Raising Competitors: Recent Episodes
Jake Thompson
Raising Competitors™ equips parents with strategies for raising youth athletes with grit, gratitude, growth mindset, and leadership for success in school, sports, and life.
Learn ways to encourage youth athletes to compete every day against their own previous best and excel in life on and off the sports field. Hosted by Jake Thompson from Compete Every Day, you’ll hear his conversations with experts, sports psychologists, parents and coaches on strategies and tactics he wants to instill in his future children.
Learn more at RaisingCompetitors.com!
Intentionality is the key to deep relationships and deep relationships are what make a strong and cohesive team. This week on the Raising Competitors podcast, leadership and team development facilitator Bobby Audley shares ideas for team-building that will last. It doesn’t matter if your team is a group of young athletes, seasoned pros, or employees who work with one another in an office, finding a way to bring them together as individuals and as people will help foster a bond that will make the whole group stronger.
Some of the most successful teams aren’t the ones who win the most games, Audley says, but the ones who have good camaraderie and a shared vision. That comes from building trust between teammates, allowing yourself to be vulnerable as a person, and not getting defensive when someone challenges you — but instead using a challenge as a learning opportunity. It comes down to opening up the doors to good communication and a willingness to share with those around you.
What You’ll Learn:
- Be intentional about relationships
- Allow yourself to be vulnerable
- Make time for one-on-one conversations
- Lean into fear and discomfort
- Work to build trust with your team
Support the show by using code PODCAST for 15% off at CompeteEveryDay.com!
It’s a serious commitment to be a youth sports parent and it can be challenging, at times, to find the best way to support your child through their journey. It takes time, money, and emotional energy to stand on the sidelines and provide healthy motivation at home, while leaving room for your child to grow and learn on their own. This week, author, motivational speaker, and performance coach Alan Stein Jr. talks about parenting a young athlete.
It comes down to modeling the behaviors you want to see them learn and use in everyday life, he says. “I think every parent needs to get great clarity on why you want your children to play sports. And that’s not for me to answer for anyone. That’s for each and every parent to articulate,” says Stein. Once you know why you want them to be there, you can develop the tools to help guide them. As parents, the unseen hours between games and practices, sometimes without our kids around, can be the most important for holistically improving ourselves and building the structures and frameworks to support our families.
Things You’ll Learn:
- Be realistic about the standards you’re setting
- Avoid coaching from the sidelines
- Practice meaningful repetition to improve
- Reinforce the behavior you want to see reflected
- Recognize the difference between preparation and performance
Every person has a body, a heart, and a mind. It’s where these three components come together that the magic happens, says this week’s guest, teacher and coach Lani Silversides.
Practicing mindfulness about how we speak with and act around kids can help us set a positive example for them. It can also help them build a strong skillset and work ethic that will serve them well as they grow and progress.
Things You’ll Learn:
- Be mindful of the language you use
- Pay attention to family routines
- Move away from quick judgment about performance
- Build mental muscles
- Keep the fun factor in youth sports
Kids are like sponges. They soak up whatever you say to them, as parents or coaches, and learn how to act and react from the behavior they see modeled for them. That’s why it’s important to be mindful of how you respond.
This week, coach Nicole Denes shares tips on supporting the process, rather than focusing on the outcomes, and helping kids build good habits for the long run.
It can be helpful to think about problems or mistakes before they happen. That way, you can practice how you might respond before you’re put on the spot. Especially for kids and adults who tend towards perfectionism, it can be useful to re-focus on the skills you need to improve, rather than whether or not a result was perfect.
After all, perfection may be unattainable, but improvement is always possible.
What You’ll Learn: * Invest in the process * Prepare and plan for mistakes to happen * Be mindful of your reactions * Practice accountability for your actions * Support versatility and variety in sports
Enjoyment is a key part of sticking with sports. Especially for youth athletes, finding happiness and fulfillment in the game is central to wanting to come to practice every day and putting in their best work. This week, coach and blogger Erica Suter shares ideas for helping youth athletes take joy in the process because if they care about playing, they’ll keep coming back.
One of the ways to help kids have fun is by letting them explore. More and more, kids are being tracked into playing a single sport in the hopes of going pro or getting a scholarship to college.
But, Suter says, kids are better athletes when they have the flexibility to try new things and grow themselves in different ways. As parents, that could mean letting kids play multiple sports or getting them involved in other routines and skills, like strength and conditioning. “Build the human first,” Suter says. Then, focus on the player.
What You’ll Learn: * Practice having a growth mindset * Build healthy habits for long-term change * Take breaks to prevent burnout * Set short-term goals * Create a reflection journal
Kids aren’t just mini-adults. They think differently, process stimuli differently, and fundamentally understand the world in a different way. That’s why it’s important, as adults, to be careful what you say when you want kids to understand you, and how you say it.
This week, James Leath talks about the challenges and rewards of working with young athletes and shares tips for connecting with them on their level for better communication and outcomes.
As the founder of Unleash The Athlete, he has years of experience working both with youth and with the people who support them, like parents and coaches. By working to understand how kids experience the world around them, you can better support them on their journey of growth.
What You’ll Learn: * Encourage positive self-talk in young athletes * Be mindful of how you speak to kids * Let your kids fail and learn from it * Work to understand how kids think * Support healthy bonds between teammates
Resources * The Resilient Athlete Course here * Join James’ Coach Mentorship Program here * Buy James’ Team Building Activities Course here
Being a successful team means being on the same page. That goes for athletes, parents and coaches. Everyone has to have a shared goal in mind and work to achieve it.
This week, The Colony High School Lady Cougars Coach & Vice President of the Texas High School Girls Coaches Association Colby Davis shares tips for managing the expectations and abilities of a young team and all of its supporters. It comes down to having good communication at all levels and making sure everyone is invested in the end game.
Young teams can comprise players of many skill levels. Each player brings their own strengths to the team, even if it’s being the loudest cheerleader on the bench at gametime. The key to keeping players in sync with one another is to play to those strengths and help kids understand the importance of recognizing others’ successes.
It also makes them tougher competitors, if they can see what the competition is doing right and adapt to improve their own game and ultimately, win.
What You’ll Learn: * Seek out tough competition * Be sure not to overwork a young athlete * Let kids be role models for each other * Help athletes acknowledge team members’ successes * Practice and preach your ideal culture
You can follow Coach Colby Davis on Twitter @CoachDavis10. You can also follow The Colony Lady Cougars on Twitter @TheColonyBB.
Support Raising Competitors by using code PODCAST at CompeteEveryDay.com for 15% off any order!
It can be daunting to find support and resources you can trust as a player, coach, or parent.
This week, fellow podcaster and baseball aficionado Joe Ferraro talks about his Youth Baseball School endeavor, which seeks to bring together useful information in one place for ballplayers and their supporters. It’s a community where you can seek out likeminded people for advice and tips to get the most out of your experience with the sport.
For Compete Every Day podcast listeners, Ferraro may be a familiar voice. He’s the founder and host of the One Percent Better podcast and joined us in season 3 here. He brings the same commitment to education and relationship-building to his new project.
In this episode, he also shares stories of how lessons he learned in baseball have translated to life as a whole and the importance of staying true to the pursuit of lifelong learning, which makes finding curated and trusted resources all the more important.
What You’ll Learn: * Ways to connect with experts in the field * How to cope with the mental side of the game * The importance of taking breaks as a player * How to translate sports lessons into life lessons * Where to seek out advice from people you can trust
Listen to Joe Ferraro's interview on the Compete Every Day Podcast here.
Support the show by using code PODCAST for 15% off any order at CompeteEveryDay.com.
Connect with Jake on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter!
Kids are kids and they need to have fun. Nowadays, there’s a tendency to push kids into picking a particular sport at a young age. There’s the prevailing idea that if a kid isn’t specializing early, they’re falling behind.
Southbay FC founder Kelly Gray says in actuality, kids should be doing the opposite. They should be able to try out as many sports as they want when they’re young, and hold off on choosing a main focus until they’re older.
For nearly a decade, Gray played in Major League Soccer. He became a coach soon after retiring from the field. He saw both kids and adults questing for player perfection when they should have been focusing on progress. Kids need to be able to enjoy their experience in sports, Gray says, and have the opportunity to learn different skills.
Those extra abilities will serve them well as they get older and put them ahead of the competition when it really counts.
What You’ll Learn: * Aim for progress, not perfection * Encourage diversity of experience * Allow young athletes to fail * Wait to specialize until kids are older * Offer breaks to prevent burnout
Support the podcast by using code PODCAST for 15% off any order at CompeteEveryDay.com
My nephew has been struggling in school lately. He battles ADHD as I did, and I know he’s gotten frustrated by how long it’s taken him to get some concepts. I can relate. You just want to bang your head against a wall when a subject isn’t “clicking.”
He came in town this weekend with his family, and I wanted to encourage him. I got him a TCU football t-shirt with the words Built. Not Born. It was the perfect message I wanted to share with him.
I wrote him the following letter that I hope also encourages you – and your young Competitor – too.
RaisingCompetitors.com
When you look at your calendar, does it reflect your priorities in life? How about the priorities you want to have? This week’s guest Jon Vroman looked at his own calendar several years ago and realized that although he talked about his family as the center of his world, work was taking precedence when it came to his time.
That realization inspired him to start Front Row Dads, which works to help men reframe how they think and talk about fatherhood.
Vroman says men need to step up and take responsibility and pride in having a front row seat.
Join the Front Row Dads community.
Kip Watson is a former tackle football player with a seminary degree who raised two kids while building a business. Kip helps people discover and improve beliefs, habits, and tools to be successful and achieve more than they thought possible.
Kip has more than 20 years of experience assisting individuals, teams, coaches, leaders, families, and couples. Today, she is a certified trainer for the Positive Coaching Alliance and one of the few Certified High-Performance Coaches (CHPC) in the world obtaining her credential by the highest-paid personal development and performance coach Brendon Burchard, coach to influencers such as Oprah Winfrey, Arianna Huffington, and Usher.
On today's podcast conversation, her and Jake discuss:
- Can you really "Fake it until you make it?"
- Practice mindset vs. competitive mindset
- The importance of our beliefs to our mental toughness
- Parenting with temptations
- Specialization vs. multi-sport approach
Learn more about Anne 'Kip' Watson's work at BrainCodeCorp.com. Mention this episode of the Raising Competitors podcast and receive $100 off her athlete/executive assessment!
Priscilla Tallman understands the importance of focus and growth mindset. She as SEC Conference Player of the Year during her time playing volleyball at the University of Georgia. She later went on to play for the US National Team.
Now, after years a high school and club coach, Priscilla is a Pac-12 Conference volleyball coach, helping the next generation of players win and off the court.
In today's episode, we discuss teaching a growth mindset, why journaling is a key-component of her work with The Reset Group, and how she's parenting two athletes in her own home.
Learn more about Priscilla's work with The Reset Group and learn about their digital programs for youth athletes at TheResetGroup.com!
Click here to support the show!
Elizabeth McVickers knows what it’s like to play without purpose. The former collegiate athlete is now driven to help others find their purpose on and off of the course and help them succeed.
We sat down this week to discuss her “Dear Athlete” letters at Branched Athletics, what “playing with purpose” means, and how her unique collegiate career created this unique opportunity to pay it forward.
Learn more about @Branchedathletics on Instagram or their website, BranchedAthletics.com.
It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that you have to hit home runs every day in order to become successful.
The best hitters in the game aren’t swinging for the fences every time they get to the plate. Just like the best quarterbacks aren’t throwing for the endzone every pass.
There’s nothing wrong with chipping away at your goal and your growth with small swings, every day, that add up to significant success over time.
In this solo episode, Jake uses fairy tales and baseball games as illustrations for how to slay big obstacles and move closer toward success that you can use in sharing with your youth athlete.
Click here to support the show
Mentioned in the Episode
- Pound the Stone by Joshua Medcalf (link)
- Atomic Habits by James Clear (link)
Rodney Webb is the head football coach at Rockwall High School in Texas and president of the Texas High School Coaches Association. This week, he shares tips from his nearly 30 years in coaching.
What You’ll Learn This Week: * Manage players and the pressures of social media * Seek mentorship from other coaches * Establish relationships with players and parents * Play and practice smarter, not harder * Keep it real with kids
Click here to support the show!
Show notes: http://bit.ly/rodneywebb_rc
Follow Coach Webb on Twitter at @Jacket4Life
Former Olympic swimmer Caroline Burckle joins this week's show to discuss her athletic journey and the co-founding of RISE Athletes, a program that partners young athletes with Olympians for mentorship opportunities.
Burckle discusses the importance of diversifying their experiences (outside of sports) helps set them on the path to success in the future, as they can choose from many skillsets at different times in life.
Click here to support the show.
Rise Athletes: http://www.rise-athletes.com/
Show notes: http://bit.ly/carolineb_rc
When leaders do their best, everyone’s better for it.
That’s a bit of wisdom from this week’s guest, Adam Bradley who is the founder of Lead ‘Em Up. His company helps coaches develop their athletes into leaders both in sports and everyday life.
Leadership is a lifestyle, after all, Bradley says. It can’t just come out in only one aspect of you or your players’ lives; it has to be present all the time.
Learn How You Can:
- Build a relationship foundation so players lead one another
- Get to know players and build trust with them
- Be intentional about communication
- Develop better focus on tasks
- Elevate leadership development to the level of skills development
Click here to support the show!
Show notes: http://bit.ly/rc_leademup
Follow Lead Em Up on Twitter at @Lead_Em_Up
Being able to learn new skills is the most important skill to have. That’s the start of the pathway to success for Bobby Stroupe, founder of ATHLETE Performance Enhancement Center, or APEC.
In the end, coaches and mentors are building people, not athletes, he says. That’s why it’s important to learn or encourage the habits and practices that build a solid foundation for a successful life, which can also be used to improve athletic ability.
At an early age, that means building mental and physical flexibility and adaptability, so the potential is limitless as a person grows.
What You’ll Learn: * Build human connections and communication skills first * Have a realistic work culture so people gain confidence in themselves and others * Developing grit means having a plan for the future * Seek understanding before seeking to be understood * Encourage resourcefulness and problem solving
Click here to support the show!
Show notes: http://bit.ly/rc_apec
Follow Bobby on Instagram at @stroupebob
Learn more about APEC at APECgo.com
Talking the talk is important, but even more so is walking the walk. That’s the key message from this week’s guest, Arbonne Executive National Vice President Miranda Burcham.
Along with that, she’s a fitness pro, a full-time mother of five who does international mission work, and she teaches classes at a local women’s recovery center.
In all of her endeavors, she’s had her children by her side. They’ve seen her succeed and fall behind and they’ve been with her through her ups and downs. Burcham says she and her husband, Bubba, have made a point of modeling commitment and work ethic for their kids, in order to teach by example how to lead a compassionate life dedicated to helping others.
What You’ll Learn: * Be interested in the affairs of others, not just your own * Have a steadfast mind in whatever you do * Practice healthy competition and healthy recognition with your team * Disrespect the impossible * Model the kind of work and life ethic you want your kids to learn
Click here to support the show!
Show notes: http://bit.ly/mirandaburcham
Contact Miranda at: TeamBurcham1@gmail.com
Grit is just one of the many pieces of the success puzzle. Author & Sports Psychologist Dr. Cindra Kamphoff shares how grit is a great starting place for thinking about what it truly takes to be on top of your game or field as an athlete or entrepreneur.
It's often the most challenging moments that change us the most. If we overcome them and keep persevering, we develop grit and the long-term passion it takes to succeed.
Listen and learn:
- How to use outcome-driven goals to stay focused
- How to use process-driven goals to improve daily
- Develop grit through overcoming difficult moments
- Cultivate passion for something in the long-term
- Support mental toughness and resilience in kids through conversation
Click here to support the show!
Show notes: http://bit.ly/drcindrakamphoff
Want the BONUS material? Learn about our membership program at RaisingCompetitors.com
Cultivating relationships, both offline and online, is key to achieving long-range goals. That’s one of the messages from this week’s guest, Lauren Teague, a social media pro, podcast host, and full-time mom of three. She previously worked for many years as the person behind the PGA Tour’s social media presence. She shares her philosophy on conversation-driven engagement and talks about how to model a good work and life ethic for kids who look to you for examples.
She credits her parents with teaching her to be both highly driven and dedicated to her pursuits. Her mother gave her the gift of vision, she says, while her dad showed her that hard work breeds success. It’s those skills she’s put to work both in her private and professional lives.
Click here to support the show!
Show notes: http://bit.ly/laurenteague
Children today are the leaders of tomorrow. That’s why it’s important to foster healthy relationships with kids and help them on the path to positive growth and development.
Matt Sharp is the co-founder of the child development program, KidStrong. KidStrong is dedicated to helping parents raise stronger, smarter, and more athletic children.
Traditionally, education and child development programs have focused on specific pieces of a child’s life, like athletics or the arts or sciences. By bringing every aspect of learning together, he says, children will grow holistically and be better established to succeed in life as they get older.
He follows the 80/20 rule, which argues that 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes. By teaching kids those top 20 percent of skills in any area, adults can prime them to get the most out of life and maximize their learning time in the process.
Click here to support the show!
Show notes: http://bit.ly/matt_kidstrong
Stephen Mackey, founder of 2Words, talks about his journey to becoming a character development speaker and shares ideas for parents, coaches, students, and adults alike to build a depth of character that will carry them forward in the world.
It’s easy to get stuck in the weeds, forgetting to look at the deeper meaning behind your work. But by connecting each small step with a greater vision, you can bring purpose into your work and remember why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Listen and learn how to:
- Reward in children what you want to see repeated
- Merge skill set and passion for your best outcome
- Understand the responsibility that comes with choices
- Connect the overarching vision with the next small step
- Align competition with a greater purpose
Click here to support the show!
Show notes: http://bit.ly/2words_stephen
Changing the Game Project founder John O'Sullivan joins the second episode Raising Competitors Podcast to discuss the state of youth sports, how to handle tricky situations with your child's sports' experience, and how
John started the Changing the Game Project in 2012 after two decades as a soccer player and coach on the youth, high school, college and professional level. He is the author of the #1 bestselling book Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes, and his work has been featured in The Huffington Post, CNN.com, Outside Magazine, ESPN.com, Soccer America and numerous other publications.
Click here to support the show!
Show Notes: http://bit.ly/changethegame_rc
Visit ChangingTheGameProject.com.
Order John's book here.
Raising Competitors™ focuses on equipping parents with strategies for raising youth athletes with grit, gratitude, growth mindset, and leadership for success in school, sports, and life.
Compete Every Day founder Jake Thompson shares why this project is so important to him and what you can expect on upcoming episodes. ways to encourage youth athletes to compete every day against their own previous best and excel in life on and off the sports field. You’ll hear his conversations with experts, sports psychologists, parents and coaches on strategies and tactics he wants to instill in his future children.
Learn more at RaisingCompetitors.com.
Lindsey Smith has always been athletic, including her college career as a three-sport athlete at DePaul. Smith talks about her journey through sports and life and shares tips on transitioning away from being a full-time athlete in a healthy and productive way.
As a coach, she’s fostered positive relationships with her athletes and used the same work ethic to raise two active and hardworking daughters of her own. She shows kids the power of going all in on a dream and working hard to reach a tough goal, and how to bounce back from that even if it doesn’t go as planned.
Click here to support the show.
Show notes: http://bit.ly/lindsey_smith_rc
Follow Lindsey on Instagram, Twitter