The #1 Way to Help Your Athlete Increase Her Game Day Confidence

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the raising of the competitors podcast. I'm coach brief a mental performance coach for a girl athletes, and I am so excited that you're here. Whether you are a sports mom who is just getting going on this journey with your young athlete. Or maybe you have a lot of seasons under your belt. You're very experienced. This podcast is for you to help, you know, how to raise a girl athlete who is confident and mentally strong. And today we are talking about how did you just that in fact, we are talking about the number one way that you can help increase your athletes game day confidence. So I will go into what that is and how you can start helping your athletes with that game day confidence right away. But before we do, I want to give a shout out to a mom in our community. She actually posted this within our group for sports moms who are going through our signature mental training program called the elite mental game. So she said this the other day. She said we are a little behind in the program, but even still, the change has been incredible. My daughter played in her first basketball game since her broken nose on Monday and she was nervous. The team was tough to press all game. She started a little timid, but quickly was back to her normal aggressive play. She ended up scoring 16 points with three threes. The press was very frustrating for them, but she kept her head in the whole game. I was shocked that would have shut her down quickly before and they lost. But after the game, she said, you know what? I gave my best and I'm not upset. And she was in a great mood, the rest of the night, night, and day difference things. Aren't perfect all the time never will be, but they are so much better. I could cry. Thank you. So pretty amazing what this mom wrote about and pretty cool to see her athlete perform like this. And here's why it's awesome. Your athlete will face all sorts of challenges in their sports career. They will have injury. They're going to come up against tough teams. They're going to lose games. And this is a guarantee you actually can't prevent a lot of those things from happening to your athlete. And you won't want to. The best thing you can do is equip your athlete with the skills to handle them. So not only was this mom's daughter, she was injured. She was coming back from a tough injury. She was in a situation where it was hard for her. The team was tough. Then they lost, but to see her athlete be able to play with her head, held high with confidence and also productively evaluate her performance without beating yourself up. Is amazing. So nice job. Keep going. We're super proud of you. All right. Let's get into today's episode all about how to increase your athletes. Gave me confidence, just like this mom did. No. This looks like playing in games like your athlete does in practice. That's one like telltale sign that we are seeing confidence in your athlete when she practices and practices hard and plays well. And then she can do that in a game. Also a lot of times we hear from moms and from athletes that, you know, she plays really well in practice. When the pressure is low and then you get her in a game and she's also nervous and doesn't trust herself. Here's another way that you can see at game day confidence, she's nervous, but excited. She's not letting nerves control. Her. Whole being on not letting those nerves negatively impact her. She is feeling the nervousness and anxiousness, but she is using that as excitement to help her play. Well. The other way that we see game day, confidence is not already thinking she's going to lose or do poorly. So I also hear from moms that are saying things like she goes into that competition already, knowing she's going to lose, or she's finding out she's playing against that person and she's already, she's just out. You know, and that's, that's really tough. That's actually a lack of confidence and a lack of trusting in their abilities and in their training. On that note, GameDay confidence looks like trusting her training. She doesn't have to be the most perfect athlete out there. Nobody is, but she needs to trust her preparation. She needs to trust the training that she's put it put in and the coaching that she's received. And a lot of times athletes just don't when it comes to that game time. So your number one way that you can increase her game day confidence. This comes from. Years and years of research based methods and strategies is to know and stay in your role. Your role as her sports mom is to support her through your words. And specifically your words during four key phases of her athletic experience, I'm going to break each of these down inside this episode. So increasing her confidence through the words that you say in her day to day life. So the time where she's actually not competing or not pregame. Pregame or not post game. Her day-to-day life is super important. It's actually where she spends most of her time. What are you saying to her during those times, we'll go into some things that will help. Pre-competition that's the second phase. So about time before she goes out there and she competes during competitions. So she's out there doing her thing. What you are doing also impacts her. Post-competition what you say to her, that car ride home. Is one of the most influential moments in an athlete's career. And often it's not for a great reason. And so what you say and how you support your athlete post-competition is essential and how you support her game day confidence. So I'm going to break down all of these, but here's one thing that will also really help. We're going to go deeper into this. And our challenge that is happening next week. So we have a special what to say challenge specifically for moms of middle school athletes. So if you are a middle school athlete, mom, and you are looking for what to say before, during, after she competes, you want to be able to say the right thing without causing her to shut down or push back or give her, give you the eye roll or the mom. You have to say that because you're my mom. We're going to go into all of it in this three-day challenge. So you can register. For that at sports mom. Dot FYI Ford slash challenge. I know that's a mouthful, so we will link it in the show notes, but that's going to be an amazing challenge for you too. Attend with us. If you are a middle school sports mom. To know exactly what to say without nagging and without causing her to shut down. Okay. Here's why this is so important. Athletes who have parents who know how to support them in all four of these phases the day to day. The pre-competition the during competition and the post competition, they actually have a competitive advantage over those who don't. So, if you think about it, if your athlete has you, who knows what to say in those times and who knows how to best support her? She is going to actually show up more confidently. She is going to play better. She's going to be able to stop beating herself up and know how to productively process her performance, because you are creating that space for her athletes who don't have parents who do that. So who are, you know, saying all sorts of things in unintentionally. Adding pressure in situations or who are, you know, coaching from the sidelines and just doing these things that are actually adding more pressure to athletes. They aren't going to play their best. And so know that by you actually learning this stuff, you are impacting how your athlete shows up. And this is really cool because a lot of times we think, okay, we have to change our athletes. We have to get them to. Change their mind and get them to think more positively and they need to do all these changes. When in fact, you can influence her confidence more than you think. Just by changing your approach. Just by changing how you talk to her, she can show up differently in her sport and life. All right. If you leave it like this, the best way I can kind of drive this concept home is think of like those parenting courses. If you're like me, like parenting courses, when your kid was a toddler. Right. And you're like, okay, I've got to figure out how to get my toddler to stop, you know, throwing these big fits every time they don't get exactly what they want or, you know, going into this spiral over this little tiny thing. And so we invest in these parenting courses or at least that are run by these parenting books. And it wasn't the toddler themselves that was actually taking the course or reading the book. Right. It was us. It was the parent. And so what I learned in those courses, and maybe what you learned too, is that. By changing how I interacted with my toddler, how I responded to their tantrums, the questions that I asked, how I prepared the environment and how I planned ahead of time. It actually changed how they showed up. It was me like I had to do the work myself. In order to create the environment for my kid to thrive. And so when I changed my approach, when I changed how I talked and spoke differently to my toddler and how I regulated myself in those moments, That actually made the difference in how my toddler showed up. And so that's exactly what happens. It's the same exact concept that happens when you focus on what you are saying, when you stay you're in your role, when you know what your role is as for sports mom. You can actually influence how she shows up and Jacqueline. One of the moms actually in our program, the elite mental game, and she said this. Uh, the other day, she said, I feel like I've actually gotten the best results in this program because of the work I put in. That's how I'm seeing the good results with my kids, opening the space and remembering to be in my role is changing conversations and changing how they act at competitions and how they act with their teammates. That is spot on Jacqueline. Thank you for saying that. That's exactly what I'm trying to say. And so by you showing up differently, you actually can influence your athlete's confidence more than you think. So I'm going to break down these four. Um, phases of her athletic experience and just some tips on what's helpful and what's not helpful and why the, this phase is so important. So the first one, as you recall is the day-to-day. So this is where your athlete just is. Every day, most of the time, she's actually not competing. In her sport. She's not training, she's not in her. Pre-competition during her. Post-competition, it's just who she is. And that actually is a really key part to how she shows up in her sport. Because when you actually highlight who she is, Rather than just what she does. You are building her confidence. And I'm not saying that you just throw on this like empty praise, but I want you to think about your athlete aside from just the sport that she plays, who is she as a person? And what is she good at outside of her sport? What are her innate qualities inside the elite mental game? We call these her positive innate qualities, and we have moms come up with a list of. They're athletes positive, innate qualities. Is she kind is she generous? Is she funny, you know, like, does she light up a room when she walks into it? Is she. You know, committed to her goals, whatever these things are that you probably have known about her since she was a little girl, like those are the things that when we highlight those in our athletes, we're building confidence in them because we were highlighting who they are rather than what they do. When we focus more on what they do, we're actually lowering their confidence because we are praising something that is actually not. In their control. And when we are highlighting and praising. Things all the time that are not in their control, like wins, wins, and stops and accolades. All of those things that actually adds more pressure to our athletes because they don't know, there's not guarantee that they can replicate the performance to earn that. Achievement again, but when we highlight who they are, we are sending them the message that no matter what you do, you can go out. And you can be yourself. And my love won't change for you depending on if you win or if you lose, or if you get a game high total or not. And here's the thing we as parents, we're like, well, obviously, obviously I love her no matter what, but our athletes time and time again, are reporting that they feel a ton of pressure. Because at a subconscious level, they're connecting what they do with who they are just because they get so much recognition. And there's so much pressure and spotlight on these achievements. So in this day to day, you can actually just point out her positive, innate qualities. And that is like drips in a bucket that will help build her competence. Now let's move on to pre-competition. So I'm just going to really go through these pretty fast. But like I said, we go into detail inside that challenge for middle school sports moms. And so I will link the link for that below, where you can register for that three-day challenge, where we go through each of these phases and give you exact scripts that you can say in these moments to build your athlete's confidence. So pre-competition. The key here is to have a routine. This is the time that is potentially pretty fragile for athletes, because they're about to go do their thing and you'll see athletes, maybe get a little irritable. They'll kind of push you away a little bit. And as moms we're like, we just want to help. We want to tell them like, Hey, don't worry about it. You're going to do crate. And a lot of times what we're saying is making them more nervous or it's causing them to push away even more, adding more pressure, adding more stress, and then you kind of get those blowups right before she goes out competes. And then it's like, well, obviously she's not going to play her best. If she's emotionally dysregulated like this. So the key is to have a routine routine with your athlete. Um, we teach moms in our program to have their own routine routine, to regulate themselves, and then also to have routine with their athletes that they actually co-create with their athletes. So, um, if you have the opportunity to do that with your athlete, that is super special and it's something that your athlete can just rely on and it actually helps regulate them. If they know what to expect from you. Key here is that whatever you say to your athlete, make sure that it's short. Make sure. It's to the point and focus on something that's in her control. So not anything like, Hey, go win. Like you did last time or go, go score that many points or remember how big this competition is or like this team's pretty tough. Remember you got to make sure that you are aggressive on defense and like reminding her of all these things. That just overwhelms her. Athlete's say time and time again in our program, they do not like that, that they want something short. Something simple and focused on, in their control before a competition. During competition. Now this is when your athletes out there doing our thing. Like you actually don't have a whole lot of communication with her, right? But the thing is she knows where you are in the stands and she can read your body language. And so one of the biggest things that I want you to keep in mind during competition is to pay attention to your body language, especially when she makes a mistake. So if you are preaching like, Hey, mistakes are learning opportunities and it's okay to make mistakes. And really it's just a response to the mistake that matters. And then your athlete makes a mistake and you're like, oh gosh, you're, you know, slumping your shoulders, rolling your eyes. Like getting super tense. Then your words are not in alignment with your behaviors. And so just be very aware of what your body languages inside that competition moment also know that coaching from the sidelines. Most of the time does not help. And it actually creates a division between your athlete and her coach. So depending on like your experience with the sport, obviously if you've got a lot of effort, a lot of different sports moms in our community. So some that have played the sport before some who have coached before. And God, it's just like natural to want to coach from the stands. I'm telling you right now that it rarely is helpful. In fact it's more harmful than helpful. So, um, keep that to yourself. And if you do have some sort of like concern with coaching, then that's a whole different podcast episode, a whole different conversation on how to. How to approach that. But during competition, you are being the face that she needs and you're being the support that she needs. We ask parents just to ask their athletes. What do you need from me during competition? What do you like me to be the height? Mom? Do you want me to cheer for you? And then we asked them to bounce that out based on their personality. So that is pre competition. Last phase is the post-competition. Now this is like I said, one of the most important parts and your athlete is experiencing a variety of emotions after a competition, win, lose, played well. Didn't play well. And the key here is that no matter the outcome. The first part of this, we actually have a framework called love, L O V E. And that's an acronym that stands for let her lead open the space, validate her emotions, encourage inward, and we teach moms in our program to follow that framework, win or lose in order to have really good, rich, memorable in a good way. Post-competition routines. So I'm letting her lead us that first part and letting her lead looks like. Not attacking her right away with asking her a bunch of questions. The question you can ask her is, Hey, where do you wanna go eat? And, let that be the thing that opens the space and provides a good routine for her win or lose. Okay. Not like if you, when we're going out to a nice dinner and if you lose, you're not, because again, now we're getting back to attaching. You know, recognition and. Affection and love with outcomes. And letting her lead also looks like honoring what sh, where she needs to be in that space. A lot of times athletes tell us that they just need some time. They need a couple of hours just to kind of cool off and think straight, and then they want to talk. But if you are coming at them right away and wanting to talk, wanting to tell them what they did wrong, Wanting to point out all these things it's not going to be received well, and then you're going to relieve. Make it hard for you to connect with her later? The other thing about letting her lead is just to be that space for her to feel whatever she's feeling. At mere her emotions. You know, if she's happy, like you, you are. So you look so happy, you look so proud of yourself. If she's not, she's disappointed, just call it, call out what it is. You're disappointed that that didn't go the way you wanted it to go. You can just state the facts and your, her emotions. And even that will help her process. That post-competition time. Okay. So that's a little scratching, the surface of those four phases, but hopefully you've got some good tidbits that you can run with to start. And then of course, if you are a mom of a middle school athlete, join our challenge. So we can go a little bit deeper with this, but we've got the day to day pre-competition during competition. And post competition and the number one way that you can help increase her game day confidence is to know what your role is. Especially during these four times in two state in your role. So your role as her sports mom is to be that supporter and to know what to say, to help build her confidence. So if you're struggling with like, I really don't know what to say, use what we've, what we've talked about in the podcast episode, but also go sign up for that training. Or that challenge so that you can go even deeper and you can have some scripts that you can print off and having your back pocket. All right, moms. I hope that this was helpful. I am coach brief mental performance coach for girl athletes, and I will see you in the next episode of the raising elite competitors podcast.