Your Voice Becomes Their Inner Voice (w/ Dr. Lennie Waite)

Chad Kutting: Welcome to the struggle bubble. I'm Chad Kutting
Craig Surgey: And I'm Craig Surgey
Chad Kutting: On today's show, I want to welcome Lennie Waite. Lennie has over a decade of experience working with and studying elite performers. she has been an All-American athlete at Rice University. She played soccer, ⁓ track, did cross country, and also represented Great at the Olympic Games, World Championships, European Championships. And if that's not enough, she also has her PhD in Industrial Organizational Psychology is a certified mental performance consultant. Dr. Waite, thank you for joining us.
Lennie Waite: Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.
Chad Kutting: Definitely the most overqualified guests that we've had. So Craig, please be on your best behavior.
Craig Surgey: was gonna say that is the longest intro I think we've had with qualifications, 100%. And Lennie knows where Loughborough is, which nobody else on this, or maybe Ricky did know where Loughborough is, but very rare.
Chad Kutting: Well, knows how to say it. was ⁓ the first episode we ever did. Craig was quizzing me on how to pronounce certain cities in England and I didn't perform very well.
Lennie Waite: Yeah. Well, honestly, my favorite one was when I lived in Teddington with my now husband, Chiswick.
Craig Surgey: Luga Baruga.
Chad Kutting: Chiswick
Lennie Waite: Hahaha!
Chad Kutting: I'm not even gonna ask how you spell it.
Craig Surgey: Yep.
Lennie Waite: You spell like you would say Chiswick.
Craig Surgey: Yeah, you say it.
Chad Kutting: Okay. No silent letters or anything. I grew up the right way, labour Well, it's awesome to have you on. think as we look at your background and we were introduced through Joe Karlgaard who I worked for at Oberlin College and who you work with at Hite EQ. We'd thought it'd be a great guest to have on just to talk about all aspects. We have the sports and performance psychology aspect. You're a former
Lennie Waite: it. ⁓
Craig Surgey: same way you spell colour.
Lennie Waite: Bye.
Chad Kutting: we're all still athletes at a high performance level, a mother. So you're in that struggle bubble of you've seen many different things and I'm sure being approached by many different people on, how do I handle X, Y, and Z situations? Why don't you give us a little bit in your own words of what you're doing now and how that athlete background has translated into a career.
Lennie Waite: I have a private practice. So I work with high school college pro athletes on aspects of mental performance, from transitioning from high school to college sports, transitioning from college to pro sports, transitioning out of. professional or even high school or collegiate sports and you know all the struggles that go with trying to perform your best and of course in those journeys I communicate a lot with parents. I communicate with parents who often times have more anxiety or more concerned than their child ever is. So I spend some time reminding parents that know actually kids are pretty resilient and they take on the feedback from the people around them and if sometimes as a parent you put on a strong face and you tell them like, you know what, it's gonna be fine, we're gonna figure this out, they'll take your lead. ⁓ That's probably the number one tip that I give parents all the time is like, you your response to their loss or their injury or them not getting what they want actually is more powerful than any other person's response. As a parent, you often are the one that the child is looking for for that informational feedback and they're kind of looking like, what is the emotion of my parent? And I'll take that on. And if it's like, you know what, no big deal, like you got it, ⁓ that's good. And I oftentimes think of my mom where she was like the best at being like, everything's great, you're wonderful, like you got this. And I would be like, I was about to cry, but I guess I'm not going to anymore because the person who loves me best tells me that it's all fine. ⁓ So I try to channel her and her lighthearted approach to all of my sporting events. ⁓ And then, and then I also with Hite I serve as a chief science officer there. What we're trying to do is really make mental performance more accessible, more sustainable, more objective and a real central part to an athlete's journey. So one of the things that I see a lot and even college and pro athletes is I think like, man, I wish like, I wish you would have just kind of spent more time working on the mentality of what it meant to be. ⁓ a motivated athlete that had a focus on sustainability and more of those long-term goals, which think is injected into athletes at a little bit younger age, but it forms who they are in those college and those pro ages. ⁓ So with HITE we're working on developing and training some of those mental skills in younger athletes and then helping college and pro continue to work on those skills, measure those attributes in athletes so they can be more meaningful, ⁓ often. you know, the saying is if it doesn't measured, you're not really spending time working on it. So to elevate aspects of that mental performance to the same level that we focus on physical performance, because I think we all know that it's not always the most physical athletes or the best, ⁓ best talent, most talented athletes that make it, but the ones that can endure the most number of failures or get back up again or see the bright side of things. And so at HITE we're really focused on. bringing that to the forefront of ⁓ teams, programs, and schools that we work with.
Chad Kutting: It's just such an important mission there.
Craig Surgey: Dude, that's such a big... Yeah, I was just saying the same thing, Chad I mean, we just came from a dance weekend. So just so big, just that psychological. And you made that point early and I've this on the show before, of when I'm coaching and there's an injury, especially the babies seven, eight, nine, 10, that age range. I never ever run out to the field unless it's something serious, right? Very unlikely at this age. Broken arms, yes, we get obviously serious, et cetera. But That reaction from the coach or the parent is so key. And I think from that young age, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, ⁓ it does translate all the way up because then they can, when they're conscious, they know that, it's a little knock or it's a bruise or whatever it is. And it just gets taken back up off the field. They're not looking for somebody. Then I see other players that need that interaction to move forward. And I'm like, dude, this, you're one. One part of me is you're telling me you want to go play this high level. The second part of me is you're going to struggle with that because if you're not going to get through this, you are going to really struggle at a top, top level. And then you touched on that point about the mental strength of we fail way more times than we succeed in sport. Way more. Just the emotional and chemical reaction we get of success just dissipates all the other failures. And you just got to keep, it's so hard to train that. So it's really cool that that's, know, that's what you do. It's awesome. It's such a tough thing. Such a tough thing.
Chad Kutting: So when you were growing up, Lennie, you mentioned your mom being that inner, her outer voice becomes your inner voice over time. I'm curious as you get into, you played soccer growing up, you're on the world stage in the steeplechase. Tell us a little bit about the in-between as you, ⁓ what motivated you growing up and when did you identify as an elite performer versus just having fun and out and grinding?
Lennie Waite: Okay. I mean, I love that question. like I look, my parents have kept a lot of my like, you old school projects and yeah, there are like little books that I wrote when I was a kid about going to the world, playing in the World Cup or playing in the Olympic game or competing in the Olympic games. But I don't think I really knew what that meant. And I think I was always so focused on what was the next thing that I needed to do or when to make it to the next level. like. in high school, like how do I win an SBC soccer championship or how do I win an SBC championship? ⁓ I wasn't thinking, I guess like, you people threw out Olympics or, you know, World Cup for soccer. wasn't, didn't think about that on a daily basis ever at all. It was always about that next step. ⁓ And I think in high school, that was so much, so focused on trying to become an NCAA level athlete. And I was recruited for both and, ⁓ went to Rice to play soccer and ultimately was recruited off of the soccer field to run. And even when I transitioned to college running, never, I actually thought like, ⁓ it would be so great to contribute to the team. I honestly think my goals, I kind of softened my goals once I got to that level, because I realized it's really hard. And I would see these athletes and I think I thought they must have like a... hidden third lung somewhere, some type of superhuman talent, because I honestly just thought I was too normal to ever be an Olympian. And it wasn't until my coach kind of pulled me aside and was like, hey, you know you're really good, right? And I was like, haha, yeah, I'm good. And he was like, no, for real, you could be great if you put yourself in a spot to be great. And I think he challenged me in the next race instead of going out in the back and like. seeing what you can do, like go out in the front and see if you can hold on to a win. And and honestly, like from a coachability perspective, if someone believed in me, whether it was my high school soccer coach or my college running coach, I was like, well, if they believe in me, like why would they, they have no incentive to lie to me. That would be strange. And so I would, I would risk it. And so I think I had some real positive coaching that allowed me to strive for the next thing. And It honestly wasn't until my fifth year at Rice, after I'd become an All-American, my track coach looked at me and he said, you know what, you can go to Europe and you can make a little bit of money running. I was like, that sounds like an amazing job. That sounds like a great job. But I was so focused right on making conference final, winning a conference championship, making an NCAA championship, podiuming at NCAA. I think I, and even, so through all of that, it was like, what do I need to do next? What do need to do next? ⁓
Chad Kutting: That's perfect.
Lennie Waite: I never sat down and said, you know, I want to be an Olympian. Tell me how I'm going to get there. It wasn't until I'd become an All-American that my coach was like, well, after the NCAA, there's really only the world stage. So like, what do you want to do there? And I was like, I guess let's, I don't know, let's dabble in it and see, see what I can do.
Chad Kutting: Now tell us a little bit about the steeplechase because that's one that I don't think a lot of people are familiar with. I don't think it's done at the high school level. Not even, it's just NCAA.
Lennie Waite: Not in Texas, some states have like a 2K steeplechase that they do in high school. It's not a Texas high school event, just NCAA, yeah.
Chad Kutting: But you're not like growing up as a kid saying I'm going to be a steeplechase runner. So what, what type of athlete gets pulled into a steeplechase opportunity?
Lennie Waite: No. Yeah, so I would say an athlete who has pretty good range, so can run a good mile or 1500, has the endurance to contribute in cross country in the 5K, but has a little bit more of like a dynamic style or more maybe coordination or athleticism than a traditional, just somebody who was born up in the track and field world. So because of my soccer background, ⁓ I was a little more dynamic, used to stopping, starting, cutting, changing directions, probably had a little bit more power in my legs just from the developing as a soccer player and all of that transitioned really well to the steeplechase once I had enough endurance to run the 3,000 meters. So for me, that was the hardest part, actually having enough mileage in my background, wrapping my head around, running hard for that amount of time. ⁓ But the barriers were, they were fun. It's like not that different than the type of athleticism required in soccer.
Craig Surgey: It's wild, two miles. I mean, I'm sure you're pushing like a three quarter pace, right?
Lennie Waite: Well, yeah, so I'm, I was running, I I ran 9:35 for 3000 meters. So that's right around ⁓ just over minute mile pace. ⁓ over you Yeah. Yeah. 35 barriers, seven of them over water. You know, you, you, that water barrier, if you've ever seen it empty, it's like slanted. So, ⁓ you know, you can get waist deep if you take it wrong. Yeah. I had a few face plants. ⁓
Craig Surgey: jumping over hurdles, getting your feet wet, pushing.
Lennie Waite: So it's a real test of both the endurance, athleticism. There's a little bit of decision-making. You have to like, can you spot the barrier? Where are you gonna hurdle? How are you gonna do that effectively and efficiently? So it was fun.
Craig Surgey: How high is that hurdle, by the way?
Lennie Waite: ⁓ gosh, it's not actually that high. I wish I could remember. was like 36 inches.
Craig Surgey: It it looked yeah about three feet it looks pretty high. Well maybe it's just because it's you know a normal hurdle is kind of skinny which kind of takes your eye off it. This thing is like a full-on two by four piece of wood that you're trying to get over.
Lennie Waite: So that, is the dangerous thing, right? If you clip it, like you clip a traditional hurdle, the hurdle goes down. You don't, you clip this, like that thing doesn't go down. Yeah. There's no room for errors and you can't misjudge it.
Craig Surgey: You go down. Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Kutting: beauty of track and field, it's a, ⁓ are on a team, it is a psychological exercise. You can always go fast. It doesn't get easier. You just go faster. And it's that training. ⁓ you think that the track and field side led you into the psychology? ⁓ did you, ⁓ you're in school in psychology, but also doing track. Do they go hand in hand?
Lennie Waite: Yeah. Yeah, totally. mean, you think about, yeah, I think there's a lot of sports. mean, all sports have a psychological element, but I think about track and field. You're on the start line. There's nowhere to hide. There's a result directly connected to your name. It's going to be better or worse than your previous result. It's very, metrics-based. ⁓ There's, you if you have a bad day, everybody knows there's nowhere to hide. I spent, you know, honestly, I spent a lot of my high school career, like scared to race. Like I would sometimes think like, ⁓ maybe I could just like hide and like not go to the race. And I was really good. I won most of my races and I had nothing to fear. And in college, I actually fell in love with the process of, of not only training, but also competing. And I think when that flipped for me, I was thinking like, man, it's so crazy. This is like, harder than what I was doing in high school, yet it's much more fun. ⁓ Just because I happened to have a coach that like shifted my mindset from what could go wrong, like what if I lose, what if I disappoint myself, what if I don't run as fast as I want to, to like, if today's my best day ever? Like my training's been fire. Like what if today is the day where I run what I want to run? And he, you know, he... joke like race day was like opening presents on Christmas morning, ⁓ the excitement and you might get something great and it could be the best day ever. just like he instilled joy of racing and competing. And also, you know, if I had a bad day, the first person put their arm around my neck and tell me I did great was him. So the fear that I had had growing up, whoosh, went completely away. I truly felt like the track loved me. most of the time.
Craig Surgey: Yeah, you got to dig into that Chad or I will.
Chad Kutting: I'm going to go right there because I'll say selfishly, I have three kids. My oldest runs track this year was introduced to the 400. Similarly, like at the start of the season. can't do this. This is longer than I've ever run. It's really difficult. And that first time that she finished the 400 with, you know, a good cadence that just the look on her face and the way she opened up. But one of the hardest things for our kids right now is they've put pressure on themselves and We started this podcast to try and talk out loud. So we're not putting the pressure like why let's be in it for the right reasons and support. ⁓ but they're, we're seeing more and more kids emotionally break down in games, ⁓ in baseball, if after a strikeout or an error right. They're, they're just dejected, I don't remember that much growing up. Maybe, I mean, we're, we're boys don't cry. There's a whole different 80s generation there that we can touch on way later. it feels like that pressure on the kids right now is so great. And I love the way you said that it took a coach to kind of change that philosophy or the outlook of an versus a burden. What would ⁓ be recommendation to parents and coaches right now and how to inspire that in our kids to relieve a bit of that pressure?
Lennie Waite: Yeah, well, I'll start off by saying, even, like, when we were young athletes, we had the benefit of just not seeing what other people were doing as often. And so I think that's still one of the things that I haven't figured out, like, how do I empower them with, having access to information while also, hiding? the comparison journey. Cause I think one of the things that I hear from athletes all the time is they're judging their metric of performance based off of what they're seeing on Instagram or the rankings that are being published. And I always felt really fortunate. Like I had to wait for the newspaper to come out to know where I was ranked. like, didn't really know those people. I didn't know what they were doing on training because they weren't vlogging about it. And I could stick to what-
Chad Kutting: Exactly.
Lennie Waite: I needed to do for myself more easily. know, still the temptation to look at other people's training and do it, but I think that's a huge thing now is if they have this moment of doubt, instead of thinking about like what they need to do for themselves to make themselves a better athlete, most of their instinct is, well, what is the person that is better than me doing? And what is their coach having them doing? And maybe I should do that instead, which I then think makes it even harder to get back to. Like how do you focus on your own journey? How do you take your ups and downs, especially with kids? Like you actually don't want to be super good when you're 10 or 11 or 12. Like I would much rather you be ⁓ average, know, above average just, but have like things to chip away at. But because they can see what those best kids are doing, they're more impatient than they used to be. Cause there's just more, more easy, it's easier to compare themselves. ⁓ And then they get away from doing what they need for their own developmental trajectory. Like we all know puberty hits at a different time span for every single athlete and that impacts development massively and you can't rush it or slow it down. You just have to see what your body's gonna do. And that's a hard lesson to teach kids of like, that kid is maybe gonna get stronger and faster quicker than you are, but your time will come. We just don't know when. ⁓ So I feel like we force things more now and we compare more. So I try and one, take kids away from that and tell them like, you are your own metric of success. So like, what did you do last year? What do you want to do this year? How do you want to improve? ⁓ And if they can stay, if I can continually bring them back to that point, it's much easier to make progress. ⁓ And then also reminding them like, The purpose of like the true purpose behind sports is like joy and fun. And it seems cliche to say that, we get so far away from that. And as soon as that leaves, think, okay, well, let's take a step back. Let's think about like what made it fun originally and let's focus on that again. And it's all about the process. The other stuff will come again. But again, like patience, the need for instant rewards, there are a million things that make that. Every year that I work as a sports psychologist, I feel like those lessons become harder and harder to teach athletes.
Craig Surgey: Yeah, I mean, you just ticked every single box that we've been dealing with over the last year, two years of doing this podcast. mean, my number one always is the love of the game. A kid will self-train if they love what they're trying to do. Second part to that is, and we go through this all the time and it drives me absolutely insane, is as a coach in youth development, it's not about you and trophies. Your time has gone. Like, stop trying to, you know, manipulate games, win games, do certain things to win a game. Like, it's just such bullshit. It's the kids that need to be developed and learned. And then like I said, the biggest thing out of everything you said, the coach that actually said, dude, this is like opening Christmas. This is insane. Like, you get the chance to be out there and show everyone. what you can do and it may not be your day today but this is the best you've got at this moment in time enjoy every single minute of it and we talk to lots of coaches and we all say the same thing you never know when it's going to be your last game your last race you're like you have no idea so as a parent sit back and applaud and enjoy and encourage and have a good time like just you'll want as i tell a lot of the high school not in a negative way but tell the high school kids you'll want to enjoy your way of never playing again Like don't take that lightly. Like give everything you've got, but it could all be over in one by tackle, one by challenge, one ACL, whatever. So enjoy every single minute of it. And it just, it kills me. And I love how you mentioned about, we never knew what people were training either.
Chad Kutting: ⁓ have the ⁓ social pressures now of if you're not on Instagram or TikTok or Snapchat or whatever, then ⁓ you're cast aside or the stigma. Is there advice for the on ⁓ how to handle
Lennie Waite: You know, luckily my children are still young. So like, you know, there are, there are great recommendations on it. I think every research study that they've done, I think taking away the phones from the kids has resulted in much greater social connection, reduced anxiety, better sleep. I don't think, I mean, my big thing is, is I joke that when my kids are older, they're going look at me they're going be like, mom, you used to get on social media every day. You know, that can kill you. Like smoking, like when my mom tells me that she used to smoke and I'm like, mom, you used to smoke, that could kill you. And she's like, yeah, well, we didn't know back then. I'm like, I just have this dream that one day I'll be like, yeah, like in college, like we had unlimited social media and like people used to post and there are all these platforms. Mom, that's so dangerous.
Chad Kutting: It's as somebody whose first main tech job was at Facebook. And one of the main advertising points is, you know, people are spending an average of four hours a day. And this was, I mean, that number is probably outdated by a lot right now. Uh, and you look at that and I had the same conversation earlier this week about smoking. My, my aunts would, would smoke and I'm like, I would be the kid and like, you know, you know that you're killing yourself, right? You're, killing your lungs, your lungs are going to be black. But then I find myself.
Lennie Waite: works now, yeah.
Chad Kutting: Right. With the comfort of, ⁓ I'm just, just one more scroll through Instagram, one more, and then modeling that for my children. That's where I, we were trying to have a bit more of a movement here of being deliberate and mindful of being in the moment. Which it's going to take all of us, it's going to take a community to actually, actually empower that so that our kids feel comfortable enough to stand up and not be on their phones and not compare.
Craig Surgey: It's hard though, right? It's hard because how else do you get out there that you're successful in whatever you're doing? Right, when we were kids, you didn't take trophies into school, obviously, you know, that crap, but you were on a team with your buddies and to your point, Lennie, it was like, you know, the newspaper was where the results were, who played this weekend, whatever, and everybody knew then the minute the word got around, right, it was, you know,
Lennie Waite: Mm-hmm, it is.
Craig Surgey: it was whispers and everyone knew who won what or whatever. Now, admittedly, it's immediate, but there's part of that. I mean, this is I'd love to get your viewpoint on this. My kids dance, right? So it's a different industry, entertainment industry. So they they don't need Instagram and crap. But as they get older into the industry, that's basically their resume. Right. If the shows they go to, the auditions they go to, you know, all those things. And that's how they get seen, right? Reels of not even YouTube anymore, but the social media side of it. And it's so hard because that is part of their journey. You know, from your viewpoint, that is super unhealthy, I presume, but I'd to get your feedback.
Lennie Waite: Well, you know, I also think there's there's different like they've even done some studies on like engagement behaviors. So like passive engagement versus active engagement. So if you're posting it and actually using it for two way and kind of communicating people, it's actually healthier than if you're just sitting there and scrolling. ⁓ And then I completely agree. mean, I have athlete right in pro athletes is part of your contract. Like you legit are also you have to post, you have to do these media events. So I'm never going to tell them like. I want them to be as successful as their job at possible, but how do we facilitate this so that it doesn't ping on like the anxiety centers in your brain? And is it having someone support you do those media posts? Is it limiting ⁓ any time on like the explore page or the scrolling? So I think there are certain techniques. I'm definitely not like an all or nothing. I'm like, what is something in moderation that is healthy? And how can we create an awareness where you know that you are getting to this point where like you just watched something and maybe you just felt like, ⁓ that just like increased my anxiety. I'm gonna close my phone right now. I don't need that anymore. ⁓ Because the best tool is to learn the skills of self-regulation for you. And I mean, have great stories of working with, you know, really good high school athletes who, you know, I gave them the experiment of like, let's spend three days off of it. Like, I'm not gonna ask you to spend a whole week and just tell me how you feel. And I feel way better. I'm like, okay, so now you know that and you've given yourself like that feeling, how are you going to take that knowledge and be more responsible with your use of it in the future? So trying to empower the athlete. But yeah, I'm like, it's, non-realistic to delete all social meet. Like you're, you can't, you end up getting like, you have FOMO to the extreme, you're left behind. People are like, wait, you didn't see that? It was all over social media. And then you're like, oh, now I'm kind of anxious.
Chad Kutting: Right
Craig Surgey: Yeah.
Chad Kutting: ⁓ yeah, that balance.
Craig Surgey: Yeah, we're trying to do social media training more so now because it is the entertainment world and stuff like that and treat it as part of the job. Right. You go on for a block period of time, you upload whatever you need to upload and then you're off again. You don't need to keep going back and seeing how many likes and all your comments and all that kind of crap. And also we've advised most everybody under the age of 18, basically your parents do just honestly, number one, there's a bunch of creeps out there. So number one, know, parents monitor all social media and they're the ones doing the posting so the kids don't get suckered into it at young age and who knows the scariest stuff that can go on. But we try to do it, build it out that like, yes, as a soccer player or whatever, yeah, put your reel out there, but very short period of time. the industry now, I don't know if you know, but like when you go to the showcases, it's all QR code based. So that's what collegiate are looking for, right? It's like, here's my profile, 5'10", you know, height, weight, whatever. This is my club and here's my QR code with my reel, which used to be us sending videotapes and that kind of stuff, but same but different, but it's also scary. I'm letting that all out there into the wild, all at the same time to thousands of people.
Lennie Waite: Okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Chad Kutting: of the ⁓ that we keep touching on is as parents, we want to continue to give advice or live vicariously through the kid. And the car ride home is the big topic. Positive Coaching Alliance hits on it. Many ⁓ groups have, ⁓ can be more damage done in that car ride home than people realize. I want to tackle it from two sides. One is, can you help parents understand ⁓ feeling of the need to have that conversation?
Lennie Waite: ⁓ yeah.
Chad Kutting: and what they're really trying to accomplish versus circling back on, I could tell my kids a thousand times, you know, X, Y, and Z, do this, this, and this to improve, but a trusted coach or mentor or teacher may carry even more weight of just signaling that identifying a skillset. just like both sides of the, how can we be better as parents and what are we feeling when we're trying to give that advice?
Lennie Waite: Yeah, so I think a lot of parents are trying to, like, they're trying to process the game themselves, right? They watched it, they saw good things, they saw bad things, they have ideas, they have tips, they have maybe frustrations ⁓ that they want to get out and communicate. Like, a parent is still a human with eyes that has seen a game. So I don't fault them for that. I think where they need to pause is like, and I personally have to do this too, is thinking, okay, what emotion am I feeling? and what emotion is my child feeling and kind of around winning or losing. And I will say as a psychologist, one of the hardest times to work with somebody is when they're down because they're not open to feedback, they're frustrated already, you're gonna shut them down harder. So if someone comes to my office and they've just had the worst day ever, I'm not like, tell me about your worst day, let's talk about it. It's like, no, how do we shift the conversation so I can kind of get that tension to float off their body a little bit? have them open up and find something positive to intervene. So the number one lesson of a parent is like, if your child lost and you feel like their emotion is a little like upset and intense, honestly, this is where you do like, hey, what do you want to do tomorrow? What do you have coming up at school next week? Like you have to go somewhere else. And I think that can be hard as a parent because you might want to tell them like, it's okay, people lose or the referees were bad or your coach was bad. They don't need to hear any of that. It's okay. for them to sit in that emotion and process that emotion. That is actually an incredible skill to learn. You can ask them, how are you feeling? I'm feeling frustrated that we lost. I'm upset that we lost. And you can tell them, that's OK. I'm frustrated and upset that you guys lost too. I feel that way too. And let them be. ⁓ You know what? And then if they've won, there is an opportunity to be like, you worked really hard today, and I saw that out on the field. And you can give them a couple of kudos of. of you chased every ball down, you got back defending, you can give them some of the positive tips to reinforce that, because they feel good and they're going to want to take that on. And you can even give them a little instruction of like, man, that one time that defender beat you, if you would have had your eyes or changed your positioning, you can give them a little more feedback in that moment, because they're like, we won and I'm feeling great. And like, yeah, you're right. I can be even better. And then that's still enough. And then transition again. Like, yeah, what do you want to do tonight?
Craig Surgey: I love that. I love that because the amount... Yeah, I mean, it goes back to it, right? It's like, oh yeah, cream. But then I think as a lot of the parents, the kids, so you know, the weekend just passed, the kids have already forgot. It's Monday morning, we're at school. Like they... What did we do yesterday? Like that's where their heads at. And I think it's a lot of the, again, the kind of vicariously for your kids scenario of...
Chad Kutting: Let's go get ice cream.
Lennie Waite: ⁓ yeah.
Craig Surgey: Well, what if, and I'm like, dude, if they've already forgot, you should have absolutely have already moved on. 100%, I did this weekend, my kid screwed up in one of the group dances, she missed a hold, she came straight off the stage, I came up to her, I'm like, damn, she's like, yeah, missed it. All right, until the next one, I gotta get changed. That was it, she didn't, for less than a second, acknowledged, yep, I missed it, screwed up, I gotta get moving.
Lennie Waite: I mean,
Craig Surgey: I'm like, yeah, dude, that will take you way further in life than all the success you're getting right now.
Lennie Waite: Yeah, yeah. And I love that because I think we tell these kids like, know, the Ted Lasso phrase of be like a goldfish, but then we're the ones that are like, we're like harping on like what they could have done better. It's like, ⁓ my gosh, you're and yeah, I have to catch myself all the time. Like, take, take your own advice in this moment.
Chad Kutting: Yeah, exactly. I had one of those moments this weekend. We just started playoffs in Little League Baseball and the game didn't go as planned and there were some hiccups and you can point to umpires or specific plays or, we talked about this during training and you did the exact opposite. But that's not, I mean, they were upset in the moment. It's not helpful. And then to Craig's point, we had that game and then went to my daughter's soccer game and he had forgotten about it.
Lennie Waite: Hahaha It's not helpful. Yeah.
Chad Kutting: and we were playing catch again, baseball was the best sport again and just be there for them. I wanted to go back to just that stress, like we have the fight or flight when something's not going right and it's not the right time to engage. It's the right time to support but not go into detail. There's been some talk about how to identify the emotion, like naming, like this is anxiety, this is the stress, this is what's happening. ⁓ you found... ⁓ good ways to explain that to, and we're talking more on the younger side, less high school, but just finding names for it and explaining it to help them understand what's happening.
Lennie Waite: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, think that's where I do tell them, I, you know, encourage the kids, like, tell me how you're feeling right now. Like, what is it? Like, is it, but, and more, and I'm careful to use labels like anxiety, because I think one thing I hear a lot is, ⁓ my gosh, I have so much anxiety. And I'm thinking like, I think like, maybe you have worry or maybe you have nerves, and like, maybe you do have anxiety, but like, there's also like a clinical diagnosis for that, and that carries. ⁓ a label and there's a lot of things that we need to do around that. You can feel anxious without having anxiety. You can be nervous. can, ⁓ but the thing with my daughter, Cressida, she's almost seven and we oftentimes, she oftentimes tells me on way to soccer, like she feels the butterflies in her stomach. And I'm like, ⁓ are they like, are they the good ones? And she's like, well, they're a little scary, but I think they're gonna be good ones. So, you know, we talk about like, there's a lot of physical sensations with emotions, whether it's. where your throat is or what you wanna do with your shoulders or how your hands are feeling or what's going on in your brain. And that's, talk about glitter bombs going off in people's brains or butterflies in their stomach or feeling like an elephant just stepped on their stomach. Those are the terms that I use. And if they can explain how they're feeling physically, that's all that I need from them to help them either sit with that and realize it's okay to feel physically like that. Like I... Like people are always like, were you nervous at the Olympic games? Yeah. Just as nervous as I was when I was like eight or nine years old. Like honestly the same sort of it doesn't go away. I am just way better at not having an irrational reaction to that emotion. And that's what I'm trying to teach the kids. You can feel this way and you can actually sit with it. You don't have to tell mom that you're not feeling good enough and you can't compete. okay. And as a parent, you don't have to try to
Craig Surgey: Yeah.
Lennie Waite: yank that emotion out of them and like, it's okay for them to feel bad.
Craig Surgey: I love the butterflies in your tummy. I don't think people use those because I don't think our generation, don't think anxiety was a known, we didn't call it that right. It was stomach, know, butterflies in your belly kind of scenario. I miss that light language that means the same thing but to a kid's level. Again, my kids get it before they go on stage. I feel sick, da da da. And I'm like, dude, this is all good stuff. Like you're supposed to feel like that. It's a privilege to feel like that because you're to go and show what you can do and perform and do whatever. Like it's a good feeling. It's not a bad feeling. Like absorb it. Take it. Do it. Use it. Right. And I think we miss a lot of that. And I get really upset when again eight nine year olds like coach Condor I've got anxiety. My easy bro. You shouldn't even be able to say the word anxiety eight and nine like easy like you know.
Lennie Waite: Yeah.
Craig Surgey: Anxiety is a different thing to yours. It's diagnosed, it's not you just feel a little bit scared.
Lennie Waite: Yeah, yeah. that's, you know, those, and like the thing with kids is like, they can hold onto a label sometimes too tightly. And then you're doing the work of letting them know, actually, like maybe don't have that and they're okay. And then they can feel freer. And then there are times when the labels are appropriate, but it's a hard area to navigate.
Chad Kutting: So you both ⁓ played soccer at a very high level. I'm curious to get your take, Lennnie on the competitive soccer landscape right now, where there is a good amount of keeping up with the Joneses. ⁓ talked ECNL and all of other alphabet soup that I'm not still fully familiar with and are choosing not to understand. ⁓ is a coaching mindset of I need to have the best team in the region, in the division, in the country. And that's what we're training to do. And you can either handle that. And if you're not at that elite level, we're going to, we're going to go to the next, you know, boy or girl up. How can we balance the, aggressive right? The competitive coaching with the, let's meet the kids where they are and build them up. ⁓ I'm to see the conflict of what it means to be a competitive coach. and successfully navigate child psychology as they motivate themselves.
Lennie Waite: Yeah. So I actually think, right, a coach is like the true meaning of being a coach is developing an athlete. And that actually you don't develop someone using aggression. There's no way, you you look at all theories around learning behavior and it's all around positive reinforcement or like instilling like competence and autonomy in somebody. Like, it's a very kind of this. the basic of psychology of learning behaviors. Like what do you need to do for skill acquisition? It's a lot of positivity. And so you think about great coaches. Great coaches are developing talent and they're not aggressive. When I think about my great coaches, like the coach that, ⁓ I spent middle school in Singapore for a couple of years and so I didn't play. high level soccer and I showed up my freshman year of high school again and I basically needed a coach to get me back on the trajectory of being recruitable for college. And that was done through a lot of positivity, a lot of like, you have the work ethic and you have the deliberate skills and you have the focus and the intention to learn these skills, let's just create the time. I felt very supported, I felt like I was very focused on my strengths. Only coaches who used aggression were the ones that like made me cower a little bit, right? Like I truly loved the sport and was out there because I wanted to be out there. And when someone started yelling at me, it got very confusing to me. It was like, why am I getting yelled at? We're all like choosing to be here and trying our best. ⁓ And so the, but the landscape has shifted. I mean, especially in the NCAA, like developing athletes is dead. It's about recruiting talent and managing talent. And I think sometimes that's trickled down and some of these youth coaches now think they're just managing talent. They can shuttle kids in and out and they can yell at them if they can't handle it, they'll get the next kid. And they probably can because people are willing to spend enough money and put enough effort into it, but it doesn't mean it's right. so I like, again, will Jim Bevin, the coach at Rice, I talk to him every I look at his ⁓ and I always tell him like... I don't think there's an NCAA coach who has developed talent, who has taken the level of incoming athlete that you're willing to take and has gotten them to that level. And that is like his way of coaching. And I think there are a handful of other coaches who'd really pride themselves on actually taking a kid and instilling them with skills and confidence and optimism and developing, and that fuels their energy. I just think those people, there's fewer of them now.
Chad Kutting: It's absolutely crazy.
Craig Surgey: It's a change. It's changed so hard, so quick as well. And part of that is just the industry, right? And I'm not saying it's good or bad. These coaches now are three losses away from losing their job because of the way that this is shaken out. Right. And I talk about this.
Lennie Waite: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing. Like, yeah. You, way that coaches are incentivized. So like, again, I also defend coaches on this because sometimes NCAA athletes will be like, my coach yelled at me and they're going to cut me. I'm like, well, their paycheck depends on winning this next game. And so they, they might cut you, but that's not that necessarily that coach's fault. It's there. The reward structure for the coach is now also wrong. We're now giving bonuses for winning instead of like, Can we get bonuses for roster sustainability for reduced turnover? like, we have to redefine what success is so that we're empowering coaches to engage in behaviors that will ultimately lead to success but are not tied to wins and losses.
Craig Surgey: Yeah, retention rate for some reason isn't a winning model anymore, which is mind blowing to me. We talked to ⁓ our friend who's the pitching coach at Stanford. Pitching coach? Thomas is the pitching coach, right? At Stanford. And he talks about it a lot. Like he would have never have gone as far as he did in the pro game if he'd jumped ship after the first year when he didn't get many pitches. you know, he held out for four years and then in his year three and four, he got his, you know, his turn to start and stand up and, you know, went on to go pro and all that stuff. It's like if I had the opportunity, like some of these kids now that I go year one, I don't start and I don't throw a lot of balls or I don't bat, whatever, and I go straight back into the pool to try and go somewhere else. It's like we're missing kids because they just keep hopping and jumping. every year and now they can extend that out for five years six years we're also shifting the landscape so now we have an 18 year old competing against a 22 year old like that's a big or 23 in football that's a big physical difference right so we're I don't i don't know there's not enough time gone past yet if this is going to bite people the same time i do agree
Lennie Waite: Yeah.
Craig Surgey: with these huge football programs, these players, traumatic brain injuries, stuff like that, for playing and never made pro and now don't have enough money to live because they were a D1 footballer that got injured, never made money at the college and now can't go pro. They do deserve to get paid with the amount of money that comes in. I see kind of both sides of the coin, but going back to the coaching point, yeah, it kills me that retention doesn't get rewarded. And it kills me that we have to win to get bonus like there's something broken, really broken.
Lennie Waite: ⁓ Yeah.
Chad Kutting: Yeah, the NILs ruined a lot of things. I completely agree. Everyone has to get paid. But when you have head coaches at some great ⁓ soccer programs, basketball programs that are retiring because they wanted to build a team from that freshman to the senior level and that culture and camaraderie and a lot of that is built over time, over repetition and practices and a common understanding and common goal. When there's roster hopping every single year, or the fear of roster hopping, it's tough on both sides. As you look to ⁓ parenting now, you've mentioned a little bit about you catching yourself. to insert yourself coaches? Do you see coaches doing things in ways that you ⁓ wouldn't want your to be coached? How often are you getting that kind of advice or push ⁓ or pull, I say?
Lennie Waite: Mm-hmm. ⁓ Well, I think I'm getting asked questions about it a lot and I'm also seeing it. mean, there are things that I see on a, like there was a time my daughter, you know, even she plays with boys a lot and even the comments that they make about like, they, ⁓ like don't hold the ball like a girl. And I'm like, how are you saying that already? Like, right. And then she'll come ask me, she's like, mom, what does that even mean? And I'm like, that doesn't mean anything. They don't know what they're saying. so. Yeah.
Craig Surgey: I mean, you're holding the ball the same way a boy holds the ball.
Lennie Waite: Yeah, yeah. actually had to, I actually like was like, hey, we need to like kind of redo some of the wording around some of these like first grade boys. ⁓ And I'm trying to be, you I don't want to be like the mom that comes in hot. Like, don't you, don't you talk about, don't you talk about girls like that. But I'm also like, okay, we need like, let's move this, let's shift this language now. So there are things just around like gender stereotypes in sports that I'm like extremely aware of. And you know, my daughter will come home, she'll be like, hey mom, they said that like girls are not as fast as boys, but you're faster than dad. that like, I know.
Chad Kutting: Yes. Yes.
Craig Surgey: That's the best.
Lennie Waite: I I know. And she's like, so I'm like a little confused why they're saying that. And I'm like, Cressida, I'm confused too. Like, I don't know why. So this is all fun and games now, but in the back of my head, I'm like, this is so real. This is like why young female athletes like have a lot of problems. So I see that. And then on the, on the coaching side, ⁓ It's like a give and take. There's coaches that get very, very excited about seeing young, talented kids. And I'm like, how do you contain that excitement so that it's still, we maintain that motivation and that joy? And there's a little bit of cluelessness that I like to keep in young athletes. I want them to know they're good, but not exactly how good. And I also want them to know that there's probably someone on the other side of the city that could kick their butt at any moment. So there's just like, it's like this right ingredient of. feeling positive and excited enough, but knowing that like you could get beat at any time. I joke with Cressida, my daughter, I'm gonna send her to like an inner city Houston track meet and she's gonna race the 100 or the 200. She's gonna get rolled by some kids. And I think that'll be great for her if the challenge is appropriate. So where do you give them enough success, just enough dose to keep them motivated, not too much that doesn't tear it apart. So it is a real like... there is like a little secret to like the kind of success failure ratio and keeping the motivation going and doing it in a right way. And I feel like sometimes lucky that I have enough of this knowledge as a parent to expose them to the right environments ⁓ to keep it fun. But that's oftentimes when I see parents fail, whereas when they take a kid and they put them in either too intensive environment too quickly, and then they're like, well, like, you know, now my kid doesn't want to do it anymore. And I'm like, you like three levels too quickly. Yeah. Or when they're like, my kid is bored. I'm like, dude, you can challenge your kid in the backyard any day. But this is also like, I'm I'm, I'm the run, you know, 35 miles a week. I still stay fit. Like I'm, I make sure that I can ⁓ still play one one with my backyard ⁓
Chad Kutting: Skip the step. Yeah
Craig Surgey: Well, there's something to be said about that as well. if your kids see you doing it, they see that. That really does burn into their soul and they don't know, you know, subconscious learning, right? They see, well, if they're doing that, my dad's like 80 for sure. They've got no idea how old we are, right? They can't manage age. They're like, wow, if they're doing that, then I can definitely still, and let's go for a run together because I see my
Chad Kutting: Keep up.
Lennie Waite: ⁓ yeah.
Craig Surgey: parent doing it, right? So it's, I think that's a huge point that you make like, yeah, like, number one, I love the inner city stuff. I talk about it in soccer all the time being in California, let's go down to LA, you're gonna get your asses kicked by all the kids that live, breathe everything soccer, right? You think you're good in this area, the world's pretty big. So be aware. So I love, love that like, yeah, you need to
Lennie Waite: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Craig Surgey: There's challenges out there. Don't think you've capped. Ceiling always gets moved.
Chad Kutting: Let's talk a little bit about the work at HITE EQ right now. And where are you seeing the traction, right? Where the light bulbs are going off with the programs and also a little background of as you entered in these programs, what are you presenting the value proposition back to the athletes and coaches?
Lennie Waite: Okay. Yeah. Well, I'll focus mainly ⁓ on some of our high school markets, our high school sales right now. So one of the things that we do strategically, one, HITE is relatively new. sell directly to clubs or to schools. feel like ⁓ mental performance is often driven. Kids aren't waking up in the morning thinking like, you know what, I really want to work on my confidence. I wish they were, but it's often driven ⁓ a coach in a system. So we see success when we do it at the team level or at the club level. And we see the light bulbs in two areas. One, even just the process of onboarding kids onto our platform and asking them some questions about what goes on between their ears and how it impacts their play. They will even say after that initial assessment, like, man, I never really put those two things together. And if you can even just connect the dots and how you show up at practice or how you feel before a game or how you process a winner or loss. impacts your actual performance, like, bing, like point already. So that has been really rewarding to see. And then secondly, the way our platform works is coaches or whoever runs the platform get insights on the backend. So they get to see some of the things on how their athletes are doing, the trajectory of their athletes, where they need to instill more confidence, who might actually like think they're more competitive than they really are. And they get the dose of like having a little... quicker insight into what's going on in between the ears of their athletes and help them be more deliberate in coaching. So we've had a lot of feedback that it's just allowed them to have conversations around like what it means to show up confident, competitive and composed, what actually working on mentality looks like. Like it's not showing up and hoping that you're gonna play well, but there's some deliberate actions tied to that. And then ⁓ just forming the habit. They have habits around how they warm up, how they recover, how they do nutrition, how they fuel. This is just one more habit that can be inserted into that training week. That's something that will be helpful for them while they're in sports in high school and also in life beyond, whether or not they go ⁓ college. And so ⁓ had ⁓ these great aha moments where coaches have emailed us and told us like, man, you helped me figure this out for this athlete or I would have never known this about my team. ⁓ Now my team is actually like, talking about how they're gonna take this concept of self-belief and bring it onto the field. And that's all I want is just move the needle forward on mental performance for these younger athletes.
Chad Kutting: When we first, when Joe and I first talked about it and learning more about what you're trying to build, it's amazing that we, in the professional world, we go through these professional consultants that come in and there's managerial training and how to bring out the best based on the employee that you have. Being able to take that down to the youth and college programs, high school programs to help them identify their skill sets, talk a common language, bring them up, show the insights. I think it's just a phenomenal way to approach. performance and I love that you guys are taking the mental health aspect there.
Lennie Waite: Yeah. And yeah, you mean there are great trends, right? Even seeing like how athletes develop from freshmen to senior year, the difference between boys and girls when people are having dips, like, if we can actually, like we periodize so much training, like physical training. And I actually think there's a component of mental training when you think about what is your capacity as a freshman and you have, sometimes you have that nothing to lose mentality. And what is that like when you're a junior and you actually have... more to lose, but more brain capacity. Is that good? Is that bad? How do you manage that? So starting to uncover some of more of those like things that I think about on a daily basis, but I wonder, do these high school coaches when they're talking to that junior and that freshman, do they know like a little bit like what's going on in between their ears to help them get the most out of their performance on that day?
Chad Kutting: Absolutely.
Craig Surgey: There's something that I find really weird as well that has taken so long for this to come. I don't know it's been there for many years but to the mainstream is people always like reference Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, know, Steph Curry. I'm trying to think some soccer players that go through all this, Messi, those kind of players. They've been doing this forever. Like you watch their warm-up routines, headphones on, you whatever system they put in place.
Lennie Waite: ⁓ yeah.
Craig Surgey: It's all for this. There's nothing more physical except the normal endurance, those kind of things. But the actual technique side of their game, there's really not a lot else they can do except rinse, repeat. There's no more changes of how they hold the ball or whatever. It's all in between here. it kind of takes me back a little bit that it's taken so long because everybody wants to be Kobe. Everybody wants to be Michael Jordan. And they're like, wow, these guys are so mentally strong. They've been doing this since they were 12. mentally preparing themselves every single day to go and perform at the highest level. But we don't encourage that with 12 and 13 year olds every day that we coach. It kind of takes me back a little bit.
Lennie Waite: It's not sexy. Yeah, it's not sexy. It's not immediate. It's hard to quantify. It just doesn't feed into the culture that we want. There's no device telling them, ⁓ kudos, you hit your metric for today. Honestly, we're trying to incentivize it in some ways in what we've built in our app to make it fit ⁓ what kids like to consume these days. That's just, it's hard. It's hard to make kids want to do the thing that they can't really, it's not tangible.
Chad Kutting: Yeah, and that's a skill in and of itself. If we can teach the delayed gratification and the grit, the grind, the journey, we're teaching the right things. So one question before we go, just a parting thought is give advice out to the parents. What is the mental skill that you feel is most important that the parents, if they could focus on one thing just to develop in their eight to 18 year old right now, what would it be?
Lennie Waite: I oftentimes talk about like, it's probably around intentional control and focus, but the way that I talk about it is like, you as an individual have the choice to shine your light ⁓ a lot of things post-game or post-athletic performance. You can shine it ⁓ ⁓ you made a mistake, on what the referee did wrong. ⁓ You ⁓ this chance to kind of recreate this narrative based off of what you focus on. A lot of that is in your control. you can actually choose to focus on the things that you've done well, the areas that you want to improve, the data that you learned and what's exciting. And if we can help, and I kind of talk in the spotlight analogy, because I think kids kind of put the spotlight on a lot of these negative aspects and they, their attentional control and their focus is often on things that aren't actually going to move the needle forward. And if we can help recognize that there's flexibility in an athlete, to make a choice on what they want to focus on. Like they can choose. That is empowering and it helps them tell just a more positive story that's going to contribute to sustainability and longevity in the sport. And like, you know, I say this all the time, like there were so many races I could be like, ⁓ that was like so awful. I shouldn't show up again. But instead I thought about like, ⁓ man, that was rough and I made it around ⁓ I learned a lot and I'm to take that back to practice. And that narrative is so much more fun than like I suck. I was so slow today. I don't even know why I'm doing what I'm doing.
Chad Kutting: That was the conversation in our car last week, Lennie So I'm going to take this back to my 13 year old. She sets a new personal record. ⁓ you know, was it was a leader on the team and then came the car ride home was I'm so slow. I never want to do this again. I'm quitting track. This is terrible. And just all it took all my energy not to just, it was like, Hey, we're going to go get some ice cream right now. Let's go. Let's go. We'll talk about this in a little bit. I loved watching you out there. Let's go. Let's go somewhere else.
Craig Surgey: Hahaha There you go.
Lennie Waite: Yeah, will say I've had some irrational moments before and there was a time even as a professional where my, was a grown woman and my coach told me I wasn't allowed to come back to practice until I had until I could tell him why I was going to be at the track running. Cause I told him, I was like, I'm so, this is so stupid. I'm like old. I'm basically standing in a bikini on a start line. Like, what am I even doing with my life? And he was like, no, no, no.
Craig Surgey: Okay. You need to go today. Yes.
Lennie Waite: You're not allowed to come back until you tell me what you're doing out here and what it means to you. ⁓ So, yeah, it was. Yeah.
Craig Surgey: Yeah, that's great coaching though. Listen to know your athlete, right? That's great coaching. It's like, talk about all the time, control the controllables. You can't control the ref, you can't control the weather, you can't control those, right? So let it go. And then sometimes even when I'm mountain biking, I just got to get up the hill today. I am slow as shit. I just got to complete this and be done. And then we'll start again tomorrow. Great advice.
Chad Kutting: That is 100%.
Lennie Waite: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Kutting: Lennie absolutely enjoy the conversation and I'm sure we could talk for another hour or more. For information ⁓ on EQ, H-I-T-E-E-Q.com. We'll put some more information ⁓ the description of the podcast. Appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much.
Lennie Waite: Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me.
Craig Surgey: Thanks, Lennie.
Chad Kutting: please continue to follow us on Instagram, the Struggle Bubble Pod. We will post some highlights as we go on. And again, thank you to our guests, Lennie Waite and Mr. Craig Surgey I'm Chad Kutting We'll see everybody next week.
Craig Surgey: Adios!