Mental Training Lab

A few years ago, I started working with a somatic experiencing practitioner who opened every session the same way: “How are you?” I always had an answer ready. Then she’d ask the follow-up that stopped me every time: “How do you know?”

In this solocast, I’m sharing that simple but not easy question, and why I keep bringing it to my clients.

Most of us can explain what we’re feeling and why. But when it comes to where we actually notice it, we hit a wall pretty quickly. That gap between the story in our head and our direct experience in the body matters, because the body is where performance happens, and the present moment is the only place it can.

I get into why you can’t leave a place you’re unwilling to be, how Joseph Goldstein’s three vectors of temperature, movement, and pressure can bring you back to direct experience, and why it helps to expand where you go looking for information.

We also talk about why that specificity can feel uncomfortable, how intellectualizing keeps us at a distance from our bodies, and how this question starts building a bridge between the mind’s language and the body’s.

I close with a few practical ways to make it a habit, including bookending your day, setting reminders, and inviting someone else into the practice with you.

How are you doing right now? And how do you know?

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This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.  

Every game has rules. The blue line in hockey, the three-point line in basketball. And those rules quietly shape every strategy built around them.

In this solocast, I’m asking a deceptively simple question: what game are you actually playing?

There’s the visible game. The sport, the business, the role you’ve signed up for. But underneath it, there’s often an invisible game running the show without our awareness. The fit-in game. The be-liked game. The good-enough game. The money game. The feel-good game.

None of these are wrong. But when the invisible game is in conflict with the one you say you want to play, things start to get gummed up. And here’s the twist: most of these invisible games are unwinnable by design.

I share a story from preparing to interview Marie-Philip Poulin in front of a conference crowd, and how I caught myself trying to win the connection game by connecting harder.

Then I walk through four steps for stepping out: name the game, look at what’s predictable and what’s impossible inside it, decide whether you want to keep playing, and choose a new game grounded in who you actually are.

The goal isn’t to judge the game you’ve been playing. It’s to choose it consciously.

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Learn more about The Mental Training Lab
Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
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This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.  

For the best, reflection is an integral part of the process. For everyone else, reflection is one of the most overlooked parts of the performance cycle.

Without  structure and commitment, reflection can quickly become rumination - replaying mistakes, picking apart what went wrong, and carrying all of that into tomorrow.

In this solocast, I’m breaking down one of my favorite tools for closing out a performance: Good, Better, How.

What did I do good? What will I do better next time? And, most importantly, how am I actually going to do it?

I get into why the reps alone aren’t enough for growth, how reflection helps us turn experience into learning, and why going heavier on what went well isn’t about false confidence or ignoring mistakes.

Done well, reflection gives you a way to close the tabs, get clear on what matters next, and move forward without needing to beat yourself up to stay motivated.

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Learn more about The Mental Training Lab
Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify

This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.  

In this solocast, I’m exploring something I got wrong for a long time: the idea that when we’re carrying too much stress or activation, the answer is simply to get better at relaxing.

Breathing, meditation, visualization, progressive muscle relaxation—I still believe in all of those tools. But what happens when you’re trying to relax on top of years of missed shots, disappointing performances, high-pressure moments, frustration, and stress that your body never really had a chance to move through?

Over time, that stuff can start to accumulate. Our baseline creeps higher, our capacity to regulate gets smaller, and eventually the mental skills that used to work don’t seem quite as effective anymore.

So in this episode, I’m playing with a different idea: instead of immediately trying to calm the nervous system down, what if we sometimes need to invite in activation first?

I break down what I mean by “energetic hygiene,” why stress can get stuck rather than resolved, and a few ways I’ve been experimenting with helping that energy move—including high-intensity intervals, breathing, and cold exposure.

The goal isn’t to become perfectly calm. It’s to create enough space in the system that when it’s time to regulate, recover, or move on to the next play, we actually can. 

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Learn more about The Mental Training Lab
Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify

This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.  

In this episode of The Mental Training Lab, I sit down with former basketball athlete and executive/somatic coach Elisa Haggarty to explore how athletes, leaders, and high performers can build a more honest relationship with the body.

Elisa’s work helps leaders and teams use bodily sensations, emotions, and present-moment awareness as data for authenticity, trust, and more effective communication. Drawing from her own athletic background, she shares how sport can teach us to work hard, push through discomfort, and chase approval. Meanwhile, we’re also disconnecting ourselves from the very signals that could help us perform and live with more clarity.

Elisa offers a practical and grounded way to begin: notice what is present, name the sensations, get curious about numbness or disconnection, and allow the body to become a source of trustworthy information.

If you’re an athlete, coach, leader, or performer who has learned to use your body as an instrument but struggles to actually listen to it, this conversation offers a powerful reframe: the body is not something to override. It is part of the intelligence we need to perform, communicate, and live more fully.

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Learn more about The Mental Training Lab
Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify

This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.  

In this solocast, I’m exploring what happens when performers try to avoid the very things they’re most afraid of.

Maybe it’s falling. Missing the shot. Losing the tournament. Getting hurt. Looking like a fraud. Our instinct is often to push those possibilities away and use mental skills to stay calm, focused, and in control. But when we’re using those tools to cover up what’s happening underneath, we can actually create an artificial ceiling on our performance.

I break down three ways we tend to relate to fear: pretending the “monster” isn’t there, trying to lock it away, or learning to acknowledge it, accept what’s possible, and make an empowered choice anyway.

We’ll also look at practical ways to work with these experiences through journaling, pendulation, and meditation—and why the thing you’re most determined to avoid may actually point toward your greatest opportunity for growth.

What if your fear isn’t something you need to overcome in order to perform at your best? What if learning to work with it is part of what makes you a better performer?

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Learn more about The Mental Training Lab
Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify

This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.  

In this episode of The Mental Training Lab, I sit down with former All-American wrestler, performance coach, TEDx speaker, and entrepreneur Jim Harshaw to explore what it takes to unlock sustainable high performance in sport, business, and life.

Jim’s story starts on the wrestling mat, where early disappointment, self-doubt, and the pressure to prove himself eventually led to one of the most important mindset shifts of his career: moving from outcome obsession to process focus. That shift helped him become an All-American wrestler, and it now shapes the work he does with athletes, executives, entrepreneurs, and high performers who are trying to access the “last 10–20%” of their potential.

In this conversation, we unpack why hard work alone is not always enough, how productive pauses create clarity and more effective action, and why sustainable performance requires more than just motivation. On top of all of that, Jim shares his four-part framework for peak performance.

We also talk about failure, coaching, journaling, deep work, and the difference between grinding harder and taking inspired action. If you’re a high performer who already works hard but still feels inconsistent, stuck, or disconnected from the process, this conversation offers a practical structure for getting aligned and performing more consistently under pressure.

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Learn more about The Mental Training Lab
Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify

This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.  

We all want a little certainty before a big performance. A great warmup. A perfect night of sleep. Some sign that everything is going to go according to plan.

The problem is that certainty is never actually available.

In this solocast, I explore how our desire to know what will happen next can create fragile confidence, negative predictions, rigid expectations, and a whole lot of wasted energy. That tension can show up as panic practice, distraction, frustration, self-criticism, or even freezing when it is time to take action.

I also share three steps for building a healthier relationship with the unknown: noticing how uncertainty shows up in your mind and body, learning to hold the tension between wanting something deeply and not knowing if you will get it, and practicing how to direct your energy and attention back toward the task at hand.

The best performers are not certain everything will work out. They have learned how to stay engaged, trust their ability to respond, and perform even when the outcome remains unknown.

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Learn more about The Mental Training Lab
Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify

This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.  

In this episode of The Mental Training Lab, I sit down with sport psychologist and three-time national champion Dr. Kate Bennett, founder of Full Send Consulting, to explore one of the most powerful and often misunderstood drivers of performance: genuine human connection.

Kate’s work sits at the intersection of athlete well-being, mental performance, and transformational coaching. Heavily influenced by Jerry Lynch’s Way of Champions and Brené Brown’s research on shame, scarcity, and vulnerability, Kate helps athletes, teams, and coaches build cultures where people feel seen, valued, and loved for who they are. 

We talk about why connection and mattering are more than “soft extras.” They are core performance drivers. We explore how listening without immediately fixing can create real transformation, why psychological safety makes courageous risk-taking possible, and how love in high-performance environments often looks like accountability, honest conversations, and a willingness to go into hard places together.

If you’re a coach, practitioner, athlete, or leader trying to build a culture where people can perform at a high level without burning out, this episode offers practical “marching orders”: listen more deeply, model vulnerability, create safety, recognize people for how they show up, and build the kind of belonging that helps excellence emerge.

Learn about Kate’s work at fullsendconsulting.co.

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Learn more about The Mental Training Lab
Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify

This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.  

Brent spent years competing at the highest levels of cycling, including the Tour de France, the Olympics, and World Championships. Since retiring from professional cycling, Brent has completed graduate training in mental performance and now works as a coach, helping athletes and high performers translate lived experience into tools for growth, resilience, and well-being.

This conversation is a case study in how mental skills actually show up in the real world. Brent and Pete explore how concepts like self-determination theory, mindfulness, acceptance, a relationship with pain, motivation, and identity played out across his cycling career. And how formal mental performance training helped him better understand what he had been doing intuitively for years.

You’ll also learn about the human side of elite endurance sport: the loneliness, suffering, identity pressure, career transitions, and emotional demands that exist behind the glamour of the Tour de France.

Whether you’re an athlete, coach, parent, business leader, or performer in any domain, Brent’s story offers a practical and deeply human look at how mental training can raise the ceiling of performance while supporting the person doing the performing.

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Learn more about The Mental Training Lab
Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify

This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.