Reebs on Pressure

The Unparalleled Performance Podcast focuses on helping individuals become more disciplined and committed to their goals in life, leadership, and faith. The host, Josh Reband, discusses the topic of pressure and how it affects athletes and coaches. He explores the difference between feeling calm and nervous in pressure-filled situations and the role of internal and external pressure. Reband emphasizes the importance of controlling what you can control and not comparing yourself to others. He provides five ways to alleviate pressure and feel calm, including controlling attitude, effort, and actions. He uses examples from basketball players Shane Battier and Elton Brand to illustrate the power of controlling one's own journey. This is the Unparalleled Performance Podcast. I am your host Josh Reband. Each week we'll feature guests who are ambitious and passionate about being more than the status quo because we all know that being average is the enemy to success. We will cover topics that will help you become more disciplined and committed to your goals in life, leadership, and faith. Now on to this week's episode and remember as iron sharpens iron so one person sharpens another. Enjoy the show. Everyone thank you for tuning in again this week. This is episode 19 of the podcast and if it's your first time joining us thanks for being here and for our returners it's great to have you back. If you would do me a favor before we get rolling today, if you would head over to Apple Podcasts and leave a rating and a review that would be fantastic. It would help out the algorithm and try and get this podcast into as many hands and ears as possible. So shameless plug there but I want to get rolling into today's episode on the topic of pressure. I'll be solo today and sharing some thoughts of mine on these situations that we encounter in our lives that are pressure-filled especially from a athlete or coach standpoint and the first thing I want to do is have you imagine yourself in two different scenarios. Both are very pressure-filled situations and then one of them was a situation where you felt really calm the other one where you felt very nervous. So for instance maybe it was a championship basketball game your team's down by five or down by two points you got about five seconds to go coming out of a timeout the ball is going to be in your hands for that last shot to either tie the game or win the game and you felt really calm you you felt like you were ready for that moment you felt like the experience you had had maybe in prior situations has prepared you for it and maybe you feel like practice helped prepare you for it and you know that your teammates are counting on you and you just really enjoy being in those moments and it makes you feel calm. Maybe on the flip side a situation where you feel felt really nervous maybe it was a job interview that you felt like you really needed and you are uncertain about maybe the questions you were going to be asked and it was felt like a pressure situation though because you really felt like you needed the job or maybe a sales report meeting from the past quarter with your boss maybe you're new to the company and you're not sure how they're going to respond to the amount of work and profit that you were able to accumulate over the previous three months so different scenarios in our lives come up where we feel pressure but I want to kind of dive into what makes us feel calm and then what makes us feel nervous and how can we alleviate the nervousness so we can feel calm in our mind feel free to be able to go out and execute our plan as an athlete or as a coach and I think there's two types of pressure internal pressure and external pressure and I believe that the internal part of it is basically an interpretation of that external pressure placed upon us so whether it's other people's opinions our coach our teammates our parents even family friends we feel this pressure to be able to live up to a certain expectation of us maybe we want to be the best maybe we want to get a scholarship and these different things it's usually all of our external pressure kind of centers around the idea of living up to other people's expectations and then that internal pressure again is how we're interpreting that and are we putting everything in on the line for what other people are thinking about us and if we are that's where we really start feeling that pressure inside external pressure is great that means that there's standards there's expectations and that people expect us to perform well for instance yeah Michigan football that Michigan football fan base has a lot of expectations for those players and it's an incredible honor to be a part of that when you're within that group to have those expectations placed on you but the part that makes us feel nervous is how we internalize that ourselves and are we now constantly thinking about that in our minds and I think as athletes and as coaches we're either going to thrive in those situations or we're gonna tense up and I think about it oftentimes with a closing pitcher in baseball where their team it's a safe situation it's the ninth inning got one out maybe the the go-ahead run is at the plate and a couple runners on base and oftentimes closing pitchers thrive in those moments because they're just built for it their mind is ready to go out and compete they are confident in their abilities to strike out a hitter they're confident their abilities to get a ground ball double play or to get weak contact and oftentimes you see closing pitchers be really successful in those tight tense moments because they haven't necessarily internalized pressure but when you put them on the mound in a game where there's a margin score maybe they're up eight to one and they need to get out there to get some work in and all of a sudden they give up three or four runs and then they start now it's eight three eight four the time run maybe it's maybe they're in the hole with no out still or one out and then you start seeing them start to come through because they thrive in those pressure filled situation maybe you see an athlete tense up maybe it's their first time on the varsity team and they want to impress their teammates that they can handle the varsity level or the collegiate level and again those are things that we are now internalizing and we're not letting our abilities and our confidence speak for itself based on the way that we're going to perform but now we're enabling other people's opinions other people's expectations of us to now basically become who we are and how we're going to how we're going to play the game and then our mind is not focused on the right things. Hunter Pence major league baseball player said that a heavy mind is a heavy bat and I've used that quote many times just because I think that there's so much validity in it where if we're thinking too much or internalizing things too frequently we're not our bodies not going to feel free to do what it should do and I think that there's roughly five ways that I've come up with to help alleviate pressure and help us feel calm in these situations and the first one is control you control what you can control. When I was younger I had coaches that would tell me there's two things that you can do every day you can control your attitude and you can control your effort. John Gordon who's an author really well-known author renowned public speaker travels across the country he also added in actions you can control your attitude your effort and your actions and I think that that's a big part of it because if our attitude is good and our effort is good but then we don't have necessarily the actions outside of maybe practice maybe our effort is really good at practice but then our actions outside of practice maybe we're not continuing to get in the weight room or eat the right foods or get the right amount of sleep or build those relationships with our teammates those actions really become integral to our process so I think the idea of controlling what we can control is a major component to be able to alleviate pressure when pressure is upon us and how we internalize that. Shane Battier and Elton Brand they were two players for Duke basketball back in the late 90s Battier played in the early 2000s Brand was gone by then but coach K loves to tell a story coach K the basketball coach at Duke who's now now retired he loves to tell the story about Battier and Brand coming in they were in the same recruiting class and Battier was the number one ranked player high school player in the country. Brand was obviously really well highly touted I think he was ranked in the top 20 players in the country both McDonald's All-Americans etc they both came into Duke and there was obviously a lot of expectations put on these two guys because they were gonna be key players a big part of the recruiting class for coach K and within two years Elton Brand became basically one of the best players in the country kind of surpassed Battier's development time period and got drafted as the first overall pick in the NBA draft after his sophomore year and Battier whose development was a little bit slower once he got to college so obviously top 20 they're incredibly talented but you still have to think about the pressure that these guys are facing at the most elite level of college basketball and Battier whose teammate came with him came in with him that freshman year is already gone and starting to live out a lifelong dream of being able to play in the NBA by getting drafted. Battier took matters into his own hands he controlled what he can control two years later national player of the year won a championship with Duke cut down the nets at the March Madness tournament and was the sixth overall draft pick in the NBA draft in 2001 I believe it was and he didn't let Elton Brand's journey dictate his journey it may be at some points you know as a competitor we start to think man why were they able to get that opportunity before me and I'm sure sometimes those things may have crossed into his mind but you can obviously tell by the results of where Battier eventually got to that he still controlled what he could control he didn't worry himself with the NBA draft and the thoughts of the NBA front offices and what they were thinking in terms of the draft he stayed his course and he continued on and I think a lot of times we run into a spot of comparison and at that point once we start comparing ourselves to other people's situations we are now not controlling what we can control the only thing that we can control is ourselves and our own journey and the attitude the effort and the actions that we are putting into it and I think we really need to be task-conscious not necessarily coach-conscious parent-conscious friend-conscious be task-conscious and that's what will enable that process of your training regimen your eating habits sleeping habits your friendships your relationship with God all those things control what you can control and then let the journey kind of take care of itself as you go then second thing is limiting our distractions and again I think people's opinions of us can become a major major distraction maybe it's based on social media and you know how much attention somebody else is getting how much we're getting on social media which really should never play a factor but I think it's definitely a bigger factor than we realize and you know you look at should do or Sanders the quarterback for Colorado he's he said that he's turned off his social media this fall during football season because he doesn't even want that to be a distraction for himself and have more of an opportunity to read about what other people's opinions are of him and his dad coaching him obviously Deon Sanders the coach at University of Colorado so people's opinions from social media can play a factor and if that is a if that's a area of concern for you get rid of it there's no there's nothing wrong with that and I think that that you know can be a very wise thing in terms of limiting distractions and really it's ridding ourselves of anything that make us feel pressured it could be it could be stats sometimes we you know I know players that have calculated out if they're batting averages at a certain point how many hits or for their era how many scoreless innings they need to throw to get to a certain era or like I said a hitter calculating how many hits they need to get to in a certain amount of at bats to reach a certain batting average and Michael Jordan did that in I think it was minor league ball and he wanted to hit a certain amount and some people can handle that but if that's going to be a distraction for you then that's another part that you need to to read I think we need to find different ways to track our progress if stats are an all-consuming all mind mind-consuming thing that we can't handle that can ultimately become become a distraction the third thing is not magnifying one thing and from a competitive standpoint from a coaches standpoint I think that this is a big big piece a lot of times we see players magnify one at bat maybe one shot maybe one play in a game and they magnify that in their mind to either elevate them and think more highly of themselves than they ought to or maybe that failing moment is now bringing them down and not making them feel like they're living up to other people's expectations which again is internalizing external people's opinions and that's what brings on that internal pressure you see this in in sports as well I use Michigan football again as an example if Michigan football and Ohio State football if they magnify their rivalry in one game in those locker rooms to dictate their season which in some cases maybe it will dictate their season because a lot of times in football they're two of the most competitive college football teams in the country and maybe that one game is big but if they magnify that one game and they don't put it the same amount of effort into the games prior to that or the games after that game that one game may not matter because maybe they lost a game early on because they didn't put the same amount of attention and focus in detail into the game against Penn State the game against Iowa the game against Minnesota whoever it might be and maybe they lost that game and now this game the rivalry game which gets magnified so much which is awesome it's great for sports it's great for fan bases but in terms of long-term success if we are letting that one game magnify our entire season you know you could win the Ohio State Michigan rivalry maybe every year but maybe you don't get into the college football playoff or maybe you don't win the national championship and maybe that was you know only one team's lost you know out of that rivalry and they still get into the playoff and win the national championship so I just think oftentimes we'd magnify one game one opponent that you really want to beat one at-bat late in the game whereas maybe the prior three or four at-bats that you gave away in a dog days of July game one o'clock afternoon and all of a sudden the ninth inning hits and you got the tying run at second base but you gave away those three at-bats but now this one at-bat in the ninth inning matters and now you want to give it your all and then you still fail think about all the times in those earlier moments of the game where maybe that other at-bat could have really changed or dictated the course of the game and that ninth inning at-bat wouldn't have had had as much implication on the result of the game so in saying that I just I really believe that coaches and athletes magnify one thing way too often and to alleviate pressure we have to treat all those situations all those games as exactly the same and that will help us feel more calm that will help us alleviate the internal pressure or anxiety that we may feel in a given moment the fourth one that I want to talk about is accepting failure and I I think that this also goes to accepting success as well and being able to handle success and the pressures that are then like I said expectations when you start having success there's more and more expectations more and more people that are coming to watch because they want to see what a winning product looks like and we can put that pressure on ourselves but the same thing goes to for failure and you know I think my general rule is midnight so as a baseball coach we play pretty much every day in the Northwoods League we have very few days off and my general rule for myself is once the clock hits midnight that previous day's game the disappointment the excitement that is needs to wear off and then be able to when I wake up the next morning be able to reflect on the day prior with a clear mind and still not be living on that up or down energy scale that will affect the way that we go about our business the next day I think every day needs to get treated the same whether there was failure the night before really bad failure maybe or maybe it was really great success and there is a walk-off we have to be able to stay on an even-keeled basis to be able to truly evaluate our failures and our successes and in order to be able to perform that next day we have to accept our failures from the day before and figure out ways to implement things that are going to help us not fail in those situations down the road and it doesn't always mean that that night we're gonna see immediate results by working on something that day but the process and trusting our process trusting the training regimen you know having confidence and building that confidence so the next time we are in that moment you got the ball in your hands with two seconds to go man I feel really good about taking the shot to help my team get to overtime or to win the game and all sudden you start feeling calm even though you failed in those moments before all sudden you're starting to feel calm because you know you have the ability to be able to make those shots Michael Jordan he's got a quote he talks about how many shots he's missed in his career how many times that the game was on is one on the line and the ball was in his hands and they lost but when you look at his career and all the big shots that he made he said that the failing moments is what made him succeed in the moments that he did because he was able to handle the failure not let external people's opinions external pressure external expectations affect the way that he continued his process and his confidence to be able to compete at a really high level and help his team win games and then the fifth thing is leave the results in God's hands I I think that this is probably one of the most lacking pieces in living a calmer life living a more I guess a less anxious life would be the best way to put it less anxious moments in a game is when we know that we have put everything into our training regimen we've given it everything we've had at practice at early work at shoot arounds we put the right foods in our body we've gotten hydrated we've slept if we do those things we are made ready for battle at that point and Proverbs 21 31 one of my favorite verses that I have applied to coaching that the horse is made ready for battle but victory rests with the Lord and in interpreting that into a coaches or an athlete's world is if we can go through our day we know that we've done everything to prepare we've done the scouting report like I said we've gotten our seven to nine hours of sleep you've eaten your protein and your carbohydrates and your essential fats to be able to be ready to perform at an elite level you've taken you know your pre pre BP routine in the cages you've gone through you know your key work your front toss maybe hit off the machine whatever the case may be you've done the scouting reports as a coach if you have done all those things and you you feel confident in it let the game play out and let the Lord work through you through your attitude through your effort through your actions and that is how we can then bring glory to God for the abilities and talents that he's given us and it's out of our hands we can be so much more free by coaching or playing for an audience of one rather than all these external opinions and sources and expectations that are put upon us over the course of a week or over the course of a season and I think that the more that we let God fill our mind and our hearts as an athlete and as a coach and we just prepare ourselves for battle we are going to be able to play so much more free coach so much more free and be so much more intentional because we aren't concerned about ourselves anymore because we're not internalizing that pressure into what other people are going to think of us now we're able to be more intentional into how we pour into everybody else around us and not necessarily pouring into ourselves in those moments where the athletes were coaching or your teammates really need you to be there for them and be intentional to give them that confidence on the court and I think that that is truly one of the greatest missing links in sports is letting God come into the picture and leave it all in his hands Matthew 634 says don't worry about tomorrow for tomorrow is going to have enough worry in itself each day has enough trouble of its own and it's so true oftentimes too we think about the next day we think about the next week we think about things down the road our goals that are out in the future which those are definite things that we need to be thinking and planning ahead for but in order to take care of the process you got to get through today to have a chance at those goals in the future and I I think Matthew 634 sums that sums that up perfect and one other thing that I want to leave with you is Tommy Bolt he was a PGA golfer and he said that the mind messes up more shots than the body and this kind of ties in the quote that I mentioned earlier from Hunter Pence that a heavy mind is a heavy bat the mind messing up more shots than the body when our mind is filled with things that are making us feel pressure that are making us feel anxious get rid of those things get rid of the distractions control what you can control and don't magnify any one play any one game except failure and success as its own and as it comes and leave these results in God's hands and your body your mind will then enable your body to perform at the highest level and it won't be a heavy mind it won't feel like a heavy body where you're trying to tell your body what to do your body will just naturally be able to perform at a higher level because we aren't feeling as anxious and we have that sense of calmness based on whatever results happen at the end of the day so as you go into the the week ahead be passionate about what you're doing be bold about what you're doing love your process give the best attitude effort and actions that you can to prepare yourself for battle if you're an offseason this is a great incredible time to be focusing on your skills focusing on building those great habits and I I also believe that the younger you start a very disciplined habit driven life those habits are going to sustain you a lot of the same habits that I started creating in middle school and high school are a lot of the same habits that I still carry through to this day and I think the earlier that you can start those then the easier it's going to be to sustain them later in life not you can't create new habits create new disciplines later in life definitely can it's never too late to start but the younger that you train yourself in those areas think of how many more days how many more months how many more years of experience you have disciplining yourself in that in those areas that will then help make it easier down the road to continue back or you may fall back and then you're like hey what got me here was all those disciplines and habits and it's a lot easier to go back into them because you realize how much success you had because your disciplines and your habits were fantastic back back when you were having success so don't let the fear of failure set you back don't let success make you feel like you don't have to work but just keep grinding and and go out be calm in those situations don't worry about other people's opinions and go dominate your day go dominate your workouts and we'll see you next week and thank you so much for tuning in thanks for joining us on this week's episode of the unparalleled performance podcast and if you enjoyed it please share with those around you we'll see you next week and go dominate your day