Mental Toughness Interview cross-over episode

Brad Cooper

Welcome to the latest episode of the Catalyst Health and Wellness Coaching Podcast. My name’s Brad Cooper. And normally at this point, I’d say, and I’ll be your host, but we’re going to do things a little differently today. Dr. Ian Dunican reached out to me a few months ago and asked if I would be willing to be interviewed on his podcast, titled sleep for performance out of Australia. He had read some of my research on mental toughness and its application to everyday life and thought it might be a nice addition. I agreed and he did a great job. And as I was listening to it, I thought, you know, this is probably some stuff that might be of interest to our audience. And if nothing else they’ll at least appreciate his accent. So today’s episode, Dr. Ian Dunican will take the controls of the interview itself. Just a reminder, you can always reach out to us at Results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. And we have supplementary materials at that same website CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. Now on with the latest episode of the Catalyst Health and Wellness Coaching Podcast.

Dr. Ian Dunican

Welcome back to sleep for performance radio, January, 2019. So many people have sat on the couch over Christmas drank lots of beer, lots of food, probably not done much. And you’ve all got up and said, right, this is the year I’m going to make it work. Well today, we’ve got a very special episode with a very special guest. You sound like a guy that owns a massive ranch in America and has lots of money.

Brad Cooper

Well, we’ll just go with that.

Dr. Ian Dunican

So, so Brad, can you give us, obviously you’re based in the US, you’re in Colorado. Can you give us a quick overview of your background and how it led you to doing your PhD?

Brad Cooper

Yes. I’ll try to keep this short, physical therapist for 20 some years. In 2007, we started a company called US Corporate Wellness with the goal, the design to bring essentially better lives to corporate America, if you will, and helping employees make better life choices across the full spectrum. So yes, food and fitness, but also sleep also life balance, all these other components. And so our focus has covered the full gamut of health and wellness in terms of those elements, but especially the personal wellness coaching. And so that’s what we’re known for in the US is we provide the full gamut of wellness programs, but we almost always incorporate personal wellness coaching into that. And in fact, we have a lot of our competitors that are now having us do their coaching for them, just because of the way that reputation has developed. So that was the early stage of trying to figure out, well, how can we do a better job of doing what we’re doing? And then in 2015, and I think this is maybe what brought you to, to me initially, was I had a chance to do a trio of events, the race across America, two person bike race from Oceanside, California, to Annapolis, Maryland. It’s about 3000 miles. And we finished that in about seven days. We won the race. A couple of months later, I tried to qualify for the Hawaii Ironman world championship, which is probably your, most of the listeners on this podcast already know is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and, uh, and then a marathon at the end and the likelihood of competing to the level that you get into the, the world championship is it’s just a long shot. It’s, you know, one to 2% of each group. And then two weeks after that race is over, tried to run a sub three hour marathon at age of 49. And then the research, the reason that research came about was I came out of those three events saying, well, what’s up, like my metal toughness was really good here and really bad here. And then it would spark again and that wasn’t caffeine related. It wasn’t blood sugar related. It just would happen. And so I was curious, I, I, I tried to read everything I could get my hands on in terms of the popular press and it, there, there just weren’t answers. And so I decided to go back and get my PhD and study mental toughness, variability the within person, not between person, because that’s where mental toughness has historically been studied is looking at is yours better than mine? Well I don’t care? It doesn’t matter to me at all. I want to know how can I improve yours and how can I improve mine. And so that’s what led to this. And that’s, that’s where we’ve gone with the research so far.

Dr. Ian Dunican

That’s really cool, Brad, and it’s great to, you know, talk to a scientist who actually participates in these activities as well, because I think it’s a real, it’s real interesting in our narrative that you can bring into your research as well, because not only are you, researching it, but you have practiced it as well, and you can bring in personal experiences to kind of help guide the research and get credibility with athletes as well, which I think is really important.

Brad Cooper

Well, I appreciate that. It brings it to life so much. I mean, I was out at the track doing 800 or 400 repeats the other day and you know, I, yes, I’m training, but I’m also thinking through, okay. So what was that finding we had in that last study? Let me apply that to this next rep and see if I can trim three seconds. So it’s, it’s selfish too, in that I’m doing this, not only to help our organization to help the broader population, but it’s kind of fun to apply it personally too.

Dr. Ian Dunican

And with that then Brad, I’m going to have to confess here because, uh, this podcast here today is completely selfish because, uh, I’ve switched from long distance running, as I’ve told you to long distance swimming. I completed my longest swim last week, five kilometers in the ocean. And I’m trying to get up to 10 kilometers in the ocean with a view to doing 20 next year. And, um, this podcast is really all about me and how can I get more mentally tough?

Brad Cooper

Well, let’s get you there, buddy.

Dr. Ian Dunican

So, so Brad, at the moment, um, we, we jump on online, let’s say Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, we see all these kinds of ads for different types of coaching. And there’s mental toughness. There’s resilience, there’s train like a Navy seal, be like a special forces guy, you know, push through what what’s the difference or how, how would you define mental toughness in this kind of world of all of these terms that are getting thrown around at the moment?

Brad Cooper

Yeah, that’s a fantastic question. I think if you look at the three biggest terms that are out there in terms of, uh, this general concept, you have resilience at one end, you have grit at the other end and you have mental toughness, uh, somewhere in the middle. If you look at the resilience is being defined and redefined by, by everyone, essentially. But if you look at the original concept, it was about what you bring to the table. So you go through a difficult childhood. You’re, you’re abused as a child, you go through a tough situation there, that breaks a lot of people, but the people, it doesn’t break, it creates this resilience that they carry with them, the rest of their lives. And so resilience is really about the past. It’s what you bring to the table. Uh, grit, if you read Angela Duckworth’s research and her book, it’s about the future. It’s about keeping that long-term perspective on where you’re heading and staying on that path. What I love about mental toughness is it’s right now. It is right now. Now mental toughness needs to be in the context of you caring you don’t when you listen to this podcast, unless you’re running at the same time or, or whatever it might be. You’re not using mental toughness. You’re just kicking back relaxing. You don’t need it at that moment, but there are times in life, whether it’s a physical pursuit or some change around a new year’s resolution type thing, that if you can draw a little bit more from your, your potential capacity, if you will, that can make the difference of succeeding or failing. And so that’s where the focus of my research is. And I think if people can keep that, that diagram in mind of you’ve got resilience past grit, future mental toughness right now that kind of helps put things in context.

Dr. Ian Dunican

So that’s a great way of framing that Brad. And if we look at resilience first, like, do we need resilience to have mental toughness? So as your example, if you had a rough childhood or, you know, maybe you didn’t get through that childhood very good. And you weren’t very well and you were left with some sort of residual mental health issues or emotional issues. Does that mean you can’t get mentally tough and you can’t have grit? Or do you have to have a good high level of resilience before you can have mental toughness?

Brad Cooper

That’s a great question. And I don’t think we’ve clarified that in the research yet, but my personal opinion is twofold there. One, if you look at our model of, of, uh, essentially the, what we call the functional mental toughness concept, and what I mean by that is it’s not, it’s not what your potential capacity is for mental toughness. It’s what you’re functioning on. So it’s how much you’re accessing at this moment in the situation. So again, the, the broader mental toughness may be your potential capacity. And if you have more resilience than your potential capacity might be higher, but the functional piece, the FMT is what are we accessing in this moment at this time for this specific activity that we’re trying to break through and perform above our natural ability. So to answer your question, would that person bring more to the table? I think they would, again, I’m, I’m hypothesizing here, but I think if, if you did come through a tough childhood or a rough divorce or an angry boss that was constantly on your, on your back, then you might build resilience that could give you a greater capacity, but that doesn’t mean you’re utilizing it. The, the three elements we’ve identified as impacting functional mental toughness, the most are thrive, prepare and activate. Thrive is the foundation of wellbeing. It’s all those things that, that you kind of introduce there. The prepare is what you’re doing to repair specifically mentally for the, whatever it is that you’re pursuing, the race, the event, the presentation, the new year’s resolution, whatever. And then activate is what you do in that moment. You have broader thrive, foundational wellbeing, and then you have prepare, that’s the concept of what you’re doing to get ready for when the spotlight hits you, you’re ready. And then activate is, is when the spotlight’s on.

Dr. Ian Dunican

Yeah, very, very, I’m very interested and this is something we often talk about with them, or we see in, in martial arts, for example, in combat sports, as people are very good at getting ready for a fight, um, very good in the gym, very experienced, but then when the big show comes along they just kind of fall apart, and this is, we can see many examples of this, but also conversely to that then Brad, and this is a conversation I had with a friend of mine who’s ex special forces who was on the podcast last season, a guy called Bram Conley, who was a major in the Australian commanders. It’s a conversation I had with him I think off the podcast is how much the situation has got to do with it. So for example, when people go through a selection course for a special forces, um, place, so whether it be Navy seals, Greenbriers, whatever it might be, those guys at any one time, know they can drop out, they know it’s not real. They know it’s not, you know, life and death really. Although some people do die in those courses, if that was a real life war situation, would those people, you know, perform at a greater level, would they be more, more likely to be like a Navy seal or an SAS type candidate? Is there a difference in how the, how the environment and the situation shapes our mental toughness? So, you know, when our lives are up against, up against it, or we’re really getting pushed here for our own safety does a different level of mental toughness or to use your future term grit, present itself?

Brad Cooper

Yeah. I’m not positive I’m catching your question, right. So guide me differently if I’m taking this the wrong direction. But I think what their training is really focused on is that prepare piece of the trilogy. So the thrive is not always there in those settings to prepare is the main emphasis. They cannot truly create the activate piece, but they can practice it over and over and over and over. So it’s more likely that they can activate when they move forward. And that’s what you’re looking for in that, that prepare space. Things like self-talk, for example, everybody that’s done any kind of reading knows the value of self-talk. And yet you talk to athletes of almost any sport and the number of them that purposely utilize that when they’re in that moment, it’s actually a very small percentage. And so, by, by taking that into the prepare phase and saying, okay, I know the value of activate, I need to do it. Here’s my specific strategy. Let me lay this out. And in my training, I’m going to utilize these tools that can have a big impact. So that’s the direction I would try to take with somebody in that situation.

Dr. Ian Dunican

Okay. Yeah. No, that was perfect answer. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. So Brad, when we, um, going back to mental toughness, um, what are, what are the elements that people need to have, or need to train or what would they need to do to try to increase their mental toughness for the present? So, like I said, at the start of the podcast, somebody’s got a goal this year to run a marathon. Um, they want to complete a triathlon. They want to run a 10k, whatever it might be, what sort of elements of mental toughness should people look at and how maybe some of the things they could do to improve their own mental toughness?

Brad Cooper

Yeah, sure. I think any of your listeners who just write these three words down that we’ve been talking about and then continually revisit them. So the three words are thrive, prepare and activate, and then we’re going to, we’re putting together an assessment that’ll help people, nothing official, not a, not a research-based assessment, but just something to get people thinking. That’ll help them look at that and say, Ooh, yikes, I’m a little weak in the thrive area. Or man, I’m really dropping the ball on the prepare, whatever it’ll just help them kind of guide that process, but on their own, they can do that a little bit. So if they’ll just write those three down and say, okay, I’m wanting to do XYZ. How’s my thrive. And so for example, a lot of your focus is on sleep that is such a critical, critical, in fact, there’s probably not a more critical area for the thrive piece. So is their sleep where it needs to be both quality and quantity and if not, they’re going to improve their mental toughness by improving their sleep. So that would be an example of enhancing their thrive as they move towards these other things. They could look at the prepare and say, well, okay, I’m running, I’ve been trying this marathon, but am I preparing for the tough piece? The, the, that, you know, you hit that 18, 20 miles and doggone. It doesn’t matter who you are. It, it stinks. It’s just tough. What are you doing to prepare for that? What types of, of, uh, training mental training are you doing? For example, when I was getting ready for the race across America, one of the techniques I use and I actually got into a bike wreck six weeks before the race and broke eight bones. So I had to be a little bit creative with my training. And one of the things I did during my indoor training was I took a target just on a piece of paper. And I would stick that in front of me. I was training indoors on the CompuTrainer in my basement, and I’d stick this thing in front of me. I’d turn off computers, phone music, podcasts, TV, the whole works, and just stare at that target and stay focused on the centerpiece. And then I start, if I would start to drift if my mind would start to go into different directions. I would work my way back in. So I’d start from the outside rings. And I just gradually go back to the bullseye and I’ve worked on that concentration. So that was an example of the preparation phase. I didn’t realize it at the time, but retrospectively, that was, uh, an example of going through the prepare phase that once I got into that race and I hadn’t been sleeping and the competitors were right there and it wasn’t the perfect situation that could bring that concentration back into play. So those types of things, if they’ll just analyze, do a, self-assessment ask yourself, how am I doing with my foundational wellbeing? How well am I preparing? And then what am I doing in that moment to activate these other pieces? And that’ll, that’ll really give them a lot of guidance.

Dr. Ian Dunican

Excellent. Very interesting. Very interesting. So Brad, for people who may be sitting at home again, um, coming back to this, um, sort of start to the year thing. Um, and they may feel like I’ve had lower resilience. Um, maybe they’ve had like, like we said, the traumatic childhood, they’ve been through a rough job divorce. Some of those examples you used, um, what could they do in terms of preparing for resilience before they even look at mental toughness to get ready for an event? Because they may have probably some, I suppose, existing issues that they may need to work on. Um, any athletes you’ve worked with before or any examples from the literature, what do people do to kind of improve their resilience as a, as a base before they move into that mental toughness area? Or is that something that’s been looked at?

Brad Cooper

Yeah, the, the, the research out there is people are calling it different things, frankly. So resilience is getting a lot of attention right now. It’s a popular word across both athletics and the organizational level, uh, workplace settings, those kinds of things. But the original definition is what you bring to the table. So we’re not going to change that. Now people are going to argue with me on that. I get it, but, but that’s, that’s what it was. So we look at that and we say, okay, what elements can we impact? And it, and I don’t want to make it too simplistic, but it’s pretty straightforward. We need to look at these three areas. Am I thriving? So if I don’t have a lot of resilience, I need to do better at X, Y, and Z, the thrive prepare, activate piece, an example that might be helpful. I I’m, I’m 52. A lot of my buddies are starting to use age as an excuse. Oh, you know what I’m slowing down because I’m in my fifties now. And I just look at them and go, just, what are you talking about? Like, you’re an idiot stop saying that. That’s just an excuse. Now it’s not an excuse for the elite athlete. Someone who is literally world-class, they’ve been at the peak of their performance. And they’ve, they’ve performed at that level that, you know, 0.001% of people hit. I get it. Okay. Sure. But for most of us, we’ve never performed at our capacity ever. So if you’re telling me that you can’t make up, you’ve been performing at 60% of your capacity, most of your life, buddy. So if you’re losing some, yeah, we’re losing a little bit, a half percent to a percent every year after 50, but there’s so many opportunities to make up for that with better eating, better sleeping, better use of strategic caffeine, you know, this whole thriving piece, foundational well-being all of those pieces more than make up for that 1%. So if you’re telling me that you can’t race as fast as you did at age 40, because you’re now 50, you’re full of it. Again, if you are elite and you’re Olympic caliber, then I’ll buy that argument. But none of my buddies are Olympic caliber. So we’ve got potential to make up that 1% by doing other things better. And so, in your example of somebody who has limited resilience, maybe they were coddled as a kid. Maybe they never had those challenges that put put in front of them, or maybe they were broken by them. And so they’re coming to the table with low resilience. Okay. That’s how, that’s just how it is. We’ll just move forward. What can you impact? And that’s where you look at these three elements of how can I enhance my thrive? How can I enhance my preparation? How can I enhance my, my, the way that activate in the midst of that? And there are so many opportunities to work on all three of those. It may not fully make up for the resilience piece for someone else who comes at it from the other angle of having huge resilience, but doggone it, we don’t care. It’s not the between person. It’s the within person that really matters.

Dr. Ian Dunican

I think you’re right. I think there’s this kind of nearly expectation in Western society, that once you get over a certain age, that you should slow down, you have to slow down where it’s kinda like, uh, here, you know, after let’s keep pushing, let’s keep moving. Because once you start slowing down, you start gaining weight, you start, you know, getting tired and, and sort of get lethargic. And it’s, it’s more about your approach to life. And then everything else starts to fall apart. And I’ve seen this with other people as well, where they make that mental shift of I’m going to get fit. I’m going to like, you know, reduce alcohol, whatever it is. And they become new people at the age of 50 on the, on the back of that Brad, and like in our, with some of the corporations you work with, is that really what you’re focused on is getting them to try before you think you talk about mental toughness and grit, and just to get them to a base level, um, of sort of operating, like you just implant an operating system into them really about daily activity and general health and wellbeing to be fit for work, to perform their job first, before they move into, you know, sort of, um, athletic endeavors?

Brad Cooper

It really is our, our focus is with everyday employees. So we’re not working with elite athletes primarily, although there are a few elite athletes that are, that are, uh, working here with us, through their companies, if you will. But our work through the Catalyst Coaching Institute is certifying coaches for the international consortium for health and wellness coaches. And all that training is around how to draw out of the individual what matters most to you? A coach does not come to you and say, you need to do A, B and C an effective coach says what’s most important to you? And then let’s create a plan together, or frankly help the employee or the client create that plan. And then the coach helps, helps them move forward by asking the right questions, setting specific targets, those kinds of things. So you’re exactly right. The thrive piece is where we as an organization focus our time, but at some level we start to move into the prepare and activate, and I’m actually going to be doing a keynote out in Cincinnati next week, where I’ll be talking about that to a group of, of human resources, managers and leaders. So hopefully we’ll get more opportunities to present this concept because I think it’s very powerful and can make a big difference.

Dr. Ian Dunican

Yeah, I think it’s, it’s really interesting. And like you brought as well, I work across, you know, industry and athletes and, um, there’s lots of crossover, but in the, in the industry affairs of the work that I do a lot of is about embedding, um, you know, kind of a framework and a foundation where people can move off that and you will find some high level or amateur athletes within those groups as well, who can give them some more of these kinds of information pieces that come from daily athletes. Um, but I think if you have a shorter framework or how it works in sport organizations are quite intrigued by that, and it can help kind of paint a picture and to use your example of thrive prepare and activate. I think showing that to organizations is very helpful and we often do that within the sleep portal as well. We’ll sort of embed the kind of a fatigue risk management system, um, or alertness management system. And then how that works in terms of creating the foundation for elite athletic performance. When we work with elite rugby or fighters, whoever might be to move to that next level. And we show that like, sleep is the number one recovery tool that’s free and provides that baseline as well. And that’s why I like your model here. That you’ve you keep coming back to because it shows, you know, in a very nice way of how people can go, um, how can people can analyze the different phases in resilience, mental toughness or grit, and when to use it, but also to thrive, prepare and activate, which is a great kind of thing for people to remember. So, um, it’s extremely beneficial for, for people at home.

Dr. Ian Dunican

So, so Brad, let’s, let’s, let’s look at an example. Let’s, let’s take this example of this group that I’m in at the moment and we’re working through, um, um, and we’ll walk through it, if that’s all right. So we’ve got these group of people that are like, um, it’s about a 50 to 60 people. Their age somewhere between average age is probably late thirties, early forties, we’ll say 40 for argument’s sake. They all want to swim to this Island off Perth, which is 20 kilometers away. They want to do this long distance swim that’s a solo crossing. Um, you can’t be aided by any boards or whatever. Like you can have boards with food and water and so on, but you can’t be touching the board or be getting dragged. The water has got to be about 20, 21 degrees Celsius. Um, people are gonna swim anywhere from five to 10 hours to get across here and our trained in a, in a four month block, um, or 16 weeks. And, uh, right in the middle of that now sort of pause Christmas. In this sort of example, how would you recommend if people are struggling, we’re kind of continuing to train or they’re dropping out or getting injuries, or to kind of doubt themselves, whether I can do this, this race at the moment, um, where do you think they should start in terms of looking at their approach to their training and their mindset?

Brad Cooper

Yeah. I, again, come back to this concept of functional mental toughness, you have an amount that’s available to you, but how much functional mental toughness are you drawing? How much of that are you accessing? And if you feel like, you know, control the controllables, basically, if you feel like you’re falling short, first of all, ask yourself, cause part of thrive is, do you care? Like you don’t need functional mental toughness if you don’t care, if you’re just out there, cause your buddy dragged you out there, or you’re, you know, you, your spouse’s ex boyfriend was doing this. You’re trying to prove something that may not be enough. And so you may need to examine internally, is this really part of who I am? Am I, do I care? Does this matter to me enough to draw an actual mental toughness? Or am I just going through the motions? Functional toughness only comes into play when you care, otherwise it’s off the table. So I think that would be my first question is, do I really care? Now, if I do really care and I’m falling short, then I need to go back to this self-assessment and say, okay, let me start with thrive because that’s such a basic, easy to analyze area. How am I sleeping? What is my alcohol intake? How’s my fueling, is my general health good. How’s my stress. How am I managing my stress, all of those components. And then fix those again, control the controllables. If you’ve got a shoulder injury that may be out of control, but if it’s a, if it’s a mental piece where you say I just don’t care enough, well then maybe we can get that by improving our sleep or these other elements. So I would start there, look at that first control, those basics.

Brad Cooper

And then from there, say, okay, we’ve got that dialed in. I’m sleeping well, I’m eating well. I’m well, I’m watching the alcohol, all those kinds of things. Now let’s move to phase two, prepare how do I need to prepare? Where am I breaking down? When am I falling short? What could I do that would change that if it’s always hour four, how could I set myself up to experience that mentally? One of the things I used to do for, for triathlons is I would sign up for a half Ironman or a half marathon. And I would go out to the parking lot three hours before the race and get on my bike trainer and just ride on my trainer for two, two and a half hours. And then five minutes before the race starts. I throw my bike in the car, throw my running shoes on and run the race. And what that did is it created this race scenario. I wasn’t just doing a brick workout. I wasn’t just doing a bike run. I was doing a moderate, I wasn’t killing myself on the bike, but a moderate bike and then literally racing and trying to be as close to winning the half marathon as I could coming off that bike for two hours. So that created this mental preparation, if you will, for when I got into half Ironman, yes, there’s still a swim on there and in front, but that’s a half hour and then boom, similar bikes, similar run. And that wasn’t a surprise. I was ready for it. So have that person look at where are they breaking down? Is it hour four? Is it hour six? How can they set that up? How can they create fatigue or mental struggles leading into that? If they always work out in the morning, for example, when they’re fresh and they’re ready to go, and they haven’t had any mental drains on their day, what if they shifted and started doing their, you know, if they can shift their work schedule and have a long, hard day of work where they’re trying to do a lot of stuff and maybe they even don’t eat all that well, you know, kind of purposely deplete the body and then go out and do that three hour swim at four o’clock in the afternoon and see how do I respond now? So you’re essentially that preparation, preparation is all about putting yourself in the scenario so that when it’s go time, when the spotlight shines, you’ve been there already, essentially in your mind at least. And so it’s analyzing that piece and then moving forward. And I think if they do those two things, they’re going to be there.

Dr. Ian Dunican

I love that reasoning and rationale, Brad, I think it’s such an important thing. Um, you know, personally, um, you know, when you have a goal or something you want to achieve, whether it be either physically or academically or in business, I think it’s, it’s what drives you and just writing down your goals, you know, um, about what you want to achieve is, is very powerful and may seem a lot of people laugh at it, but I’ve seen people write down on a piece of paper and for, you know, in two years time, I want to earn X amount. I want to be in a job or I’m working in technology. I want to have my master’s degree. And you pick up that piece of paper two years later and you know, I’ve seen people go, Whoa, I actually did all of that. And it’s very powerful about writing those down or repeating those or you, um, having to, as at the forefront of your mind, which actually leads into my next part is when it comes to the race there Brad, whether it be a swim or run or whatever it might be. And come back to our example here, these guys swimming, what, what can people do on a day of, such as mantras or self-talk or, you know, repeating a phrase or whatever it might be. What have you seen that works pretty well?

Brad Cooper

First of all, if you haven’t, you know, the old saying, don’t do anything new on race day. If you haven’t practiced it, it’s not going to work. You’re just, you’re setting yourself up for failure and you’re wasting your time. So if you’re going to use self-talk on race day, make sure that’s part of your practice. Make sure you break it up into, here are the words I’m going to use at this time, during this section, uh, during this phase, whatever, it might be, practice that in training so that it’s automated when you get to race day. So, so that’s the biggest thing. Self-talk, you know, if you look at the literature on that, it’s, it’s getting stronger practically by the day in terms of what we’re seeing with that. Um, so take advantage of that. The, the whole concept of you’ve been there is a big one and reminding yourself, you’ve been there, I think on race day, if you can look at it and say, okay, I’ve done this, that changes your perspective so much because you’re not, you’re not freaking out. You’re not like, Oh my gosh, I’m at the start of the Hawaii Ironman world championship. This is crazy. You can just say, you know what? I’ve been here. Yeah. It wasn’t the exact same spot, but I’ve, I’ve done this. I’ve ridden the exact same distance. I’ve run the exact same race in similar humidity, you know, whatever. Um, but reminding yourself of that, and then the little things like smiling, it sounds so hilarious. But if you watch the Nike two hour project, even at that level with the greatest athletes, not just of our generation, but maybe ever the guy that came in 24 seconds over the two hour mark, even under some artificial conditions, you saw him using that smiling technique up until the last, what 800 meters miles, something like that. So that’s a powerful one too. And that one is probably one you could use without a lot of practice. If you remember, the practicing piece allows you to kick that in and remember as you go forward. So those would be a few things you could try out of the gate. You know what, one of the things, Ian, you mentioned the, the writing goals down, we just recorded on our podcast, the catalyst health of wellness coaching podcast. We just recorded an episode on kind of moving a slightly different direction instead of directly goals, looking more to theme or a vision. One of the things we see with people is when they set goals and the way you described it, it totally makes sense and it works, but a lot of people will set goals that, that they’re, they’re not necessarily them. And so what we encourage people to do is take a step back. Instead of writing the goal. First, identify the vision of the person you want to become the who, once you have the who and place the, what is pretty simple, but if you identify the what first, which would be your goals, it’s not always lined up with the who. And then they usually fail within a few weeks. So we encourage people and you may want to take a peek at that one. It’s all about themes. And how do we identify a theme for our life for the next year or a vision for our life, for the next year of who are we going to be? And then once that, who is in place, well, then the goals pretty much are just walking through the motions. So it really is a powerful process for somebody who takes the time to do that.

Dr. Ian Dunican

That’s, that’s pretty interesting. If we come back to like on race day, we were talking about self-talk and mantras and so on. And people often describe in these long distance events, about getting into a flow state and to feel, like everything is this magical bliss and they’re floating along and they can sort of transcend transcending the actual day. What is it Brad that gets people into that flow state? Um, and why does it last and why does it not last, or why does it kind of sometimes happen or not? Do you have any thoughts or comments on that?

Brad Cooper

You know, that’s probably part of what pulled me into this PhD research was wanting to be able to recreate that in a competitive situation. And so your question is truly the million dollar or many million dollar question. Um, but I I think if you look at, the original research on flow. It occurs when that challenge and skill level exactly match up. And in fact, maybe the challenge is just a smidgen, just a minuscule outside your skill level. So you’re slightly stretching, but it’s not so much that it becomes discouraging. Um, so to start with, you have to, for it to have potential, you have to be in a situation where that is possible. If you’re always pursuing things that are below your skill level or well within your skill level, the old comfort zone thing, I don’t want to overuse that word because it’s ridiculously is, is overused, but just, is there anything in your life that is slightly outside, or at least at the boundaries of your, of your skill level, or is everything you’re doing far below that? Because if so, you’ll never, you’re never going to experience that flow state. So that’s the first thing. And then with the other pieces are the things we’ve been talking about today in order to get into that state, you’ve got to put yourself in a place where you have the potential for it, and then you need to get these other pieces in place to thrive, prepare and activate to allow you to function consistently at the outer boundaries of that.

Dr. Ian Dunican

Hmm. Very interesting. The problem is with a podcast like this Brad is, as you’re talking, I’m writing and I’m thinking, and I can’t think of the question I want to ask here next because it’s so interesting. I find myself drifting off thinking about different things as we speak, which is probably not great for our listeners, but I’m mega interest in this because, um, you know, going through different challenges myself personally, um, and always looking for something next to kind of test myself. This is a fascinating area for me. And I, I find it really interesting because I find in, in, in some events that I’m nearly like this due to personality from observing myself and, you know, I’m talking to myself or give it out to myself, or I’m getting mad at myself when I’m not doing something well enough and so on. And it’s interesting how with different sports like jiu-jitsu or even a yoga class, because I’m so inflexible and so broken, um, you know, that self-talk, that goes on, whether it be negative or positive or right, or running or whatever it might be. But what I do find interesting is that the more experience and the more training I do, and the more kind of, let’s say I work on putting in an effort and an effort I put into a task, the more positive the self-talk becomes, um, over time. And so, like you said, it’s like, you’ve been here before. So like last week I swam five kilometers in the ocean, which is nothing for long distance swimmers. For me, that was the equivalent of like a marathon. You know, it was also, I felt so good because only two weeks before that I spent my furthest ever in the ocean, which is 3.3 ks. And back in October, I’d never even swam three kilometers in a swimming pool, uh, without the air of like fins and pool boys and so on. So in a very short space of time, getting that experience, um, has been extremely beneficial to me. And like you said, replicating those conditions. And with that, now my confidence has gone up, you know, I’ve been promoted up a lane in the, in the, in our group, my confidence gone up, I spent more time in the ocean cause it’s going to be ocean swimming. And to your point, I think replicating those conditions as much as possible doing the work. And now I feel like my, my thrive in sports affairs is increasing improving because of preparation. So, you know, you can, you can do as much mental toughness as you wish in terms of mantras and self-talk. But if that thrive piece isn’t there and you have to put in the work, no amount of mental toughness or self-talk is going to get you through. If you haven’t, you know, got yourself race ready on the day. Um, so have you ever seen people in lieu of doing the proper training and try to use self-talk or is that just a waste of effort?

Brad Cooper

That’s a fool’s game. Yeah, absolutely. Functional mental toughness is the tie breaker. When all other things are equal, if you’re not prepared physically, it doesn’t matter. Like, yeah, it matters. It’s going to help you drag yourself through it, but it’s not going to help you perform. And if we’re looking for performance, that’s a different area. So you’ve got to be physically prepared to go in there and get it done. And then the functional mental toughness will allow you to perform slightly above what your expectation, what, what normal expectation would be based on your, your performance. That’s where mental toughness comes in. If you think about like an underdog, we love the underdog because you see the underdog performing above what you thought they were going to do. That’s what makes them an underdog. And if you want, and that’s where mental toughness comes in is it allows you to function slightly above slightly, 1%, 3% above what you should have been expected to do. It is not the base. The base is the physical training and preparation. The function mental toughness allows you to outperform that physical preparation by a very small amount, but it could be the amount that makes a difference.

Dr. Ian Dunican

Brad in your work or shift the focus off the athlete and more towards the coaching and the support, um, and your work dealing with athletes and even businesses or talking to their coaches. Um, how can a coach help athletes around, you know, the resilience, mental toughness and grit and the thrive prepare and activate pieces. Um, because in some of the coaches I’ve spoken to somewhere like, look, these guys, or these girls are grit. They don’t need any, they’re here to putting into work. At the elite level that that happens. And they’re kind of, most of them are pushing it because it’s a full-time job for them because they’re getting paid. But then when we get to the older athletes, particularly who are in that amateur bracket or doing something like this swim or training for a marathon, um, and it’s not life or death for them, they’ve got a full-time job they’ve got kids that like having a few glasses of wine on a Friday night, um, have to do this part-time, they’re trying to do everything and they don’t want to drop anything. What advice do you give to coaches or athletes around that from a kind of a external point of view about managing all those that are other kind of activities that’s happening that may be detracting them away from the thrive and, and preparation piece?

Brad Cooper

Yeah, it’s a great question. I think, decide in advance. How much do you care? Is this a social activity? Are you doing this because your buddies are doing it and it’s something to do on a Saturday morning, like a golf game, or do you have dialed in specific targets that you’re committed to? And you’ve talked through with your family and you’ve looked at your schedule and they make sense. It’s a fool’s journey to set a goal that doesn’t fit with life. And I get that. I believe me, I get that before I sign up for an iron man. That’s a conversation my wife and I have is, does it make sense to do this this year? Because we know the commitment that’s involved with that. But once that decision has been made, decide, am I sticking with this, like maybe you reassess on a monthly basis. Okay. A month ago I said that I was committed to qualifying for the Hawaii Ironman or racing the race across America or doing this incredible swim that you’re scheduled to do, but is my schedule conducive to that? And if it’s not, does that mean I cancel my participation? Does it mean I lower my expectations or do I realign my schedule at work at home? And if we can’t you, like I said, you can’t, you can’t create something out of nothing. If either we don’t care anymore, or our schedule doesn’t work with it, then we need to either change expectations or change the plan.

Dr. Ian Dunican

That’s that’s uh, that’s, that’s great advice. I think it’s, um, I think it’s great. And I think like for people who may be halfway through a training program at the moment, right. To start it’s, it’s great advice because maybe, maybe it is time to pull the plug. Maybe it’s not right. Maybe you lower your expectations. Okay. Yeah. That’s okay. But like, like you say, it’s realistic, you know, there’s no point in, in destroying your career, your marriage, your relationship, other things, just for the sake of ticking a box, because you know, you thought, that’s what you had to do.

Brad Cooper

Um, well, and I, I, you know, I think something I realized a few years ago and I’m still not very good at applying it, but I came to the realization that, you know, who cares, how I finish in a race. There are only two people, well, maybe three me, the person that was right in front of me and the person that’s right behind me, my family doesn’t care. My friends don’t care. The race director doesn’t care, nobody cares. And I think we forget that we blow this stuff up in our heads as this, for some professional athlete, performing the super bowl. Folks, I got bad news for you. That’s not, you just basic people we’re out there having fun. It’s our hobby. And again, I can say this very easily. I’m not very good at applying it. But I think when we realize, Hey, like you said, it’s not worth messing my marriage up. It’s not worth taking too much time away from being a dad to these great kids. That’s, it’s not worth losing my job over this thing. And people get crazy with these things in turn sports kicks in the psychosis, I think. And we were like, no, I give up my job to qualify for Ironman. No, you don’t. It’s not. It’s cool. And it’s an awesome life changing event to a point. But so is losing your job, because you’re an idiot.

Dr. Ian Dunican

I think Brad, to that point, there’s lots more things that people can give up. You know, if the one, if they’re looking to, you know, look for some agent or training, you know, you can take alcohol out for, for a period of time, you can stop socializing. You know, on certain times you can focus on your sleep. You can stop watching crappy Foxtel shores or, you know, Fox sports in the evening or watching reruns of Dawson’s Creek. We can all we can all find time somewhere, you know? Um, we’re, we’re all guilty of that. We can all find time somewhere to, um, to focus on these other areas. So I think, I think that’s a, that’s a great point. And, um, you know, it’s very important.

Brad Cooper

And it’s just like the 50 year old athlete that uses age as an excuse when they haven’t frankly, optimize their physical performance ever in their life. But, well, I’m getting old, so that’s why I’m slow. No it’s just, cause you’re not training anymore, but same, same thing for that person. And your point is very well stated that if the time isn’t because of your family, it’s not because of your work it’s because you’re disorganized. It’s because you’re not dialed in. Um, I get that question constantly of how do you, how are you the CEO for a wellness company and training for this Ironman or whatever 20 hours a week? And I say, well, I’m, I’m on the bike at 5:00 AM on Saturday. What are you doing? You know, so you don’t go for a ride with a group ride at 10:00 AM and miss the whole day with your family. No, you don’t, you, if you’re really committed to this, prove it, don’t say it. Prove it by being on that bike at 5:00 AM. That’s a different story.

Dr. Ian Dunican

Yeah. You’ve got to do the work. Yeah. That’s uh, I’m gonna say I’m a half-life Saturday morning, we’re at the pool or, you know, we’re swimming five, six kilometers. It’s you’ve got to do the work. People, people see the glory at the end of the day across the finish line or, or just think that it’s all easy for you. They don’t, they don’t see the hard work that goes into, uh, um, you know, my wife and I speak about this. She’s got a background in human movement and natural medicine. We speak about this a lot about how, you know, people say to us, well, it’s all right for you. You don’t like junk food and you like to run. I’m like, well, actually, you know, um, you know, I love junk food and I actually don’t like running and I don’t like all these things, but I like how it makes me feel when I’m in the middle of that. And I like how I feel at the end. I said, you don’t think, I don’t want to sit at home on the couch and, you know, scratch my balls and watch TV and eat crap food of course I do. Like you’ve got to just kind of, you know, have that self-talk and, you know, have that grit and, and sort of that inner mongrel, as we say, here in Australia, and just get up and go for it. Because if you don’t like what what’s going to happen, what’s the downside is, is too much for me. It’s uh, I, I know, I feel like crap. I know I can perform cognitively. I know mentally I’m going to be, I’m going to be washed out. So I’ve got to get up and do work. And so on the back of that, Brad, if, if people are in the middle of that training and they are thinking about, you know, dropping out, like we said, and sometimes that’s okay. What’s the benefits for people if they do stay in the training that they do keep going, what, what benefits do you see for people outside of their chosen sport? Whether it be swimming long distance running or, uh, long distance cycling? What benefits do people bring into the rest of their life from going through these adverse, um, sort of training programs and conditions and events? What, what, what benefits do people bring into their general life?

Brad Cooper

Great question. And maybe the most important question we’ve talked about because general life is a lot more important than these fun things that we’re doing this hobbies. So in terms of, okay, you’re, you’re kind of hitting a wall. You’re not sure to continue to decide, to continue to make some sacrifices in other areas with Netflix or, you know, whatever it might be and you power through it. That just became a preparation piece that fits in that preparation section for other aspects of your life. You’ve just shown yourself that I can do this. I can pull through when things are down, when the chips are down, et cetera, et cetera. And so you’ve created this, this vision of you and your life and the things that you can accomplish in one area that then carries over into other areas. And so I think that’s one of the biggest benefits is that ability to, I did it here. That is preparation, not only for future events, but for future life. And that’s kind of a cool thing to walk away with.

Dr. Ian Dunican

That’s great. That’s a great point and a great way to end the podcast, Brad. Brad, that was, that was awesome. I think I could talk to you all day about this millions of examples and, and, and, you know, bring you around in a circus with me and talk to lots of people. I think it will be, it will be great, um, unfortunately, uh, the oceans and land dividers, but I do really appreciate your time, their Brad. Um, uh, and, uh, this is, this has been an awesome podcast for me to record, which I really appreciate that. If people want to get in contact with you, Brad, what’s the best way, how can they follow your work? How can they, you know, see all the great work that you’re doing?

Brad Cooper

Yeah, probably two areas. Email, if they have any specific questions is B as in Brad Cooper, C O O P E R BCooper@uscorporatewellness.com. They’re on Twitter, and they like that route. It’s @Catalyst2Thrive. So catalyst two thrive with the two being a number two.

Dr. Ian Dunican

Excellent. And what’s your podcast, you spoke about your podcast I’m going to subscribe to.

Brad Cooper

Yeah. It’s the Catalyst Health and Wellness Coaching podcast. It’s designed for health and wellness coaches to help. There are a million wellness type podcasts out there, but there’s nothing to help wellness coaches become better coaches. And so we cover everything from in fact, you and I may need to talk about this. We just had another sleep expert on there. I’d love to get you on in the coming months. Uh, we had somebody talking about the overlap between mental health and coaching and how the two work together. We’ve looked at all kinds of different things, but it’s essentially health and wellness tips for the general population, but also helping coaches become better coaches.

Dr. Ian Dunican

Oh, that’s great. Yeah. And I, and that was like one of my questions there about the coaches as well. I think a lot of times in these, um, in these research projects or in these discussions, we overlooked the coaches and, um, you know, how we can support those. Really appreciate your time and look forward to talking soon.

Brad Cooper

I hope you found a couple of nuggets in there. Again, thanks to Dr. Ian Dunican of sleep for performance podcast. Great job it was a lot of fun. If you have any questions for us at the Catalyst Coaching Institute, you can email us at Results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. If you’ve been pondering the retreat in September, up in Estes park, Colorado, it may be worth a look that early registration deadline is coming to a close, and we’ve just about filled those spots. So you may want to take a look at that it’s CatalystCoachingInstitute.com/retreat, or you can just go to the website and go to the retreat tab and you’ll find it there. As always thank you for spreading the word this podcast somehow some way is garnering a lot of traction and, and it’s you so really appreciate it. Keep up the great work there. Until next time, let’s all keep working towards better than yesterday for ourselves, our clients, our family, and our community, make it a great day. And I’ll look forward to speaking with you soon on the next episode of the Catalyst Health and Wellness Coaching Podcast.