being resilient whenthings are going well for you.
and being resilient in winning time when both teams are peak performing.
So my first question for you is, why do you think, especially with this generation ofathletes, that some of that core resilience is missing?
(07:32):
See, this is where I said people are gonna wanna work with me or they're gonna hate me.
let's go.
That's by the way, that is completely who I am.
So I'm all in on this.
Yeah.
I think a big part of it is that we allow our athletes to shy away from adversity.
Things get hard, they don't want to go to practice.
We're like, okay, yeah, you don't have to go today.
And we don't let them fail, right?
(07:55):
So when things are good, things are great.
When things start to get harder, we shy away from it.
We don't push them through it.
We don't guide them through it.
And this is not a shot at coaches because coaches do so much.
They're only able to do.
so much too in their season, right?
A lot of times there's not enough resources to help them.
And I don't expect every coach to understand the little intricacies of helping these kidswith their mental toughness.
(08:21):
So I just want to make that clear.
It's a problem, but it's not anyone's real fault.
But I think that we have to work on that aspect of not shying away, letting our kids failsometimes and letting them know like, all right, well, you know what, that sucked.
I remember the first time I was coaching a hockey team and they lost in the championshipand I was happy when I saw them crying because it made me able to see that they cared and
(08:45):
that they were going to maybe do something with that.
Because not everything is always going to be rosy when you're playing sports and you haveto still want to play again the next season and keep showing up.
assuming then based on what you just shared with me that you're gonna tell me this sort oftakes a village.
It's not just the athlete working on something it's it's the core.
(09:09):
So my follow-up is how can that athlete and their support network
work to further developing this mindset outside of the basic be persistent.
So I guess my direct question to you is how do we the village help the athlete become moreresilient?
(09:30):
I think it's a few things, right?
So we have to understand as the athlete, you have to understand what your role is.
I think that's a big part of it too, right?
Your kids playing a sport, they're not getting the minutes they think they deserve.
They're not playing the role or the position that they maybe are used to or they wanna beplaying.
And then we say like, well, it's the coach's fault.
You should be doing that.
(09:50):
Let your kid try different roles, right?
They're gonna build resilience, being able to find themselves in different positions thatare not comfy, right?
Maybe I used to play
Center.
Now I'm being told that I have to play left wing, right?
It's these little, it's not always going to be a huge thing, but it's these little thingsthat we have to push our kids into and let them say, I'm okay being uncomfortable.
(10:12):
And this is going to help me when things become more uncomfortable.
That's part of it.
Just allowing your kid to kind of sit in that and having productive conversations, knowingwhat to say in those situations.
I think we can both agree that one of the
Worst and hardest things for an athlete is that ride home.
(10:33):
Parents don't really know what to say.
They might say the wrong thing inadvertently.
You know, we point out things without helping them overcome it.
Of course, we notice all the mistakes our kids make.
What are you doing to help them overcome that?
You saw your kid fall to the ground crying in tears because his teammate got scored on,right?
(10:54):
Did you just mention that in the car or just gloss over it?
Let's have these harder conversations and open up the door to those things, right?
We can't just pretend it's not happening because it's gonna show up very differently.
So I think all of these things, it's like just, it's adversity, it's challenges, and it'sjust being able to, you'll build the resilience when you're able to recognize it and then
(11:17):
change it.
And I want to build on this because I think what you're saying is really, really importantfor other parts of the ride home circle too.
My biggest regrets in this profession have very little to do with the X's and O's.
(11:39):
can, like the things that caused me to lose sleep, sometimes even 10 years removed fromwhen it happened, are the times where I had really good intentions.
but said the wrong thing to a player that I was trying to motivate.
And for anyone that hasn't had this experience yet, you can tell in real time when you'veshut down a kit.
(12:02):
Like you think you have the answer, you haven't done enough research beforehand, maybeemotions are heightened because it's like during a game or post game and you say it and
then it's out there and they heard it.
And...
As we're talking about resilience, we're talking about athletes that are already in astate where they could go either way.
(12:25):
So I want to put you on the spot here and direct this a little bit to coaches.
Is there anything you found in your experience where you can kind of assess when the kidis in that state?
like, hey, choose your next words wisely because this is going to be really, reallyimportant.
(12:46):
Because while I agree with you that 80 % of this falls on the kids, the coaches are notexempt.
absolutely not.
and if I made it seem like I think anything other than that, my apologies.
No, no, I just, of course, of course, of course.
But yeah, of course it has to do with the coaches too.
(13:07):
Right.
And, I think this could be an example of, of what you might be talking about.
And this is a big thing just in general with my coaching and what I kind of remindathletes of.
their body language, right?
You can tell any, a lot of things from people's body language.
That's just one way that they're communicating with you.
So when you see that kid coming off the court, the ice, the field, whatever it is, you cantell by their body language that they already have an idea things were going wrong, right?
(13:34):
You can see where they're at.
You don't need to bury them because of it.
You have to just choose your words wisely.
And that comes with practice too, just like anything else that you're training theseathletes for.
how you talk to them is a skill that the coaches need to work on.
Right?
So, so just noticing things.
And I've, I think off this podcast, me and you have talked about things.
(13:56):
And I gave you an example of this one time I was coaching a hockey team and there was thisone defenseman in particular that would always come off the ice and she would just make
dead eye contact with me, waiting for me to point out things that she did wrong.
And I knew that if I did point out things that she did wrong, she would, I would lose her,right?
And I needed her.
about now for the rest of the game, right?
(14:18):
Yeah.
Right.
And she's just looking at me and I would say to her, what's up?
And she goes, I know, I know what you're going to say.
And I'm like, I'm not saying anything.
She's like, no, I know what you're going to say.
So just say it.
I'm like, I don't know what, what you're talking about.
You know what you did wrong out there.
You don't need me to say it.
So like, just go back out there, fix it on the next rep, right?
It's not always, not everything has to be a teaching moment, right?
(14:41):
Sometimes the teaching moment is letting them sit in it, think about it and go back outthere and just fix what they already know.
So I think that just,
kind of understanding your players is a huge advantage and can be a huge difference makerin the outcome of what you're gonna get from them.
really really appreciate you sharing this because I feel like in very short time we'vedone sort of a 360 about like okay if if the player's in the middle of this here's what
(15:11):
the surrounding people can do I want to shift our focus we're not necessarily getting ridof the circle but I want to shift our focus for a moment to that dot in the middle of the
circle the buzz-worthiest buzz-worthy
phrase in athletics for what I feel like the last quarter century has been to control thecontrollables, right?
(15:35):
Easier said than done, first and foremost.
But the thing I see is a lot of people that need that sort of control the controllablescoaching also react with anxiousness when they're told that.
And to give you an example of what I see is I see people that
try to abide by that control the controllables philosophy, but the way they actuallyexercise it in practices, they try to control more, right?
(16:03):
I'm not actually letting life come to me.
I'm trying to increase my sphere of influence so that I'm in control of more.
And that's how I control the controllables.
And that's toxic and destructive and also not helpful for the individual.
So what I'm getting at you, I want to learn what
The actual skill development in your eyes of controlling the controllables looks and feelslike.
(16:27):
So I'm guilty of hammering home control the controllables and my athletes probably, and Ialways say, you know what I'm gonna say right now.
You know what I'm gonna say.
That's out of your control.
One of the first things I do with all my athletes and my coaches is go over ourcontrollables and our things that we can't control, right?
And I make them write out columns, can control, can't control.
(16:49):
And I give them a couple of minutes to fill out one side and then a couple of minutes tofill out the other side.
And I tell them, read me all of the things that you can't control.
And once they do that, I say, good, we're done with those.
We're not focusing on those at all.
Right?
Like literally forget that they exist because you're never going to control these things.
There's no point in you putting your energy into it.
And one, one of them that people love to argue with me about either on Instagram or inperson is playing time.
(17:15):
Like, Oh no, you can control how much playing time you get by showing up to practice anddoing this, doing that.
And I'm like, you can influence what your coach decides on your coach.
is in control of your playing time.
You can do all of these things.
You still don't have control of that because I can find us in a position where we need tobe really, really hard on defense right now, but you're more of an offensive player.
(17:41):
I don't need you as much right now.
Right?
So that's not something that you're able to control.
There are things that you can influence, kind of like what you were just saying, likepeople start to almost like micromanage and try to influence as much as they can.
But if it's not something that you yourself
can change, we forget about it.
So then we go through our controllables.
(18:02):
And I honestly don't remember exactly what the question was that you gave me because I'malready on my my tangent, which is what I do when I'm talking about things that I love.
yeah, so then just going into the controllables and kind of breaking those down.
And that's where we're gonna put all of our focus, right?
So.
(18:22):
How you prepare for your games, the attitude you show up with, the effort that you give,your body language, how you're communicating with your teammates.
Those are all things that you are fully in control of so you can change it at any secondwhen you need to.
Let me first tell you, you answered the question.
So great job.
Fridge magnet on the way.
(18:43):
second of all, the last thing you shared is actually most poignant to me because you'resandwiched in between some interviews with a couple of coaches and they all talk about the
most important part of execution is preparation.
And I think a huge myth, I'm going to allow you to tell me if it's the same in soccer andin hockey, which are your,
(19:06):
more experienced areas, but I can tell you for basketball, this idea that we'reimprovising or that like when we call a timeout and we draw up a play on the sidelines
that our players have legit never seen it before, no, we prepare for everything.
It's a dress rehearsal, practices dress rehearsal every day.
So is it similar what you're asking for your players that we are repeatedly working onmental practices so that when you are in crunch time, all I'm
(19:35):
saying to you is hey remember what we've been working on is that kind of what you'regetting at?
Yeah, I mean, when you're drawing up plays, right, you're just kind of reminding everyoneand then you're maybe adjusting things based on what you saw the other team do.
But you're not rewriting the script here, right?
You're these are things that we've practiced.
It's like I'm just instilling in you the confidence that you are.
(19:55):
You've already done this.
You know exactly what you need to do.
We're going to take a breather.
We're going to we're going to write it down and show you.
But you're prepared for this moment that that is in front of you.
It's just I think it's same across the board, I would guess, for most sports.
Right?
You're just adjusting.
Yeah, and you know what?
It almost sounds like we're trying to figure out how to make those small adjustments forthe athletes when they're in heightened states.
(20:19):
Which brings us to, I think, another very buzzworthy word, which is triggers.
While I certainly haven't done the work that you've done in this field, I'm an avidreader.
I constantly talk to my favorite coaches in the basketball sphere about mentalperformance, and I at least assume
(20:40):
that there is a certain amount of stoicism that we're trying to build into athletes,specifically when it comes to stimulus and response.
We're working on the space between stimulus and response.
So I imagine because of that, that you are constantly trying to help athletes spot theirown triggers.
(21:00):
Like, hey, I noticed that this thing happened in you and then I lost you.
Once you've identified a trigger in that athlete,
What happens next?
For my athletes, we go through a reset routine, right?
So something to refocus on.
So you know that we go through the stages of what it would look like, what your bodylanguage starts looking like, the things that you start telling yourself, a number of
(21:28):
things that your body's now going through, your mind is now going through, because youfeel yourself, I missed two layups.
Now I'm starting to really feel the heat.
I suck, this, that.
These are the things that you're telling yourself.
You have to be able to recognize that right away.
And then you only have a few seconds because games are fast, right?
There's not a lot of time to sit and dwell and think, what can I do to get myself throughthis?
(21:50):
Go into it with a routine that you're already ready to do.
So it's something physical.
It's something, it's a deep breath and it's telling yourself something, right?
So for example, if you're a soccer player, you might not need to adjust your sock, butit's there as a habit to tell you, all right, I'm resetting my sock because I know that I
(22:10):
need to refocus.
So I take a deep breath, I adjust my sock, and I just say a word or two to myself, likecalm down.
Right now I'm triggering it to myself, okay, what happened happened, I'm not gonna let itruin the rest of my game.
And then you just keep going.
And every time you feel yourself starting to slip from maybe a green zone to a yellowzone, right, because there's three zones.
(22:31):
Our green zone is like where we start off and we're ready to go.
We're running all over the field, we're communicating with our teammates, we're happy tobe there.
things start slipping, not going our way.
We start sliding to the yellow zone.
I'm fine if you can work through the yellow zone, but if it's a very short range from red,I'm sorry, from yellow to red, we've got to snap you back.
(22:51):
So we're always trying to stay between green and yellow.
So recognizing it is great.
Doing something about it is better.
So the recognition of, feel myself starting to slump.
I'm not standing as tall.
I was sprinting, now I'm kind of jogging.
These are all things you have to start recognizing about yourself and say, all right, Igot to pull myself back.
(23:13):
I'm going to just reset, right?
Take a deep breath, tell myself something positive, do something physical, and I'm back init.
This is an awesome jumping point because what you described when you describe that typicalgreen zone, to me, I would consider that to be a flow state where like you're not you're
(23:34):
sort of instinctively doing what you're supposed to be doing and you're so locked into thegame that everything kind of slows down for you.
That's how I would describe flow.
One of my favorite athletes.
Quick shout out to Amy Fisher was the only athlete to this day I've ever worked with who
could verbalize to me pregame that she was in a flow state.
(23:56):
And much like any human being on earth, she wasn't in the flow state 100 % of the time.
That's not really possible.
But like, she's the only athlete I've ever worked with that would come to me pregame andbe like, I'm on right now.
And then like we would run plays for her and she would shoot like 75 % from three.
And like that was just her thing and just sprint and outwork everybody.
(24:19):
And I...
I'm sharing fish as an example because that to me is flow state.
I would love to know between the athletes you've worked in and your own experience aroundsport, what am I missing?
When it comes to that locked in athlete that's in flow, what are the sort of flow bestpractices for Coach Kristen Tullow?
(24:40):
I think first I want to take a step back because you said something I think is importantthat just because she's in a flow state doesn't mean just like all the other athletes,
we're not going to stay in there the whole time.
Right.
And mental tough, mental toughness, I think gets misunderstood.
It is not always being able to do the hard things and not, not show emotions, you know,and I, I almost hate the term mental toughness because it gives this connotation that
(25:04):
like, I'm so tough.
Nothing is going to like,
hurt me, nothing's gonna get me upset.
I'm always gonna be just like straight faced, ready to go.
And like, okay, that's not the reality of things, right?
So mental toughness is just being able to bounce back when things aren't going 100 % howyou want it, right?
(25:25):
You can show me emotions.
I love it.
I love emotions.
I'm a very emotional person myself, but I need you to not lose yourself to those emotions,right?
I need you to take that deep breath.
process those emotions into what's gonna happen next.
So I just wanted to, I didn't wanna not mention that because I don't want people to thinkthat mental toughness means always being 100%, not being able to show how you're really
(25:50):
feeling or what you're really thinking.
not a character on like the Fast and Furious 9 is basically what we're getting at.
Right.
Yeah.
are, athletes are real humans, right?
We are going to feel things, do things, and they're not always perfect.
And that's perfectly fine.
It's all about the reaction to what's happening, which I think is the most important.
does flow, then mean that your bounce back time is basically the highest it can be.
(26:17):
Yeah, I mean, you see, you could watch a tape of any athlete, a great, like the best ontheir team or the best in the league.
They're going to make mistakes through the game, right?
We always focus on the mistakes we make, but if you sat down and watch tape of someoneelse, you're going to notice their mistakes.
The biggest difference between those athletes and other athletes is that they didn't letthose two, three mistakes turn into 10 mistakes where they completely shut down.
(26:44):
You can make
You can make mistakes.
I don't care.
And I tell my, when I used to coach, would tell my athletes all the time.
The only thing that's going to piss me off is if you don't try.
Fall down.
I do not care if you fall down trying to learn how to skate backwards.
I'm going to be more upset if you just completely ignore that one step and not try.
(27:05):
The phrase I used to use with my players a lot was compounding interest mistakes.
And I want to give, just because this tends to lean towards basketball, I want to give anybasketball listeners a really practical example of what I'm hearing from you.
You take an open three, you miss it.
So you're frustrated.
So you immediately commit a defensive foul, right?
(27:28):
And then the next play.
You want to make up for it because now you're in your head about the foul and the miss andyou immediately take an ill-advised shot, right?
And then you're on defense and now you're just completely broken and you stop talking toyour teammates and you miss a defensive assignment.
And your reality is I've completely, you know, fallen apart and this is horrible.
(27:49):
The coach's reality is nobody actually cared about your missed shot, but you just caused afour to five point swing.
That's a problem.
right, exactly.
It's not the mistake is not the issue ever.
The worst part is that if you don't react in a way that's going to be beneficial for youor your teammates, I think that's probably one of the best takeaways anyone listening can
(28:13):
have.
Miss the shot.
We don't care.
Just go back into the next play without hanging your head.
So this is really important to me.
How can coaches be better for athletes in those moments?
Because those moments happen.
I don't know how much the average person sees this because maybe the average person sees,that was a good defensive player or that was a tough thing.
(28:38):
We're talking about things like this happening dozens and dozens of times every game andevery practice.
So what can coaches do better to keep
that balance between green and yellow.
I think it happens outside of the game, right?
I think that the relationship, the communication that you have open and the accountabilityyou give to your team is going to show in those moments when the pressure is on, they
(29:08):
missed a shot, are they nervous because of what you might say to them?
Are they nervous about something surrounding that?
think that being able to have communication is everything, right?
In marriage and in business and everything.
Communication is always key and it's the same thing with your athletes and your players.
So I think one of the things that coaches can do is make sure that outside of practicesand games, you have those open communications and you stick to check-ins, right?
(29:36):
Everyone likes the idea of check-ins and, we're going to have this meeting, we're going tohave that meeting.
Make sure that you're actually doing those meetings.
Understand like where your athletes are at right now because maybe, maybe so-and-so justbroke up with their boyfriend or their girlfriend.
and like they're already just like, a slump.
And then you don't have to ask them these personal questions, but you hear these thingsaround the room.
(29:57):
Just an example of being able to kind of meet them where they're at, right?
So you're doing these check-ins, do they have a big test coming up?
Are report cards coming out?
Are acceptance letters from colleges coming out?
So keeping these lines of communication open and kind of just having a good understandingof your athletes as a human is gonna help you be able to support them how they need to on
(30:19):
the court.
I don't think that there's one size fits all for that situation.
think that getting to know your athletes, understanding how they like to communicate, whatthey respond best to with communication is going to help you when you see your player miss
that three, all right, I know how she is or what she's going through right now and this isthe support that I need to give to her.
(30:42):
And this is not babying, it's kind of just helping develop your athletes based on notassuming
well this is how I did it with this person so I'm just gonna do it with that person.
I think that that's also kind of a misunderstanding.
It's like well I'm not there to babysit, I'm not there to like baby my athletes.
You don't have to and the athletes don't wanna be babied either.
(31:03):
They just kind of wanna be understood.
think that that quest for understanding is one of the most overlooked parts of collegeathletics.
And I'm very grateful, seriously beyond words looking back at it, that all of my mentorsin the basketball profession strongly encouraged that I looked outward for advice on
(31:28):
leadership best practices and not just basketball coaches.
So some of my favorite books on
navigating leadership change and optimizing a workspace are literally about optimizingworkspaces, not college basketball teams.
And one of the things they talk about constantly is the power of enabling people to act,making them comfortable enough that they feel like they could challenge your process,
(31:57):
making them comfortable enough to feel like they could go to you with anything.
And it's amazing the impact that can make on the culture of a basketball team.
I think the other thing that's really important to what you just shared is, again, we'retalking about prep.
You know, we're not talking about isolating specific moments.
We can identify a specific moment and then remind them of the prep we've done, but notvice versa, right?
(32:22):
It's very interesting to me.
And I think another part of the communication between coaches and players is understandingwhat their role is.
I think that sometimes athletes are a little harder on themselves because they don't fullyunderstand what they should be doing or what's expected of them because the athlete is
like, well, I have to score points because points is what matters, right?
(32:43):
But not every kid on the team is going to get to be the leading scorer.
And I think that there's
Everyone has a specific role.
Like you were put on this team for this or that, and your role could change from team toteam based on systems and coaches and what have you.
But I think one of the first things that I would encourage athletes to do and coaches todo is to make sure that you guys are both clear on what's expected of you as an
(33:08):
individual.
Right?
We have team expectations a lot of times and what we expect of the team.
I think we need to do the same for the individual athlete.
And that's just another way to get make sure that you guys are constantly checking in andmeeting those expectations.
love that.
Now want to flip it.
I know, I know.
(33:29):
Yes.
I want to highlight an anecdote if you're comfortable sharing it that you talked aboutwith me a couple of weeks back off air.
You talked about preparation for coaches, being able to identify specific things that theycome.
None of us are know-it-alls.
Well, don't we have to challenge the young athletes to...
(33:51):
except the fact that they don't know everything either, because I think that is somethingthat a lot of coaches struggle with.
Are you willing to share a fun story about that?
willing to share it because this happened, had to be at least six years ago and it isstill like one of the freshest memories in my mind.
It was just burned in there and I wish I could forget it, but I can't.
(34:13):
But it's a perfect example of a lot of the issues that we see between maybe parents,coaches, athletes.
So I had told you the story about one of the soccer teams that I'd been coaching a fewyears ago.
first day of practice, know, keeping things loose.
Everyone's kind of warming up, stretching, and we're just going around asking everyone,like, what are you most excited about this season?
(34:37):
What are you most excited about to learn or do or experience?
Because it was a new team for a lot of these girls.
And everyone's given these great answers.
And then I get to this one girl and she just casually stands there and goes, I mean, Idon't know.
I already know everything.
And I was just like, she's obviously kidding.
(35:00):
She's an eighth grade.
She can't possibly think she knows everything about the sport of soccer.
So like, was like, there's nothing that you can think of.
And she was just like, I mean, I've been playing soccer.
I like know everything.
Like, okay.
I'm not speechless too many times in my life.
I think that moment, I was just like, all right, let's go to the next girl because what?
(35:22):
Like, and my initial thought was like, what a disservice.
Whoever told this girl that she is like, she's peaked, she's plateaued, she knowseverything she needs to know, what a disservice they did to her because she, if you want
to talk about buzzwords, we're going to say coachable, not a coachable athlete, right?
(35:42):
Because the mentality already was just like, you're not going to be able to show meanything I don't already know.
I think we, anyone listening, and we both know that that is far from the truth.
The more I find out, the less that I know.
Yes.
So.
do we aside from, you know, trying to be humble and receptive to new information, youknow, are there best practices to avoid being, you know, quote, another know it all.
(36:14):
Just understand that none of us know everything, right?
I tell people all the time, clients or just anyone, if we're not learning something newevery day, we're just not paying attention, right?
Because there is something to be learned every single day, no matter what it is, whatyou're doing.
And you can be in a profession for years.
You can be playing a sport for years.
(36:35):
There's always going to be something that you can learn.
And it's not necessarily a tactical skill or anything like that, but just, huh, I neverthought of that.
Or I never realized that.
That's interesting.
And then you kind of rethink plays a different way or how you're going about things.
So I think keeping an open mind and understanding that if you are learning, it's notbecause you suck.
(37:00):
or you didn't know or whatever, you're allowed to not know everything.
People that think they know everything are the ones we should be a little nervous around.
in all walks of life.
Yeah.
When I said that I wasn't even thinking about sports, to be honest, it's like, you say?
(37:21):
And like I said, I'm a personal trainer.
I have clients that I see all the time.
And one of the things that we always say about personal trainers is if you find thepersonal trainer that like has the answer to every one of your pains or questions, they're
not trustworthy.
Not everyone knows everything.
If a client has a problem and they ask me, I might know the answer.
(37:42):
I might just say,
I'm not the best person for that and I don't want to misspeak.
So I will find out for you and I'll talk to someone about it that would know better.
But like, I don't need to have every answer and we shouldn't expect someone to have everyanswer.
Love that so much.
We're in the homestretch here.
I want to shift to a few about the recruiting process itself.
(38:03):
I'm imagining some of our more creative listeners have already been able to conceptualizehow some of your talking points could also impact some of the pain points and stressors
they experienced in the recruiting process.
But I want to do my due diligence and spell it out for them.
Two, the hypothetical high school student that's doing all the right things but
(38:25):
just has not gotten the attention that potentially they deserve yet and is hearing a lotof things from a lot of different people.
What do you say to that kid?
think you need to trust your circle.
Always have people, maybe three people that you trust the most to give you feedback or togive you an honest advice or opinions.
(38:48):
So I think the first person is always yourself.
Understand what you really want, what you need, and what you're looking for.
And then two people, maybe it's a coach or a mentor or a parent or a close friend.
I think when you have those three people, those are the people that you can trust.
And then...
When you're hearing, like you said, you hear a lot of different things from a lot ofdifferent people.
A lot of it is noise.
(39:09):
You stick to those three people, yourself being the loudest voice, and you just trustthose three key people in your life.
love that.
Knowing that your work focuses so much on the sort of end result being more grit, moreresilience, more toughness, real like leadership aptitude.
(39:36):
I want to run a specific data point in my research by you.
Now you knew in advance that I wasn't going to tell you what the data point was.
Okay.
So here is what I decided to do in my research.
I was just kind of sitting back and as I was putting some of my materials together forwork, just sort of recollecting that all of my favorite players that I had coached and the
(40:02):
kids who I felt made the biggest impact in the locker room were never the most skilledplayers.
And I wanted to sort of turn that into like a hypothesis and test it.
So I asked 50 college coaches the following question.
on a scale of one to 10, one being they literally cannot compete at your level.
(40:23):
They don't belong.
And 10 being they are an all-American at your level.
What is the lowest performance level out of 10 that you would take on your team, that youwould offer to be a part of your team if you knew the kid was a 10 out of 10 attitude and
unconditionally trustworthy and reliable?
The average response from both scholarship
(40:47):
and non-scholarship level coaches was a 5 out of 10.
And now I want to give you the kicker before I ask for your input on this.
There was also a correlation between how low a result the coach was willing to give andwhether or not that coach had repeatedly been to the NCAA tournament, won their conference
(41:09):
and advanced the NCAA tournament.
If that was the case, the answer was closer to a 4 out of 10.
Okay.
Given your experience, what we've been discussing here, I would love to get your gutreaction to that because it's a pretty staggering fact.
I love these coaches.
(41:32):
I'm surprised to an extent, but also happy to hear that because I would rather a team fullof fives than a team full of tens all day.
And people think I just say that, but no attitude, everything like that, energy, what youbring to this team off the field, off the court, ice, whatever.
It's, I mean.
(41:55):
I'm a little surprised, but I'm also, like I said, I'm happy to hear that.
Do you think, because I hear that and I go, I want this kid that's maybe been told you'renot talented enough to play at level X, but has a 10 out of 10 attitude, I want that kid
to go for it.
Like that's kind of my thing.
(42:15):
And if a kid displays to me that they have that attitude, I'm like, don't let anybody tellyou no, none of this information is final, go for it.
Would you take away something similar, especially because you're constantly trying toshape the attitudes of young people?
Would you agree with me in that philosophy?
I feel like in all of my coaching at every level or whatever it was, whether it wascoaching on a team, consulting for a team, doing the mental performance training with
(42:43):
athletes, I feel like I'm always more interested in the, we'll say like the middle of theroad kids, right?
They're not super talented.
They almost fall under the radar and they are often the most important pieces.
And one of the things that drives me crazy
is when coaches name captains based on popularity or talent.
(43:08):
Because those are often the kids that don't give a crap about the underclassmen or the newkid or the person that's just not to their level.
That's just something that always drives me crazy.
I was talking with someone other day actually and she was talking about her son's teamor...
(43:31):
or a team, it's not even her son's team, it was a team at her son's high school namedtheir captains and they didn't name one of the seniors as captain.
But he's the best player on the team and he's a senior and I was like, does he deserve tobe a captain?
And she was like, not really, but I was like, no, there's no buts.
Like the parents can be upset and I've gone through that naming captains.
(43:58):
I mean.
the conversations that go on there, I would love to share these stories with you off airbecause they are quite interesting, but I'm sure you can understand it all.
yeah, I mean, there's so many intangibles, we'll call them, that teams need, right?
(44:18):
Because not everyone, like I said before, not everyone gets to be the star player and youneed the girls and the guys that are playing a little bit different game.
This was what a unbelievably valuable conversation.
And I mean, I'm obviously selfishly very excited to continue collaborating with you.
Your information is below in the description.
(44:40):
So people will be able to look and click and see how to contact you.
But for people that don't like looking and clicking, how can we find you, Kristen Tullow?
I am fortunately or unfortunately always on Instagram at CoachKristinTullo.
I have a website, it's thinkstrongplaystrong.com.
There's ways to work with me there.
Yeah, and anyone can just reach out to me on DMs on Instagram or through my website andI'm always happy to chat with parents, athletes or coaches.
(45:09):
I cannot understate this enough because I talk to two bodies of people most often.
I talk to college basketball coaches who are currently doing this and I talk to highschool recruits.
What we have talked about for the last 45 minutes is mission critical to your success as arecruit and your continued success transitioning to college athletics.
(45:31):
It's not easy and mental mastery is extremely important to your continued growth andsuccess.
Coach Kristen, thank you so, so much for your time.
This was a 45 minute knowledge grenade.
I hope so.
hope everyone enjoys it and is able to take something from it.
Thank you so much for having me, Jared.
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!