🏆 ARC Podcast Episode 38: Mental Performance Secrets Revealed
Join performance coach Drew Hopper as he unveils the mental strategies that separate elite athletes from the rest.
📋 Chapter Markers:
0:00 – Podcast Introduction
1:09 – Drew’s Performance Coaching Journey
2:21 – Insights from High-Level Golf Tournaments
6:02 – Preparation vs. Readiness in Sports
9:05 – Mental Performance Strategies
23:41 – BRAVR Technique Breakdown
33:37 – Overcoming Negative Self-Talk
38:22 – Closing Thoughts
🔑 Key Insights:
– BRAVR Mental Performance Technique
– Athlete Preparation Strategies
– Overcoming Performance Anxiety
– Parenting’s Impact on Athletic Performance
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#MentalPerformance #AthleteMindset #PerformanceCoaching #ARCPodcast
What’s up everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Ark podcast. I’m your host Brandon Zachary. If you’re new tuning in, thank you for joining. This is the Athletes Resilience Center podcast where we talk all things mental performance in sports. On this week’s episode, we have on special guest Drew Hopper. This is the second time Drew has come on the podcast. On this episode, he updates us about his mental performance coaching journey. He talks about working with athletes in golf and other sports. He talks about being a father and coaching his sons in golf specifically. He talks about his Bravver technique and goes into what each of those letters stand for within that Bravver term and goes over all the other mental performance things that he’s kind of discovered along the way through his mental performance coaching journey. This is a great episode. I hope you guys enjoy. Ru, thanks for coming back on, man. We’re we’re excited to have you. I know last time we had you, it was great for you to share your story, and now we’re we’re coming back for part two because we we definitely want to hear of more you have to say. I know last time we talked it was kind of earlier stages of of getting into coaching and building your business and now you know we’re getting further and further along in that and I’m I’m excited to hear your findings and what you’ve been you know working on in the coaching sphere. So how are we doing today Drew and and what’s going on Brandon? I’m doing great. Glad to be here and it’s been it’s been a heck of a year. Uh it’s been a heck of a ride since we last talked. You know, I’ve I’ve been in what you would call the live fire environment from a military perspective, right? You don’t you don’t actually learn what it’s really like until, you know, for me it was boots on the ground in Afghanistan. Everything up until then, um, infantry school, airborne school, etc. was all training. But you really learn the most about what you’re doing when you’re in a live environment. So this summer um did a few things. I cattied in a lot of highlevel tournaments for high level players and from that vantage point I was able to learn a lot um because you’re seeing elite D1 level talent and you see these stark contrast between those who rise to the top of the leaderboard and even in this one particular individual one week he was in the final pairing and shot at a seven under par. the next week, different tournament, different championship. Maybe it was two weeks later. Um, he finished almost last. So, what’s the difference there, right? When you see such a huge gap and everybody has bad rounds and courses that don’t fit their game and all that, but there’s more to it than that. When you spend four and a half hours, five and a half hours a day, three day three days in a row, you you see you see a lot. You learn a lot. Um, and so that that experience has been huge in in shaping the direction in which I’m going. And then also I conducted what was meant to be a 90-day study, but it’s an 87day study. Um, yeah. And and you know came at performance from a different perspective. And you know, the intent of that study was to demonstrate that multi-dimensional training can actually stimulate more performance gains than, you know, I think we have a lot of folks going down, I’m this one sport athlete and I only train for that one sport. And yeah, I think in when I was a child in the 80s, it was more common to play three or four or five sports. Even in high school in the ‘9s, you would play multiple sports. And so we’ve seen kind of a shift. I think into to to extreme focus and I think that’s well informed by um you know the rule of 10,000 hours and things like that. But I wanted to challenge that to see if you could introduce athletes into different activities and different environments and if there would be a positive impact on all of the dimensions of performance. Right. Yeah. No, definitely. Um there’s seems like you’ve done a lot since the last conversation we’ve had which is awesome and obviously seen a lot of golf conducted your own study which is fantastic and we’re going to definitely get into the results of that study and kind of the highlevel points to take away from that but first you talked about you know cattying and being around the game of golf and kind of you know learning by being in the fire and kind of seeing what goes on in real time during the game of golf because like you said you know practice is one thing, but when you get out there and and you’re in the game, that’s extremely hard to replicate. Now, you’ve worked with a lot of guys and you’ve seen a lot of guys golf, obviously, and like you said, there’s there’s multi-dimensions of of the aspect of sport that helps someone excel and someone achieve right now. I’d love to hear because you know you and I obviously have had a lot of these conversations off air in the past, but I’d love to hear like what are the major differences you’ve seen between some of these guys that excel versus some of the ones that might struggle a little bit. And again, when I’m talking about excel versus struggle, like you said, there was the the one athlete that shot seven under par and then, you know, two weeks later he was finishing in dead last. And I’m sure again that’s not a skill issue because he proved right away that he could play with the best of them shooting 700 par. But what are kind of the I guess the similarities and differences between the athletes that are kind of excelling at that stage of the game and and maybe struggling a little bit to keep up. I’ll divide it into two lanes. Um lane one I will call level of preparation. Yeah. And lane two I’ll call level of readiness. Okay. Um, yeah, I think in some cases, and I’ll give some examples, you see athletes who are there the day before and they may play 18 holes with a yardage book in hand with a caddy giving them inputs, having a a discussion. They’re all over the green, reading putts from different pin positions where we expect them to be in difficult spots, whatever it may be. They’re going through the entire preparation process refining their plan, making sure that caddy and athlete are aligned because that’s an important note because if you have caddy athlete friction within the round, which I observed in a lot of these tournaments, yeah, that takes a whole another path, right? And it it’s destructive and cancerous. So you have the people who are really really leaning into the preparation and I think they’re getting every bit out of that that they possibly can. Yeah. Then you have the people who we get paired with on day one of the tournament and after a couple holes you start talking to the player in the caddy and getting to know them and everybody kind of relaxes and realizes we’re just playing golf here. It’s not that serious. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and they’re like, “Yeah, we uh we were uh in California last night and flew in this morning and we’re we we’re just now seeing the course for the first time.” And and and you know, they may do good for a few holes, but then there’s a couple holes where you kind of needed to play them or you should have or you might have benefited from playing them ahead of time, walking them ahead of time even. Um, and they didn’t. And so they literally like predictably pay the price. Yeah. So those are kind of the extremes on on that lane as an example. Go ahead. Yeah. No, that’s that’s that’s great. Now, I’d love to hear too because like you said, the readiness and preparedness, I’d love for your insight because obviously again you and I talk about the mental side of the game so much, just the two of us. um when you’re looking at these guys, right? Like I think you made a really good example where it’s like you might play great for three holes, but you know there are three holes that you really needed to have played the day before to kind of get a feel and understand like what should my strategic approach to this be? Like how do you see that affect those players mentally? Because again, like I I think especially younger athletes, like if you go out there and you kill it for three holes, you might be on this high of the high and then one hole doesn’t go your way and it’s like boom, transforms completely, flips the script, and then the rest of the day you can’t play very well. Yeah. So, exactly that lane we just unpacked was the preparation lane. Now, we’re talking about the readiness lane. And that’s exactly the part where again, it goes two different ways. those folks who flew in from California the morning of and are coming in hot with no plan, just whatever, if they’re ready and they have a a process where the caddie’s got um, you know, some kind of high-speed Garmin rangefinder that’s legal and they go around and and and they have their way of going about it, then they they may get away with it. Um, also though that that’s just on that end on the mental side, it’s the same thing though. If you have a process like the one we’re going to discuss today, then you might mess up the one and two handicap hole because they’re the most difficult holes and you probably should have had a but but you you keep yourself together and you’re able to continue performing and to just let that go. And when you do, it doesn’t turn into an 82. It turns into a 72 because you make a couple birds on the back on the 1516 handicap holes and you’re you’re okay. You’re not where you could have been. Clearly, you’re not fully optimized, but you at a higher level of readiness. Even though your level of preparation was poor, your level of readiness to compete, to be in the live environment was good. Yeah. Yeah. And so again, you haven’t optimized all four dimensions, but you came in with a level of readiness that at least allows you to absorb and to move past in a productive fashion those speed bumps that as your performance coach, I would seriously encourage you to take another route because you have so much more potential to go low, right, than what you’re achieving because remember, your level of prep was an F, your level of readiness was an A, and then therefore you’re I mean, simple math, you’re playing at a C, Right. But I’d love to see you at an A because all four dimensions are firing, you know, full tilt red line. Yeah. No, completely. And I think this reminds me of uh I don’t know if you remember uh I think it was at this point three or four years ago the Matt Stafford gets hurt for the Rams and then they sign Baker Mayfield on a Wednesday. Yeah. And then they play on uh they play on Sunday night and it’s like is he going to be ready? and his level of readiness, right, was at an A because as you saw, every moment in that game he was taking and and letting his athletic self take over, right, there wasn’t much preparation because he he didn’t have the chance. Like again, that’s not on him for not being prepared. That’s on the team for signing him on a Wednesday and then starting him on a Sunday, right? It’s like he’s as prepared as he’s ever going to be. Maybe his preparation was a C or a D because they didn’t have the time. But when he went out there, he was ready to go, right? And he stayed ready. He was like, “I’m going to prepare the best I can for myself. And whether that’s a C or a D, I can trust in the fact that I will be ready because I’m always ready.” Right? And he’s been in a couple interviews where he talks about that where it’s like, you know, that that was a crazy week, but I I I was training to stay ready for those moments. And, you know, ultimately that led to, you know, him signing with the Bucks and now he’s, you know, having an amazing past two years and and he’s really one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL. So, it really kind of links the two. It’s crazy to kind of see that work, you know, with amateur athletes and younger athletes and then with the guys at the highest level. Yeah. And what’s I mean, what’s amazing and and this is potentially as a performance coach also a source of frustration because you you see the world through different lenses as you’re walking around and when you see athletes who like are leaving potential, it’s like I want to help you, but you can only help so many people, right? So hopefully like social media outlets allow us to broaden our reach and make a positive impact like we’re trying to do right here right now today. Of course, but the disparity between the levels of preparation, the levels of readiness, just those two factors alone at the highest level, I’m talking major golf programs. Yeah. Not to SMU, you know, we’re playing alongside these major golf programs and you still see it. You still see the disparity at big-time D1 programs where Guy has incredible technical physical gifts, but his strategic planning, we’ll call it a C. Um because he clearly is is excessively pinhunting and paying the price for that and then therefore the strategic plan is failing him because he’s so overindexed in belief in his technical capabilities. He can’t foresee that aiming at anything other than flat the flag is a good idea. So, right. So, so then he pays the price for that. And then the same is true on the mental side where Yeah. You have a guy who snap hooks it into the woods and it’s gone and and and he has a very short amount of time to get himself back together, tee it up again and hit a shot and and imagine and do it just right. Right. And I’ve seen those who do it and it’s incredible how they can go through their process and you can see it happening when they’re they start with breathing. It’s always the same. And they begin to downregulate their nervous system with breathing. And then they successfully execute their next drive as if that never happened by going through the systematic process and trusting it completely. And then you have the opposite. Miss Snap hooked it. I was too under man. Yeah. Yeah. Explicit explicit explicit club. Yeah. Yeah. What what I mean maybe the club throwing probably not so much in that environment as like a public golf environment but like not yeah but the explicits and the you know disappointment and the negative selft talk and that’s the biggest thing you see is the negative selft talk in that period and I think I’m not a I’m not a counselor I’m not a psychiatrist psychologist at this point but there’s some underlying things that come from their family of origin story maybe their coaching story in the past that are influencing that current moment and how they’re reacting. And that reaction doesn’t serve their highest good. And it it actually then carries on for the rest of the hole, several holes, and they’re shooting themselves out of the tournament because they don’t know how to downregulate their nervous system, get back to their best, and what’s about 30 seconds in that moment because you just hit OB, you got to get it together pretty quick and execute at your highest level. Some people can do that. They have a way. Others not so much. Right. No. Uh I think you brought up a really good point too about like you know kids snap hooking and then they’re like crap like whatever explicit explicit and then like you said there there might be some external pressures. Now, you know, when I was coaching baseball, I’ve seen it so many times, man. Like, a lot of the relationships you saw with parents and their children when it came to sports was like, you know, could be way too intense and it it bleeds onto their their child’s performance and their ability to be resilient because then there is this lack of self-confidence. Again, not a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. I I’m not going to dive into the the deep depths of this, but you could just see how it affected them, right? It’s almost like, well, they’re pissed at me now. All my self-confidence is gone and I have no like route to be like, okay, I can reset and get ready for the next pitch, the next play, whatever it is. I’d love to hear from your perspective like seeing all this. I know they’re like higher level tournaments that you’re you’re kind of seeing, but have you been able to kind of notice like differences in I guess the the parenting strategies from some of these athletes? like do you see some of these intense parents and it’s like okay like what are we doing here versus the ones that might be supporting their their children a little bit I guess in a more ideal fashion. Yeah. Um I can be really transparent about this. I was probably the intense parent in my child’s youth right um when when they were first growing up because I didn’t know any better and I’ve since learned and and and I always say ignorance is acceptable until you’ve been informed. And so if you’re listening, if you’re listening, you’re not going to be ignorant any further big time. Um, so let’s think about what’s happening from like a scientific perspective when you have an overbearing parent or a parent who makes playing a round of golf a highstakes situation. Yeah, that’s it. You don’t have to get more complicated than that, right? If it’s a high stakes situation for the athlete, inherently there’s an undercurrent and if they feel unsafe, then they’re going to lose access to their prefrontal cortex. And when they do that, there’s a cortisol surge. When they do that, their motor skills diminish by 35%. And I don’t have to go any further because we already know where this is going. So, if you’re a parent and you have children who are athletes or you’re a coach and you’re coaching athletes, you really do have to consider how the athlete is perceiving the environment. Is it a safe environment where they can be free to play and be an athlete and make mistakes and recover from those mistakes in a healthy, positive way in which they learn, they evolve? or is it such a high stakes environment that they’re unable to reach their full potential because they’re constantly living in what we would call a flooded state, a triggered state, you know, pick your pick your phrasing. Um, that’s real. And I think you and I would say we want our athletes to be free completely to play because just like in college football season right now there’s poor discipline flags and and and and those are unacceptable. And then there’s the athlete is playing and they’re making a play on the ball and something happened and but they were making an athletic play and it’s going 100 miles an hour penalty. coach is never going to say a word about that penalty. They’re going to focus on the lack of discipline penalties and the root cause of that. It’s the same way with the athlete. Let them play. Let them be free. And then we can avoid this the negative cycle. But then there’s also the part of building a more positive cycle, right? Which is called neural pruning. You want to, you know, kill the old pattern, build the new pattern, right? No. And listen, there’s there’s no better way to to lose or underperform than to try to play in order not to lose, if that makes sense. Like if you if you have that fear of losing or you have that fear of I’m going to get yelled at, you have that fear of, you know, I’m going to hear about this one after the game if I make this mistake, like there’s no way you can play free because there’s so many thoughts that are rushing through your head, you And I I think I you know battle with this even coming into fatherhood shortly like yeah trying to understand in my head about like how I want to you know coach and and lead my son potentially in the future. And it’s like you know I’ve had some really good examples and I’ve had some not so good examples. I was fortunate enough where my dad coached me for many years and I feel like I we had a great relationship and I never felt that level of of pressure on the field, right? like there was never I don’t know there was never a fear for me of of getting yelled at or or screamed at or that I wasn’t good enough I guess it you know so I’m trying to take a lot of those habits and make sure I’m incorporating things like that into hopefully the way I coach my son in the future because I feel like a lot of I’ve seen so many athletes that I’ve played with where they were way good enough but the relationship that they saw with their either coach or parent was negative and then it was like absolutely diminishing their gain as they continued throughout their athletic career, right? And it’s like that’s like one of the saddest things that you could ever see because it’s like this guy had so much potential but there’s just so many other external variables that are kind of, you know, damaging that if that makes sense. Totally totally makes sense and and totally agree. Um, shout out to my high school wrestling coach Mark Silvers and my college wrestling coach, Coach Simpson, Randy Simpson, Olympian Randy Simpson. Um, they used to, you know, both of them would say the same thing just a little bit differently, but it was the message you just mentioned. You can wrestle not to lose or you can wrestle to win. Yeah. And there’s a big difference. And the same is true in golf, but it might be a little bit different than what you think. The same is true in jiu-jitsu, but that baseball, you know, you play to win or you play not to lose. And by the way, SMU played Baylor a couple weeks ago and that meltdown to end the game was them playing not to lose and they know that. We want to take a quick second to let you know that today’s podcast is brought to you by the Philly Pretzel Factory of Marlton, New Jersey. Whether it’s picking up a snack between games or picking up a party tray for the big game, the Philly Pretzel Factory of Marlton has you covered. For all of your pretzel needs, make sure you stop by the Philly Pretzel Factory of Marlton located on North Maple A. Let them know that the Ark podcast sent you. Now, back to the episode. Yep. Yeah. No, I I completely agree and you’ve you’ve kind of touched on it, so I’d love to dive right into it now. Right. Like you said, I I I’ve talked with guests in the past, too, and the best athletes have a very intentional set of procedures that they follow when things go wrong or very intentional set of procedures every day in order to not guarantee their success obviously, but you know, in their head, give them the confidence to be like, I have this this procedure put in place where if things hit the fan, I can just rely back on that and I know I’ll be right back on track. Now, you have a system that obviously has worked for many of the athletes that you’ve worked with and that you’ve kind of shared on social media quite a bit. I’d love you to kind of go into the Brav technique, kind of what each of those letters stand for and why it’s so valuable because again, anyone who’s not following Drew on social media, I highly recommend it. He’s posting great content about this and obviously the Bravo technique is like a big main frame of yours as to like how you approach coaching and and the strategies of how to you know build resilience. Yeah. Um couple disclaimers before I jump into Bravver. This for golfers specifically this is this is something that you need to experience to understand the power of it. In the podcast I dropped this morning at 7:30, I talked about how buying a driver It’s $6.99. It’s on the It’s on the shelf at Dick Sporting Goods. You can tangibly see that and you have the hope in your mind that it’ll help you hit it longer and straighter. And so it’s like a real clear transaction that’s happening. Whereas with mental game, it’s not something you can see. And most people think it’s like if I’m not having a problem, why do I need it? I would challenge that and say yes, it can help you avoid or or get out of negative scenarios, but it actually stands to also elevate your level of play and at a higher frequency. So, if you think I don’t have mental game problems, that’s half of the equation. The other half is, do you want the upside that comes with superior mental game as an athlete that allows you to unlock unlock part of yourself that you don’t even know exists? Yeah. Yeah. No, I will say I just had this conversation with Matt recently. It’s really funny that you just brought it up. We have been talking with specific athletes and they’ll say like I’ll incorporate some of this like the mental performance side of the game when the season starts. And it was like, “No, no, no. That’s too late.” Because like you said, you might think that your your the mental side of your game is dialed in. But the second you face struggle and you go look for that, you’re already at a point where I haven’t built the systems that kind of bulletproof my performance in the season. So, it’s things that you need to practice before any of the hits the fan because you need all of that base foundation in order to be able to build and have that resilience moving forward. Matt and I literally, it’s funny you said that, Matt and I literally just talked about this cuz it’s like I understand the thought process cuz that’s very logical. It’s like, well, why wouldn’t I just utilize it when I need it? But that’s that’s not how it works, you know? It’s like anything. It’s like it’s like a pitcher being like, “Well, when the season comes, I’ll throw 90.” It’s like, “Whoa, whoa, you throw 82 right now. How can you just say I’m going to go throw 90 in the season?” Right. It’s like there has to be a set of processes put in place or else none of that’s going to be achievable come season time. Absolutely. Perfectly said. All right. Well, let’s jump into Bravver. Yeah, let’s do it. So, we’re going to keep it really simple, really high level. I also am going to say that this is customized for every athlete. The framework is the same but how they implement it varies and that’s intentional because our minds, our brains, we’re personal, right? B means baseline and we deploy breathing to support this step. And baseline is to downregulate your nervous system. Right? When your nervous system is in fight or flight, the brain, certain parts of your brain literally go offline. and your old brain takes over, which is notoriously terrible at making decisions because it’s only trying to help you stay alive. It’s not trying to help you perform. So, we want to avoid upregulating our nervous system. So, we’re we’re intentionally doing something like box breathing, which is what the Navy Seals use. It’s four in, hold for four, four out, hold for four, repeat. That’s it. Right? You’re stimulating your vag nerve. Um, you’re down regulating that nervous system. Huberman just a couple weeks ago posted another version of that which is a a very deep inhale and then when you get to the end of that inhale one more sharp inhale for a overfill if you will and then a slow extended exhale and you actually will hear dogs do this naturally uh which is incredible that they just inherently know how to you know relax themselves. So that’s the intent of be baseline. Downregulate the nervous system, avoid the fight orflight, all the the cascade of hormones and negative things that happen to your brain as a result of that. The R is for reset. And so what we’re doing here, I’ll give a golf example. Athlete hits a bad shot, they’re out of position. I’ve seen athletes who get out of position and they just roll with it and, you know, they’re good. They accept it. That’s not normal. I’d say that more golfers resist a bad shot than accept a bad shot. And and if they’re resisting it, then they’re going down this path of negativity. And so, we really want to accept where we are. And again, now we’re going to transition into grounding techniques and being present because we don’t want to think about what what happens is you hit a bad shot and the athlete might, as an example, immediately go, I’m going to bogey this. And they’re they’re like a fortune teller. They’re like telling us what’s going to happen before it’s happened. And so then when you do that, you’re giving your mind an input. Okay, you want a bogey? I’ll give you a bogey. No, don’t do it. Stop. So, so we want them to anchor in the now and by listening to the birds chirp, feeling the sun on their skin, take a drink of coffee, a drink of Gatorade, whatever it is you’re doing, but use all of your senses in that moment because now you’re present. And if you’re present, you’re not telling yourself bogey or whatever thing you’re doing that isn’t productive. All right. Next is a for affirm. All right. And so we’ve moved past, we’ve downregulated our our nervous system. We’ve accepted our circumstances. We’re present in the now. Now, we’re going to begin to transition into productivity, which is with an affirmation. Affirmations are about really programming your subconscious mind for peak performance. These are positionspecific. I am statements that reinforce your performance identity. So, what do I mean by position specific? Well, if I just hit a shot from 140 yards and I flared it right at the green, I’m and I’m going through this process, I’m going to start telling myself that I’m a world class chipper of the ball and that I get this up and down 100% of the time and and I’m going to use the Gogggins cookie jar technique and remember when I did it last or when I did it best and feed that self, feed that to myself via an affirmation. Another way this might show up position specific is you’re hitting your T-shot and you’re going to then tell yourself a totally different story. Remember a different shot that you hit it exactly how you wanted to. So it’s it’s an authentic affirmation. It’s not fake. You’re remembering when you actually have done this. And everybody who’s played golf has hit good shots. Everybody. So this is about those empowering I am statements that really elevate you elevates you to the peak performance level you want to. The next step is V for visualize. I use baseball in all my metaphors because baseball players are truly amazing athletes and that they have to react in a split second to a 90 plus mph fast ball coming in, you know, high and inside, whatever, right? We want to engage that same part of the mind in golf, but it’s a static ball. And so we have to go about it differently than baseball, which is pure reactionary. We want to get to that same reactionary place, but to get there, we have to sort of give ourselves the right inputs that create that output. And so, in this case, an example would be a golfer standing behind their shot. Again, I’ll use 140 yard shot. And they want to hit to a back right pin position, but leave it short left. They’re going to start it on the middle of the green and hit a just a baby cut so it comes up 10 ft short and left. That’s what they’re trying to accomplish. Well, they’re going to stand behind their ball and they’re going to see that in real time as if it’s a movie that they’re watching the ball take off and do its entire deal until it stops exactly where you want it to be. Examin like it’s you’re watching a movie in real time. That’s the important part here because that’s what’s activating the athletic the the vision system if you will is activated within our mind and it’s like I know what to do now. I’ve given myself the right inputs. And if you want to take that one step further, a Swiss study proved that if you do just micro movements with that, you don’t even have to do a full practice swing. Yeah. If you’re just doing micro movements while you’re visualizing, 20% plus more effective and activating that athletic mind. Our last step is R for ready. This is when you lock in for performance completely. It’s full commitment, full execution mode. and and a cherry on your Sunday is if your ready word or phrase evokes a positive emotional response, that’s even better. And so I’ll give you two examples of this real quick and then I’ll I’ll hand the mic back to you. Um, for me, I worked with a sports psychologist in in college for college wrestling. And for me, my word was finish. Now, I didn’t have Bravo at the time, so that was all I was thinking about. I didn’t have all this other stuff. But I took that and I sort of modified it for for golf. And for me, my my ready phrase is balance finish because I’m reverse engineering where I want to get to and that’s a balance finish position. And even if it’s a chip, a putt, a full driver swing, it’s the same thought and that’s what does it for me personally. But I have other athletes, particularly this in this example, it’s a 13-year-old uh pretty good golfer, really good golfer actually. But he thinks of the name of his beloved pet and that just fills him with security, love, affirmation, and he plays his best. And all he’s thinking about, I’ll just use a fictitious name, is Fluffy. And but that’s what works. And at the end of the day, performance coaching is about finding what works for the athlete and implementing that, right? And and and you know, kind of test that. If it works, great, we stick with it. If it doesn’t, let’s try something else. No, I love that. I mean, the Bravo technique is like when you and I had talked about it and you kind of showcased to me, it was like I mean, this is all perfect. It’s all it all makes sense. And it’s like a a dialed checklist almost for athletes where it’s like, let’s hit all of these things in order to get back to where I need to be. And again, like if you have that process put in place, you’re already head and shoulders above the next guy because I I I can tell you right now, obviously playing a lot of sports growing up and and I’m sure now you seeing a lot of golfers to this day, a lot of guys are not implementing that in their game, right? And it’s like having a system that works like that is is crucial. It’s the most important. Now, I’d love to hear because obviously there are a lot of steps to the Bravver technique. Not a lot of steps, but obviously there are the five steps to the Bravo technique. Now, which one of those would you say personally for like younger athletes would be the hardest to implement? Like what do you see is the most difficult for them to I guess attach to out of that system? It’s a great question. Um, I had a top 400 ranked golfer come to me and he he didn’t have within this context a pre-shot routine that access this, right? His pre-shot routine was inconsistent and um all kind of all over the place. So, as a result, he was making big numbers for really no reason because he was in perfect position. So in his case, it was the visualized part because he had gotten to an elite level of play without using it. And and so he was literally thinking about what not to hit. He he would go through he would identify his target, but then his last focal point was what he wanted to avoid. Right. So, where do you think his ball went? A lot. Yep. Yep. So, I think that’s been my experience, but I I do think it’s individual, right? I I I seen it where some people just can’t seem to get too ready because they’re like, I don’t know what to say. It’s like, what what does this mean? But I’ve seen other people who are actually uncomfortable with affirmations because they’ve come from such a place that they don’t even talk nicely to themselves. So affirmations feels like a stranger, right? Not like a warm sweater that should make you feel nice and comfy and good about yourself. It it feels yucky. And they’re like, “Man, that’s like that’s like that’s not something I’ll do.” Right. And then you hear that same person, sorry. You hear that same person when they’re the ones in the flooded state, you know, they they they really are channeling some other voice and berating themselves and then you go to them at the end of the round and you say, “Do you remember what you said to yourself on hole four when you made that triple and you three putted? Do you remember what you said to yourself?” Uh, no. What What did I say? And then you tell them, they’re like, “I didn’t say that.” Witness. witness and their their playing partners are like, “Yeah, bro. You did actually.” You know, and it’s like weird to do that to an athlete, but they’re coming off four and a half hour round with you and they’re not feeling good about themselves in that moment. They’re probably pretty pissed off. But man, it’s like sometimes real time feedback is the most valuable feedback because you just came from the the theater of war and you took one to the shoulder and you’re bleeding out a little bit and you’re like, “I’m alive, but man, I’m hurting.” Well, let’s get that fixed and then let’s avoid the bullets next time. How about that? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. No, definitely. Um, no, I I completely agree. I mean, there’s so many athletes and I’ve played with so many that have this like negative self-t talk and almost think that like positive selft talk for yourself or like the affirmation piece is like almost corny, if that makes sense. It’s like, bro, that’s not going to work. And it’s like, yes, it will. I promise you it will. The the way that you communicate with yourself is everything cuz no one’s going to communicate more with you than yourself. And it’s like if you’re giving yourself and feeding yourself all these negative thoughts, that’s obviously going to bleed into what happens. And again, like you said, the athlete you worked with that’s like, I just need to make sure I don’t hit it over there. Like that’s playing not to lose, right? That’s like playing thinking about, all right, I’ll be in a good spot as long as I don’t do this. It’s like, well, that’s not the goal. It’s like, what is your mission? It’s to do X, Y, and Z. Okay. Well, let’s focus on doing X, Y, and Z, and that’s it. Like that’s ultimately what’s going to what’s going to set you up for the most success. Yep. No, completely. Um, but Drew, again, thank you so much for coming on and sharing the Bravo technique and sharing kind of your insights and everything. I’m sure we’re going to have a part three on this at some point because, you know, obviously you and I are talking all the time and you’re always doing cool new things. Now, can you again share with everyone, all the listeners kind of your uh social media handles so everyone can kind of find you and and follow you if if they want? Yeah. Um, performancejuice, real simple. And YouTube and Instagram, find me there, hit me up. Love to hear from you. Awesome. All right, Drew. Again, thank you so much for coming on. I’m sure we’ll we’ll have you on for a part three, so I’m excited for that in the future. Um, but awesome, man. Take care and thank you again. Thanks, Brandon. Take care. Ah, everything.
