Evolving Athletes Podcast with Coach Vinny

Kathy, a pioneer in girls' hockey development and a driving force behind Premier Ice Prospects, joins Coach Vinny Malts to unpack what it takes to build sustainable opportunities for female athletes from the ground up. This conversation covers her early days establishing a pathway for girls in Pittsburgh, why patience and integrity are non-negotiable when building programs, and how to prioritize long-term development in a youth sports culture obsessed with short-term results.

The discussion dives into the "Pip Pyramid" of player development, the critical difference between accumulating puck touches versus just playing endless tournament games, and the power of integrating mental skills and positive self-talk for young girls. Kathy also shares insights on leadership derived from her military family background, explaining why true leadership involves establishing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and giving your team the permission to make mistakes.

Key Topics

• Pioneering girls' hockey and filling the void in female-specific development opportunities

• The "Pip Pyramid" and creating a sustainable, long-term pathway for athletes

• Why maintaining integrity and fulfilling promises is the ultimate currency in youth sports

• Prioritizing skill development and puck touches over playing in constant tournaments

• The importance of normalizing mental skills training and positive self-talk for young players

• Applying military SOPs to program management and avoiding mid-stream reactive changes

• Fostering a genuine "hockey family" and empowering young female staff members

Shownotes 00:00 Introduction to Kathy and her origins in Pittsburgh girls' hockey 06:30 Recognizing the void in girls' hockey and deciding to build an exclusive platform 12:50 The value of patience and scaling events up slowly rather than rushing 19:40 Why integrity and delivering on promises are crucial for credibility 29:00 The "Pip Pyramid" and balancing tournaments with actual skill development 35:30 Introducing mental skills and positive self-talk at the youth level 45:30 Creating a "Pip family" and advising parents through the long-term recruiting process 55:10 Leadership by example, professionalism, and allowing staff to learn from mistakes 1:06:20 Using Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and avoiding emotional mid-stream changes 1:12:10 Kathy's legacy: Promoting the girls' game and preparing them for life after hockey

About Kathy Kathy is a pioneer in girls' hockey development and a key leader behind Premier Ice Prospects (PIP). Originally stepping into the space to create local opportunities for her daughter in Pittsburgh, she has spent decades building comprehensive events, camps, and developmental pathways for female athletes across North America. With a strict focus on integrity, professional development, and empowering young women, Kathy continues to shape the future of the sport from youth programming all the way to professional scouting.

What if the player who "just isn't getting it" was never the problem? Ben Mayfield-Smith, founder of Matter Athletica and host of the Matter Mentality Podcast, joins Coach Vinny to unpack why so much of elite performance comes down to how clearly leaders communicate. It isn't about how much more the athlete is told to do.

This conversation covers why performance psychology works from optimization rather than deficiency, and why coaching the strengths an athlete was drafted for makes their limitations shrink. It also covers the difference between borrowed belief and owned belief, and why "clear is kind" is a skill every coach can train. Coach Vinny breaks down his sandwich analogy for individual versus collective thinking. Ben shares how a single word changed the way he coaches.

Key Topics

• Clinical psychology vs. performance psychology: deficiency vs. optimization
• Why communication is a psychological skill with hard impact
• Radical responsibility: is it the players or the coach?
• Borrowed belief vs. owned belief
• Win-focus vs. loss aversion under pressure
• Process-oriented language and why winning is a byproduct of development
• Coach Vinny's sandwich analogy

00:00 Why mindset coaching still gets rejected 01:00 The PBJ sandwich story and the power of rituals 04:00 Clinical vs. performance psychology: deficiency vs. optimization 08:00 Where the stigma came from and comparison culture in pro sport 14:00 Why performance psychology can't come from a textbook 22:00 Jordan, Tim Grover and the edge of asking 24:00 Coach Vinny's sandwich analogy 29:00 Communication as a coaching skill 36:00 Is it the players or the coach? Radical responsibility 44:00 Borrowed belief vs. owned belief 51:00 Mindset, leadership and character 1:01:00 Playoffs: the team that believes the most wins 1:05:00 Win-focus vs. loss aversion 1:12:00 Winning is a byproduct of development 1:21:00 One word and a coach's responsibility 1:31:00 Specificity and why clear is kind 1:45:00 Haaland and the joy of the game 1:50:00 You don't hate the game, you hate the people 1:58:00 The final game Ben never knew was coming 2:00:00 Decentralized leadership and the fun of being uncomfortable 2:07:00 Changing your environment to find your game again 2:12:00 Role-playing pressure and visualization through recall

Ever notice that some athletes play with a freedom you can't fully explain, and it isn't because they know more? Ben Mayfield-Smith, founder of Matter Athletica and host of the Matter Mentality Podcast, joins Coach Vinny to unpack why the athletes and coaches who go furthest aren't the ones stacking the most information, they're the ones who've reduced their process down to what actually matters.

This conversation covers Ben's model for confidence as "a history of competence," why the flow state everyone's chasing is really just rhythm built from repetition, the permission gap that keeps most athletes from playing with the freedom the pros have, and why discernment, not more coaching, is the real skill of elite performance. Coach Vinny also gives an early look at the book he's building around the mindSET Method™.

• Why elite performers simplify instead of adding complexity

• Confidence as a history of competence

• Belief systems and how non-negotiables become automatic

• Flow state as rhythm, not something to chase

• The permission gap between top players and everyone else

• Discernment: building your own model instead of copying someone else's

• Coach Vinny's upcoming book on the mindSET Method™

00:00 Introduction to Ben Mayfield-Smith and the episode's focus 02:00 The frameworks each coach brings from hockey and bodybuilding 08:00 Coach Vinny's upcoming book and the mindSET Method™ 19:00 Comparison, identity, and writing realism into the book 26:00 Why ten different coaches can overwhelm an athlete 33:00 Sport as life education: habits that transfer beyond the game 37:00 Thought processing vs. belief systems 44:00 Why teaching your process is the fastest way to learn it 50:00 The nuance NHL players want 58:00 The permission gap in athlete development 1:03:00 Flow state as rhythm, not a state to chase 1:11:00 Confidence as a history of competence 1:17:00 Helping a 16-year-old shift perspective against older competition

Ben Mayfield-Smith is the founder of Matter Athletica and host of the Matter Mentality Podcast, where he explores performance, nutrition, and training through expert conversations. A high-performance and bodybuilding coach with a background in competitive sport, he blends elite training systems with a focus on radical ownership and self-mastery.

What if the thing you built your whole life around is the same thing keeping you from knowing who you really are?

We chase the dream for years, reach the top, and then wonder why we feel so empty once we finally get there.

In this episode of The Evolving Athletes Podcast, Coach Vinny Malts sits down with Kurtis Gabriel, a former pro hockey enforcer who fought his way to the NHL and then faced a much harder battle once the game was gone.

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• Pain vs Suffering: Why pain shows up in every life but suffering is a choice, and how that one shift changes how you handle everything that comes at you.
• The Identity Trap: How building your whole self on one role sets you up to break when it gets taken away, and how to find who you are underneath it.
• Discipline Over Motivation: Why motivation comes and goes while discipline holds, and how one non negotiable daily practice became the thing that changed everything.
• Your Own Scoreboard: How chasing approval from coaches, stats, and other people keeps you stuck, and what it means to play for that feeling instead.
• Knowing Yourself First: Why putting your own happiness first is not selfish, and how everything you want tends to follow once you do the real work of knowing yourself.

Shownotes: 00:00 - Welcome to The Evolving Athletes Podcast 02:56 - The Genuineness of "Namaste" in Hockey Culture 06:43 - Deconditioning and Relaxing Into "The Zone" 09:15 - The Discipline of Daily Meditation 13:09 - Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is Optional 14:44 - Lessons from the NHL Journey and Handling Identity 17:57 - Childhood Creativity and Personal Tragedy 21:41 - The Core Battle: Vulnerability vs. Toughness 25:32 - Moving Past Dogma to Awareness and Consciousness 33:12 - Returning to the Enforcer Role with a New Mindset 38:44 - Putting Your Own Happiness First 42:52 - Humans, Systems, and Collaborative Leadership 49:44 - The Power of Storytelling in Coaching 57:08 - Finding the "Bowl" for Integration 01:02:02 - Identity Crisis and Helping Others Find Their "Middle Way" 01:06:12 - Authenticity in the Age of AI 01:12:01 - Building a Community of "Love and Light" 01:15:52 - Curtis's Future Mission: Book and Course Launch 01:18:30 - What it Means to Evolve as an Athlete

Connect with Kurtis Gabriel Instagram: kurtisgabriel_

Connect with Coach Vinny Website: coachvinnymalts.com Instagram: @coachvinnymalts Linkedin: Vince Malts

Website: https://coachvinnymalts.com/ Are you ready to evolve?

What if the single biggest threat to your team's growth isn't a lack of talented workers, but the unwilling leaders running it?

We routinely blame an entire generation for being lazy, yet we refuse to give them the actual environments they need to succeed.

In this episode of the Evolving Athletes Podcast, Coach Vinny Malts tears up the conventional corporate handbook alongside Sam Caucci, the visionary founder and CEO of 1Huddle and author of Wasted Talent.

Sam breaks down why the frameworks built to train our modern workforce are fundamentally broken, sterile, and failing the very people they are meant to support.

By extracting the precise word choices, relentless preparation habits, and continuous practice models used by elite sports performance coaches, Sam has completely re-engineered how frontline employees learn, execute, and handle intense pressure.

What You Will Learn In This Episode: The 5X Sourcing Lie: A stark financial breakdown of why trying to buy external talent costs your business five times more cash than building a clear pathway for the roster you already have.

Managing vs. True Coaching: How to stop dictating robotic commands as a manager and start operating as an empathetic coach who aligns personal missions to unlock extreme "discretionary effort".

The Dark Side of Gamification: An inside look at how extraction-based leaderboards backfired severely inside Amazon warehouses, and how to use game psychology correctly to build healthy, self-driven competition.

Operating Without Game Film: Why making massive talent decisions based on pure gut feeling is weakening companies, and how evaluating your team with objective data changes everything.

Eliminating the Generational Experience Gap: Dynamic communication tactics to lead Millennials and Gen Z by entirely replacing "do it because I said so" culture with the transparent "why" behind every single daily drill.

Connect with Sam Caucci Instagram: @sammycaucci Instagram: @play1huddle Website: https://1huddle.co/

Connect with Coach Vinny: Instagram: @coachvinnymalts Website: https://coachvinnymalts.com/

Are you ready to evolve?

Most athletes believe that blind hustle and perfect data tracking are the keys to reaching the top tier.

But some of the most resilient players in the world know that grinding harder will eventually break your system.

Dr. Mike T. Nelson grew up battling a massive congenital heart defect that left him in heart failure and completely out of breath at just four years old. He later faced a severe visual blindspot that forced his entire body out of alignment, leaving him constantly injured under traditional, rigid workout routines. When his body kept breaking, his coaches simply told him to stop asking questions and just suck it up.

By graduation, he was an engineer turned exercise physiologist, decoding complex dynamic human systems for elite high performers.

That shift did not happen because he followed standard industry protocols. It happened because he fired his coach and discovered a biological truth that most trainers completely miss.

In this deep dive, Coach Vinny Malts and Dr. Mike T. Nelson explore what it really means to outthink your competition, respect structural complexity, and build absolute physical autonomy.

Watch the full evolution to discover:

• The Greedy Brain: Why your mind hoards 30% of your metabolic energy and will ruthlessly starve your muscles of fuel the second it senses a survival threat.
• The Robot Jock Fallacy: The real reason the strongest players in the weight room rarely start on game day, and why tracking individual statistics completely ruins team chemistry.
• The Bumper Bowling Model: A systematic framework to safely transition an athlete from rigid training boundaries into total self-coaching autonomy.
• The Illusion of Flow: Why chasing a flow state with quick mental tricks fails, and how elite processing speed is actually a byproduct of unconscious physical mastery.
• The Quantitative Trap: Why relying blindly on a tracking wearable's surrogate scores can completely derail your recovery logic.
• About Dr. Mike T. Nelson: Mike is a world-class performance coach, exercise physiologist, researcher, and educator who has spent nearly two decades pressure-testing human metabolism, heart rate variability, and performance to help athletes unlock true resilience.

Connect with Dr. Mike: Instagram: @drmiketnelson

Connect with Coach Vinny:Instagram: @coachvinnymalts

Are you ready to evolve?

Most athletes believe that starting late means falling behind forever.

But some of the most resilient players in the game never had the luxury of a head start.

Kim McCullough grew up playing every sport except hockey. She showed up to her first competitive game in hand-me-down gear with no idea what she was doing. Her skating was rough. Her hands were rough. She was the worst player on the ice.

By college, she was leading her team in scoring and heading to Team Canada camp.

That gap did not close because she worked harder. It closed because she understood something most athletes never figure out.

In this deep dive, Coach Vinny and Kim McCullough explore what it really means to build a career on self-knowledge, not just skill.

Watch the full evolution to discover:

• The Late Starter Advantage: Why players who come to the game with fresh eyes often outlast those who were groomed from birth.
• The Confidence Gap: The real reason female athletes hold themselves back, and what coaches can do about it in real time.
• The FIST Framework: A simple four-word anchor Kim has used with teams from U11 all the way to the Icelandic national team.
• The Monthly Report Card: A five-minute team exercise that revealed more about each player than stats, film, or any one-on-one ever could.
• Your Value as a Player Is Not Your Value as a Person: The message every athlete needs to hear and most coaches forget to say.

About Kim McCullough: Kim is the founder of Total Female Hockey, a former Division I captain at Dartmouth, professional player in the CWHL, and a Hockey Canada coach developer who has spent over 20 years helping female athletes see themselves differently.

Connect with Kim:

Instagram: @totalfemalehockey_

Website: totalfemalehockey.com

Connect with Coach Vinny:

Instagram: @coachvinnymalts

Are you ready to evolve?

Most athletes believe that grit and effort are the only keys to success.

But intensity without wisdom is dangerous.

Tex McQuilkin grew up in the intense football culture of Katy, Texas, where weightlifting started in the sixth grade. He was an enforcer on the field who earned his nickname far from home. His entire identity was built on being hard-nosed and all in. Everything changed after a single coaching mistake left a teammate injured.

That moment cracked his identity.

It opened the door to a grueling apprenticeship that transformed how he leads.

In this deep dive, Coach Vinny and Tex McQuilkin explore what it really means to evolve as an athlete.

Watch the full evolution to discover:

The Audacity of the Underdog: How a group of 15 players started their own program from scratch when the system failed them. The 3 Ps Filter: A methodical way to ensure every drill has purpose, practicality, and prudence. The Laws of Motor Learning: A four-step framework to teach skills that actually translate to the game. Winning the "Car Ride Home": Proactive strategies to protect your team culture from outside noise. Transformational Leadership: Why the person you become in ten years is more important than the scoreboard today.

About Tex McQuilkin: Tex is the founder of Captains and Coaches, a longtime leader at Power Athlete, and a coach educator dedicated to blending physical performance with deep character development.

Connect with Tex: Instagram: @mcquilkin

Connect with Coach Vinny Instagram: @coachvinnymalts

Are you ready to evolve?

Colby Cohen was scoring championship goals one day and being told he sucked by an NHL coach the next.

Most high performers fail because they focus entirely on the physical work while completely ignoring the ecosystem that is actually controlling their mindset. This conversation takes you deep into the brutal reality of the NHL grind and the exact moment an unexpected trade forces you to confront your true identity. We move past the highlight reels to reveal why you cannot win this game alone and why your circle is either your greatest competitive advantage or your biggest psychological liability.

You will learn how to trade the myth of the self made athlete for a radical level of self awareness especially when the system is designed to move on without you the second you stop providing value. By the end of this episode you will understand how to audit your own environment and build a mindset that can sustain the weight of elite performance.

It is time to stop trying to outwork a toxic system and start architecting your own evolution behind the headlines of the NHL.

Key Takeaways for Your Evolution The Word Economy: Why speaking less gives you more authority as a leader. The Skinny Pyramid: Why talent is common but character is the filter for the NHL. The Majority Shareholder Model: How to lead through partnership rather than power. The Collective Mindset: Why your mindset is a reflection of who you allow in your circle.

Shownotes: 00:00 The Day Colby's NHL Dream Died 06:01 The Danger Of Early Arrogance 10:01 Why You Must Play Up Against Older Peers 20:11 When Talent Is Not Enough To Stay On The Team 27:45 Surviving The National Team Boot Camp 35:44 The Truth Behind The Frozen Four Winning Goal 46:37 The Meeting Where My Coach Said I Sucked 51:03 The High Standard High Support Coaching Model 60:07 The Shock Of A Sudden NHL Trade 73:07 Handling Failure And Identity Shifts 85:56 Transitioning From The Ice To The Broadcast Booth 99:02 Why You Must Audit Your Circle To Win

Most leaders think they are guiding their teams but they are actually just passing on their own stress. If you cannot find peace within yourself, you can never lead others to greatness . In this episode, you will learn how to fix your nervous system and why your body is the best tool you have to heal.

We explain how to find safety in the middle of a mess and why changing the way you talk about your limits can help you get better faster. You will also discover why your identity is not tied to your work and how to start leading with peace.

What You Will Learn In This Episode

The Power of Language: Why shifting from "injury" to "limitation" changes your body's ability to heal.

Safety in Chaos: How to train your nervous system to stay calm when everything feels like it is falling apart.

The Identity Trap: Why your success in business or sports is not who you are .

You are the Technology: Why your body is more powerful than any expensive recovery tool you can buy.

The Peace Test: The one simple question that reveals if you are leading from trauma or leading from peace.

Shownotes 00:00 - The simple test for leaders who want to win

04:30 - Why your past problems are hurting your team

09:00 - Stop letting your job define who you are

16:00 - The truth about why you give too much to others

22:30 - Change this one word to heal your body faster

33:00 - How to stay calm when everything feels like chaos

39:30 - Why you are the best technology you will ever own

54:50 - The hidden cost of always being stressed

56:10 - Can you pass the peace test right now

58:10 - Simple steps to fix your nervous system today