00:01.95
mvhuber
Hey everyone, it's Mike Huber and this is the Freshman Foundation podcast episode 75. If you've ever listened to the podcast or you've been following it since we started it up a few years ago, um you know that most of my episodes are with guests. So when I started the podcast, I really um was focused on asking individuals who I thought would be um valuable sources of information to come onto the podcast and really pick their brains about you know some of the things that they've experienced or they know ah to help the audience. And so um I've done a handful of of ah solo podcasts, but I'm really trying to shift in that direction. I've kind of
00:44.37
mvhuber
hit a lull over the last six months or so and I really wanted to pick back up and I think the easiest way to do that is to just go ahead and do some solo episodes here. So today I wanted to really talk about um Let's call it off-season training. So ah not that there's really an off-season anymore for young athletes, um but really specifically talking about summer being out of school. um Every sport looks a little bit different, baseball and basketball and soccer, softball. um All sports are a little bit different in the summertime. But by and large, you know the summertime is probably the one time of year where an athlete can focus on their own personal development.
01:27.23
mvhuber
you know, work on getting better. um And specifically, I wanted to talk about planning the offseason. And so I think there are three things I want to kind of get across here in the next 15 or 20 minutes, hopefully. ah One is, it's okay to spend your summer however you want, right? I think, you know, we all want what we want, right? And if we want to spend the next two, two and a half months having a good time, relaxing, resting, um, hanging out with our friends, like at least from where I sit, it's cool. Like I'm not going to tell you, you can't do that. I'm not going to tell you, you need to grind out your summer, but you also have to understand that there's a consequence.
02:05.35
mvhuber
to that action, right? So um if you're not training, if you're not working on your development, if you're not focusing on getting better, you're probably not. And there's a consequence to that. And so when you show back up in September or whenever your next you know season starts, if you're not working on getting better, youre you might be falling behind. So I think you know from a motivational standpoint, it's, hey, what do I want to do with this next two and a half months and prioritize and decide what's the most important thing for me? But am I going to be willing to live with the consequences of those choices? So I think that that's one and actually two is is the second takeaway is that, you know, living with the consequences. Third, right. Like the third thing I would want to get across is if you're focused on development this summer, if you're working on getting better as an athlete in your sport, you know, I think the mental piece of it has to be included specifically. Right. Part of that is planning.
03:00.78
mvhuber
your summer, right, planning out what you want to accomplish, setting some goals in the right way, and we'll talk about that. um But also adding in some skills that are going to be valuable so that your mental game gets better. So when you show up in the fall or the winter, um you're ready to go. So from there, you know, I think the first question we asked so ask ourselves is like, What do we want to get out of this summer, right? A lot of athletes like, hey, what do I want to get out of it? And I think sometimes that question doesn't even get asked, to be honest, right? Especially if you're, say, a baseball player, for example, there's a lot of tournaments, there's a lot of showcases. I think by virtue of just showing up to those and playing in those tournaments or showcases, I think we
03:44.98
mvhuber
You know, my sense is that athletes might feel like that's enough. Right. I'm just playing, which, okay. It may be true, right? Like to be fair, but at the same time, it's like, is that going to be good enough to get better? Right. Am I training on my own? Am I lifting? Am I. doing all the little things in between the games, right? Am I getting my body better? Am I getting my mind better? Am I working on certain skills that maybe I'm deficient on or are things that I want to get actually even better at strengths that I have? So, you know, what are some of the things that an an athlete might want to get out of their summer experience? One is they want to perform well, right? For a lot of sports, recruiting happens in summer.
04:24.87
mvhuber
because college coaches are out of season so they're out at showcases and tournaments looking at players so you want to play well and you want to perform well well with that is pressure so whether it's physical or mental we've got to be prepared for that right so we want to be able to go into that into those situations ready to perform right they want to get exposure they want to get recruited right and so even if you perform well it doesn't guarantee that you're gonna get noticed, but if you perform well, it's definitely gonna increase the likelihood of that. Well, how do I get exposed? Or or how do I get noticed? right I go to a tournament, what do I need to do? Well, I need to perform well on the field, but what am I doing off the field? Or how am I carrying myself on the field?
05:09.19
mvhuber
right, the body language, the communication, the the the the ah teamwork, all those intangible things that may not ah be be measurable on the on on the field in terms of goals and hits and baskets, et cetera. But if a coach watches me closely, can he see that I am ah a player that gives great effort, um is is greatly engaged, um you know is doing all the things that I can do that I can control to to get noticed and and and go out and play well. um And finally, i want you know players want to get better. What does that mean? Well, we have to assess where we're at in order to get better. We have to look at ourselves objectively to understand where we need to get better and what we need to do to to get better. So that's what we'll talk a little bit more about. ah Two, what's what's a problem we're trying to solve, right? What is an area where we're trying to get better?
06:05.66
mvhuber
Maybe we're trying to be better at managing nerves. We're trying to get better at the mental game, right? Maybe we're trying to get stronger. I know a lot of athletes are working on their body. They're working on putting on more lean muscle. They're working on their mobility. They're working on arm strength if you're a pitcher in baseball, right? But they're working on their body, right? But what are we trying to solve for here? Having a priority. ken't You can try to do everything. You could try to get better at everything. That's not to say you shouldn't try, but I think focusing on one or two things that are really of the highest order um is gonna make your you your energy, your time much more focused, much more efficient, and you're gonna get a much more optimal result, right? Who's gonna take you through it?
06:51.37
mvhuber
Obviously you have coaches, you have travel coaches, you have private instructors in some cases. You've got parents, right? Parents are maybe giving you the advice that they're taking you to the games. They're giving you feedback, holding you to account. Obviously there's a limit to that relationship or maybe not so obviously, but in some cases there's a limit to that relationship because of the emotional nature of it. Right? So you have a coach who's maybe a little bit more objective. You get a parent who's maybe a little bit more or less objective, more subjective. There's more of an emotional tie. And then bringing in somebody like a mental performance coach or somebody who is ah even more objective to look at things from an outside point of view to hold you to account and to give you feedback, both good and bad, to help you get better really with that purpose in mind. So I think having a guide to go through that is really important.
07:41.46
mvhuber
um What's the plan, right? Okay, now you kind of understanding like what you want to get out of the summer, right? What do I want to get better at? um How am I going to do it now? right What's my plan? right So I think one, right having a plan, an execution plan, a strategy, some tactics that work for you. right Everybody has different schedules. Everybody has different um demands. They have obligations. right Setting up a plan that works for you. right
08:15.53
mvhuber
um
08:18.48
mvhuber
Maybe the best place to start there is by reflecting on the last season or the last 12 months, like, hey, what did I do in the last six to 12 months that worked? what did I do in the last six to 12 months that didn't work? What do I wanna keep? What do I wanna get rid of? right And now I'm going, okay, like this is what I wanna do for the next two and a half, three months, because this is my goal to get to get better. right And a way to do that is setting goals, which I'm sure a lot of athletes do, but setting properly structured goals is a big part of it. right So what do I mean by properly structured? There's a lot of frameworks
08:58.07
mvhuber
for setting goals, you know, at least from a sports psychology perspective, right? You may have heard of smart goals, specific, measurable, attainable, adjustable, realistic time bound, right? Just a framework, right? And I think the most important part of these is is having specific and measurable goals, right? Telling yourself that you want to get better is not may be gonna be sufficient. because there's no well One, we have to decide how we're gonna measure better, right and and two, we want it to be specific enough that we can actually aim for a small target rather than just be like, hey, I wanna get generally better. right Then we we look at the different layers of goals. right so and you know one Another way to look at it is we have think something called an outcome goal, which is you know I wanna be a starter
09:53.27
mvhuber
on my team in the fall. Well, an outcome goal is something that's not really in your control. right Ultimately, a coach decides whether or not you start, come off the bench, make a team, whatever. right Now, you can influence that through your performance, but ultimately, it's subjective and totally up to the coach. right So like that's something that if you're if you're only focused on that and you're not focused on the things you can control to get there, to optimize or maximize the chances of reaching that outcome goal, you could get really frustrated um or you may like lose your direction you may lose your focus because you're only thinking about the result that could come in three to six months you want to focus on what can i do today to get better right and so underneath if you think about a pyramid right you've got outcome goal at the top underneath the outcome goal you've got a performance goal what's a performance goal a performance goal
10:46.03
mvhuber
is a goal that's partially in your control. right So I want to you know i want my my batting average to be... you know go from 300 to 400, right? I hit 300 in the spring, I wanna hit 400 in the summer. There is a self-referenced goal of I wanna go from one level to another, I wanna improve relative to myself, right? Is it guaranteed or do you have full ah control over the fact that you want that you can hit 400? No, there's gonna be some bad luck, there's gonna be some outs, there's gonna be some bad games, right? But if I do,
11:21.70
mvhuber
all the things that I know I need to do successfully to hit 400, I'm going to increase the chances of that happening. Right. So underneath that, the bottom layer of the pyramid, right the widest layer of the pyramid is our process goals. Process goals are the things that we do every single day or every week that are completely in our control that are going to give us the best chance to improve our performance relative to ourselves. And they're going to give us the best chance to reach our outcome goal. right And so things like I'm lifting four times a week, I'm eating clean six days a week, I'm doing mobility every day, I'm meditating every day, I'm hitting in the cage three times a week, um I'm doing this, I'm working on my fitness, all these things, right those are things that we can control. And if we have an execution plan every single day, every single week, and we stick to that,
12:18.53
mvhuber
The likelihood, it's not guaranteed, but the likelihood that we're going to reach those higher level goals that are more out of our control goes up. right So now we've got this multi-layered plan where we can not only judge ourselves based on an outcome that's not in our control, but we can judge ourselves based on what we're doing every single day. right Trust your preparation, trust your work. You might have heard that from a coach or a parent or you know from a teammate even and that's what we're talking about here trust your work the more work you put in consistently the more likely it is you're gonna get the outcome that you want on the back end. And so in terms of building a plan like i what i would say is bringing in.
12:59.97
mvhuber
right, incorporating a new mental skill, right? In my case, I usually ah advocate for something like meditation, like you have a little bit more time during the summer, right? You're not as busy getting up for school and et cetera, et cetera. You can take five or seven or 10 minutes to meditate every single day to try it, to incorporate it, to see how it works for you. you can incorporate some form of you know journaling, whether it's a prompted journal, meaning you find a journal with some questions that it's gonna help you keep on track every day, or you have a kind of a more freeform journal where you write down your thoughts and your feelings on a piece of paper, but that's a ah ah good habit to have every single day to build into the into that plan, right? I mean, you could also work on things like
13:49.84
mvhuber
improving your self-talk, you know, building an imagery practice, all sorts of different stuff. But putting in a new mental skill during the summer is actually like putting in a new skill on the field in the summer, right? You've got a little bit more leeway. You got a little bit more time to work on it. And it's a really good time to build that new skill when you're not in a stressful situation trying to compete. So maybe adding in a mental component to your summer plan. um So How are you gonna make sure that you're giving yourself the best chance to succeed and execute that plan? I think having someone to hold you accountable is really important. I've mentioned that word already. You know, have an accountability partner, find a friend, a teammate,
14:35.26
mvhuber
a sibling, someone on the outside, a coach, someone who's gonna hold you to account, right, this summer, right, for whatever your plan is to get better. Because if you don't do that, it might be easier to stray depending on your motivation level, depending on the number of distractions you have. Am I committed to working out six days a week when the weather's beautiful and I want to go to the beach or when I could work a couple extra days to make money or, you know, whatever. Right. So like being accountable to yourself and have somebody holding you accountable is really important.
15:08.09
mvhuber
um Now is a really good time to look into mental performance coaching. you know ah I would say that the vast majority of my clients come to me in season when they're stressed, something's going wrong, they want to fix a problem, they need someone to talk to because things aren't going the way they want them to. but actually in the off season, in the summer, or when you're not in the thick of a ah stressful you know season competition with school on top of it, now is a great time to add something new into the process to get the feel for it and try to like learn while you have a little bit more breathing room.
15:44.17
mvhuber
You know, some people don't always feel that urgency because everything's maybe a little bit easier going in the summer. That's fine. Just a suggestion, right? If you want to get an introduction to that or, or really get a sense of how to lay out this off season plan, you can go to my website, michaelvhuber.com. You can download your off season mental performance coaching guide that I have on my, on my homepage. ah Or you could just shoot me a message and I'll be happy to talk to you about it, um you know, whenever you want.
16:14.74
mvhuber
um So ultimately, like what do you want to get out of it? right And again, that's a very personal, individualized question. Everybody has their own plan. Everybody has their own goals. Everybody wants to get something different out of the summer. And I completely respect that. And I think it's really important that you're able to formulate that ah that answer for yourself, right rather than having somebody tell you, this is what you need to do. Because any time somebody tells us what we need to do, unless that person is absolutely 100% trusted by the by the person being told what to do, there's going to be an element of resentment potentially where we just say, hey, I know what I need to do. Stop telling me what to do. It's like with school, if a parent tells you what to do, go do your homework every single day, you're going to get sick of hearing it. But if you decide this is really important and I want to get a good grade, you're going to go do it. right so But ultimately, here's some some things that
17:08.67
mvhuber
you know the summer's for, learn, right? Acquire new knowledge, right? Get smarter, get better, right? Practice more, practice new things, take some risks, try some new things. um Use your time wisely, right? Don't let the summer get away from you if you really wanna use it to your the best of your advantage to try to get better before you go back to school in September or August or wherever, depending on where you live, right? You might wanna play well, right, this summer and under control. What do I mean by that? I just mean like, hey, you're gonna go out there in some of these showcases and tournaments and you might get ahead of yourself. You might get a little anxious. You might speed up a little bit. Hey, I wanna be able to play under control and not let the magnifying glove glass or that that what I perceive to be that pressure get on top of me.
18:02.19
mvhuber
right And ultimately, I wanna get noticed. And yeah, if I perform well, that's gonna help me get noticed, but also doing those little things, right? The body language, the hustle. teamwork, you know, um respectfulness. When you talk to somebody, our coach, coach comes to your game, shake their hand, look them in the eye, right? Do those little things to say, hey, this is a player I'd want to have in my program because they're coachable, because they're respectful, because they do the little things, right? Everybody knows you might have a bad game because everybody who who's in this process probably has played sport. They understand you go through bad stretches.
18:40.07
mvhuber
They wanna see you perform, yes, but if you have a track record of performance, the performance on the field in a showcase or a tournament may not be as important as how you carry yourself. Rather than throwing a bat or throwing a helmet or you know getting a stupid foul or or calling attention to yourself and acting acting out, how do I stay composed? How do I stay poised? How do I stay positive when things aren't going my way? That's a great way to get noticed because that's gonna make you stand out potentially. And then ultimately, right, we want to be better than we were at the start. And so there may be a lot of different transformations that you'd want to see happen over the course of two and a half or three months. But ultimately, like for me, um, I think one great one is being mentally prepared for anything that comes your way because so much is out of your control, right?
19:33.15
mvhuber
Ultimately, being resilient, being able to deal with adversity, being able to stay calm under pressure, be able to stay poised when things aren't working. like That's a great goal to aspire to, a transformation, because a lot of athletes aren't able to do that. That's just my experience. A lot of ah young athletes feel the pressure, and maybe they don't act it out on a field, but they internalize it, which in turn affects their performance. the ability to stay present and and really be ready for anything that comes and not let yourself get bogged down by the past or the future um is ah is not an easy thing to do and I think it takes a lot of practice. so
20:11.96
mvhuber
um I think, again, the three takeaways for this episode, you know getting ready for the summer and trying to plan are, one, it's okay to do whatever you want, right but there's a consequence that comes with it. right So, hey, use your summer however you see fit, it's yours, try to get the most out of it, whatever that means to you, just understand, two, there are consequences to that. right If I'm not using as much time to train and train my body, train my mind, train my skills, train my sport, then I may look back and regret that I didn't use the summer in a different way. And then finally, right, if you're focused on your individual development getting development and getting better this summer,
20:53.93
mvhuber
I would so suggest including some sort of mental you you know skill or component into that summer training, like a meditation or a journaling um or whatever it is that works for you. So um that's all I got. ah Hopefully this was helpful. um You can always reach out to me. You can reach out to me through my website, Michael. vhuber dot.com or you can email me directly at michael at ftb coaching frank tom bob coaching and I would love to talk you know anytime I love to talk about this stuff and I love to help so I hope you have a great summer and we'll see you soon