A bad pass leads to a turnover, a missed shot and your team is still behind, the ball runs under your glove and the runner scores. Do you let this unfortunate event impact the rest of your game, or do you accept what happened, and shift your focus to the next play to give yourself the best chance of being successful at the next opportunity? In this podcast, Trevor and Myles talk about the concept of mindfulness. Along with giving examples of how to practice mindfulness, they speak about working to change your relationship to your thoughts and emotions, as well as how to reattach yourself to the present moment you’re in.

As athletes, we are conditioned to never accept anything but our best. We work tirelessly to improve incremental aspects of our craft with the hopes it is enough to beat out the competition. However, sometimes we become our biggest critics and we risk doing more harm than good. In those moments when you miss a shot you’ve made a million times, the coach moves you to second string, or you can’t seem to find your groove in practice, what are you saying to yourself? Is it kind? Caring? Compassionate? Not likely. This week, tune in with Sam and Kaite to understand the importance of Self-Talk, the impact it has on your game, and potential solutions to helping you leave your negative self-talk behind.

We’re all familiar with the term mental toughness, but what does it really mean? In this podcast, Kaite and Myles take the opportunity to give a clear explanation of mental toughness, mental endurance, and mental resilience. Additionally, they’ll offer strategies to help strengthen and maintain each of these aspects of mental performance. This discussion, along with some relevant examples, will help create a distinction between each term and encourage you to identify areas of your mental game that you can improve upon!

Sports do not exist in a bubble and as much as we would sometimes like to shut out the outside world and just focus on our game, when an athlete is personally affected by what’s going on in the world around them, that can be nearly impossible. With everything that has happened in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, and so many others, we thought it would be important to talk about how social justice relates to sports and impacts athletes. In this episode Mikaela sits down with two guests, Travis Scheadler and Ngozi Musa, to have a conversation about just that. Travis is a former University of Kentucky Sport and Exercise Psychology Master’s student and wrote his master’s thesis on social justice and athlete activism. He will be pursuing his PhD in Social Work at The Ohio State University in the fall and is interested in positive youth development and LGBTQ+ advocacy issues. Ngozi is a former Harvard University Women’s Track and Field team captain and 5-time Ivy League Champion. At Harvard she studied Sociology and African American studies, and has been an active advocate in this current social justice movement. She recently founded her own podcast and platform called ‘Aesthetics and Athletics’ that works to inspire and empower the athlete in every woman. Though we talk about social justice in the context of sports, much of what we discuss can be applied to any area of life. We hope you enjoy this week’s episode and continue to have conversations like these with those around you!

If you want to connect with either Travis or Ngozi, you can find them at the accounts below:

Travis: @ScheadlerTravis (Twitter) & @travy.6 (Instagram)

Ngozi:@ngozimusa & @aesthetics_athletics (Instagram)

Regardless of what level student-athlete you are, you know there will be TOUGH workouts that will require mental toughness to get through. Sometimes, even the toughest battles can be between your ears and how you respond to that adversity mentally, can determine your success throughout that workout. In this episode, Ken talks with his special guest, Alycia Carrillo about the overlap of sport and exercise psychology within strength and conditioning. Alycia also touches on how to incorporate various sport and exercise psychology concepts with student-athletes, as well as your own training. Enjoy!

It goes without saying that we’re in, you guessed it, unprecedented times for sports right now. That said, we still have the tools to perform our best; we just need a little help identifying them! In this episode, Sam and Myles will discuss competing without fans and strategies for controlling arousal. They’ll wrap things up by rehashing the importance of controlling the controllables, especially under these new circumstances. Enjoy!

It goes without saying that we’re in, you guessed it, unprecedented times for sports right now. That said, we still have the tools to perform our best; we just need a little help identifying them! In this episode, Sam and Myles will discuss competing without fans and strategies for controlling arousal. They’ll wrap things up by rehashing the importance of controlling the controllables, especially under these new circumstances. Enjoy!

This episode begins by emphasizing confidence as one of the most valuable mental skills related to an athlete’s performance. It then provides a list of common misconceptions regarding confidence. Finally, the episode guides listeners through descriptions and examples of four major sources of confidence, along with introducing two other sources that will be discussed in future episodes.

As an athlete, you don’t operate in a vacuum. Your athletic and personal lives are filled with noise and distractions. Some of what we feel and experience, we have control over. However, a large portion of what we experience is completely out of our hands. In this podcast, Trevor and Myles address the “control the controllables” mindset. Additionally, they touch on how to apply the “control the controllables” mindset to everyday life, even outside of sport, and then give a few examples of high performing athletes who exemplify what it means to control the controllables. Enjoy!

First and foremost, the co-creators of the Kentucky Resilience Lab want to welcome you. Shannon and Kaite, along with an incredible team have worked to create content to help you become better. If you remain consistent and demand the most of yourself, the possibilities are endless.