High Performance Psychologist. CMPC|LP Director of Clinical Mental Health & Performance
@NWSL
|MLB Sport Psychologist|PerfPsych Consultant to Various Industries
Really excited to share my new endeavor which my team and I have been working on for the last year!! Mental Performance Coaching face to face 1:1 FOR EVERYONE! Check us out 🧠💪
Nearly all top athletes receive mental performance coaching, but few youth sports orgs offer mindset coaching. “Mental performance coaching isn’t just for the pros. We believe high-quality mental performance coaching should be accessible to everyone. Welcome to Momentum Labs.
"We deal with a lot of stuff & I developed a bond with my counselor at Seton Hall that has lasted until today..
She got me to talk about a lot of stuff that was bothering me & helped me get to being my best self" ~
@dhurley15
#PMSLive
I tell athletes who want to be great one of the most difficult skills to acquire in pursuit of excellence is tolerance for redundancy and boredom! 10 years worth of psychological data in the NFL proves these are the athletes who last the longest and get the most snaps.
Greatness is less about an event or outcome, and more about the process. And that process is often boring.
It's a dedication to being brilliant in the basics, to commitment over convenience, to showing up every day to get a little bit better.
Do the work.
🪵🪓
Such a challenge our field faces…not to mention not all psychologists practicing in the sport space have pursued the proficiency or cultural awareness about the sport ecosystem to competently practice in the space. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater & do your homework.
Sport psychologists walk a delicate balance.
If you don’t like an athletic trainer or strength coach, you get a new one.
If you don’t like a sport psychologist, most teams swear off sport psychology.
You have a responsibility to do a great job and not undervaluing the work.
Congratulations to our very own Director of Athletics Jayme Pendergast for receiving this year's
@_WomenLeaders
@Nike
NAIA Executive of the Year Award!
I tell athletes feelings are like indicator lights on your cars dashboard. Worth paying attention to, doesn’t always mean something is wrong with your car.
A sign of emotional intelligence is refusing to let feelings dictate decisions.
Feelings are electrical signals in the brain. We don't choose every sensation, but we are responsible for how we react.
Emotions are rarely calls to action. They're usually cause for reflection.
Preparing for life after sport prior to retirement decreases uncertainty, and reduces prolonged grief. Retiring from your first career which defined your identity for 10-20 years can be really painful. We need to consider how to mitigate this with programs like this one!
As part of
@Nationwide
's "Experience Nationwide" program, five NWSL players explored career opportunities in marketing, communications, corporate sustainability, talent acquisition, DEI and more!
Kudos to Nationwide for championing holistic athlete development 🤝⚽️🏢
Authenticity is not about expressing every opinion you hold. It's about ensuring that what you voice reflects what you value.
If you prize respect and kindness, your comments shouldn't be filled with contempt and cruelty.
Ideas are worth sharing when they represent your ideals.
If you know anyone who has a Masters Degree in Social Work who would be interested in working with Husker Student Athletes and being part of an awesome sport psychology team please let them know we are hiring!!
#GBR
🌽🧠 💪
Stress inoculation teaches you how to make discomfort your new comfort zone. Teach your brain these experiences won’t kill you…by doing them and not dying.
Tom Brady defines mental toughness
"The only place for growth is outside of your comfort zone...We have to work and struggle through things in order to achieve this confidence in ourselves about how resilient we can become."
#MVPMind
@AlexAuerbachPhD
Mastery and achievement follow a growth curve—early in learning we get big gains with little effort. Later in learning we make gains but it requires greater effort to achieve smaller rewards. Cultivate patience & hope to maintain energy over the long haul!
Talk to teams all the time about how important it is to consider that human brains are wired for connection so we can use that neurobiology to elevate our capacity while also mitigating the risks associated with social evaluative threat.
Old School - Mental well-being needs to be addressed when it starts inhibiting performance.
New School - Proactively invest in mental well-being because it drives high performance.
#MVPMind
Tonight, we welcomed
@GothamFC
, the defending
@NWSL
Champions! The team had a record number of players on the
@USWNT
that won the gold medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics. Congratulations to all of Gotham FC’s Olympians🥇👏
“I want to build a community where women of all races can communicate and ... continue to support and take care of each other. I want to give women a space to feel their own strength and tell their stories. That is power.” -Beyoncé
Really appreciate the work Dr. Higgins is doing in our local community to equip providers with the most up to date evidence based practices for treating concussions. If you work in sport in NE check out what she’s doing at the Nebraska Med concussion clinic!
#FBF
to our Dr. Kate Higgins who led a symposium (7.14) to local healthcare providers in the community of
#Lincoln
on best practices for concussion care & treatment. One of the many reminders of why we're lucky to have her as our lone neuropsychologist on staff!
#GBR
#brainhealth
Foundation of psychological wellness--sleep, eat, move, connect. Any effective treatment for mental health should start here! Mental health = brain health.
Is anxiety a problem of the mind—or body? Emerging evidence supports the view that anxiety is essentially a disorder of the body’s energy regulation, and that what we eat can change our stress level.
Gonna need to rewatch our mental health session about five times to catch every takeaway from
@DrKensa
! Being your own advocate is a great reminder.
Here’s another you might need:
“Just pause and ask, ‘How do I feel right now?’”
I have Asthma, allergies, dyslexia, ADD, anxiety, and Depression.
But I will tell you that what you have does not define what you can become.
Why Not You!
Really cool to watch my dear friend
@mikeharrity
assemble as formidable a performance team as any in college athletics! Incredible how you a pushing the needle not just in the Ivy’s but anywhere. Your capacity for evaluating talent and luring them to work for you is impressive!
Please join us in welcoming Austin Driggers, PH.D to Dartmouth as the athletics department’s first Executive Associate Athletics Director for Peak Performance!
🔗:
#TheWoods
🌲 |
#GoBigGreen
💙 We’ve been thinking of you as we navigate these uncertain times. We're feeling it too, and we wanted to share some of the tools we're using to take care of our minds and stay grounded. Please share with anyone who might benefit.
Inertia is a key aspect of building motivation & behavior change. My advice to people climbing out of depression is MOVE—however small, just start and don’t stop even if all you can do today is walk around the block. Small achievable goals > than big goals you avoid starting.
Exercise has been clearly shown to have a powerful effect on depression. The problem is that symptoms of depression sap people's motivation to get moving. Here are 5 tricks that could help.
We are biologically wired for connection. Yet we fuel ourselves with the McDonalds of connection and think we are eating from a local sourced michelin star menu. Don’t sell your soul short. I get the irony of posting this too 😉. My sense of humor is best experienced P2P.
If you are debating “trusting your gut” on a big decision, first ask yourself am I truly an expert on the subject matter. If yes, your “gut” intuition is probably helpful. If no, gather more data and test out theories for better decision making. 🧠 science. Thinking Fast and Slow
Yes👇🏼! How does your org signal trust in behavior? Are those behaviors an expectation baked into your core values? Norms + Conformity = ⬆️ Cohesion = ⬆️ Trust = ⬆️ Performance Don’t talk about trust without talking about behaviors.
When your environment is high on trust, you optimize for innovation.
The energy that would spent trying to better understand and predict your teammates can be spent trying to find new ideas and push forward.
Culture is a performance enhancer.
Drew Brees putting in mental reps by himself after practice.
Nobody else in the gym.
@ReggieBush
: "This is what it takes. … This is what greatness looks like.”
Such an important aspect of our mental health crisis that we overlook—free play, independence, curiosity, adventure, problem-solving, & social feedback in childhood with other children. For more on the subject check out:
When kids are deprived of play, their mental health suffers.
Over the past 50 years, the time kids spend playing outside and inside has plummeted. They're missing opportunities to bond, build self-control, be creative, and feel joy.
Free play is a key to happiness and growth.
Did you know gratitude can help: reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression & stress, AND improve sleep, immune system & mood? All things that we can boost our well-being & performance!
So, what are you thankful for? :)
#Gratitudeweek
#sportpsychology
#mentalhealth
#GBR
Love evidence based info with solution focused strategies! Great strategies here to reclaim attention back from our smartphones. Time management = mind management!
Your phone is a weapon of mass distraction...
And far too smart for your own good.
But it doesn't have to be.
Here are 5-quick tweaks to turn your phone into a tool of outrageous productivity:
1. Grayscale
This is the absolute quickest and easiest way to cut your phone usage
Rock chalk!!! This is one of my favorite sport experiences ever. Won’t ever forget my first game in AFH when KU played TX in the last game of the season in 2008 before the went on the win the Natty! Proud Jayhawk here.
One of my dearest friends doing incredible things in the NAIA. I have so much admiration for creativity, drive, and persistence! Way to go
@JaymePendergast
Attendance for Nebraska's spring match at UNK's Health and Sports Center is 5,094 – an arena record for a volleyball, eclipsing the pervious mark of 5,025 for the 2005 Division II title match.
If you work in elite sport, but don't want to do it forever...
There's a lot of other people out there who could benefit from support to help improve their performance.
And chances are, simple steps can have a much bigger impact.
Can social interactions have a placebo effect on performance?
"The Performance Director of a UK Olympic Team was described by his sports science staff as a ‘human placebo’.
"He always brings out the best performances, often through social (as opposed to technical) processes."
Mental toughness is so much more nuanced than we would like it to be. I really appreciate the way
@stevemagness
sheds light into the crevasses of performance psychology.
Since the release of Do Hard Things, the question I’ve received most is:
“What about the David Goggins, be a badass and ignore your limits, approach to toughness?"
Here's your answer. On the difference between tolerating pain and performing well:
We have to do more to take care of the mental health and well-being of our leaders. We are pack animals—extremely attuned neurologically to those around us. Well-being, mental-health, and mental performance are systems issues which require systemic intervention at every level!
This is a global trend.
Across sports we have our most qualified and competent head coaches burning out, taking 'lower' jobs to avoid the rigmarole of leading, or leaving the industry completely.
Might not be a crisis, but it's certainly not a model for success either.
Yaaaassss…should be the foundation for psychological skills training programs. 👇🏼 If you can’t regulate from the bottom up, you can’t think quickly or clearly from the top down. 🧠 science!
You don't actually experience the world—instead, you filter reality through the state of your nervous system.
If you are able to internalize this statement, it will radically change your life.
Mental toughness is task-specific! Doing generally difficult things will give you confidence that you can do hard stuff, but it won’t make you tough in executing the skill of your sport when it matters most!
Youth. & High School Coaches and Parents—if you are interested in learning how to help your athletes be more mentally tough, resilient, and supported check this out.
@AlexAuerbachPhD
is one of the worlds leading Sport Psychologists! Great opportunity!!!
“Before I can lead I’ve got to make sure that my mind is in the right place to do that... I think that’s important to be vulnerable, to be genuine & to be transparent..."
@dak
discusses the importance of mental health
@AlexAuerbachPhD
@SleepAndSports
Check out Duncan and Millers work—Heroic Client and Heart and Soul of Change. They introduced the ORS/SRS outcome driven care model centering the therapeutic alliance as the crux of change.
Surround yourself with people who:
• Support your autonomy and ownership over your career and performance, rather than tell you what to do.
• Focus building your skills and building you up.
• Enhance your connection to others and something bigger than yourself.
If this is a challenge working with a mental health provider with expertise in high performance mindsets can really help changing resistant thinking patterns 🧠💚
Your mental health is crucial to your quality of life and many of us have to change the way we talk about ourselves to improve it. Positive self talk goes a long way, so I need you to understand that you are enough, you are worthy of being loved and you matter.
Today, we unveiled the newly designed Sensory Room at
@yankeestadium
, which will be opened for use beginning with ALDS Game 1. The space, located on the 300 Level behind home plate, ensures that every fan can be comfortable enjoying the game 💙
@AlexAuerbachPhD
@SleepAndSports
Also, supervision literature is mixed on whether or not supervision actually improves therapeutic outcomes—in contrast client feedback consistently improves them ☺️
“We should be uncomfortable about the injustice in our country. For many Christians facing the reality that America still has a race problem is uncomfortable. Until we’re able to listen-we might remain comfortable-but it’s a poor substitute for the love to which we’ve been called
The path to meaningful relationships requires the courage to be vulnerable & own your story. Great teams invest in building strong relationships. Starts with openness & curiosity-ends with respect & appreciation. It’s not easy and often uncomfortable. Most things worth doing are.
Is your team focused on building great relationships? Watch how Husker Volleyball places a priority on building relationships in their high performing culture
@huskers
@huskervball
@jcook2
On June 7, Josh Mitchell and his most-trusted friends and former
#Huskers
teammates had an honest discussion about the world in the weeks following the death of George Floyd.
“I blew matches, seasons, player’s confidence, by how I reacted after a match” - John Cook and the UNL Sport Psychology Staff discuss creating a coaching staff routine to debrief and manage emotions while performing under pressure.
@jcook2
@huskervball
Check out the good work my friend and former NFL player is doing to support athlete wellbeing. Injuries are one of the most challenging psychological trials an athlete will face.
@ColkyJonov10
Anyone who knows me knows how injuries have played a massive role in not only my athletic career but also my personal life.
I’m excited to partner with Raising Champions community in hosting an open discussion on how to work through the adversity of injury!
Event will be
May your hunger for peace be stronger than your hunger for comfort.
May your appetite for justice overshadow your appetite for approval.
May your soul choose to be stirred up and not sedated.
“But right now, I am thinking about wrestling in that state and want to know even more about the Life programs because they won both divisions. I’m not sure I even knew where Life University was before this year’s National Duals. I do now.”
@dannygable
@LifeUniversity
@AlexAuerbachPhD
@SleepAndSports
By monitoring TA every session you solicit feedback and create dialogue about the clients experience of TA. Imagine that…feedback nurturing the development of therapeutic expertise 😉
When you make discomfort part of the pursuit you feel validated and accomplished for doing hard things rather than discouraged when you fail. Learning to live in (not just explore) the fringes of our abilities is essential to mastery & expertise.
Decision fatigue hacks 👇🏼. Be cautious though, the same shortcuts that improve resilience can also cause errors. Know how you use mental models both for your benefit and as thinking traps to avoid.
We don’t need 50 different “brands” of leadership (authentic, quiet, etc.)…
The best leaders share 4 evidence-backed traits:
1. Inspirational motivation: a clear mission, vision, values that enable others to act.
Leaders motivate positively with an eye on a better future.
Former
#NFL
RB Willis McGahee reveals that he considered suicide multiple times after retirement due to struggling to find a purpose in life after football, via
@TheAthleticNFL
“It crossed my mind a couple of times.”
“When it’s gone, you really have nothing to fall back on,”
Great resource for HS coaches and AD’s who are looking for practical solutions to the challenges facing HS athletes from 2 of sport psych’s best!
@DrKensa
&
@DrLani_SportPsy
🙌🏼
Appreciated the opportunity to work with
@DrLani_SportPsy
on this article about supporting youth mental health in high school athletics.
#YouthMentalHealth
.
@demario__davis
: We need to get past the myths that if you talk to somebody about mental health there’s something wrong with you. Once you get past the stigma and you realize it’s actually a good thing, then you can grow.
#APA2020
For people quarantined due to
#COVID19
, Dr. David Cates has developed a virtual "town hall" to address anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges associated with isolation.
Dr. Higgins is doing great work for all athletes in Nebraska! Check it out.
Concussion Clinic expands eligibility, moves to unique location | Nebraska Today
Yaaaassss to all! It’s also important to understand and address the nuerocognitive and neurobiological underpinnings of psychological flexibility. Autonomic regulation facilitates mental flexibility and dysregulation undermines it.
There's one mental skill that seems to have wide-ranging benefits - from improved physical health to better longevity to greater well-being to peak performance.
That skill?
Psychological flexibility.
Here's what it is, and how to get more of it:
There’s more strength in admitting when we feel weak than in hiding it. May is
#MentalHealthAwarenessMonth
. I’m taking care of my mental health through workouts, therapy, and gaming but want to hear what you’re doing to keep your peace. Let’s
#silencetheshame
together.
#NFLPA
Many times once you start it’s easy to keep going and you actually want to. The hard part is often starting. However you can convince your brain to start is a win—REACH goals.
A simple reflex is... [an] abstract conception because all parts of nervous system are connected together and no part is ... capable of reaction without affecting and being affected by various parts, and it is a system certainly *never absolutely at rest* 😮
-- Sherrington, 1906
Being present in the moment is difficult. Mindfulness meditation gets us reps working on it so you build that mental muscle! Our coaches are helping athletes learn tools to practice during mindfulness meditation so “reps” are purposeful and improve your life and performances!
Cumulative stress buildup is the cause of many of our mental and physical health problems today. Physical exercise shows better outcomes for treating depression and anxiety than meds!
I have a unique offer for the next 5 parents who sign their kids up for mindset coaching with Momentum Labs...
I'll do a free workshop for your kid's team on mindset (just mention this post).
Book a discovery call here:
Happy National Girls & Women in Sports Day!
Today and everyday we celebrate all of the women in our Yankees community and affirm that women belong in sports.
#NGWSD
July is
#BIPOCMentalHealthAwarenessMonth
Together we recognize the unique struggles Black, Indigenous, & People of Color face regarding mental health & behavioral healthcare in the U.S.
Visit to learn more about the resources WeCOACH can provide.
2024 Best New Artist candidate, Noah Kahan, celebrates the Grammy Awards by sharing his commitment to reduce the stigma around mental health.
"I've never found it hard to be open about my mental health & I owe that to my parents, who would always encourage me to talk about it."