The Paris Olympics are over and now there are athletes that were at the top of their game who are realizing their time in competitive athletics is over, but what's next? In this episode we walk through the person behind the athlete.

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Ryan: Welcome to shift happens where we talk everything. Mindset, development, taking lessons from college and pro athletes, college teams, coaches, pro teams, everyone that we work alongside. I'm Ryan Schachner. This is Cheney Robinson. And today we're talking about an article that we saw about the post olympic blues, talking about why do so many competitors suffer that emotional letdown when they're done competing? And, you know, I. The Olympics was highlighted, obviously, Paris just ended and closing ceremony and all that kind of stuff. The US won the medal count, but this is not just an olympian thing. Right. It's highlighting the fact that they're Olympians. But this happens with every athlete that we've ever spoken with. Right. It could be the college level, from that college athlete going from, you know, playing their sport to now they have to find, you know, a job in the real world to the pro athlete who most of them don't decide when they're going to be done. It's decided for them. So one day they're on the team, next day they're off the team all the way to military people. Right. Military. That go from, you know, I'm a service member and that was really my identity to all of a sudden now I got to go back to the civilian world. And so this is not just kind of centered on these, on these athletes, on the Olympic athletes. This is something that all athletes face.

Cheney: Yeah. And you think about it, because this is the livelihood, right. More than just what we do, good, bad and different. It's who we are. Right. And that's who our, that's who our livelihood, that's where our livelihood is tied to, is playing our respective sports, whatever those may be. I was thinking about this, this article, too, with, in regards to these Olympic athletes. And you say Bolt had recently said, I trained four years for 9 seconds, yo. So he's spending a, an inordinate amount of time, literally for 9.58 seconds, and then it's over unless you make the team again in four more years.

Ryan: Yeah, but that's four years of devoting everything you do to that. To that sport. But again, this is not just Olympic athletes. This is all athletes. And I think this is almost a self created problem, perhaps, right? Because if you, look, let's just start out when we start playing sports. And when you and I started playing sports, we played every sport. Right. And it wasn't, it wasn't focused on one sport, but now it's so specialized at such an early age where you have, you know, position coaches working with middle schoolers for football to learn that position. And so their whole identity is, this is who I am. I'm this athlete. And, and that's really defining who they are. But it's. But it's dictated a lot of times by the parents, you know, and maybe they, and maybe the kids enjoy the sport, right? But it's. It's dictated almost to them that your worth, your value comes from simply being an athlete. And they don't get to develop outside of that, that small bubble. I think, you know, a lot of times the coaches that we talk to, whether it be at that high school level, college, or even at the pro level, they think that creating that zone, right, where these athletes have to stay in from a mental, from a mindset standpoint of, hey, I'm an athlete, I need to develop this. They think if you go out of that zone, it's going to negatively impact you as an athlete, your physical performance. When the reality is the more you identify as that athletics is something that you do, it's not your whole identity really helps you figure out why you're playing that sport, right? And so, you know, the why or the true motivation. And so a quick example here. And I was working with, on the financial side, an athlete and spending problem, right? Like buying stuff and especially for his family, right? And he said, hey, you know, I asked him, why are you. Why do you keep buying, you know, the house or why do you keep buying the stuff for, for your, you know, for your family and spending it on you and all that? And he's like, well, I haven't had it before, and it's. And it's, you know, it's really nice. And I said, yeah, okay, I get it. Right. Makes sense. Yeah, but why, like, let's dig down deep into that. And at the end of it, you know, there's a lot of sitting in silence, staring at each other. One of those games where the first one to talk loses, right? Right. And. And he finally said, man, you know, it's. I want to buy my parents. I want my mom to be able to sleep in a house where she doesn't have to worry about the blind over, you know, through the window in the middle of the night. I want her to be able to not have to take the bus to get around anymore. And that was the whole purpose behind him playing the sport that he played. And that then identifying that component of why he was playing it allowed him to fully embrace why he was playing, fully, dig in, get better physically get better from a mindset standpoint and get another contract. And that sort of stuff. And so that's really, you know, it's almost counterintuitive where we try and keep these athletes in this bubble, where when we help them figure out why they're playing the sport or who they are outside of just that fleet, it either gets rid of the people that the athletes that aren't really. They don't really care about the game, which is kind of what you want as a coach anyway, and as a teammate, and. Or it gets them dialed in even more, because now there's a purpose, now there's a vision, and they can. And they're working towards something for a reason.

Cheney: Yeah, well, now there's a different level of motivation, too. It's like I'm providing for the family. That is my sole purpose for doing this. Growing up, my dad didn't have a whole lot. Right. And that was one of the things, too. So my brother and I, younger brother and I, we. We had what we needed, some of the stuff we wanted, but we had what we needed. Or what he felt like, hey, this is what you need to be able to perform at the highest level in whatever it is that you want to do. Right. So it wasn't that, you know, the dad. My dad was trying to cast onto us or. Or live vicariously through us. He just enjoyed watching us play and compete and the enjoyment that we got from the competition itself. But he would. He wanted to make sure that, like. Like the guy you were talking about, that we had the stuff that we needed to be able to perform it at the highest level we could.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, I think, and I think, you know, to throw another kind of lump in here is you add nil in here. Right. And, you know, I just read an article about a wide receiver from North Carolina state. Wolfpack had a great. He was the rookie, I believe, the ACC rookie of the year, Casey Concepcion. Right. And he started a foundation, and he's using his nil money to. For the money and his time to give back to Charlotte, where he grew up, and then the Raleigh community where he goes to school.

Cheney: Yeah.

Ryan: And he bought pizzas and partnered with the police department to feed kids the other weekend. And so him being able to express himself and, you know, and, you know, participate in the activities that are most important to him, self identify as something outside of an athlete, but then perform even better on the field, because he knows if he does that, his purpose of being able to give back and help the community is just going to grow exponentially. He's going to be able to do more. Right? And so it's that helping the coaches but really helping the athletes identify with, all right, I'm playing this sport for these reasons. It's not my complete identity. And, you know, it's. It's a tough, you know, this is one of the tough ones that we deal with, with, you know, when we work with. Work with our athletes, right. Is helping them get that next level. And it's not them laying on a couch. You know, we're not therapists. Right. It's just helping them think about, you know, their goals, why they really. Why they want to accomplish those goals and. And figuring out who they are outside of being that athlete. And it takes a little bit of time, right. But when they connect, man, they just blossom into better people, better athletes. I mean, they just perform in every aspect at such a higher level. It's really incredible.

Cheney: And it's fun to watch that, too. It's so fulfilling to see them have the success that we know that they can have and helping them realize, hey, I can be better. Right. Like, you've had conversations before with, with guys. And again, I know it's not, it wasn't necessarily on the couch because, y'all, I saw the conversation happen of, hey, you're supposed to be here now. Embrace this thing and go get it. This is what you've been dreaming about. Go get it. And. And sometimes that's all it is, is just that encouragement, that one little piece of encouragement. And you didn't know this guy from whomever else. Right. You did, but, I mean, we'd literally just gotten introduced to him, but there was value in what you were saying. He heard it, embraced it, and internalized it and, you know, had a pretty good NFL draft.

Ryan: Yeah. Because he made some money.

Cheney: He's got. He believes in himself because somebody first believed in him.

Ryan: Yeah.

Cheney: And that's.

Ryan: Yeah, it goes back to what we say that experiences drive beliefs and beliefs drive behavior. And we don't just, you know, I knew about him based on some of the tools that we use. Right. And I knew with very high accuracy where he was going to struggle. Right. And so I was able to have that conversation. We're able to have those conversations because we can identify these things and we can break through that, you know, the barrier of, you know, hey, he's got a, you know, he could be a first or second round pick. Everybody, everybody's, you know, wants a picture and all that type of stuff, and that's the last thing we care about, but. And we're truly showing how we can help them not just get to the league, but this is how you're going to stay in the league.

Cheney: Right. Well, another example we put on a conference years ago, place I used to work and had Bobby Bowden as the keynote. And that was one of the things that he talked about was I want to develop men. I want these young men to develop as football players, but also as husbands and fathers and be influential, you know, and positively influential in their, in their communities, he said, but I gotta win football games to have the opportunity to have these men come in here for me to pour into a mentor.

Ryan: Yeah. And I think the greatest coaches at the end of the day, that's truly their, you know, you think about even, you know, a Saban, a Kirby smart. You know, it's. It's a hypo. Right. It's. It's wanting to truly impact these, these athletes and, and they're just using the sport as a vehicle to do that. Right. And which is exactly what we need to get our athletes doing right is figure out who they are, what they really want to accomplish so that they can use their sport as a vehicle to, to achieve that so well.

Cheney: And that's what's so cool about KC, too, is at NC State, is he's get. He sees the bigger picture. Right. Strategic visionary. And he's taken advantage of the spirit of nil. Right. And like you talked, you've talked about entrepreneurship in this, of, hey, and what's going to help set me up for success later on and. But more importantly, what's going to help support others and that's what he's doing with the foundation. Like, there was a guy recently that we saw, I think also in Charlotte who didn't he help his dad invest in and start up a basketball player from South Carolina?

Ryan: Yep.

Cheney: There you go. So at South Carolina, so he's helping his dad, very entrepreneur, neural minded, helping his dad get a barbershop started, which is going to give back to the community.

Ryan: Yeah. And his whole purpose with that is legacy. And so if there's a takeaway from this episode, it's, hey, helping these athletes identify who they are outside of their sport isn't going to hinder them performing. It's actually going to enhance how they perform. Now, the trick is you spend so much time from a physical side of things trying to get better, trying to get stronger a little bit quicker, all those physical characteristics that we need to perform better to make it to those next levels. It's where do you find the time to help them identify who they are? Outside of the athlete. And I think it doesn't have to take a ton of time. It's not an hour, two hour session where they're hearing somebody talk. It's, you know, you know, I think, and, you know, a little bit of bias, but I think our process is good where, I mean, they can start to develop this over a couple weeks.

Cheney: Yeah.

Ryan: Simply by taking one or two minutes, two or three times a week. Right. And so it's not that it's difficult, but it's like with anything, it's a process that you have to start to get in the habit of and you'll grow as you really start to develop it.

Cheney: Yeah, well, and it just compliment. It compliments it. Well. What we're doing off the field, outside of the respective playing surface will complement us on the field, on the court. And these athletes need to understand that. And more importantly, coaches, administrators need to see that, too. Like, hey, we can help these athletes by parallel path. Hey, here's who they are. Big picture. This is part of what they're doing. This is a platform, and it's, obviously, it's right here in the face, you know, what we're doing, whether it's football or basketball, volleyball, whatever, baseball. But there's, there's more to this individual than just them being a pitcher or quarterback or point guard.

Ryan: So athletes, you're listening. You're more than just an athlete. Figure it out. The sooner the better. Avoid the post Olympic blues. I'm Ryan. This is Cheney. Thanks for joining us on shift. Happens.