September 23, 2025 • 44 mins
Steve Magness joins Greg Olsen to dive into the mental side of sports. They explore strategies for building resilience, maintaining focus under pressure, and cultivating the mindset of elite athletes. This episode is packed with practical techniques that athletes, coaches, and parents can apply both on and off the field.
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(00:00):
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What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode
here on You Think. And today we have an episode
that I am really excited about. One of my favorite authors, one
of my favorite speakers thought leaders of Steve Magnus, the
(00:20):
author of Do Hard things, his new book win the inside Game.
Steve, really a big fan of everything you do, everything
you preach, especially in the world of youth sports and really
appreciate you joining us here today on You Think.
Yeah, Thanks so much. I love the work that you do, so
it's an honor to be here. Well, I appreciate that.
So I want to start with, you know, one of your more famous,
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one of your most well known pieces, the book you wrote Do
hard things, and I want to talk to it through the lens of youth
sports. You know, in in the book, you
really challenge the idea that the old school idea of toughness
and what does that mean? And how do we teach kids to be
quote UN quote, tough? How would you frame that through
the context in the lens of the youth sports experience?
(01:06):
Yeah, I think youth sports is the perfect thing to capture
that because I think often we have this idea that, oh, the way
that we instill toughness and discipline and grit and all
those things that we want from sport is essentially to be kind
of the the hard ass old school football coach or basketball
coach. And if you look at the research
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in the data, it just doesn't play out.
And, and chances are you know this as an athlete or as a
student or as an individual. Because what happens is the
people who are ridden, who are like, you know, have the parent
or the coach who says like, do this or else you're going to be
punished or run laps or do burpees until the end of time.
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What happens is that changes their motivation.
They start doing the thing only because the coach, the teacher,
the parent is there telling themand they're performing out of
fear. And when we instill that that
motivation out of fear, the onlyreason I do this exercise is to
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not get punished. We don't instill long term
motivation that creates good habits, that creates good
motivation, that creates the grit that creates that that
ability. When there's no parent there,
when the coach isn't there, you're in the game and you have
to figure out how to navigate this difficult moment by
yourself. To do that, we need intrinsic
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motivation. So out of wanting to get better,
joy of the sport, seeing how good we can be and that is
nurtured by putting people in a position where yes, they need to
do hard things, but they also have the support to be able to
try things and potentially fail and get back up and try again.
(02:53):
Well, there's a lot there that Iwant to unpack.
I want to stay and I want to talk about internal and external
motivation and I want to talk about habit building.
So well, I want to get to all that, but stay with this
conversation. So I'm going to, we're going to
do an experiment here. I'm going to frame I, me and my
dad and bunch of my old teammates, Luke and Stu.
We coach a middle school football team.
We anyone who's ever played for us, no one's ever going to say,
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oh, it was easy, it was casual. They were very, hey, it's OK,
get back up and try again. We are really hard on our kids.
But let me frame it to you in our perspective, how we're very
honest with the families and thekids, and you tell me if we're
on the right track. We have very high standards for
our kids. It's not OK not we always say
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not everything is OK, right? Like we really ask them to do
things that in their brain rightaway they're thinking, I can't
do this. And we sit there saying, yes,
you can. We are going to hold you to this
every single day. We are going to pour into you.
If we're going to do extra reps,if you mess it up, we're going
to do it 100 times. And yes, you can do it.
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And right now you don't think you can, but we promise you that
you can. And we are going to grind them
and grind them and grind them. And our message to them is we
coach you because we believe that you can do it.
If we didn't think you could do it, we would put somebody else
in this position. So when we're on you about
whatever it is, your route, yourblocking technique, where your
(04:18):
helmet is your first step. Like all the little details that
we wear them out about. We then bring them together at
the end and we and we remind them every day.
Why do we coach you hard? Why do we push you hard?
And they'll to a man say, because you know we can do it,
because you know we can do it. Like that is the framework of
everything we do now. Is it the put our arm around and
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hug them? Not really.
But I think at the end of the day and at the end of the
season, our kids know no one believes in them more than us.
No one loves them more than us. No one lives and dies with their
success and failures more than us.
And I can see over the course ofthe year, their confidence.
They stand taller, the way theirbody put like, everything about
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them grows because they're held to such a standard that all of a
sudden they start doing it. And they go, wait a minute.
I am better than I thought I could ever be.
Like, are we at least somewhere in the realm of what you're
putting together here? Like and you can be honest with
me, you can't hurt my feelings. Yeah.
So I think the best way to answer this is actually to look
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at the research not in coaching,but in parenting, because we
have about 50 years of research and psychologists have
simplified it. If we if we plot what we call
demandingness and responsivenesson two different axis.
So demandingness, you think you hear that and you think, OK,
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that means you're going to be like hardcore and high demand.
But what it really means is exactly what you said there,
expectations and standards. We're going to set a standard
and we're going to hold you to the standard.
If it's not throwing food at dinner, that is the standard we
have. And if you break that standard,
there's some sort of consequences.
But on the other side, you also need what we call high
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responsiveness, which is essentially the other part of
what you identified there. We are here to help.
We care. I care about you not just in
your athletic performance, but in getting you better as a human
being. Like we are on this journey both
on sport and life to help you. And what research overwhelmingly
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says is we need both of those things.
We need the high demandingness or expectations or standards and
we need a high level responsiveness where people go
wrong as they hear things and they say, OK, people are too
hard. I don't want to be that, that
old school 1970s football coach.I'm going to go in the other way
and have no expectations. No, that's what we'd call
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permissive parenting. And the kid learns like, hey, I
can do whatever I want. There's no standards.
So we don't want either of the extremes permissive, no
standards or high standards and no responsiveness, which is
essentially I'm just going to bea jerk or a hole and like not
really care about your development.
(07:10):
And you'll know that. So it's really the magic happens
when we combine those two things.
And I think from what you're describing is like that is that
is what you are giving high standards, but also we care
about you and we want you to getbetter.
It's funny, we always try to frame it like we can't coach you
hard until you know we love you,right?
(07:30):
And the more I love you, the harder I'm going to push you and
the more I'm going to coach you.And I am very, I'll look our
kids right in my own kids. Obviously they know this.
They leave this all day. But like the other kids that now
we kind of look at as an extension of our own kids
because we coach them in multiple sports.
I've known them since they were five years old.
They've grown up with us now through the school that now
we're all playing together at our school as a middle school
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program. And I looked them in the eyes
and I say, guys, no one is goingto love you more than me, but I
am going to coach the hell out of you because that's what you
should want out of me. Like if I I, we, I had this big
talk with the kids the other dayafter practice.
Like every day we try to leave them with at the end of the day
after we fix this. So we coach footwork and we do
this. What is our message that they go
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home to mom and dad about? Like I want to just put a bow on
the end of the day. And our message to them is the
day we stop coaching you, you should tell your parents that
we're not the right program for you.
The day your teacher stops giving you your time, the day
people, your boss stop every once someone gives up on you,
you'll know it. And that should be your biggest
fear is that the day you walk inand we don't say a word to you,
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we don't fix you. We don't tell you to play hard.
We don't tell you whatever the corrections is.
You should be concerned then. But if one day you, we come in
and we're all over you, it's because we want you to be the
best version of yourself. And we see something in you that
we're not getting all the time, but it's in there and we're
going to pull it out come hell or high water.
Like that's just the model in which I was raised.
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It's the only way I know. And I'll tell you, boots on the
ground, real time experience, like the kids, these boys,
they're old enough to do it. Like they get it.
And they were, most of them. The vast majority of them
respond to it. You know, my wife was an
elementary school teacher and now she's elementary school AP
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and I, I love picking her brain because she was also a world
class athlete. But you can see the connection
there because in the classroom, what happens is if a teacher
gives a kid a path and says, I believe in you, you can solve
this. You can get good at science or
math or reading or whatever. The thing is, even if they're
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pressing that kid, if they give that kid a path, they're going
to stay motivated. The worst thing that can happen
in a school is exactly what you outline there is the teacher
kind of gives up and goes through the motions because the
kid picks that up and the kid says what's the point?
Why try? I don't have a path forward.
There is no way to progress. I am who I am.
(10:03):
I'm not good at math, science, reading, whatever it is, I'm
just going to coast. So I think, I think our job as a
coach is very similar is especially with youth sports,
you are the adult, you have the wisdom and perspective.
Kids don't have that long term view.
They can't see what they're capable of.
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Your job as a coach is to open doors and pathways and say, Hey,
if you follow this, if you, you know, commit to these ideas,
this training, this coaching, whatever it is, we're going to
open some doors. We don't know exactly where they
are or they're going to lead, but we can tell you this.
They are going to help you long term, both in sport and in life
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and set you up. And I, I think that's kind of
what it, what it's all about is coaches.
I almost see it as like it's ourjob to widen the perspective of
or lens of that kid to make themsee that they are capable of
more because when you're whatever age 810121416 like you
just don't have their wisdom to see that you need someone else
(11:09):
to bring it out on you. Oh, it's so true.
And, and, and I want to stay here, but in in a slightly
different angle. What's up guys?
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itsnot.com, it's Youth dot Inc. Now back to our episode.
You brought up internal versus external motivation, and that
was something I really wanted todive into, like the science
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behind it. And we can, again, I go, we go
through it on our own house and at times it's really, and my
kids are all middle schoolers. So I have an eighth grader and I
have twin 7th graders. So we're still young in the
maturity stage and we're still building those perspectives.
And there's a lot going on now in their lives, which I, which
I, I'm sure you understand well,you understand from a science
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perspective, your kids obviouslyare a little bit younger.
But let me ask you this. Like the science of motivation
tells us what, Because some daysI look around at my 3 kids and
I'm like, they get it. Like everything we've taught
them about, like process orientation, we're not worried
about outcomes. We are not outcome driven.
We are process, if we do the right processes and we put the
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hard work in, we give ourselves a chance of success.
We don't guarantee success, but that's not like that's
everything. We try to harp on them.
And at times I see that autonomy.
I see them going through, you know, doing their homework on
time, doing their drills in the basement in the batting cage or
stretching or whatever. Whatever we build that we say
are important habits if they want to do the things that
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they're involved in. And then out of other days we're
pulling teeth. Hey, did you guys do this?
No. Hey, did you remember?
No. What does the science behind
motivation tell us, especially at the youth age?
Yeah. So I think here's where people
often get it wrong is they see it as like an either or.
And in reality, we should see itas almost like a seesaw.
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It's a balancing act. None of us are like monks and
going to be perfectly intrinsically motivated.
Like we're going to have that internal motivation because we
want to get better. We have that sense of competency
and belonging and mastery and seeing progress.
Like none of us are going to have 100% that.
But what the research overwhelmingly shows is that we
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need that seesaw most of the times to be balanced where we
have just a little bit more internal motivation than
external. And that's what it that's what
it is. And the thing here I want to
make a point in is that the reason we harp on this so much
is because, especially in youth sports, everything else in the
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world is pulling them towards having that external motivation.
I want to get validation from ifyour kids are on social media,
you know, from TikTok or Instagram or whatever, you know,
I want my friends to see that I'm good at this.
I want to win that trophy, that award, that championship,
whatever have you. Everything in the world is
pulling them out in that direction.
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That's going to be natural to some degree.
But if we don't have a counterbalance, if we don't have
coaches and teachers and parentssaying, hey, yeah, I get this,
but This is why you need to fallin love with the process.
This is why this matters. This is why we need to come back
to this over time. Then what happens is naturally
your balance is just going to tip to that extrinsic and what
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research shows from sport to prodigies of math and science
and whatever is that if that external balance shifts too
much, we tend to lose motivationover the long haul and we tend
to burn out. And in fact, when I was a
college coach, I did a little experiment where I took every
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kid that I recruited and signed for the team and looked at their
internal versus external motivation coming out of high
school. And then I looked at their
performances 4 years later and their performance improvement.
This is in track so very objectives for them.
Their performance improvement was directly correlated to their
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internal motivation when entering college.
If they had higher internal motivation than external, they
got better over the long haul. If they did and how did you
quantify that? Like give us an example of how
you quantify that. Is it AQ and A?
Is it a pic? Like how did you you ask them
questions? Yeah.
So I used a psychology validatedquestionnaire and then paired
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that, paired that with coaches ratings because I wanted both
ideas, right? What they thought, and then what
their coaches thought of how they.
Did you often find that those were aligned?
So this is what they were aligned whenever the kid had
higher internal motivation. OK, where you often saw a
disconnect is that kid who oftenI'm going to paint with broad
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generalities here, but that kid who who knew the right things to
say. But then when you talk to mom
and dad, you realize, oh, they're kind of driving the
ship. When you talk to the coach, they
said, you know, this kid is really good.
Like he's talented, but like he's never, he's never been in a
position to have that autonomy to choose like mom and dad, make
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sure he is at everything, doing everything.
And the reason that that's important, especially going from
high school to college is guess what?
You go to college and say, yeah,you got coach, but there's not
that hand holding that there is in high school.
So I think when we bring it backto youth, as a parent, you look
out, where is my kid on that seesaw?
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And then am I developing the right habits and orientation so
that when I'm no longer in the picture, like they have that
ability to to thrive and and do it on their own?
We what we try to talk about a lot here is and everything you
just said, I want to like clip it.
And I'm just going to like when my kids come home from school,
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I'm just going to like play it on the television and be like,
see, it's not just dad, listen to Steve, but like we, I
actually, and you can tell me ifI'm wrong.
I'm not a huge believer in goal setting.
And I know that's a deeper, longer conversation.
But like what I found, and again, this is just through my
own personal experiences and thepeople close to me is the issue
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with goal setting is there's thethen what?
Right. Like my goal is to make the
varsity baseball team. I made the team, Then what?
My goal is to get a college scholarship.
My goal is to get a big NFL contract.
My goal is all these. I want to make this team
showcase All American, whatever it is.
Then the question becomes, OK, well, let's say you reach your
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goal, then what like does the work stop?
Like that's why your point aboutlike processes and, and we're
just falling in love with the work and we're just falling in
love with what does that day's work look like?
It is really hard to convince a 14 year old, a 13 year old kid
that I have in my house that that is the best path forward,
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right? It's very hard.
But in my mind, in my experience, everything that I
know, like I think it's the onlyway.
Like that is the only way for long term success, right?
You want momentary success if your goal in life is to make the
varsity baseball team, there arethings you can do to manipulate
the system to make the varsity baseball team.
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And if that's the end of the road, mission accomplished.
I tell the boys all the time, I don't want to hear that.
You want to be a college this, ahigh school, this play on this
team. Let's just say we're going to be
as good as humanly possible and get as good as we can
indefinitely. Wherever you make it.
Maybe it's JV baseball, maybe it's varsity football, maybe
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it's college something. Who knows what that is.
You succeeded. Like they don't get it.
But those are the tried the habits that we tried to preach.
What does the what? What does the science, what do
the studies show like with that approach?
Yeah, I'm like testing. I'm like testing my parenting
knowledge on you here. So yeah, help me out.
Let's go. No, I'm I'm actually in
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agreement and I'll give you the science in a second, but I'm
going to give you a little personal story where I think
that is really important is I hate goals because for myself,
goals backfired. I was a runner.
I was the fastest miler in the country.
My senior in high school. I ran a four O 1.
Four O 1 Yeah, I saw that. My goal was to break the four
minute mile barrier. That goal at first was
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motivating. But then when I ran four O 1 and
four O 2 and four O 3 about a dozen times, that goal shifted
from something that was motivating to almost this like,
Oh dear God, I'm going to go through, you know, 3/4 of the
way of this race and be on pace.Am I going to get this goal?
It became like this fear, right?Can I do it?
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And I never did. And I think this is one of those
another moments or demonstrationof like goals create an endpoint
where we have no idea, no idea where the actual endpoint is.
I couldn't agree more. You know, that's what it is, and
I tell I would whenever I was coaching college and even
professional athletes and high school kids, I'd always tell
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them this. We really suck at predicting
talent. And you don't have to take up my
word for it. Just go look at all the stories
of the kids who weren't that great in high school and then
made the pros. Or go look at the people who
were supposed to be phenoms and make it all the way to be a
star. And they didn't quite make it.
They didn't make it. We're not very good at
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predicting talent. So if I sit here and say like,
hey, you're going to make the varsity team or you're going to
make it to, you know, be draftedin the NFL, I'm just blowing
smoke up you. I have no idea.
So the best thing that we can dois say, OK, what gives us a
chance to fulfill our potential and see how good we can be.
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And that is the process. And again, I'll go to the
science now. There was a meta analysis, so a
study of studies that looked at 10s of thousands of participants
across studies and they looked at different goal settings.
When we look at performance or outcome goals, meaning I want to
win this race or I want to run this time the effect was so
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small it was almost non existenton performance.
When we looked at instead havinga process orientation, it had a
moderate to strong effect on performance.
So the point is your experience,my experience, others experience
aligns with the science which says like I get it, we all want
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to set these big audacious goals, but often those become
the roadblocks or the endpoints where we get to the OK, what do
we do now? I've accomplished my goal and
now I don't know what's next. What we want is a never ending
path towards how good can I be? Let's see what I can do.
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And the last bit of science I'llgive on this is, is a
psychologist studied elite swimmers, so swimmers who had
won an Olympic medal or better. And what they found is that at
some point early in their career, they switched from what
they called a performance mindset to a quest mindset.
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All that meant, all that means is they switched from judging
themselves solely by the time onthe clock to I'm going to see
how good I can be. I'm going to put myself in a
position to explore my abilities.
And those are the people who made it to the Olympic medal.
It's literally the top of the top so however you want to frame
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it, I'm 100% agreement. We need things to allow us to
see how good we can be instead of stop signs that say us.
OK, we've hit this point. Now what do we do?
Yeah, get better forever. Exactly.
Right. Like it's the easiest way I can
frame it. And, and I think this really
takes to another really important conversation that's
going on in the youth sports world right now.
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And, and something that we try to share and we try again.
I just take my own household, for example, I tell my kids all
the time right now we're living in a moment where we are trying
to make it a race. We have expedited the path of
development to being so young that instead of it being a race
to 18 where we go, OK, let's seewhat everyone looks like as a
junior and senior in high school.
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We probably have a better picture of what sport you're
good at, what college level are you capable of playing at, if
that's in your path or typicallylike that was the age group
where people started to separatethemselves.
We've now expedited that path ofdevelopment to 12 years old,
sometimes even younger. So the question becomes at any
given moment, if we just took a freeze, just a a snapshot of
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time, I say to my kids, well, you might not ever be the best
at anyone finite moment. But if the goal is to get better
forever, you might not pass everyone by until you're 17.
You might be 24, you might be improving yourself in the
workplace as a dad at 31. Like it's improvement doesn't
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just mean fielding, hitting, throwing, catching.
It could just be your ability tolearn, your ability to take on
new tasks, your ability to have a job, career change, whatever
it is like. But the problem is right now we
are evaluating everyone at snapshots of time, 12 year old
baseball, 14 year old soccer, 16year old football.
Like we, that is the way we evaluate kids.
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We're ranking kids in the class of 2034 and it's bananas.
And what we're telling these kids is, OK, you're ranked in
the class of 2034, you're in 4thgrade.
Oh my God, I must be really goodat basketball.
That's where my identity lies. I'm really good at girls soccer.
That's where. And all other things get put on
the back burner or just get knocked off the table.
(25:16):
Like, how do we combat that? Like how do we go out there and
champion the message of wide berth of experiences, wide berth
of high standards? And then let's just let this
thing play itself out through a never ending quest, in your
words, of, of improvement and development and growth.
And then it'll all sort itself out when it gets to the
(25:37):
appropriate time. Like how do we get that message
out there? That is the that's the hard
question, Greg. I wish I had a great answer, but
I think that the answer is this is first, it starts with
educating and understanding why it occurs.
Why it occurs is because parentswant the best for their
children. We get it like we're parents.
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We want the best for our kids. And if and often you don't know,
you are ignorant to the world ofsports because let's be frank,
like most people weren't professional athletes like
yourself. Most people haven't coached at a
high level. They don't know.
And again, I saw I see this all the time with the kids and
students at my wife's elementaryschool.
They hear that I've worked with high level athletes and they
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come around and they say, hey, little Johnny Susie is in 3rd
grade. Can like we get some private
coaching and like ability to do this and like, no, they're in
3rd grade. Just let them play a bunch of
sports and and have some fun. But the reason is that parent is
trying to do the best that they can.
What we need to do is educate them and say, I get it.
(26:43):
I see where this is coming from.But if you look at let's just
have a hypothetical and we said we want your kid to be
professional, What sets them on the best stage?
We know this from years and years of data across sports.
It is that wide berth that diversified sports that not
specializing until they're readyto.
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That's what sets us up best bothfrom a physical development
because we have more tools in our toolkit, but also from a
psychological development. Because what we know is if we
cement our identity around soccer player, football player,
baseball star when we're 10, we've shut off identity
(27:26):
development before it should. Like we should be dabbling and
exploring who we are. And when we don't dabble and
explore and we become a soccer player at 10, we have a fragile
identity because if we can no longer see a path toward soccer
player, it literally shatters who we are.
We're like, this is this is who I am.
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What do you mean I can't be this?
What am I going to do in life ifinstead we see ourselves?
I love sports. I love athletics.
Well, guess what? When soccer doesn't work, maybe
we switch to track or we play golf or whatever it has.
Have you We're able to shift. So I think step one is educating
people and say the path you think you're going down to help
(28:10):
is actually going to backfire. Like we need this other path,
which might seem like it's not going to help in the short term,
but over the long haul, it's going to keep kids A, in the
sport and then B, developing those motivations in that
identity that allows them to become a robust and resilient
human being. Because no matter how good you
(28:33):
are, even if you're the star of stars, you're going to go
through a rough patch. And if you don't have the tools
to handle that rough patch, guess what?
It's not going to be fun. Well, it leads me to something I
want to talk a lot about, which is how the idea of failure at
the youth level, right? Like, I think everyone comes to
(28:53):
grips with professional athletes.
You throw the game, you know, you throw the game ceiling in,
in interception, you're going tobe on the front cover of the
paper and there's going to be scrutiny and every talk show is
going to be ripping you. And like you kind of understand
what you sign up for at the college and cut pro level.
Like it is an outcome oriented business.
Like that's if you don't like it, then don't enter that world.
(29:15):
Like that's pretty much. But at the youth level, what I
see boots on the ground is and and Michael Gervais, doctor
Michael Gervais has become a friend of mine and he actually
gave me this, this idea. He said it's called Zamp.
We used to say like helicopter parenting.
He's like, now we call it Zamboni parenting right where
we're out in front of the kid and we're smoothing the ice for
(29:36):
them to follow in behind us to make sure they're on the right
team and they get the right playing time and they're playing
shortstop or they're batting in the right order in the lineup or
they score the most goals. But in reality, what we're doing
is we're just creating an environment where there never is
any set back. There is no failure.
They're always the best player on the team.
(29:56):
They don't. And and the example I like to
always kind of remind myself andtell my kids, like right now, my
kid goes out on the mound and hegives up three home runs in the
first inning. No one's thrilled.
Everyone. You know, you're upset for your
kid. It's nerve racking.
You don't like it, but you know what?
They come home to your house, they're 12, they have tears,
there's conversations about why they go to bed, they wake up the
(30:19):
next day, we had breakfast and we move on.
If that if you never put your kid in those situations to have
failure to have setbacks, if they it's coming, it's coming in
sport, it's coming in life, it'scoming in some aspect.
There is going to be setbacks and Roblox.
I'd much rather those kids experience those moments for the
first couple times in my home asa young kid where they lay on
(30:41):
the couch crying with mom. Then as an 18 year old high
school senior, or a 21 year old kid who loses his first job.
Or the 27 year old kid who unfortunately gets divorced or
something happens in his life and they have no skills to ever
put the fires out. Like why are family?
What is? What is the psychology and the
(31:01):
science behind? Why are we so fearful to let our
kids be in tough situations where the outcome is not
guaranteed? Because it's uncomfortable.
I mean, it's uncomfortable for the kid, but it's also
uncomfortable for a parent. Think about it like this.
I have a toddler, OK? And if she falls off the couch
(31:22):
or something really small, what's my natural instinct?
Run over and be like, Oh no, areyou OK?
Like, but if I do that in every situation, and there's research
on this, but I'll tell you from a parent too, if you do that in
every situation, your toddler looks up and says, OK, if
something bad happens, slightly bad, mom and dad are going to
(31:43):
save the day. And I'm going to externalize my
coping strategy to be dependent on mom and dad, right instead.
Again, I'm not talking serious situations, but if they fall and
scrape their knee or something like that, and you say, ah, that
hurts a little bit, but it's OK.Like we can get up and Lee can
keep playing. Guess what?
They learn? They say, oh, this isn't that
(32:05):
bad. I can cope with this.
I'm going to develop. The same thing happens with
youth kids, whether we're 5 or 12, OK, We have to learn the
skills to cope with negative feelings, emotions, physical
pain, discomfort. And we can either learn to cope
with them productively, which generally has what we called
(32:27):
approach orientation, meaning I'm going to approach the
problem, I'm going to solve it, I'm going to deal with it.
Yeah, sometimes I'm going to crymy eyes out and feel the thing,
but I'm going to be solution oriented.
Or we can have an avoidant mindset, meaning this pain
sucks. I'm going to do whatever I can
to get rid of it in this moment as a parent, Like you're
(32:51):
instilling how your kids, like, deal with things.
So if you never let them go through those struggles, if you
always bulldoze down that path ahead of them, guess what?
They don't get the reps. And like anything like, you
know, it's just like training a muscle in the gym.
And if we don't do the reps, we don't get the strength
(33:14):
improvement. If we don't do the reps on the
mental training, on the psychology, on the dealing with
failure, on the dealing with tough situations, we've never
developed those coping strategies to get through it.
So I think as a parent, like oneof the best things that you can
do is essentially realize, hey, it's not my time to step in.
(33:34):
I'm going to let this, I'm goingto let this play out a little
bit. And then yes, I'm going to be
there to comfort my child or help them navigate or after
they've cried at home to be there to be be like, OK, lend
that perspective so that we can like learn, grow and move on
from this. Yep.
But if you immediately step in all the time, guess what?
(33:55):
No learning and development is going to happen.
That's so interesting. Let me ask you this, do I want a
kid who after he has a bad game to be really upset?
Like it really bothers them on one extreme, do I want a kid who
walks out of the gym and goes, Iknow I stunk don't really care
(34:16):
I'm going to go home and ride mybike?
Like do we want our kid to be upset or do?
Or do we look at the kid and go,like, I have a hard time
wrapping my head around that. Like at sometimes I want my kids
to feel the discomfort of failure and say, I don't want
this to happen again. What can I do to prevent it?
(34:36):
And that's where I get into likemy whole like soapbox about like
the outcomes, the outcome. What did you do leading up to
it? Like forget how the game went.
Did you do things leading up to that game that really put you in
position to have success? If the answer is no, then why
are you upset? You set yourself up for failure.
If the answer was yes, then maybe it was just a bad day.
(34:57):
Or maybe we need to re evaluate our approach.
Like all that stuff is super, you know, we can practice that,
we can apply that. Like to me those are solution
oriented. But on the other end, like you
see some kids that walk out of the gym and they lost by 100 and
they don't really care. I have a hard time.
(35:18):
Like where, where are you on that spectrum?
Like where, what is this? What is the happy medium between
caring enough that it's worth, you're going to fight through
it, but also not caring so much that you're going to just crush,
you're just going to crumble andfall apart.
Like, I don't know what, what, where is the right balance of
that? I mean, 'cause I'm the one, I'm
(35:40):
the one. It's like we lost.
I was terrible. And I'm like in a coma for two
days when I was a athlete, like it took it ripped my heart out
when I did not do my job well. And now it was also incredibly
internally motivating where likethat next practice, I was going
to do everything in my life to reevaluate my habits of the week
to make sure that never happenedagain.
(36:03):
But I sure as hell didn't walk out of the gym, out of the
locker room and go well, just not my day.
But it's all good. I'm going to be great.
Like that's never been me. Yeah, me neither.
But I think what it gets at is less of how they handle that
failure and what comes next. OK.
So here's how I'd look at it is if that kid is walking out and
(36:25):
be like no big deal, like whatever, doesn't matter.
And they're using that as almosta protective mechanism, right?
Where it's like, I'm going to downplay this and make it seem
like I'm not. I don't care.
That way I get to protect my ego.
It's almost like the the cool kid in gym class, like middle
(36:46):
school gym class who doesn't trybecause they're afraid of
getting beat by like whatever. The You beat me, but I wasn't
even trying. Yeah, exactly.
If that is what's coming out of that, if that is why they're
doing this act, then that needs to be addressed.
OK, On the flip side, if you have the kid who is like so
motivated and cares so much likeyourself or like I was when I
(37:10):
was an athlete, that it, that ithurts a lot.
What comes next is the key is ifthat motivation is fueled into
the process, into the productivity, you're probably
OK. If instead if that that stewing
on the failure starts to make itbe where they start instilling a
(37:33):
degree of fear of like, Oh no, is this going to happen next
time? Do I want to be in this place
where my whole world is shattered again and it starts
making them hesitate and avoidant and not taking the
necessary risks on game day? Then that needs to be addressed.
So I think that the answer is there's probably a happy medium.
(37:57):
People are going to cope with things in different ways.
But what I think matters more islike what happens after you get
out out of that initial, you know, couple hour period or one
day period where the lost stingsor it doesn't?
And what are they doing next? Are they getting back to the
work productively or are they getting in that avoidant or fear
(38:18):
or like you know, spot where it's not going to help them over
the long haul? That's well said at the end of
the day, if you don't know what to do, work is always a pretty
good option before we get back into the episode, a quick
reminder to follow us across allsocials.
We're posting daily content centered around youth sports.
All right, let's hop back into it.
(38:38):
Last thing I want to talk about with you because I think this is
all of this is just incredible. I could ask you 5000 questions,
but I'm going to for the sake oftime, I want to talk about one
last thing, a little bit of a different topic right now.
I know just raising 3 kids and the families and the friends
that we have, our kids lives aresuper scheduled.
(38:59):
Their school, there's team practices, there's competition,
there's individual training, there's training at home.
Getting ready to train. Like there is a lot of stress
and demand and time. I know something that you've
written a lot about and you've talked a lot about is the, is
the relationship between rest and play, between work and
recovery. It seems like in the world we're
(39:22):
in now, it's so much play, so much practice, so much
competition, so much training. And we go, they're young.
They, you know, how much break do they really need?
They're young. Like, what are you seeing?
What is the science saying? Like what can we as parents and
what can we as youth coaches do to find a better balance to
allow our kids more free play, more rest time, more days they
(39:46):
get to come home after school and not have to be rushed to a
training, to a practice because we are building better young
athletes. You said it earlier and it stuck
with me like kids are better athletes at a younger age now
just because of the system we'recreating less long term high
level athletes. That's the negative outcome.
So like, what can we do practically as parents that we
(40:08):
can? Quite that urge.
Yeah, I think I think First off,it's understanding that you're
not going to break the laws of biology, which is like you need
to like stress demands rest. And we we know this even though
elite athletes like what do we do?
We have lighter days or recoverydays or we rest before game day
(40:29):
to make sure we're repaired and ready to go.
It's even more important at a youth level when kids are
developing and growing and all that.
Have you. So the way I like to look at it
is like as a parent, more than ever, you've got to protect some
of their days or their afternoons or evenings because
if you don't there's, they're going to be filled in.
(40:51):
So just like as parents and adults, we protect some of our
afternoons, evenings, weekdays from overworking because we can
work 24/7 now because it's, we don't even have to go to the
office a lot of times. We can just work all the time.
We've got to protect that time. Do the same with with your kid.
The second part of it, which I think is as important as we need
(41:14):
unstructured play as you mentioned, which is different
from parent LED, coach LED. And the reason is this is
unstructured play takes some of the pressure off and it moves
them in an environment where instead of it's like a top down
learning, it's almost like experimentation and creativity.
(41:37):
And if we look at especially in sports like soccer, they often
find that the elite soccer players often had more
unstructured play and a little bit less coach LED or parent LED
instruction early on. And it's that unstructured play
that allowed them to have that creativity that we now see in
their game as a pro. So as a parent, what I'd like to
(42:01):
say is like, we need to get a little bit more of that, you
know, when you and I grew up that like Sandlot baseball or,
you know, street football or street hockey or what have you
and allow that to flourish. So don't think that you have to
structure and schedule every aspect of their sport instead,
(42:21):
especially, you know, over summer or winter breaks or what
have you. Think of it as like, let's get
all the kids together at the park, parents, we're going to go
walk some laps or what have you.Throw a ball out there and let
the kids do whatever they want and they'll figure it out.
We don't need mom or dad or coach directing them.
Let them figure it out. It's so true.
I don't know if you're familiar with the book talent Code, but
(42:44):
they dived into the whole like, why is there a hotbed?
They use different sports, but soccer in South America, You
know why? And they get into the idea of
free play versus guided learningand whatnot.
It's a pretty fascinating topic,but we probably all need to do a
better job. And like, I'll raise my hand and
say I'm not a great just like roll the ball out there and let
(43:04):
him go. Like even when my kids are in
the driveway, I'm like giving them pointers, like, no, you
know, cross, why are you not defending getting a stance?
But and I, my wife's just like, would you just let him play?
I'm like, you're right. I have to be better.
So I, I everything you're saying, I'm taking like mental
notes here saying like, OK, these are great areas of
improvement, parenting A and then obviously as an extension,
(43:28):
what we're doing coaching youths.
But Steve, your wisdom, your experience, both first hand and
obviously now just through your studies and through the, the
work that you've done, your postathletic career.
I have a lot of stuff I'd love to pick your brain on on track
and field to have a daughter that's recently got into track
and field. We're going to have you on for a
second episode because I'm not done with the things I want to
(43:50):
talk to you about. So, but for the sake of your
time, I'm going to let you go. But again, Steve Magnus, author
of Do Hard Things, his new book win the inside Game.
Steve, I can't thank you enough for joining us here on You Think
and given some unbelievable wisdom and experience to all of
our listeners. Thanks so much for having me,
this was an absolute blast. What's up guys?
Do you want custom fan wear likethis cricket shirt for Charlotte
(44:13):
Christian School? We've got premium apparel from
your favorite brands. The best part about it is I
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(44:33):
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feed for all future conversations here at You Think.
What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode
here on You Think. And today we have an episode
that I am really excited about. One of my favorite authors, one
of my favorite speakers thought leaders of Steve Magnus, the
(00:20):
author of Do Hard things, his new book win the inside Game.
Steve, really a big fan of everything you do, everything
you preach, especially in the world of youth sports and really
appreciate you joining us here today on You Think.
Yeah, Thanks so much. I love the work that you do, so
it's an honor to be here. Well, I appreciate that.
So I want to start with, you know, one of your more famous,
(00:42):
one of your most well known pieces, the book you wrote Do
hard things, and I want to talk to it through the lens of youth
sports. You know, in in the book, you
really challenge the idea that the old school idea of toughness
and what does that mean? And how do we teach kids to be
quote UN quote, tough? How would you frame that through
the context in the lens of the youth sports experience?
(01:06):
Yeah, I think youth sports is the perfect thing to capture
that because I think often we have this idea that, oh, the way
that we instill toughness and discipline and grit and all
those things that we want from sport is essentially to be kind
of the the hard ass old school football coach or basketball
coach. And if you look at the research
(01:27):
in the data, it just doesn't play out.
And, and chances are you know this as an athlete or as a
student or as an individual. Because what happens is the
people who are ridden, who are like, you know, have the parent
or the coach who says like, do this or else you're going to be
punished or run laps or do burpees until the end of time.
(01:50):
What happens is that changes their motivation.
They start doing the thing only because the coach, the teacher,
the parent is there telling themand they're performing out of
fear. And when we instill that that
motivation out of fear, the onlyreason I do this exercise is to
(02:11):
not get punished. We don't instill long term
motivation that creates good habits, that creates good
motivation, that creates the grit that creates that that
ability. When there's no parent there,
when the coach isn't there, you're in the game and you have
to figure out how to navigate this difficult moment by
yourself. To do that, we need intrinsic
(02:33):
motivation. So out of wanting to get better,
joy of the sport, seeing how good we can be and that is
nurtured by putting people in a position where yes, they need to
do hard things, but they also have the support to be able to
try things and potentially fail and get back up and try again.
(02:53):
Well, there's a lot there that Iwant to unpack.
I want to stay and I want to talk about internal and external
motivation and I want to talk about habit building.
So well, I want to get to all that, but stay with this
conversation. So I'm going to, we're going to
do an experiment here. I'm going to frame I, me and my
dad and bunch of my old teammates, Luke and Stu.
We coach a middle school football team.
We anyone who's ever played for us, no one's ever going to say,
(03:16):
oh, it was easy, it was casual. They were very, hey, it's OK,
get back up and try again. We are really hard on our kids.
But let me frame it to you in our perspective, how we're very
honest with the families and thekids, and you tell me if we're
on the right track. We have very high standards for
our kids. It's not OK not we always say
(03:36):
not everything is OK, right? Like we really ask them to do
things that in their brain rightaway they're thinking, I can't
do this. And we sit there saying, yes,
you can. We are going to hold you to this
every single day. We are going to pour into you.
If we're going to do extra reps,if you mess it up, we're going
to do it 100 times. And yes, you can do it.
(03:57):
And right now you don't think you can, but we promise you that
you can. And we are going to grind them
and grind them and grind them. And our message to them is we
coach you because we believe that you can do it.
If we didn't think you could do it, we would put somebody else
in this position. So when we're on you about
whatever it is, your route, yourblocking technique, where your
(04:18):
helmet is your first step. Like all the little details that
we wear them out about. We then bring them together at
the end and we and we remind them every day.
Why do we coach you hard? Why do we push you hard?
And they'll to a man say, because you know we can do it,
because you know we can do it. Like that is the framework of
everything we do now. Is it the put our arm around and
(04:40):
hug them? Not really.
But I think at the end of the day and at the end of the
season, our kids know no one believes in them more than us.
No one loves them more than us. No one lives and dies with their
success and failures more than us.
And I can see over the course ofthe year, their confidence.
They stand taller, the way theirbody put like, everything about
(05:02):
them grows because they're held to such a standard that all of a
sudden they start doing it. And they go, wait a minute.
I am better than I thought I could ever be.
Like, are we at least somewhere in the realm of what you're
putting together here? Like and you can be honest with
me, you can't hurt my feelings. Yeah.
So I think the best way to answer this is actually to look
(05:23):
at the research not in coaching,but in parenting, because we
have about 50 years of research and psychologists have
simplified it. If we if we plot what we call
demandingness and responsivenesson two different axis.
So demandingness, you think you hear that and you think, OK,
(05:43):
that means you're going to be like hardcore and high demand.
But what it really means is exactly what you said there,
expectations and standards. We're going to set a standard
and we're going to hold you to the standard.
If it's not throwing food at dinner, that is the standard we
have. And if you break that standard,
there's some sort of consequences.
But on the other side, you also need what we call high
(06:06):
responsiveness, which is essentially the other part of
what you identified there. We are here to help.
We care. I care about you not just in
your athletic performance, but in getting you better as a human
being. Like we are on this journey both
on sport and life to help you. And what research overwhelmingly
(06:27):
says is we need both of those things.
We need the high demandingness or expectations or standards and
we need a high level responsiveness where people go
wrong as they hear things and they say, OK, people are too
hard. I don't want to be that, that
old school 1970s football coach.I'm going to go in the other way
and have no expectations. No, that's what we'd call
(06:49):
permissive parenting. And the kid learns like, hey, I
can do whatever I want. There's no standards.
So we don't want either of the extremes permissive, no
standards or high standards and no responsiveness, which is
essentially I'm just going to bea jerk or a hole and like not
really care about your development.
(07:10):
And you'll know that. So it's really the magic happens
when we combine those two things.
And I think from what you're describing is like that is that
is what you are giving high standards, but also we care
about you and we want you to getbetter.
It's funny, we always try to frame it like we can't coach you
hard until you know we love you,right?
(07:30):
And the more I love you, the harder I'm going to push you and
the more I'm going to coach you.And I am very, I'll look our
kids right in my own kids. Obviously they know this.
They leave this all day. But like the other kids that now
we kind of look at as an extension of our own kids
because we coach them in multiple sports.
I've known them since they were five years old.
They've grown up with us now through the school that now
we're all playing together at our school as a middle school
(07:52):
program. And I looked them in the eyes
and I say, guys, no one is goingto love you more than me, but I
am going to coach the hell out of you because that's what you
should want out of me. Like if I I, we, I had this big
talk with the kids the other dayafter practice.
Like every day we try to leave them with at the end of the day
after we fix this. So we coach footwork and we do
this. What is our message that they go
(08:13):
home to mom and dad about? Like I want to just put a bow on
the end of the day. And our message to them is the
day we stop coaching you, you should tell your parents that
we're not the right program for you.
The day your teacher stops giving you your time, the day
people, your boss stop every once someone gives up on you,
you'll know it. And that should be your biggest
fear is that the day you walk inand we don't say a word to you,
(08:37):
we don't fix you. We don't tell you to play hard.
We don't tell you whatever the corrections is.
You should be concerned then. But if one day you, we come in
and we're all over you, it's because we want you to be the
best version of yourself. And we see something in you that
we're not getting all the time, but it's in there and we're
going to pull it out come hell or high water.
Like that's just the model in which I was raised.
(09:00):
It's the only way I know. And I'll tell you, boots on the
ground, real time experience, like the kids, these boys,
they're old enough to do it. Like they get it.
And they were, most of them. The vast majority of them
respond to it. You know, my wife was an
elementary school teacher and now she's elementary school AP
(09:20):
and I, I love picking her brain because she was also a world
class athlete. But you can see the connection
there because in the classroom, what happens is if a teacher
gives a kid a path and says, I believe in you, you can solve
this. You can get good at science or
math or reading or whatever. The thing is, even if they're
(09:42):
pressing that kid, if they give that kid a path, they're going
to stay motivated. The worst thing that can happen
in a school is exactly what you outline there is the teacher
kind of gives up and goes through the motions because the
kid picks that up and the kid says what's the point?
Why try? I don't have a path forward.
There is no way to progress. I am who I am.
(10:03):
I'm not good at math, science, reading, whatever it is, I'm
just going to coast. So I think, I think our job as a
coach is very similar is especially with youth sports,
you are the adult, you have the wisdom and perspective.
Kids don't have that long term view.
They can't see what they're capable of.
(10:24):
Your job as a coach is to open doors and pathways and say, Hey,
if you follow this, if you, you know, commit to these ideas,
this training, this coaching, whatever it is, we're going to
open some doors. We don't know exactly where they
are or they're going to lead, but we can tell you this.
They are going to help you long term, both in sport and in life
(10:46):
and set you up. And I, I think that's kind of
what it, what it's all about is coaches.
I almost see it as like it's ourjob to widen the perspective of
or lens of that kid to make themsee that they are capable of
more because when you're whatever age 810121416 like you
just don't have their wisdom to see that you need someone else
(11:09):
to bring it out on you. Oh, it's so true.
And, and, and I want to stay here, but in in a slightly
different angle. What's up guys?
Do you want custom fan wear likethis cricket shirt for Charlotte
Christian School? We've got premium apparel from
your favorite brands. The best part about it is I
don't have to just wear it to Charlotte Christians events.
I can wear it to golf. I can wear it to lunch.
It's turned into my uniform. Go right now over to Youth dot,
(11:32):
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itsnot.com, it's Youth dot Inc. Now back to our episode.
You brought up internal versus external motivation, and that
was something I really wanted todive into, like the science
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behind it. And we can, again, I go, we go
through it on our own house and at times it's really, and my
kids are all middle schoolers. So I have an eighth grader and I
have twin 7th graders. So we're still young in the
maturity stage and we're still building those perspectives.
And there's a lot going on now in their lives, which I, which
I, I'm sure you understand well,you understand from a science
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perspective, your kids obviouslyare a little bit younger.
But let me ask you this. Like the science of motivation
tells us what, Because some daysI look around at my 3 kids and
I'm like, they get it. Like everything we've taught
them about, like process orientation, we're not worried
about outcomes. We are not outcome driven.
We are process, if we do the right processes and we put the
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hard work in, we give ourselves a chance of success.
We don't guarantee success, but that's not like that's
everything. We try to harp on them.
And at times I see that autonomy.
I see them going through, you know, doing their homework on
time, doing their drills in the basement in the batting cage or
stretching or whatever. Whatever we build that we say
are important habits if they want to do the things that
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they're involved in. And then out of other days we're
pulling teeth. Hey, did you guys do this?
No. Hey, did you remember?
No. What does the science behind
motivation tell us, especially at the youth age?
Yeah. So I think here's where people
often get it wrong is they see it as like an either or.
And in reality, we should see itas almost like a seesaw.
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It's a balancing act. None of us are like monks and
going to be perfectly intrinsically motivated.
Like we're going to have that internal motivation because we
want to get better. We have that sense of competency
and belonging and mastery and seeing progress.
Like none of us are going to have 100% that.
But what the research overwhelmingly shows is that we
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need that seesaw most of the times to be balanced where we
have just a little bit more internal motivation than
external. And that's what it that's what
it is. And the thing here I want to
make a point in is that the reason we harp on this so much
is because, especially in youth sports, everything else in the
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world is pulling them towards having that external motivation.
I want to get validation from ifyour kids are on social media,
you know, from TikTok or Instagram or whatever, you know,
I want my friends to see that I'm good at this.
I want to win that trophy, that award, that championship,
whatever have you. Everything in the world is
pulling them out in that direction.
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That's going to be natural to some degree.
But if we don't have a counterbalance, if we don't have
coaches and teachers and parentssaying, hey, yeah, I get this,
but This is why you need to fallin love with the process.
This is why this matters. This is why we need to come back
to this over time. Then what happens is naturally
your balance is just going to tip to that extrinsic and what
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research shows from sport to prodigies of math and science
and whatever is that if that external balance shifts too
much, we tend to lose motivationover the long haul and we tend
to burn out. And in fact, when I was a
college coach, I did a little experiment where I took every
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kid that I recruited and signed for the team and looked at their
internal versus external motivation coming out of high
school. And then I looked at their
performances 4 years later and their performance improvement.
This is in track so very objectives for them.
Their performance improvement was directly correlated to their
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internal motivation when entering college.
If they had higher internal motivation than external, they
got better over the long haul. If they did and how did you
quantify that? Like give us an example of how
you quantify that. Is it AQ and A?
Is it a pic? Like how did you you ask them
questions? Yeah.
So I used a psychology validatedquestionnaire and then paired
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that, paired that with coaches ratings because I wanted both
ideas, right? What they thought, and then what
their coaches thought of how they.
Did you often find that those were aligned?
So this is what they were aligned whenever the kid had
higher internal motivation. OK, where you often saw a
disconnect is that kid who oftenI'm going to paint with broad
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generalities here, but that kid who who knew the right things to
say. But then when you talk to mom
and dad, you realize, oh, they're kind of driving the
ship. When you talk to the coach, they
said, you know, this kid is really good.
Like he's talented, but like he's never, he's never been in a
position to have that autonomy to choose like mom and dad, make
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sure he is at everything, doing everything.
And the reason that that's important, especially going from
high school to college is guess what?
You go to college and say, yeah,you got coach, but there's not
that hand holding that there is in high school.
So I think when we bring it backto youth, as a parent, you look
out, where is my kid on that seesaw?
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And then am I developing the right habits and orientation so
that when I'm no longer in the picture, like they have that
ability to to thrive and and do it on their own?
We what we try to talk about a lot here is and everything you
just said, I want to like clip it.
And I'm just going to like when my kids come home from school,
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I'm just going to like play it on the television and be like,
see, it's not just dad, listen to Steve, but like we, I
actually, and you can tell me ifI'm wrong.
I'm not a huge believer in goal setting.
And I know that's a deeper, longer conversation.
But like what I found, and again, this is just through my
own personal experiences and thepeople close to me is the issue
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with goal setting is there's thethen what?
Right. Like my goal is to make the
varsity baseball team. I made the team, Then what?
My goal is to get a college scholarship.
My goal is to get a big NFL contract.
My goal is all these. I want to make this team
showcase All American, whatever it is.
Then the question becomes, OK, well, let's say you reach your
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goal, then what like does the work stop?
Like that's why your point aboutlike processes and, and we're
just falling in love with the work and we're just falling in
love with what does that day's work look like?
It is really hard to convince a 14 year old, a 13 year old kid
that I have in my house that that is the best path forward,
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right? It's very hard.
But in my mind, in my experience, everything that I
know, like I think it's the onlyway.
Like that is the only way for long term success, right?
You want momentary success if your goal in life is to make the
varsity baseball team, there arethings you can do to manipulate
the system to make the varsity baseball team.
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And if that's the end of the road, mission accomplished.
I tell the boys all the time, I don't want to hear that.
You want to be a college this, ahigh school, this play on this
team. Let's just say we're going to be
as good as humanly possible and get as good as we can
indefinitely. Wherever you make it.
Maybe it's JV baseball, maybe it's varsity football, maybe
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it's college something. Who knows what that is.
You succeeded. Like they don't get it.
But those are the tried the habits that we tried to preach.
What does the what? What does the science, what do
the studies show like with that approach?
Yeah, I'm like testing. I'm like testing my parenting
knowledge on you here. So yeah, help me out.
Let's go. No, I'm I'm actually in
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agreement and I'll give you the science in a second, but I'm
going to give you a little personal story where I think
that is really important is I hate goals because for myself,
goals backfired. I was a runner.
I was the fastest miler in the country.
My senior in high school. I ran a four O 1.
Four O 1 Yeah, I saw that. My goal was to break the four
minute mile barrier. That goal at first was
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motivating. But then when I ran four O 1 and
four O 2 and four O 3 about a dozen times, that goal shifted
from something that was motivating to almost this like,
Oh dear God, I'm going to go through, you know, 3/4 of the
way of this race and be on pace.Am I going to get this goal?
It became like this fear, right?Can I do it?
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And I never did. And I think this is one of those
another moments or demonstrationof like goals create an endpoint
where we have no idea, no idea where the actual endpoint is.
I couldn't agree more. You know, that's what it is, and
I tell I would whenever I was coaching college and even
professional athletes and high school kids, I'd always tell
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them this. We really suck at predicting
talent. And you don't have to take up my
word for it. Just go look at all the stories
of the kids who weren't that great in high school and then
made the pros. Or go look at the people who
were supposed to be phenoms and make it all the way to be a
star. And they didn't quite make it.
They didn't make it. We're not very good at
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predicting talent. So if I sit here and say like,
hey, you're going to make the varsity team or you're going to
make it to, you know, be draftedin the NFL, I'm just blowing
smoke up you. I have no idea.
So the best thing that we can dois say, OK, what gives us a
chance to fulfill our potential and see how good we can be.
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And that is the process. And again, I'll go to the
science now. There was a meta analysis, so a
study of studies that looked at 10s of thousands of participants
across studies and they looked at different goal settings.
When we look at performance or outcome goals, meaning I want to
win this race or I want to run this time the effect was so
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small it was almost non existenton performance.
When we looked at instead havinga process orientation, it had a
moderate to strong effect on performance.
So the point is your experience,my experience, others experience
aligns with the science which says like I get it, we all want
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to set these big audacious goals, but often those become
the roadblocks or the endpoints where we get to the OK, what do
we do now? I've accomplished my goal and
now I don't know what's next. What we want is a never ending
path towards how good can I be? Let's see what I can do.
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And the last bit of science I'llgive on this is, is a
psychologist studied elite swimmers, so swimmers who had
won an Olympic medal or better. And what they found is that at
some point early in their career, they switched from what
they called a performance mindset to a quest mindset.
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All that meant, all that means is they switched from judging
themselves solely by the time onthe clock to I'm going to see
how good I can be. I'm going to put myself in a
position to explore my abilities.
And those are the people who made it to the Olympic medal.
It's literally the top of the top so however you want to frame
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it, I'm 100% agreement. We need things to allow us to
see how good we can be instead of stop signs that say us.
OK, we've hit this point. Now what do we do?
Yeah, get better forever. Exactly.
Right. Like it's the easiest way I can
frame it. And, and I think this really
takes to another really important conversation that's
going on in the youth sports world right now.
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And, and something that we try to share and we try again.
I just take my own household, for example, I tell my kids all
the time right now we're living in a moment where we are trying
to make it a race. We have expedited the path of
development to being so young that instead of it being a race
to 18 where we go, OK, let's seewhat everyone looks like as a
junior and senior in high school.
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We probably have a better picture of what sport you're
good at, what college level are you capable of playing at, if
that's in your path or typicallylike that was the age group
where people started to separatethemselves.
We've now expedited that path ofdevelopment to 12 years old,
sometimes even younger. So the question becomes at any
given moment, if we just took a freeze, just a a snapshot of
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time, I say to my kids, well, you might not ever be the best
at anyone finite moment. But if the goal is to get better
forever, you might not pass everyone by until you're 17.
You might be 24, you might be improving yourself in the
workplace as a dad at 31. Like it's improvement doesn't
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just mean fielding, hitting, throwing, catching.
It could just be your ability tolearn, your ability to take on
new tasks, your ability to have a job, career change, whatever
it is like. But the problem is right now we
are evaluating everyone at snapshots of time, 12 year old
baseball, 14 year old soccer, 16year old football.
Like we, that is the way we evaluate kids.
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We're ranking kids in the class of 2034 and it's bananas.
And what we're telling these kids is, OK, you're ranked in
the class of 2034, you're in 4thgrade.
Oh my God, I must be really goodat basketball.
That's where my identity lies. I'm really good at girls soccer.
That's where. And all other things get put on
the back burner or just get knocked off the table.
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Like, how do we combat that? Like how do we go out there and
champion the message of wide berth of experiences, wide berth
of high standards? And then let's just let this
thing play itself out through a never ending quest, in your
words, of, of improvement and development and growth.
And then it'll all sort itself out when it gets to the
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appropriate time. Like how do we get that message
out there? That is the that's the hard
question, Greg. I wish I had a great answer, but
I think that the answer is this is first, it starts with
educating and understanding why it occurs.
Why it occurs is because parentswant the best for their
children. We get it like we're parents.
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We want the best for our kids. And if and often you don't know,
you are ignorant to the world ofsports because let's be frank,
like most people weren't professional athletes like
yourself. Most people haven't coached at a
high level. They don't know.
And again, I saw I see this all the time with the kids and
students at my wife's elementaryschool.
They hear that I've worked with high level athletes and they
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come around and they say, hey, little Johnny Susie is in 3rd
grade. Can like we get some private
coaching and like ability to do this and like, no, they're in
3rd grade. Just let them play a bunch of
sports and and have some fun. But the reason is that parent is
trying to do the best that they can.
What we need to do is educate them and say, I get it.
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I see where this is coming from.But if you look at let's just
have a hypothetical and we said we want your kid to be
professional, What sets them on the best stage?
We know this from years and years of data across sports.
It is that wide berth that diversified sports that not
specializing until they're readyto.
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That's what sets us up best bothfrom a physical development
because we have more tools in our toolkit, but also from a
psychological development. Because what we know is if we
cement our identity around soccer player, football player,
baseball star when we're 10, we've shut off identity
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development before it should. Like we should be dabbling and
exploring who we are. And when we don't dabble and
explore and we become a soccer player at 10, we have a fragile
identity because if we can no longer see a path toward soccer
player, it literally shatters who we are.
We're like, this is this is who I am.
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What do you mean I can't be this?
What am I going to do in life ifinstead we see ourselves?
I love sports. I love athletics.
Well, guess what? When soccer doesn't work, maybe
we switch to track or we play golf or whatever it has.
Have you We're able to shift. So I think step one is educating
people and say the path you think you're going down to help
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is actually going to backfire. Like we need this other path,
which might seem like it's not going to help in the short term,
but over the long haul, it's going to keep kids A, in the
sport and then B, developing those motivations in that
identity that allows them to become a robust and resilient
human being. Because no matter how good you
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are, even if you're the star of stars, you're going to go
through a rough patch. And if you don't have the tools
to handle that rough patch, guess what?
It's not going to be fun. Well, it leads me to something I
want to talk a lot about, which is how the idea of failure at
the youth level, right? Like, I think everyone comes to
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grips with professional athletes.
You throw the game, you know, you throw the game ceiling in,
in interception, you're going tobe on the front cover of the
paper and there's going to be scrutiny and every talk show is
going to be ripping you. And like you kind of understand
what you sign up for at the college and cut pro level.
Like it is an outcome oriented business.
Like that's if you don't like it, then don't enter that world.
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Like that's pretty much. But at the youth level, what I
see boots on the ground is and and Michael Gervais, doctor
Michael Gervais has become a friend of mine and he actually
gave me this, this idea. He said it's called Zamp.
We used to say like helicopter parenting.
He's like, now we call it Zamboni parenting right where
we're out in front of the kid and we're smoothing the ice for
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them to follow in behind us to make sure they're on the right
team and they get the right playing time and they're playing
shortstop or they're batting in the right order in the lineup or
they score the most goals. But in reality, what we're doing
is we're just creating an environment where there never is
any set back. There is no failure.
They're always the best player on the team.
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They don't. And and the example I like to
always kind of remind myself andtell my kids, like right now, my
kid goes out on the mound and hegives up three home runs in the
first inning. No one's thrilled.
Everyone. You know, you're upset for your
kid. It's nerve racking.
You don't like it, but you know what?
They come home to your house, they're 12, they have tears,
there's conversations about why they go to bed, they wake up the
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next day, we had breakfast and we move on.
If that if you never put your kid in those situations to have
failure to have setbacks, if they it's coming, it's coming in
sport, it's coming in life, it'scoming in some aspect.
There is going to be setbacks and Roblox.
I'd much rather those kids experience those moments for the
first couple times in my home asa young kid where they lay on
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the couch crying with mom. Then as an 18 year old high
school senior, or a 21 year old kid who loses his first job.
Or the 27 year old kid who unfortunately gets divorced or
something happens in his life and they have no skills to ever
put the fires out. Like why are family?
What is? What is the psychology and the
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science behind? Why are we so fearful to let our
kids be in tough situations where the outcome is not
guaranteed? Because it's uncomfortable.
I mean, it's uncomfortable for the kid, but it's also
uncomfortable for a parent. Think about it like this.
I have a toddler, OK? And if she falls off the couch
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or something really small, what's my natural instinct?
Run over and be like, Oh no, areyou OK?
Like, but if I do that in every situation, and there's research
on this, but I'll tell you from a parent too, if you do that in
every situation, your toddler looks up and says, OK, if
something bad happens, slightly bad, mom and dad are going to
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save the day. And I'm going to externalize my
coping strategy to be dependent on mom and dad, right instead.
Again, I'm not talking serious situations, but if they fall and
scrape their knee or something like that, and you say, ah, that
hurts a little bit, but it's OK.Like we can get up and Lee can
keep playing. Guess what?
They learn? They say, oh, this isn't that
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bad. I can cope with this.
I'm going to develop. The same thing happens with
youth kids, whether we're 5 or 12, OK, We have to learn the
skills to cope with negative feelings, emotions, physical
pain, discomfort. And we can either learn to cope
with them productively, which generally has what we called
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approach orientation, meaning I'm going to approach the
problem, I'm going to solve it, I'm going to deal with it.
Yeah, sometimes I'm going to crymy eyes out and feel the thing,
but I'm going to be solution oriented.
Or we can have an avoidant mindset, meaning this pain
sucks. I'm going to do whatever I can
to get rid of it in this moment as a parent, Like you're
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instilling how your kids, like, deal with things.
So if you never let them go through those struggles, if you
always bulldoze down that path ahead of them, guess what?
They don't get the reps. And like anything like, you
know, it's just like training a muscle in the gym.
And if we don't do the reps, we don't get the strength
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improvement. If we don't do the reps on the
mental training, on the psychology, on the dealing with
failure, on the dealing with tough situations, we've never
developed those coping strategies to get through it.
So I think as a parent, like oneof the best things that you can
do is essentially realize, hey, it's not my time to step in.
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I'm going to let this, I'm goingto let this play out a little
bit. And then yes, I'm going to be
there to comfort my child or help them navigate or after
they've cried at home to be there to be be like, OK, lend
that perspective so that we can like learn, grow and move on
from this. Yep.
But if you immediately step in all the time, guess what?
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No learning and development is going to happen.
That's so interesting. Let me ask you this, do I want a
kid who after he has a bad game to be really upset?
Like it really bothers them on one extreme, do I want a kid who
walks out of the gym and goes, Iknow I stunk don't really care
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I'm going to go home and ride mybike?
Like do we want our kid to be upset or do?
Or do we look at the kid and go,like, I have a hard time
wrapping my head around that. Like at sometimes I want my kids
to feel the discomfort of failure and say, I don't want
this to happen again. What can I do to prevent it?
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And that's where I get into likemy whole like soapbox about like
the outcomes, the outcome. What did you do leading up to
it? Like forget how the game went.
Did you do things leading up to that game that really put you in
position to have success? If the answer is no, then why
are you upset? You set yourself up for failure.
If the answer was yes, then maybe it was just a bad day.
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Or maybe we need to re evaluate our approach.
Like all that stuff is super, you know, we can practice that,
we can apply that. Like to me those are solution
oriented. But on the other end, like you
see some kids that walk out of the gym and they lost by 100 and
they don't really care. I have a hard time.
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Like where, where are you on that spectrum?
Like where, what is this? What is the happy medium between
caring enough that it's worth, you're going to fight through
it, but also not caring so much that you're going to just crush,
you're just going to crumble andfall apart.
Like, I don't know what, what, where is the right balance of
that? I mean, 'cause I'm the one, I'm
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the one. It's like we lost.
I was terrible. And I'm like in a coma for two
days when I was a athlete, like it took it ripped my heart out
when I did not do my job well. And now it was also incredibly
internally motivating where likethat next practice, I was going
to do everything in my life to reevaluate my habits of the week
to make sure that never happenedagain.
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But I sure as hell didn't walk out of the gym, out of the
locker room and go well, just not my day.
But it's all good. I'm going to be great.
Like that's never been me. Yeah, me neither.
But I think what it gets at is less of how they handle that
failure and what comes next. OK.
So here's how I'd look at it is if that kid is walking out and
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be like no big deal, like whatever, doesn't matter.
And they're using that as almosta protective mechanism, right?
Where it's like, I'm going to downplay this and make it seem
like I'm not. I don't care.
That way I get to protect my ego.
It's almost like the the cool kid in gym class, like middle
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school gym class who doesn't trybecause they're afraid of
getting beat by like whatever. The You beat me, but I wasn't
even trying. Yeah, exactly.
If that is what's coming out of that, if that is why they're
doing this act, then that needs to be addressed.
OK, On the flip side, if you have the kid who is like so
motivated and cares so much likeyourself or like I was when I
(37:10):
was an athlete, that it, that ithurts a lot.
What comes next is the key is ifthat motivation is fueled into
the process, into the productivity, you're probably
OK. If instead if that that stewing
on the failure starts to make itbe where they start instilling a
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degree of fear of like, Oh no, is this going to happen next
time? Do I want to be in this place
where my whole world is shattered again and it starts
making them hesitate and avoidant and not taking the
necessary risks on game day? Then that needs to be addressed.
So I think that the answer is there's probably a happy medium.
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People are going to cope with things in different ways.
But what I think matters more islike what happens after you get
out out of that initial, you know, couple hour period or one
day period where the lost stingsor it doesn't?
And what are they doing next? Are they getting back to the
work productively or are they getting in that avoidant or fear
(38:18):
or like you know, spot where it's not going to help them over
the long haul? That's well said at the end of
the day, if you don't know what to do, work is always a pretty
good option before we get back into the episode, a quick
reminder to follow us across allsocials.
We're posting daily content centered around youth sports.
All right, let's hop back into it.
(38:38):
Last thing I want to talk about with you because I think this is
all of this is just incredible. I could ask you 5000 questions,
but I'm going to for the sake oftime, I want to talk about one
last thing, a little bit of a different topic right now.
I know just raising 3 kids and the families and the friends
that we have, our kids lives aresuper scheduled.
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Their school, there's team practices, there's competition,
there's individual training, there's training at home.
Getting ready to train. Like there is a lot of stress
and demand and time. I know something that you've
written a lot about and you've talked a lot about is the, is
the relationship between rest and play, between work and
recovery. It seems like in the world we're
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in now, it's so much play, so much practice, so much
competition, so much training. And we go, they're young.
They, you know, how much break do they really need?
They're young. Like, what are you seeing?
What is the science saying? Like what can we as parents and
what can we as youth coaches do to find a better balance to
allow our kids more free play, more rest time, more days they
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get to come home after school and not have to be rushed to a
training, to a practice because we are building better young
athletes. You said it earlier and it stuck
with me like kids are better athletes at a younger age now
just because of the system we'recreating less long term high
level athletes. That's the negative outcome.
So like, what can we do practically as parents that we
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can? Quite that urge.
Yeah, I think I think First off,it's understanding that you're
not going to break the laws of biology, which is like you need
to like stress demands rest. And we we know this even though
elite athletes like what do we do?
We have lighter days or recoverydays or we rest before game day
(40:29):
to make sure we're repaired and ready to go.
It's even more important at a youth level when kids are
developing and growing and all that.
Have you. So the way I like to look at it
is like as a parent, more than ever, you've got to protect some
of their days or their afternoons or evenings because
if you don't there's, they're going to be filled in.
(40:51):
So just like as parents and adults, we protect some of our
afternoons, evenings, weekdays from overworking because we can
work 24/7 now because it's, we don't even have to go to the
office a lot of times. We can just work all the time.
We've got to protect that time. Do the same with with your kid.
The second part of it, which I think is as important as we need
(41:14):
unstructured play as you mentioned, which is different
from parent LED, coach LED. And the reason is this is
unstructured play takes some of the pressure off and it moves
them in an environment where instead of it's like a top down
learning, it's almost like experimentation and creativity.
(41:37):
And if we look at especially in sports like soccer, they often
find that the elite soccer players often had more
unstructured play and a little bit less coach LED or parent LED
instruction early on. And it's that unstructured play
that allowed them to have that creativity that we now see in
their game as a pro. So as a parent, what I'd like to
(42:01):
say is like, we need to get a little bit more of that, you
know, when you and I grew up that like Sandlot baseball or,
you know, street football or street hockey or what have you
and allow that to flourish. So don't think that you have to
structure and schedule every aspect of their sport instead,
(42:21):
especially, you know, over summer or winter breaks or what
have you. Think of it as like, let's get
all the kids together at the park, parents, we're going to go
walk some laps or what have you.Throw a ball out there and let
the kids do whatever they want and they'll figure it out.
We don't need mom or dad or coach directing them.
Let them figure it out. It's so true.
I don't know if you're familiar with the book talent Code, but
(42:44):
they dived into the whole like, why is there a hotbed?
They use different sports, but soccer in South America, You
know why? And they get into the idea of
free play versus guided learningand whatnot.
It's a pretty fascinating topic,but we probably all need to do a
better job. And like, I'll raise my hand and
say I'm not a great just like roll the ball out there and let
(43:04):
him go. Like even when my kids are in
the driveway, I'm like giving them pointers, like, no, you
know, cross, why are you not defending getting a stance?
But and I, my wife's just like, would you just let him play?
I'm like, you're right. I have to be better.
So I, I everything you're saying, I'm taking like mental
notes here saying like, OK, these are great areas of
improvement, parenting A and then obviously as an extension,
(43:28):
what we're doing coaching youths.
But Steve, your wisdom, your experience, both first hand and
obviously now just through your studies and through the, the
work that you've done, your postathletic career.
I have a lot of stuff I'd love to pick your brain on on track
and field to have a daughter that's recently got into track
and field. We're going to have you on for a
second episode because I'm not done with the things I want to
(43:50):
talk to you about. So, but for the sake of your
time, I'm going to let you go. But again, Steve Magnus, author
of Do Hard Things, his new book win the inside Game.
Steve, I can't thank you enough for joining us here on You Think
and given some unbelievable wisdom and experience to all of
our listeners. Thanks so much for having me,
this was an absolute blast. What's up guys?
Do you want custom fan wear likethis cricket shirt for Charlotte
(44:13):
Christian School? We've got premium apparel from
your favorite brands. The best part about it is I
don't have to just wear it to Charlotte Christians events.
I can wear it to golf. I can wear it to lunch.
It's turned into my uniform. Go right now over to Youth dot,
Inc sign up for our newsletter. It talks about our podcast for
that week. Our interview guests all the
breaking news across the landscape of youth sports and
(44:33):
you can win one piece of merch for your school by going going
to Sign up today and remember itsnot.com, it's Youth dot, Inc.
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