Developing the Confidence Required for Peak Performance with Sports Psychologist Dr. Joel Fish

[00:00:00] John Boruk: Hello and welcome into the podcast. I'm your host, John Boruk. You can catch us on pretty much any venue out there. We're available on Amazon, Spotify apple Podcasts. So however, wherever you listen to make sure you subscribe to us. Give us a And give us a review at the same time, because those reviews determine just exactly how far we move up the charts and give us a little bit more notoriety.

The more you like us the more people will find us, and that's important as well. If you're a first time listener thanks for Checking us out for the first time. If you've listened before, we're glad to have you back. My guest on this episode is somebody I've been trying to track down for the first five or six months of this podcast.

I was finally able, we were finally able to secure a a day and a time to get this done. is the director for the Center of Sports Psychology. He has been working with really athlete. At every level from adolescents to teenagers college. He's worked with Olympic and professional athletes.

He's also worked for [00:01:00] organizations the Philadelphia 76ers, the Philadelphia Flyers, the Philadelphia Phillies, the USA Women's National Field Hockey Team, and the National Soccer Team. Dr. Joel Fish welcome to raising a champion. Very happy to finally have you.   

[00:01:13] Dr. Joel Fish: Thank you, John. Thanks for hanging in there with me and it's a pleasure to be here.

 [00:01:18] John Boruk: absolutely. And I, on top of all of that, what you've done and what you continue to do you also have a book that we're gonna get into the 101 Ways to be a Terrific Sports Parent. Now, we're not gonna have time to go through all 101, but I think we could probably highlight a few in.

Relevant ones are out there, but yeah, the director for the Center of Sports Psychology. You and I got to know each other when I was covering the Philadelphia Flyers and you would make stops into the practice rink and that sort of thing. Just got talking, but talk about a little bit about what you do, why you started it, and what has really, what intrigues you about the psychology of, and , [00:02:00] clearly, there's all, it's it's, there's always gonna be work for you because somebody's always is gonna need that psychological element to their game. 

[00:02:07] Dr. Joel Fish: I'm a licensed psychologist by background, and in graduate school, University of Wisconsin, they had a track in what we'd call sports psychology.

And it was really a developing field in late seventies, early eighties. If you. And I like sport. I like psychology. I had an opportunity, I'd like to tell you, it was more well thought out than that. But sports psychology really has two parts to it, John, and sport and performance psychology. The sport part is what we call the mental skills for peak performance.

And if I've asked thousands of athletes you sport through the Olympic and professional ranks, what percentage of performance is mental confidence, composure, concentration, communication, team. From eight year olds to the Olympic professional seniors, people are always saying, no matter what the sport, individual sport, golf, tennis, team sport, [00:03:00] baseball, basketball, soccer, the game is largely mental.

So if the game is largely mental, the sport performance part is teaching mental skills to help with the mental part of the game. Positive self-talk, relaxation focusing, mental preparation, visualization. The psychology part is anything in a person's personal life that can be impacting on performance. So I've talked to so many athletes who come in to talk about a slump, and in five minutes you're talking about their mother, father, sister, brother.

It's really more of a psychology issue and the art of what I do and what really excites me. One of the things is that in first meeting someone I have to try to assess how much is a sport, and how much is the psychology part? Because if there's some underlying issues, mother, father, sister, brother around competitiveness, achievement, unless you really try to address some of those underlying issues, the sport techniques and strategies, I think they help, but it's more like a band-aid.

They really help. If you get to what some of the underlying issues are, [00:04:00] then you start teaching some of the positive self-talk relaxation issues. So that's really what I do. Yeah, and it started out in my interest in what makes an athlete tick. And the reason I still enjoy it, and this is again for youth sport through the Olympic and professional ranks, for me, sports still remains a wonderful place to teach life skills, goal setting, dealing with adversity, being part of a group listening to an authority figure, a coach.

It's not the only arena, but with all the things that are happening in Newport that I love your podcast. It's terrific that I know you. I still am a firm believer that sport is a wonderful place to learn and teach life skills, and that's really where I get my most satisfaction. Let's use sport and what's going on here, but how does it apply to school, to your social life, to your job, to your profession?

 [00:04:51] John Boruk: So you've been doing this 25, 30 years. Yeah. During that time though, the paradigm has shifted where [00:05:00] in the nineties and early two thousands, there was a stigma attached to, don't go down that road. Don't go seek the psychologist. You don't want people to think you're crazy. You don't want the mental help.

We're athletes. This is sport. You gotta be tough. Correct. Has that shifted now to where if you need the mental help, go get it. We're behind you 100%. Go talk to somebody who who can really get you out of that, whether it's depression it's a mental blockade, whatever it is. But people are now embracing what you do more so than when you started.  

[00:05:34] Dr. Joel Fish: Very much. When I started at the professional level, 1994 with the Phillies, and none of this is confidential, it's very important for me to say. Del Unser who brought me in was really at the head of the curve and most organizations in the nineties will call you if we need you, Del and the Phillies brought me in, is part of player development and that's really become the model over [00:06:00] time.

On the sport performance part. What percentage of performance is mental? 30 50, 80%. Okay. So as part of your player development, we'll have strength and conditioning, nutrition, mental skills training, sports psychology. So the biggest change that's happened over the 30 years is that people like myself that were ahead of the curve in the early nineties.

Now, every pro organization has someone like me involved. It's part of sport performance. It's part of player development. So there's an understanding now that we have to develop the whole, and at the mental skills part of it is a really is important is developing the offense to defense. The technical part of it.

That's the sport part. The psychology part's also become much more accepted, and I think when you talk about depression, anxiety, stress, real world stuff, athletes aren't machines, they're not robots, and it's taken a lot of, I think a lot of the [00:07:00] high profile athlete. Who have come public from Kevin Love to DeMar Derosen in the NBA, to in tennis this past year we've had a couple high profile gymnastics.

I think as it's become more high profile, I think it's given permission for people to be honest. Lane Johnson on the Eagles. Yeah. About what they're feeling and what they're thinking. And there's a greater acceptance, understanding of both at the culture level. Yeah. But most importantly, John, in my opinion, is within the locker room, it's much more accepted.

Yes. So you have teammates reaching out to the Lane Johnson's of the world, the Simon Biles in gymnastics. Naomi Osako in tennis. Tennis, yes. And when it's become more accepted within the locker, and it's more accepted in our culture and it's more accepted in the [00:08:00] organization itself, general managers, owners, there's been a culture shift that I think has been really positive because it's understanding that for us to help people who play sports, they're not just athletes.

Player development, we have to help them develop their mental skills. And on the personal side, we have to give them the resources to manage their personal lives as well as professional lives so that they can be the best they can be. We've got a lot of work left to do, but, oh yeah. The needle has moved so very much in a positive way since I entered this field 30 years ago. 

[00:08:34] John Boruk: So obviously last summer, Simone Biles was, it became front and center when she was in the Olympics.

And I, I actually remember watching the Olympic trials and she was struggling in the Olympic trials, and she seemed off. I remember that because my daughter loves gymnastics. But, so when people see this and see that Simone Biles is now she's not competing, she's struggling. The mental [00:09:00] aspect they're like she's the world's greatest gymnast.

She's been in on this stage. Now she's cracking under the pressure and she's quitting on her teammates. That's how outsiders who may not have the psychology down like you do. So when something like that happened to Simone Biles, how do you view it? How did you see it? 

[00:09:19] Dr. Joel Fish: That's a great question. I have seen it so many times in different ways, shapes and forms, that either on the personal side or the professional side, it's starting to impact, their ability to perform. And the first thing I tell myself every day, cuz I'm still working with youth, sport athletes, high school, college and pro, is, let's say if I'm in a college, this is an 18 or 19-year-old person.

Physically, they may have extraordinary skills, but emotionally they're 18, 19, 20 years old. And the other thing that's changed over the 30 years with social [00:10:00] media and the spotlight, in 24/7. ESPN just bombarding us with these images. You need a one in a million talent to navigate that at the highest level, but you need a one in a million personality, in my opinion, because to deal with the pressures, the stresses, the notoriety to stay grounded when things aren't going well, to stay grounded when things are going well, to live a normal life, it takes extraordinary personality.

And so I'm surprised quite honestly that more folks don't have experiences like Simone Biles. In my experience, the many of the folks who can't handle the pressures, and I'm not judging it at all, I couldn't handle all that, probably get weeded out of the system earlier on. But I think the Simone Biles of the world, the Michael Phelps of the world, these people who have performed at the highest level, when they're honest about what they're feeling and think, and own up to the fact that I need [00:11:00] help. We learn, I think as people through modeling an imitation, we see that and it makes it easier for us to say, oh, I feel stressed, I feel anxiety. I'm not alone. Simone Biles feels it. I need to work on that, or I need to get help. And I think that's been a driving force in many people seeking.

Athletes and non-athletes who otherwise wouldn't have because they wouldn't feel that would be, as you call it, perform mentally tough. We've got a new definition of mental toughness now, and I think I was dealing with a pro athlete I'll keep his name confidential, basketball player, high level, came into the league, N B A All Star, not Philadelphia.

When I came into the league, I thought mental toughness was, if somebody talked trash to me, I'd talk trash to them. If somebody elbowed me, I'd elbow. Now I define mental tough. Because I'm gonna be walking into an arena in an hour where 20,000 people are gonna be booing me and talking about my mother, father, sister, brother, mental TSIs is [00:12:00] learning how to control my emotions rather than them controlling me.

And then he said to me, with em, he said, because nobody can get in my gut and force my blood pressure to go, nobody. Nobody can get in my head and force me to think negative. I am still a work in progress, but I have control over that. And that's the attitude. I try in my work with youth sports at all levels, no matter what their skill level is, to maximize and to build on what you can control, let go what you can't learn some skills so that no matter what situation you're in, you're able to say, I'm in this situation, mentally I know what to do.

And whenever you can say, I know what to do, you're gonna feel more in control. If you feel more in control, you're gonna feel more self-confident, but. 

[00:12:41] John Boruk: It's almost like I, I remember Mike Richards played for the Philadelphia Flyers, and he and it's the one quote that he probably said that, that resonated with me more so than anything.

It is when you have confidence, you feel like that you can conquer the world, and when you don't have it, you feel like a complete failure. And [00:13:00] I assume that when you're talking with athletes, really at any level, it's all about confidence. And they can seemingly have it at one moment, and then it just disappears from one day to the next for whatever reason.

Maybe they read something online, maybe, some they're having problems at home. They had a bad game, had a bad quarter or whatever. But so much of that psychology seems to come from confidence. So what you're describing there, do they have to have the success first and the confidence and the mental aspect follows?

Or do you need to be strong mentally and then the success comes along with that?   

[00:13:39] Dr. Joel Fish: That's a great question. And psychology, they always say confidence, like the foundation of a house. If it's strong and you can build really good things on top of it, if it's shaky, then what you build on top of it is, do you need confidence to succeed?

Do you not? Not everybody. I believe on a scale of one to 10 is at [00:14:00] the same level of confidence. Okay. Michael Jordan was good the first time he picked up a ball, had to get experience. But you take a look at some elite, one in a million talents, one in a million personalities, the Julius Servings of the world, the Irv Magic Johnsons of the world, the Wayne Gretzkys of the.

But I was dealing with a guy recently that he was a AAA player in baseball, number one draft pick, not in Philadelphia. And he came to me because he said, Joel, I'm having anxiety attacks. I can't sleep at night. What's going on? I'm 0-for-18 and I've had 10 strikeouts, haven't had hits in the last 18 at bats.

And I'm thinking to myself, I played college base well I went, oh, for 18 in eighth grade. Some guys like that number one draft pick are so talented, and I think you see this in a lot of pro sports. Their physical talents are so much, they haven't had to develop some of the coping skills that [00:15:00] us regular athletes have had to develop in order to advance.

And so somebody may on paper leave us wondering how can this person not have confidence? But this may be the first time they've had to deal with a certain kind of adversity because they've just been so good. So those folks sometimes are delayed in terms of meeting their mental skills or their talent just masks that.

Other times and this could be at the pro level, could be at the youth support level, I think we can learn how to build our confidence. Some folks just need some skills to do. Self-talk. How can I trust yourself? But what if I've done this before? I can do it again. But what if, gimme the courage to do the best I can do.

Like we can learn to talk to ourselves in a heated the moment so that we maintain our confidence or composure. There are some learned skills. Not everybody can be Michael Jordan, right? But on a scale of one to 10, [00:16:00] I think no matter what our starting point is, me, you, anybody who's listening in self-confidence, we can build it from a four to a six to an eight, because I do think there are certain mental skills training that can help us to build self-confidence.

So no matter where we are I think we can improve. Some people are at a different starting point than others. Certain situations, unmask. Yeah. For some people more than others. Yeah. 

[00:16:24] John Boruk: For the basis of what we do here in this podcast, we talk about young kids and youth.

And so you've really dealt with the spectrum all the way to the top professionals, Olympic athletes, and now, with kids and teenagers and those going through. Is your message different? Do you. these young kids differently, do you look at their pro, because they're not playing on the biggest stage, but they're playing within their peer level and they're, what may be going through their mind is considerably different than that of an o, an Olympic gold medalist, or somebody who's playing professionally in [00:17:00] front of 20,000 fans.

So when you talk to young kids, how do you start with them and how do you assess their mental approach? To where they are and how they're playing the game. If you if you sense that there is a mental blockade there. 

[00:17:13] Dr. Joel Fish: I also bring to this conversation, I'm the parent of three kids yeah. Yes. I want to answer that question as a parent, I have three kids.

Eli Orientali, I have one is 33 and I have twins that are 30, but that's the subject for another time. So I say that because in my dealing with. Middle school, high school athletes. And what I tell parents, I've lived it let's put it that way. So I'm trying to answer your question from both the sports psychology perspective and from a parent's perspective.

And interestingly enough, the first thing I'll try to assess whether it's middle school, high school and a pro is the confidence level. Like where are they at? Gimme situations cuz confidence isn't something that's straight across the board. [00:18:00] Some basketball players are great, in the first quarter, but if they miss their first shot, their confidence goes down.

Some eSport kids are comfortable when they're playing with their peers, but they have a hard time with a coach who might talk to them a certain way. You. I love my dad. I miss him every day. Every day. But I remember in high school, and then certainly in college, I played up in Massachusetts 300 miles away from home, and I felt like my dad was looking over my shoulder every pitch, because I knew I was gonna get a call at the end of that day.

Joel, how'd you do? And he wasn't gonna mean, did you have fun today, Joel? Did you enjoy? No. Did you get any hits? Did you win the game? So I'm playing 300 miles in home and it felt like that was over, so I'm assessing. If you will, child's confidence. I'm assessing how much they enjoy the sport, and then I'm assessing if there's been any changes.

It would indicate there's some stress there. So I'm always asking parents to just take a [00:19:00] look. For example, does your kid consistently perform better in a practice situation and in a game or a competitive situation? Does your, did you, did your child usually enjoy going to practice and now you have to drag him to practice? Have there been any personality changes? Your son used to be? Your daughter used to be really outgoing. Now they're really shy in competition and shy. Now they're bouncing off the wall and the way he usually comes to me is, just isn't herself anymore.

Isn't himself anymore. And if you can check off yes. Typically, the child may be experiencing some kind of competitive - in half of our kids - you can tell it because they're aware there are emotions on their sleeve, but the other half, they're good poker players and outwardly they might like cool and calm, but inside stomach may be a knot, sweaty palm.

Get these little lines on their head like I do. So in the evaluation piece, in the assessment part, those are some of the things that, that I'm looking, because based on that, to me, we develop a plan, if you will, [00:20:00] for the child to learn how to manage those emotions better. Or if it's a parenting situation, a game plan for parenting the child in sport, because anxiety's not going away in competition or achievement.

It's not stress. The goal is to learn how to manage the stress a little bit better, and I can show people documentation up to the ceiling, three or 5%, three or five. Often times what we call the mental edge, three or 5% is a difference between going to the foul line with the game on the line with confidence or with your knee shaking.

 Three or 5% when they have to take an exam is a difference between the are children studying and the clocks winding down and their freeze, their mind freezes or and maintain their composure, and they're able to answer the questions three or 5% socially for our kids, is the difference between them being able to be comfortable and confident enough to be looking people in the eye?

With a group or when they're meeting new people, hi Joel Fish, nice to meet you. Or they don't feel very comfortable. So in social situations they spend half of their [00:21:00] time looking at the ceiling. You're looking at the fluid, three or 5% mental edge. So if we can teach them how to manage and handle their emotions, some strategies too, to me, I think that only not only helps them the next time they feel anxiety and stress in sport competition, but as I said earlier, I think it's a skill that translates to their schoolwork, to their social life, to their work life. 

[00:21:25] John Boruk: When you speak to kids, how often or the percentage of, once you really dig into the mental aspect and what's going on through their mind, does it have to do less with sports and more about interaction with friends, social media, something that's going on at home? Parents, sibling. , something along those lines. And it's not just the activity itself, the dots are usually connected.   

[00:21:51] Dr. Joel Fish: Yeah. And some of that has to do with their age and all this is normal stuff. Everything we've [00:22:00] talked about is normal stuff. So just roughly in that five to 10 year old age, kids are trying to figure out like, what am I adequate at with, how am I competent?

How competent am I? So I remember we moved. My eight year old son, Eli says not to talk about him so much. He was eight at that point, like after a week. I said, who's the smartest in the class? Just curious. Who do you think? I don't know. Who's the fastest in the class? And he went down 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

That for boys changing for girls. That issue of adequacy and competency, where do I fit in, is real, really important for kids developmentally. That's what they're trying to figure out, and then you get into that 11 to 13, age 14, and it's about identity. Who am I? And I had, and that's what you also see is people age and college, that, that identity, who am I and what role does sport play?

Becomes really important. I had somebody recently and then just to finish that [00:23:00] thought. Then from 12 to 15 or so, or 14-15 through high school, it becomes peer pressure. So all these normal developmental, psychological issues in my mind play into how comfortable they feel when playing, making a mistake being the last one picked in gym class.

And so to me, the youth sport is trying to understand where they're at with all those developmental issues, where they're at with their confidence. What skills can I help teach them to manage their emotions? Cuz so for example, I usually in the middle school age it's around frustration. Kids are just figuring out how to handle that emotion.

Sport's a great place. You can't learn, you can't always get what you want. What can you say? What can you do? So long-winded answer to your question, but that's how I evaluate how I might be able to help somebody in a youth sports situation. 

[00:23:55] John Boruk: A couple weeks ago I had a writer, Laura Flanagan, on this podcast she [00:24:00] wrote about how money and mania is destroying youth sports.

And talked about how, and in your 25 years where we've gotten away from just say the good old YMCA league and the rec league and just going out there to, it's now so organized. It's it. Money grab at so many different levels, travel teams, club teams and it's just like you're just burying these kids into the ground with so much and overdoing it and trying.

You gotta be on this team to if you want to go to where you, you want to go are you seeing that within your line of work where there it's just, it's almost too much now. It's too much in terms of the level of competition, the expectation that comes when you pour a lot of money into all of this.

[00:24:48] Dr. Joel Fish: Sure. Yes. , I have, and I think there's a couple, there's a couple reasons for that. If you look at youth sports today, there's good news, bad news. That's the way I [00:25:00] look at it, which is there's more kids involved than ever. The sports, the new sport will take through high school. That's the good news.

30% are dropping out. 14, 18. Number one reason, without question, not fun. That's the bad news. More girls, women involved in sport than ever before in in a wider range of sports. Used to be girls were funneled more towards body image and grace gymnastics, ice skating. Now there's more women involved than ever before.

My daughter got a chance to play field hockey in a way that wouldn't have been 34 years ago. Bad news is more girls are dropping out at the high school level and the number one reason, it's not as much fun. Let me be clear. I don't think you can paint every kid with the same brush. So for some kids, and this is where I think I trust parents' ability to know their kids.

For some kids more is better. But there've been a couple trends here that I think contribute to parents sometimes feeling like I have choice. This more may be better, more may not be better, [00:26:00] but they feel dragged along. One is a specialization piece that there's no question, specialization is up.

Recreational play going to the playground is down. And everything else, it's a mixed bag. But I do believe that more isn't always better for most of our kids. And when I'm dealing with parents, I can show them again, documentation. Having your kids in multiple sports the way it used to.

It's really healthy for your kid from coordination social to be less burned out. But there is an even well-intentioned parents can get understandably drawn into. If I'm really advocating and trying to give my child all the resources to be the best of he or she can be then I need to go down that track with travel teams and clubs and spend a lot of money and campaign everybody with the same brush, but often times there are costs [00:27:00] to that. 

I was dealing with a family recently also. There's costs in a lot of different ways. Wasn't in Delaware, and I know Delaware is big with ice skating. It happened not to be in Delaware, but this 12 year old was told she had Olympic potential as an ice skater, and these were the most well-intentioned parents you'd ever want to meet.

They were aware that sometimes that level of competition can be, as they put it, shark filled waters. It's a very competitive, and so they were trying to decide whether they should relocate their family or just continue what they're doing. And then out of nowhere, there was an eight year old, her sister who just meekly raised up her hand and said if you move like what about me?

Like I'm tired of being dragged around to all these different places that in working with families of someone who has talent, if you go down that road of specialization, more is better. Travel teams, we can, I'm always asking people to be mindful of what [00:28:00] consequences that has for the family dynamic and for other kids in the family.

The other major trend and as someone, I'm interested in myth facts when it comes to youth sport and sport in general, whether when I got into this it was completely true, but I can say from my own experience, there was a better balance between, it didn't matter whether you won or lost, it was how you played the game.

Whether Vince Lombardi came along and said, winning isn't everything. It's the only thing that's become part of our culture. So the rankings and the. Starting at the youngest level has really changed. And the other trend I saw a study recently really caught my attention. Wish I could cite it for you, but I know I'm right when I say it was for high school boys, can you name three heroes that you have and for high school kids in the last 10 years?

If you ask to name three heroes, two of them are often athletes. Third one could be a rockstar, but that's another subject for [00:29:00] another time. It was documented that in the sixties, seventies, eighties, athletes have always been heroes. I grew up in Philadelphia, had Richie Allen posters on my wall.

But it showed that in the sixties, 1780s, if you asked for high school boys, three heroes, many of them would put a teacher minister, priest, rabbi, maybe even president of the United States that the role of sport and our culture has changed. So status prestige. Of having an elite athlete has changed.

And so I think it's the culture change, the specialization that's also contributed to the pressures that kids are feeling in. That continues to be the number one reason why kids drop out. It's not fun. 

[00:29:50] John Boruk: It's not fun because you're playing the same sport sometimes 11, 12 months out of the year over and over again, and that repetitiveness gets.

That's why we're big proponents on this [00:30:00] podcast, we talk about it all the time with different experts that come in here, is to play numerous sports, play multiple sports, don't get caught up in just doing one sport, even, maybe until you get to high school. But coaches, when you talk to coaches, collegiate coaches they want, the athlete that plays more than one sport doesn't because they know that, Hey, look, if you're a good quality.

You're gonna be good no matter if you've spent all your time playing that. But it, there's it develops muscles differently, it develops skill sets differently. You playing one game, you develop, a different mental repertoire. So there's so many different reasons. Why being multi-sport, a multi-sport athlete is so productive that, but I would think that when you do that, you're really.

You're beating you're taking the fun out of it. And that to me seems like that's what's happened over the last 10 years. Is it just, it stops being fun at an earlier and earlier age than what we've ever seen [00:31:00] before? Yeah. 

[00:31:00] Dr. Joel Fish: I had a 12 year old say to me a couple weeks ago, soccer player playing 11 months.

Man, this feels like a chop. And I'm looking at him and you and I have a job, John, this 12 year old, it shouldn't seem like a campaign ever with the same brush. But I'm also interested internationally, like what other countries do with their youth sports too. And I've been looking a lot at Norway, who is a country that in the Winter Olympics produces more medals.

The one most medals in the last two winter Olympics with a population of six, 7 million people. And this is again, winter Olympic skiing environment's, part of it, but their youth sport model. Opposite of ours. They don't have competitions the way we do until kids are 13, 14, 15 years of high school. All their youth sport effort, participation, skill development, which used to be the foundation of our youth sports programs, effort, participation, skill development, and their model shows that not only do they have more [00:32:00] people, skiing is part of a healthy lifestyle, but they produce elite athletes too.

Our balance has been thrown outta whack here, and there's evidence that has a cost, both in terms of burnout. Adults continuing to play a sport is an active part of their healthy lifestyle. And it may have a cost in terms of our elite athletes too, because if you look at, as you just said, pro sports, most of them have played multiple sports.

It's rare that they've played one sport. So having said…as a parent, I really understand how sometimes in your head you may understand this, but in your heart it's hard to say no when you see a lot of other kids. My, my younger son, I remember we lived on the street and I talk about this stuff all the time, lived on a street in Philadelphia.

There were seven boys his age and they were going to summer. Six of them were going to a sports specialty camp and we were sending him to [00:33:00] a general camp. And I remember Tune and my wife Debbie, who's always a good balance, me like, and I talk about this stuff all the time are you sure we're doing the right thing?

Because there's an undertow and I speak to a lot of parents groups and there wouldn't be any parent that wouldn't be nodding their head to what we're saying right now, but you might know it. But sometimes that undertow of being a good parent thinking, I want to advocate for my all the resources to be the best they can be.

Leads, parents, sometimes to get on that fast track where sometimes it may be good for their child, but many times it may not be good for their child's development. Yes, socially, emotionally, as well as. The love of the sport. Yeah. 

[00:33:45] John Boruk: We're with Dr. Joel Fish. He is been a 25 year sports psychologist, runs the Center for Sports Psychology, works with a lot of colleges.

That's the mostly what you're doing right now. Over the last 20 years, you've also written a book, and that's something I wanted to [00:34:00] transition to 101 ways to be a Terrific Sports Parent. Now, you could probably do a second volume too, if you wanted to. I think so. But what inspired you, I guess the first to to write about that book is you probably, you were going to, you were dad, you got three kids and you probably picked up on some bad habits or some things.

That you saw throughout you sports to say, we can do it better. So I want to get in, just tell me a little bit about the book, what's in there and, you can't, we're not gonna go through all 101 ways, but we can go through a few of them that maybe a parent hasn't really taken the time to think about or hasn't really processed through to say, you know what, that's a good, that's a really good.

Obviously, a good one's screaming at the refs and yelling throughout the course of the game. As I think of the Will Ferrell skit on Saturday Night Live where he is yelling at his son, get on the bag. . Yeah. I think we know that's not healthy, but outside of [00:35:00] that, in fact, I may have to drop that clip in there.

It's just it's funny. It's sad, it's funny, it's sad at the same time but some of these other ways to be a terrific sports parent.

[00:35:09] Dr. Joel Fish: I really started to think about it because at that point I was working with a lot of athletes and I had three kids that were all involved in sport and.

There was an incident that happened with me, that I really, as I think back on, it really got me not only thinking about it, but starting to write about it, which was I'll go back to my oldest son Eli again. He, who is a, terrific, well-rounded kid, and so he must have been 10 or 11 at this point, and I'm home for dinner and he says, dad, do you.

You wanna see this art project that I wrote? So I was reading the paper. I looked that up. Oh, that's nice, Eli. Little later that day, you wanna see? You wanna hear me play something on the piano? That's nice, Eli. And maybe a week later he's in our basement. We had one of those little [00:36:00] baskets that kids have and he had a shot that was one in a million, pure luck.

And he had that shot. And I start prancing around with him. Hooray for Eli. Hooray, free Eli. And I said, my wife Debbie. She's a good balance for me. Are you aware that when he brought his art project too, you said, oh, that's nice of you, Eli, when he played on the piano, but you p around and I realized at that point I could talk about it, but emotionally as a parent, there's something about sport that just grabs me.

And as a kid it always did. And so what I like to believe the contribution to the book is of those first 101, the first 30 or 35 is helping a parent understand what they feel. And what their own attitudes are about winning, losing success, failure competition. Because as parents, unless we're aware of what we're feeling and thinking, it's really hard for us to keep the parent cap on and respond appropriately, if you will, [00:37:00] and.

That was really, that's really of the 101 ways. The first third of them are about helping parents understand what they feel and what they think. Let's put should, or should in the side. What do you feel when your kid's up there with the bases loaded? And, my, my daughter Talia, who is, who's also, I'm happy to say well-rounded, but loves sports.

I, I remember. . I said to her, cuz I was trying to with my daughter, just make sure she, exposure. You wanna have a catch with your dad in the backyard? No. Perhaps you didn't hear my question, Talia. Yeah. Do you wanna have a catch with your dad? No. Do you want to have a catch with your dad? Cuz I would've done anything to have a catch with my dad in the backyard.

And if you put a 10 play objects out there, a book crayons. An instrument, Talia may pick up a ball fifth or sixth, but for me, there was [00:38:00] only the ball, there weren't the other nine objects. And so in a nine I just really spend a good chunk of that book trying to get parents to understand what their feelings are about achievement, about competition.

Because when you're watching your kid in sport it's not an intellectual exercise. It's very emotional…and I'd never say to a parent, don't feel stressed. Don't feel frustrated with your child. Don't. But if you do, what can you say or do in the moment? What's best for your child? How do you keep your child's needs on the front burner and your needs on the back burner?

We're not living out our experience through our children. So that's really a good chunk without going through all 101 of them for what the first 30 are. Yeah. 

[00:38:45] John Boruk: And in fact some of the bullet points of the book the book are help your child reach his or her full athletic potential and developing strategies to deal with competitive pressure.

Yeah, and I think that's probably a good starting [00:39:00] point is the strategies, because I think it's important that kids fail. They have to, it's a huge learning experience. If you're constantly success, and all you know is success. At some point you're gonna be devastated. When the outcome doesn't work the way that you want.

No question. So it's good. It's good for them to fail early on. You learn it. It's all part of the learning experience. 

[00:39:24] Dr. Joel Fish: No, no question. What Jalen Hertz just said after the Super Bowl, either you're win or you lose. There's, excuse me, he didn't say that. He said either you win or you learn.

That you learn. Let me be clear. You win or you learn that you learn through another team scoring more points than you do. . But if the first 30 of those points in the book, 101 ways are about the parent, the next 30 are about some strategies. For example, I think it's really important for kids to learn early on what we call multiple goals of how to define a good day.

Cuz our sports are so result oriented, numbers, outcomes. So we [00:40:00] teach a lot and there's a lot in the book. How parents can help their kids to develop multiple goals. Quick story, I was working with an Olympic athlete who won a gold medal, told me not to say his name I want, and the TV announcer sticks to a microphone in his draw cuz he doesn't look very happy.

He said you won the gold medal, you don't look very happy. Why? And he said I came to the Olympics with two goals of mine. I wanted to win the gold medal. I wanted to smash the world record. I won the gold medal, but I didn't smash the world record. So I. You don't have to be Freud or a great sports psychologist to think something off here.

He should be joyous. Yes. Yeah. So many people involved, not just me. The first day we had him back in the pool, this is about multiple goals for parents. He had to rate himself on five or six different dimensions about what a good day was, cuz he had on one definition of a good day, smashing the world.

So every day I degrade himself. A, B, C, D. Were you healthy today? Yeah. Take a moment. That's part of a good day. You're healthy. You're doing something that you [00:41:00] love. You're with people that you enjoy. Give yourself an A for that. Did you give your best effort for the day? I have to have my game for no.

You know when you give your best effort, when you don't, if you don't grade yourself as lower. If you do, give yourself a pattern. Did you learn something today? Made you a better person, a better swimmer. That's part of a good day. Were you a good teammate today? Give something back to somebody else.

Did you have fun for this guy? Did he smile once or twice in the course of a workout and look around and say, wow, look at what I'm doing. That was part of a good day. And then we did look at his results, but if my story is clear, there were five or six different goals he had every day to how to define a good day.

And I'm smiling cuz I saw him a couple months. He says, I'm still swimming recreationally, which I thought was really good and I may even get to that ultimate goal. There's some Senior Olympics there. Maybe I can smash a world record. But the thing I'm most pleased about wasn't just me, a lot of people involved, was he's still swimming.

And he said to me, it was really helpful when you [00:42:00] helped me to broaden my definition of what it meant to be, have a good day. And as parents, I think that's a really important strategy or because there's so much out there. We can't control what a coach says, what ESPN says, who's number one and all this.

But we can't control helping our kids to develop an attitude of their variety of ways to assess whether I'm moving in the right direction or not. Whether today was a good day. I'm not one of these folks that believe and results. I don't believe every game set in a tie. in response to your question.

To me, there are a number of tools and strategies in there for very specific situations that I hope help parents to use this opportunity to teach life skills as well as help their kid enjoy sport more. Yeah. 

[00:42:57] John Boruk: Kids that play team sports as opposed to [00:43:00] individual sports. Whether it's they're playing hockey, lacrosse in a very team environment, or they're into tennis and golf, you see a big difference in that sort of psychological structure to where the individual sports is, I don't know, more psychological barriers to overcome.

Whereas in a team, you have teammates that you're working with or is it just all the same? 

[00:43:25] Dr. Joel Fish: Yeah. It's a great question. I just think there's different kinds of pressure. Okay. And I just believe that when it comes to mental blocks in a mental block is a feeling or emotion it can get in the way of us being able to perform our best.

So we could be, shoot baskets. They make eight out of 10 free throws when we're alone. And then in a game it's four out of 10. So the mental blocks in an individual sport, some take, sometimes take a little more work to overcome because it's just you out there. Whereas in a team [00:44:00] sport, you can blend in a little more.

Having said that, the team sports have a certain kind of peer pressure that sometimes individual sports don't have. So I don't find that the mental skills. In individual sports are exactly the same as team sports, that there is an overlap. But I just was working with a wrestler recently.

That's the ultimate, I think, physical and mental sport. Who said, man, the other day, I just felt like I was in an island. I just had all these eyeballs looking at me and it was just me and I didn't know what to do. And so it's rare in a team sport, you're gonna feel that. But there's some dynamics on a team sport in terms of peers letting other people down.

And then you got sports like baseball where if you strike out, you've got all your teammates. So it's a little bit individual. So to me, what's exciting is someone who works with a lot of different sports, there's some common skills, [00:45:00] confidence, but then each sport requires a different formula. Of learning how to manage your emotions, cuz different sports bring different emotions. 

[00:45:12] John Boruk: Back to the parent element what is the number one what's the number one thing that a parent can do to help their child get back on the right track through athletics and through being that, that great parent what would you say?

[00:45:27] Dr. Joel Fish: I think it would. It's the parent's role to keep perspective and be the voice of reason. And by perspective, I mean it's only a game and voice of reason means hang in there, you can improve. And again, I say this because I've been the parent. It sounds so simple, but it's really not, because that's why the first third of the book is [00:46:00] about self-awareness.

Because if I'm saying the right thing, but my body language is something this different, our kids are gonna pick up the body language. I had a parent, and I really struck me because I've said it so many times, was coaching his own child, which is a whole another subject.

I'm not a great actor, but I'll try to do it. Cars, you gotta have fun out there. You gotta have fun out there. And all the kids were saying, particularly his son, man, dad, coach is really uptight right now. So you can, which of us have, and said, oh, I only want Johnny to have fun. I only want Janie to have fun.

If they see you on the sidelines and your body language is conveying you take this really seriously. Or you're out of character exactly. Yeah. They can take, the kids are gonna pick that up and then they're playing the as they go through high school, college sometimes, because they should play the sport.

Parents want me to, as opposed to choosing to play the sport. And our kids do go through some changes. I had a college [00:47:00] student say to me, coach comes to me and says, you know what's wrong with Johnny? He was a senior in college, when he was a freshman, he would around throw a wall for this team.

Now he's showing up physically, mentally, he's someplace. And I say to Johnny, what's going on? He said let me give you an example. When you asked me my first day of college, who am I? He would've said, I'll make up a name in a sport. I'm John Smith, the basketball player. Now it's four years later, and if you asked me who am I?

I'd say I'm John Smith who likes to play basketball. Do you hear the difference? Yeah. Went back to Kosh and said, look, here's the issue. John Smith is changing. That's good, right? We want him to change. Now we have a choice. We can either coach. Parent him with who he is today, not who he was, who he want him to be, who he may be, or without compromising our principal’s coach, maybe it's not a good fit for the team anymore.

But I see a lot of parents, I see a lot of coaches get angry with their kids because they're changing, and in high school, college, that's our role as [00:48:00] parents to help them change. And if we don't give a consistent message, that's okay. Had so many college students say, I'm playing this sport because I should be playing it.

My parents invested a lot. They want me to, it has a lot of meaning to them. And if I've learned anything, and this would be true for me or you, and anything we do, if we're not doing it 51% because we choose to do it, not cuz we have to must, I don't think it's ever a hundred percent and it just doesn't work out at some point it catches up with us and so that's why, as a parent perspective, voice of reason. . Easier said than done is to me what I ask parents to think about before they decide what choices they have with their son or daughter. Yeah, that's good. . 

[00:48:43] John Boruk: Dr. Joel Fish Center for Sports psychology. If people wanna check out your website, what do they go to?

[00:48:51] Dr. Joel Fish: It’s www dot Psychology of Sports. Sports Singing. Okay. Psychology of sport.com. We'd be happy. Email Joel Fish. The [00:49:00] name j o e l f i s h. The number three, the numeral three aol.com. Okay. 

[00:49:04] John Boruk: Is there a definable sign when the parents should say, maybe we should look into this? 

[00:49:09] Dr. Joel Fish: I think if everybody has a bad day, but if they see some significant changes in their daughter or son eating habits, sleeping habits, grades drop, performance on the field, drop.

Break up with an important relationship so and so just isn't himself. He herself more significantly more withdrawn that then I think reaching out for help can really give the parent some tools in which to deal with the daughter or the son, or give the son or daughter, and that's usually the barometer, the formula.

That I would say to parents or to your listeners.  

[00:49:47] John Boruk: All right, Joel, thank you so much for coming on. Great seeing you, the program, doing this episode. I'm glad that we can finally get it squared away. The schedule's finally worked out, but it's a very important topic. The mental, [00:50:00] probably more so than anything physical.

In our society. So I'd love the fact you came on here and you addressed it. And if you're out there listening and you like how, the advice that Joel gave you, please go out there give us a review. Tell us what you think. It goes a long way towards bumping us up the rankings and up the charts.

And we'll just by doing that, we'll get even more listeners onto the. To the podcast. All right. Thanks to all of you. We're gonna wrap up our episode with our quote of the week. This comes from Clemson football coach Dabo Sweeney, who says, “Don't worry about criticism from people that you wouldn't seek advice from.”

Not a bad choice of words from the two-time national champion coach. All right. Thanks to all of you for listening, and we will hope you'll join us next time.