The Importance of Having a Healthy “Why”, with Brent Bookwalter

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Understanding the deeper reasons why we train and race can help us develop a stronger sense of motivation, work ethic, and confidence for our sport of choice.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Chris Case: Hey everyone. Welcome to Fast Talk your source for the science of endurance performance. I’m your host, Chris Case here with Coach Julie Young. When it comes to training and racing, we all have a why. In essence, it is our purpose for doing what we do that’s special. Something that motivates us to take part in our sport of choice and stay involved for the long term.

That why could be simple enjoyment or a desire to compete, or it might have to do with overcoming a past injury or a challenge and proving that those things don’t define us or limit us. Whatever your why is, it’s serves a very important role in sport. At its most basic, it’s a powerful motivator that can get us through a tough day or make us push a little harder when a race gets challenging.

But it also gives us that all important sense of self-determination. Our coach may build our plan, our manager or our parents may push us, but at the end of the day, we all have a why that we choose. That gives us reason to continue doing the sport. If you’ve lost your why or forgotten what it was, now is a good time to stop and rediscover what it is once you’ve found it again, make sure you stop every few weeks and remind yourself why you do what you do.

Here to help us understand our why and its importance for performance is Brent Book Walter, a 2016 Olympian, a 16 year veteran of professional cycling, an NBC commentator, and now a trained sports psychologist. Brent’s own career was defined by grit, tenacity, and world-class collaboration, and Brent now brings his high level experience to his role as a mental performance coach, helping athletes and leaders optimize habits and strengthen their mental game.

Brent will talk with us about what is meant by the why, how it ties into the three key elements of self-determination and how it gives intrinsic motivation, even when we are focused on the external. We’ll then dive into how not having intrinsic motivation can push burnout. Particularly in younger athletes who are often distracted by what they see top athletes doing on social media.

Finally, we’ll have a lengthy conversation on ways to build a sense of self-determination and find that why joining Brent will also hear from Pat Warner, vice President of Product at Stages cycling on his why as a national and world champion, along with top gravel racer Lauren de Crescenso, who uses hardship from her past to give her a very powerful why.

So take a moment to think about that. Why, and let’s make you fast.

[00:02:32] Trevor Connor: Before we dive into the episode, we’d like to introduce you to our Met Pro Performance Minute. You sent us your most pressing nutrition questions. Here’s Met Pro founder Angela Polley. Take it a minute to give you an answer. So Angelo, generally athletes assume that if they want to have a better body composition, so basically lose some weight and perform better, the answer’s always eat less and train more.

Is it that simple?

[00:02:57] Angelo Poli: Well, I wish it was that simple. If you’re listening to this podcast, odds are you already know that simply training more isn’t gonna get you past a certain point. Most people will reach the body composition that their training’s going to initiate, usually within about a year of training, once you’ve been training consistently for nine months to a year, unless you’re making active changes.

It really comes down to, if you want further body comp adjustments has to come from the nutrition, and that’s where the balance and the tension lies. You have to absolutely be in some level of deficit if you want your body composition to shift, and I’m speaking of course, if you want, reduce body fat or weight, but we can’t burn through our recovery stores, our access to the fuel that we need to perform.

So the question really lies in. How much do we restrict? What macronutrient and to what degree should we restrict? Which meal do we restrict from? And here’s the big one that most performance athletes miss. How long should we restrict for? Because the answer is not necessarily well until I lose all the weight I want.

We wanna actually have a strategic plan to take someone through a cutting cycle just long enough, and then quickly bring them out. Because the key to optimizing performance is actually gonna be an abundance of fuel for recovery. So it’s timing and structuring that cutting cycle in tandem with understanding your training needs, your training schedule.

And if you do have a race on the books, making sure that it’s timed appropriately for that.

[00:04:36] Trevor Connor: So it’s a case of, again, you can’t beat the laws of thermodynamics. You need to eat less than you’re burning, but that food is essential for recovery and adaptation. So you have to be very careful about making sure that you’re providing for those needs too.

Am I hearing you right?

[00:04:51] Angelo Poli: Performance athlete, their margin is smaller than the general public when it comes to fat loss. They’re also at greater risk for stripping muscle off their frame because of all their training. So because of that, we just really wanna make sure that we, you know, sharpen up the pencil when we do the math and we make those adjustments.

We wanna take a scalpel to it, not a hammer.

[00:05:14] Trevor Connor: And so if the audience wants to learn more about this,

[00:05:16] Angelo Poli: they can visit us at Met pro.co/fast talk.

[00:05:22] Trevor Connor: Thanks Angelo, appreciate it.

[00:05:24] Angelo Poli: Thanks for having me

[00:05:25] Trevor Connor: now on with the show.

[00:05:28] Julie Young: Well, hey Brent. Welcome back to Fast Talk Labs.

[00:05:31] Brent Bookwalter: Hey, Julie, thank you for having me back. Great to be back with Fast Talk Crew.

Some of the usual suspects, not here, but excited to be reconnecting with you on yet another timely, relevant, and interesting topic about making ourselves fast and fulfilled.

[00:05:45] Julie Young: Great. Well, for me, this topic came up because I feel like nearly every day in my coaching practice, it comes up and I find it’s more often with the younger writers I’m working with, and when I see them or sensing them getting kind of heavy and getting bogged down and like losing that enthusiasm, I will often ask them to take some quiet time and remind themselves of why they do this and why it’s meaningful for them.

And also just remind them that they don’t have to do this. And again, Brent, I am not formally educated in sports psychology, so you’re gonna school me on this whether I’m barking up the wrong tree or not. But I just feel like the Y is so core to our being as athletes, our motivation and. I find that it often falls by the wayside, and I don’t know if that’s because we live in this age of so much noise, so much destructive noise.

I often find it like when I was thinking about this episode, similar to our pursuit of the physical performance where, just to give an example, someone might be like subsisting on Inn out burger and five to six hours of sleep, but they’re obsessed about which supplement to take. And I find that this is similar that to remind ourselves of our why, it’s such that guiding light and that core anchor point for ourselves.

But yet I feel like it’s often disregarded. So I’m curious what you think about this.

[00:07:18] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah, Julie, I think you said so much of it nicely there, and I don’t think formal, nuanced psychological science is really even needed to appreciate this. I think. This definitely lies at the intersection of science, but also applied growth and coaching and application and wisdom.

So I’m excited to like also learn from you and hear some anecdotes and stories from working with athletes. I view the why really as part of motivation, and that is at the core of performance. It’s at the core of fulfillment, joy, flourishing, and yeah, often it does get lost. I think especially these days, it’s not the defined minutiae, the 1%, it’s not sharpening the really flashy sword.

It’s not the marginal gains, but it often is a bottleneck. In terms of performance, and the way I view it is it’s at the foundation of the performance period, or it’s at pyramid or it’s at the roots of the performance tree. And if your understanding and alignment and articulation and self-awareness of your why and what motivates you and what’s important, if that hard internal work and underground work isn’t done, no matter how far you get up the pyramid or how, no matter how far you get out of the tree, you won’t realize the full flourishing fulfillment and actualization is if you set that up with that foundation and those roots properly.

[00:08:34] Julie Young: Yeah, and thinking of the roots, that definitely came to my mind. And if we think about achieving any goal, it’s like consistency over time. And to me that why is that thing that through the tough times it reminds you? I think on those days where you don’t feel like getting on the trainer or the bike, it is that little nudge sometimes.

And it’s really, again, to me in achieving success in sport or whatever the case may be, it’s that consistency over time. So I think as you point out, it’s the roots and the foundation.

[00:09:03] Chris Case: Just to jump in here for a second. From a more technical psychological point of view, I feel like there’s the underlying why of somebody trains or competes or is purely active.

And then there’s the daily purpose perhaps, that people can tap into to motivate themselves on a daily sense. Like, oh, I need to do these intervals today. I don’t really want to, but there’s a purpose behind them and I will do them because of that. How do those two blend together? Brent? Do you feel like it’s necessary to have a somewhat static underlying why I do it because it brings me joy, or I do it because of community or one of these things, and then the daily purpose can fluctuate.

I’m doing my intervals today because it’s a necessary evil. I’m doing this particular ride because I need a break from the intervals, and I just need to have fun on my bike.

[00:10:03] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah, absolutely Chris. I think that’s nicely said, and the real foundational core. Why the philosophical of why we’re doing something on a global level.

I like the analogy of the roots and the comparison there because roots in a tree, they are still growing. No matter how big or tall that tree gets, the roots are still proliferating. They’re growing. They’re working around a concrete foundation through the concrete foundation, and so we’re saying that this isn’t static in the sense of our performance career or our lifetime.

It is changing, it is evolving. It can and should evolve with us, but it is something different. They’re connected, but the daily motivation or why for why you’re doing a particular workout or trying to finish a particular effort or why you’re suiting up in the rain. There can be a whole host of other reasons and motivation and support for that.

And it can be as simple as I’m accountable to my coach and I’ve committed to checking this box and doing it. It can be, I really wanna beat this person next to me. And that those daily sort of like checkpoints and like motivational gauntlets, they don’t always warrant the full existential reevaluation of the real foundational philosophical why.

But we definitely do need to revisit that from time to time and understand that yeah, we as humans evolve, our environment, evolve, our support structure evolves, our priorities and our values can also evolve. So we need to consider that periodically, but it’s not something that we need to do. Every time we’re about to hit that set button, it’s like, Ooh, wait a minute, do I need to call my mom and my dad and my coach and my.

And everyone and figure out what’s really important to me in this world. No, we’ve pushed the set button for far simpler and more superficial reasons, and that’s okay.

[00:11:45] Julie Young: When you said the full philosophical examination, that kind of reminded me, I saw a statement about the quality of motivation versus the intensity, and it seems like that’s along those lines.

[00:11:57] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We can look at motivation in a lot of different ways, but definitely in terms of the graph equality and intensity, they both factor in and they don’t both need to be at 10 all of the time. In everything we do, there’s gonna be some ebb and some flow and some fluctuation, and I think.

This deeper underlying foundational rooted. Why in motivation is, for me, it’s a lot more about the quality and the sustainability, which we often start to lead towards intrinsic and internal than it is about an intensity and a really bright fire, which is also important, but maybe a little more applicable for that daily moment to moment motivation in terms of going from one moment to the next,

[00:12:42] Chris Case: here’s Pat Warner with his why and how sometimes keeping that simple big picture can help you get through the difficulties of the moment.

[00:12:51] Pat Warner: The why for me is I just love it. I just love riding and there are people that like training as much as racing. I think sometimes I like training more than I like racing. I like pushing myself in that. But why? What it’s changed for me is I have three kids and uh, I have some time now and my youngest is a junior in college and 21 years old.

So I’ve had a big push in the last few years where I had a little bit more flexibility. But for me it’s just pure enjoyment. Like I know that people can’t believe that time trialing are doing the hour record or whatever it is, is fun. And sometimes you think maybe it’s not fun. But the overall thing is it’s an amazing experience and uh, it’s a feeling that you just can’t get any other way and it just turns out to be a blast to do so.

Pin a number on it and going, racing a bike to me is fun. That’s my big why.

[00:13:41] Julie Young: How would you say that this idea of why fits into that bigger framework of self-determination?

[00:13:49] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah, so I this idea of intrinsic internal motivation versus, or on the spectrum with extrinsic and external motivation. And so when we talk about motivation, and I can kind of using like the why or motivation interchangeably here.

Mm-hmm. So when we talk about motivation, there’s a number of different motivational orientations or spectrums we can consider motivation on. It can be intrinsic and internal over to extrinsic and external. It can be like an approach or courageous motivation. On the other contrasting end would be sort of like a fear avoidance motivation.

So when we talk about this deeper underlying motivation and why intrinsic motivation is an important element of this, and there’s a number of different motivational theories and scientific explanations or theories on motivation. But one of them is self-determination theory from Ryan and Desi. And this proposes that these three basic human needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness are absolutely important and integral to cultivating and sustaining deep lasting intrinsic motivation.

So when we think about those individually, you have autonomy, which is your ability to exercise choice and essentially free will and acting in your own self-guided way. Competence being that you are capable, you’re qualified, you’re productive. And then this relatedness being that there’s like some connection and relatability and a shared experience with the world, with others, with competitors.

And if you look at fulfilling those sort of basic needs, those can be seen as the ingredients of sustaining intrinsic motivation and drive, which. Relates well to this understanding why, why we’re pushing, why we keep going, why we get out of bed, why we’re trying to be a pro cyclist, uh, upgrade to a CAT three cyclist from a cat four, whatever it may be.

[00:15:48] Chris Case: Can you give us an example maybe from your own career of, and I don’t wanna sidetrack, I just wanna glimpse into your world, which probably informs a lot of how you think about this to some degree. I know you now have a formal degree in everything as well, but give us a sense where you were maybe questioning your why during your professional career and how you turned that around.

[00:16:12] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah, absolutely. There were a lot of these competing professionally and have that being part of my life, not just in a pursuit for fun, but also for my livelihood, brought me head to head with a lot of these confrontations about why am I doing this? Is it for the paycheck? Is it for. Team orders, is it to get on tv?

Is it to like whatever it is or It is for something for me, I think one of the most influential experiences of my career is really about this transition that I underwent from being a team worker and a team player and a teammate, to also being a someone who could lead and win and perform and find results myself.

So I did much of my career with the BMC racing team and early days the button, the BMC racing team were all about trying to win the Tour de France, and that was gonna be with Cadel Evans. And I was really excited to do that. I was very motivated, intrinsically to be part of something that was bigger than myself that none of us could achieve alone, but that we could, together we could with a leader like Cadel.

And this served me really well as we all know, Cade went on to win the tour in 2011, and from that point forward, my identity and my motivation to be a teammate, kind of without me even knowing, started to actually slide from Intrinsic and internal to be a little more extrinsic and external. So it was like, oh, to be a good teammate, I can get paid well.

Well the team wants and needs and rewards, or expects me to be a good teammate. So I sort of lost this sort of like internal and intrinsic fire to be the teammate and to be that role that got me started on that path. And it really wasn’t until the team whacking me on the head as well as a couple other experiences after Cadel won the tour in 2011, I missed out on the Olympic qualification for London in 2012.

The team also came to me at the end of that year and they said. Thanks for the great work we’re, we are appreciative, we value your teamwork, but dun, dun, dun, like, that’s not good enough anymore.

[00:18:16] Chris Case: Yeah,

[00:18:16] Brent Bookwalter: we need more. We want more. We need points for you to survive in this sport and on this team, you gotta do more.

You gotta find a way to lead. You have to find a way to win and get results. And initially that really, I resented that I was frustrated, I was angry, I was resentful. But upon further sort of examination and reflection and introspection, I started to realize that wow, like being a teammate, a value teammate, and doing this all for one, one for all thing.

It was still important to me. There was some internal intrinsic drive, but I was also sort of feeling the pressure and it was sliding a little more external and extrinsic. And I had lost touch with this former version of myself that was also internally and intrinsically motivated to. Get results to win races, to feel that finish line fire and battle to the end and really test myself and push myself and explore the possibilities of what I could do.

So I sort of needed the team nudge and push an uncomfortable sort of reckoning to get there. But a lot of the sort of renaissance, if you will, of my career during that period was about reshifting and refining that intrinsic and internal motivation to why it was also important to me to realize my own potential, why it was important to have the opportunity to lead, and also the value I could bring for myself and my team in terms of results points and all those elements that that tie into it.

[00:19:42] Chris Case: What I was getting at by asking you that Brent, was the challenge, I assumed, and I believe I’ve heard you speak before about the challenge of sort of staying true. Two one’s y and of course, as a professional athlete, there are other factors that most people don’t deal with. It’s not our livelihood, right?

So that aspect and team orders, and that isn’t usually there in other people’s lives as a junior athlete may be the external comes into play with coaches that are demanding or parents that are demanding and so forth. But let’s set that aside. My question to follow up with your brief description of probably what took years in your career to play out several years is really the wrestling match that it took to get back to finding that intrinsic motivation.

What were some of the things that you were able to do to find your way back to what was your truth?

[00:20:42] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah, great question, Chris. I think a big element of this process was who I was surrounding myself with and how they were supporting me. With not just the output of what I was working on, but also who I was and why that was important to me.

And it takes a depth of relationship and understanding of someone and a depth of support to be able to do that. I can’t just grab someone off the street and say, Hey, help me, uh, be more motivated to win from my bike race team. They’re like,

[00:21:12] Chris Case: right,

[00:21:13] Brent Bookwalter: like, I guess I could chase you with a hammer or something I’m gonna throw at you as you’re driving along, and maybe that’ll motivate you to ride faster.

[00:21:19] Chris Case: You could. That doesn’t sound in character for you though.

[00:21:21] Brent Bookwalter: No, that, that’s not really at my default to how I work, but also like reexamining and re-engineering my, that personal team that I had around me, and that they also understood that this change I was trying to make, how it was true to who I fundamentally was as a person.

In a lot of ways it was important that they sort of had known me. Some of them at least had known me before. Because most of us, when we start bike racing as professionals, whether it’s junior collegiate, E 23, like we do get to win or compete or like bike throw at the line for results and it lights us up and there’s some fire there.

But I had really, I had lost that. So it was like having other people that could help me find that and lead me back to that. Another element of that, and just like preaching the field I’m in now was a mental performance coach or sports psychologist who. Help me one, sort of understand, walk through this process of realigning values, what was important to me, but then also actually preparing for it mentally in terms of how I’m speaking to myself, how I’m visualizing this happen, how I am like actualizing and engaging and seeing and realizing this version of myself that isn’t only a teammate is also winning and striving and grinding and pushing for the finish line.

There’s a pragmatic, actually, like, let’s re-engineer the mind a little bit for this too.

[00:22:40] Chris Case: And I think the final point that I’ll make that you’ve made in so many words is that this took a lot of work. It doesn’t just happen and it doesn’t just stay within you. And sometimes you get off track and sometimes you have to find it again.

And it takes work and it takes, sometimes you’ll hear people say, it takes a team, it takes a village, it takes a, all of these things. And you had to make deliberate choices, conscientious choices to surround yourself with the right people who you knew were going to help you get back to where you needed to be.

[00:23:11] Brent Bookwalter: Absolutely. There’s no accidents here. There’s some, I like to say like cycling is so much volume based and built into it that if we go out and pedal your bike a lot or you do a lot of group rides or you do a tot a lot of townline sprints, like we do improve. Mm-hmm. We do improve, but the efficiency that occurs deliberately versus accidentally is a huge variance.

And yeah, frankly at that point in my career, I didn’t have time to let it happen accidentally. It was like, and that, that sort of professional sport in a nutshell, there’s not a lot of time, and I still carry that with me today in terms of approaching things deliberately, intentionally, and not letting it be an accident, but designing it and recruiting that group around me and going back to the what motivates me and why it’s important.

Also keeping that front and center and reevaluating is needed.

[00:23:57] Julie Young: I think your story of your why or your motivations during your career is a clear illustration of how it’s not static, it’s evolving. And obviously it’d be really interesting to understand like, why did you first get into this? And of course that’s gonna be very different from your time as a World Tour Pro athlete.

But I do think just Chris, you had said it does take work. And I feel that’s one thing, like I constantly feel this, that we just don’t give that mental side of it enough attention. And we often do feel like, oh. I’m gonna go to this race and it’s just gonna show up for me. And we really do have to cultivate it on a consistent basis and think of it just the same way we do our physical performance, our physical conditioning.

But I do feel because we live in this age, we want things to be measurable and the mental isn’t as measurable. So you’re not kind of getting that positive feedback. So, so like in that regard, Brent, what are some things like in terms of just the story you told and for people to try to stay on track or to continue to work at it?

And I, I do think probably it is those roots kind of back to the roots and that reason for being is super critical to staying kind of on course.

[00:25:08] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think, yeah, in terms of that data or lack of data, we often have with the mental. Some of it is on us to create our own. So one, it’s creating space and time for this to happen.

That isn’t gonna happen if every waking moment of the day is scrolling the phone and engaged with other people there. It needs to be a certain amount of contemplative, quiet, reflective time where that work can be done. But I think basic elements when you talk about generally like when we wake up in the morning, like what is our motivation like on a scale from like one to three, like three being motivated, one being not.

If we’re waking up a lot of time, then it’s 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. And then you reference that against like my general mood. Am I like. Is my mood good? Is it bad? Is it, eh? Just those two data points alone provide a lot of info about, ooh, am I aligned with what is important to me in moments of alignment and fulfillment, the motivation.

And when it is intrinsic, it does come a little more natural. It does feel like we’re in the current, or we have that little bit of tailwind. And as we get further away from it, then we often start to feel this sort of like resistance. This struggle like, ugh, like just kind of grumpy, just not really motivated, can’t aim my attention, can’t focus.

And then the other one I like to insert in there is, are your actions values aligned? So, and the values go really side by side with this why. But if we understand what we value, what’s important to us, those values are in place to act as guideposts as we move through life, as we behave, as we make decisions, how we have relationships with each other.

Excuse me. And so. When we’re meeting these different forks in the road and these different junctions, just moment to moment, day to day, week to week, our decision to take one path or the other, is it referenced against what’s important to us, or is it just getting sucked along by the mob? That’s rushing down that way?

And if we are referencing against our values and what’s important to us, then we have a chance. Then we’re in it with a fight, and we’re much more likely to be able to actualize ourselves and get the most out of ourselves.

[00:27:10] Julie Young: It’s interesting just preparing for this episode, I felt like I had a lot of aha moments myself and just in terms of working with athletes and kind of back to this concept of intrinsic and extrinsic and kids will say, oh, burnout.

And I feel like that word is so overused, and they do say if you’re more extrinsically motivated or rely more on extrinsic motivation, there’s a greater likelihood of burnout. But to me it’s goes back to not really finding that thing you love and not mean really finding that thing that’s meaningful and, and I think when you do, then that carries you through those hard times.

And I mean if, yeah, of course, if you have a coach that’s just frying you and just loading you up too much and not allowing proper mental and physical rest, of course burnout is a real thing. But I think if those things are taken care of and well controlled for, to me that concept of burnout is overused a bit.

And it’s more about just that athlete not having really found the thing they love to do.

[00:28:05] Brent Bookwalter: Yes, that totally echoes my career path. And the longevity in sport that I had was largely a testament of that. Like when I stopped racing professionally and made, was able to make that decision to stop, it wasn’t because I didn’t love riding my bike.

It was almost at the whole time, that’s what it was all about. It was about like the adventure, the exploration, the self-discovery, the teamwork that could be realized. Those were values of mine and those were integral in in my why. And the bike was largely like a tool for that. So I agree in that. For me, burnout was more about the utilization of resources and resources are depleted, right?

And even willpower I think is somewhat a finite resource and can be depleted. Our actual energy, when we run on empty, after you do stage race after stage race and you take the body down to empty over and over and over, there is a depletion of the also physical, physiological resources that takes place.

We’re wore down. And that resonates with me as burnout. Whereas like the beginning of the season being like, oh, I’ve been training really hard and now I’m burned out. It’s like, oh, I think we just now actually had need to revisit why we’re doing this, what’s important to you, and figure out how to route you through that on the way towards where you’re wanting to go.

But Julie, like I, I’m interested to hear from you too, in terms of, I know you work with a lot of young athletes. You’ve worked with more young athletes than I have, and I do view them as an interesting case study and demographic. And how do you do that when an athlete does facing this or describing this burnout, especially these young ones.

Have you found a particular process that is effective in getting them, like reignited or relighting, that spark or that fire that will sustain them and encourage them and push them through?

[00:29:49] Julie Young: It’s interesting because I wanted to have this conversation with you too because of kind of understanding these concepts of autonomy for example, and, and I think with the younger athletes it is so much about finding that formula to keep a minute for the long game.

That’s to me the most important thing and I think it is important to do the good work. ’cause of course you want them to. Progress. So you want them to see that progression and feel that progression. And I feel like you do need to do some level of some good work, but also keep it super fun, keep it social, and try to find that balance.

It is interesting with the young athletes and that’s that concept of autonomy and finding that balance. Because if you have an athlete and basically if left to their devices, all they would do is race swift. So as a coach, you’re thinking to yourself, okay, I wanna nurture, I really wanna nurture autonomy.

I want them to be a part of this, but is that good coaching? So try to navigate that. Like how do you give them that sense of autonomy when it’s pretty far off the mark of what a good training program would look like? And so that’s something that I grapple with. But I think generally in terms of the ownership and buy-in, it’s the consistency of communication and consistency of helping them understand why they’re doing what they’re doing and how.

Each and every day will connect to reaching their goal and just know like it doesn’t happen overnight. It really is an investment and I think that’s one of the most satisfying things for me is when you do have the opportunity to work with an athlete over time and they really stay in it and they get that payoff, there’s nothing better.

[00:31:26] Chris Case: Julie, do you think that your work with the junior athletes exposes you more to a population that is sort of in real time trying to understand their why? I think I’m thinking more of Nica kids where some of them are coming because eh, their friends are doing it, so I’m gonna try it. Some of them are there because maybe they were.

Kicked off the track team. I don’t know. And some of them are quote unquote athletes. Some of them are there for fun, some of them are serious, some of them are not. And yet you are helping them along a path to understand whether this is for them or not. And some of the time it clicks and some of them probably go away and find something else because the Y just never materialized.

So that is a bit of a crucible, and you’re seeing this happen in real time, is how do you navigate that with them? Do you try to let that play out or do you try to have one-on-one conversations and explain some of this type of stuff to them? Or is that too much? Does that complicate things Too much?

[00:32:33] Julie Young: Of course everything is so individual and I think you see the mental, physical tolerance for things and it’s so different between each and every athlete.

So to me it really is about those individual conversations and really getting to know that individual athlete. And I think it’s also explaining like there is not one pathway, there’s not one trajectory. And I think that’s also hard with these younger athletes, Chris, is to your point, they really are in the throes of this.

And I just feel in this environment with ubiquitous social media, it is so challenging. And that’s where I feel like that distracted noise can really drown out their why and their like reason for being this athlete. And so it is really interesting and honestly, I’ve pulled. Brent and Brent and I have this opportunity now to work with athletes together, and that has been hugely valuable.

Like there’s a limit to what I can do and a limit to my tools in that respect. And being able to work in tandem with Brent has been so gratifying and really amazing to see like the breakthrough the athletes are having. You’d see in these athletes this incredible physical potential and just know like we need to some way unlock that and that Chris, these are more athletes that are more competitive than the NCA athletes.

Mm-hmm. They’ve really kind of understood like, hey, this is the direction I wanna go. But even then, I mean that why can be blurred by everything going on around them. So yeah, I think working with the younger athletes is quite interesting in terms of the volatility of the why.

[00:34:07] Chris Case: Yeah. The aspect of social media here, are you suggesting that the use of it could potentially confuse.

An impressionable mind, the aspect of missing out on something that somebody else is doing. They’re over here doing this, Ooh, I should go do that. Or, oh, this other group of friends is over here doing this. Maybe I should do that. Instead of looking inward, they’re using outward, or they’re using the external to inform what they think they should be doing rather than having confidence in themselves to choose and make those decisions for themselves.

Is that what you’re suggesting, Julie and Brent, in your knowledge?

[00:34:44] Julie Young: That is a perfect description, Chris. Exactly. That it’s just like darting all over the place and Yeah. Trying to let them just like, Hey, take a breath. Kind of quiet the noise. Take some time for yourself. Really think about like why is this meaningful to you and you alone.

[00:35:00] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah. Uh, we’re all on the same page here, essentially kind of preaching to the choir within our little group of three here. But, uh, yeah, I think inherent with the social media is so much comparison to others. And different versions of others that may or may not even be reality. That really pose a high risk for a distraction and comparison.

And that can vary swiftly, take us away from us and what’s important to us and how we’re serving ourselves and really, and just in terms of a distraction take away from how we’re aiming our attention and being productive. So, so, so quickly. So it is a, yeah. Dangerous, complicated place out there. And in terms of how to navigate that, I think kind of breaking it down and saying yes, like social media, like what can it bring to me?

What can it do for me? It can be entertainment, sometimes it can be educational, it can be info sharing. It can be funny, it can give a laugh, but it’s not my motivation, it’s not my reference for success. It’s not my reference for comparison for evaluation and being ultimately, like we need to design our time and using it and being really clear that when it is open, I’m not comparing myself to these people.

I’m not being motivated by what they’re doing or not demotivated by what they’re doing. I’m not identifying and defining myself by what is happening around me. It’s equivalent to like if you just had the TV on in your house all day and it’s just the sound and the light is just going into your head.

That’s a lot different than saying, I’m done with the day, or I’m done with this big studying for this exam and I really wanna find out what happens in this TV show and I’m gonna sit down for like 30 minutes or an hour and I’m just gonna watch it and immerse myself in it. It can provide that value.

Then relaxation, separation, enjoyment, but. Using it in an uncalculated un deliberate way is almost always going to just undermine and go up against what we’re trying to do.

[00:36:56] Julie Young: And I think, Chris, as you had asked about working with young athletes and talking, you know, having these conversations, consistent conversations about the why, I think it’s constantly combating like what they see on social media.

[00:37:09] Chris Case: Mm.

[00:37:09] Julie Young: You know, when a pro, like one of the lifetime pros goes on and shows their week of training and then they think they should be emulating that. Right. So it’s, I think it’s constantly that kind of conversation.

[00:37:22] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:25] Suzy Sanchez: Hey listeners, I’m Susie Sanchez from USA Cycling. If you like what you hear on Fast Talk podcast, you’re the kind of coach we want as part of our certified coach program.

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[00:37:47] Chris Case: One thing that popped into my head as we have this conversation about the intrinsic and extrinsic is we’ve seem to have landed in a place where we’re saying intrinsic is quote unquote better, and therefore intrinsic is sort of healthy or as a motivator or a place of motivation.

I want to know if that is universally true. Are there reasons why external motivation can actually be a really good thing at times? And can there be intrinsic motivations that are not so healthy for some reason? I can’t necessarily think of an example perhaps, and you might argue this is external, but if somebody were to get into sport and do it because it actually felt like a safer place for them to be rather than elsewhere.

I could see that being sort of internal, but you could also argue it’s an external thing as well. So Brent, maybe you take this first. Are there reasons? Are there times when external motivation is actually exactly what people need?

[00:38:59] Brent Bookwalter: There is definitely a place for external and extrinsic motivation, and one of the sort of like analogies I like to use is just the kind of like flame of a fire, external motivation, extrinsic motivation.

It can be a big hot, full blast flame. Or even using like a fueling example of look at extrinsic motivation, external motivation. A bit like fossil fuels, like combustible fossil fuels. Yeah, you light those things up, they burn hot, they can really explode big hot fire, but. There’s not like an infinite amount of it.

You gotta keep like going further, digging deeper, going farther to get it, and eventually you run out or the supply goes down and the demand goes up. And then there is a greater cost personally for those, for that motivation. Whereas like a renewable source of energy, like intrinsic, take some setup on the front end, some investment and some maintenance, but you can, it can kind of just keep going and tapping it in.

So there are definitely periods where. You kind of wanna turn the flame on full blast and you need that, it’s helpful and let’s go there. So yeah, turn it on. But consciously knowing I can’t, we can’t just leave this burner on full blast wide open forever because it will eventually run out and yeah, we can figure out kind of how to refill it and find that next level extrinsic motivation, but it’s not sustainable in terms of a, a season or a career and definitely a, a lifetime.

It’s not as efficient. So being calculated with it and using the extrinsic accordingly is, I think an important part of that.

[00:40:30] Chris Case: Would an example of that be your roots? That intrinsic motivation is you do. The sport you love because you love it, because it brings you joy for all those reasons. But every once in a while you are like, that’s my goal this year is to be state champion or national champion.

And it’s like, it’s all about winning. It’s both of those, like, I’m gonna have fun because I’m gonna win and I need that extra motivation and I need people to tell me like, you’ve gotta go for this because you’re capable of it. And that’s an example. But if every time you got out on the bike you’re like, it’s all about winning.

It’s all about winning. And that’s why I’m riding today and that’s why I’m gonna ride tomorrow. That’s not sustainable. But every once in a while you put some eggs in a basket called a championship or a podium place or whatever, and that’s. When that extra bit of fire helps you succeed.

[00:41:21] Brent Bookwalter: Absolutely. I think that’s a great example of it, Chris, and I think it’s an important reflection and distinguish with that example, even to note like we know generally just having a recent Winter Olympics and following all the Olympics stories, it’s pretty well documented and and known that the actual gold medal, I mean take Michael Phelps for example,

[00:41:40] Chris Case: right?

[00:41:40] Brent Bookwalter: That’s not it. Like that external, that extrinsic, that thing that you’re holding, like that’s not it. That doesn’t bring the success, the flourishing, the happiness, the contentment. It is more about the process. So yes, we can use it. Yes. It still is important. We’re not saying like the state championship or the gold medal doesn’t matter.

Yes, it matters. It has a role in it. The contract you’re getting or the team spot where they give you all the bikes, like that’s really important to keep going. But it can be it. There’s gotta be more underneath there and especially consistently over time.

[00:42:13] Julie Young: So speaking of goals, this came up for me and doing a little prep for this episode and it’s.

They noted interjected regulation, which is behavior driven by avoiding sense of guilt and maintaining self-esteem as an extrinsic motivation. And to me, I was thinking about this like in setting a goal for state champs or national champs, you have these little stepping stones along the way, these little goals that you’re hitting.

And to me, when you hit these little goals, like that develops self-esteem. So to me that was a little bit, I don’t know, splicing hairs there to me, because I felt like that interjected regulation and maintaining self-esteem, I mean, to me, I think that’s an important part. I don’t know. I felt like that was a little bit intrinsic.

So anyway, just kind of splicing hairs because setting goals and those stepping stones to reach those goals is so critical.

[00:43:04] Brent Bookwalter: Absolutely. Julian, I think maybe like the missing piece there, I think as I view that and interpret that is like within those goals or those steps, it’s like. Not taking ’em at face value, but like looking underneath.

So like I agree, like those checkpoints, those goals or like we like to say that evidence like build, create, like manifest when work hard to create the evidence that helps build confidence that’s gonna bring you towards what you wanna achieve the vision for yourself. But if you look at one of the goals or one of those steps, if you look at for the surface, it’s like, oh, my threshold is now whatever, five watts per kilo I went up, or like I won this qualification race.

That’s it. On the surface, we need to go like underneath it to a deeper level of, oh, like what allowed me to do that? And we’re talking about like personal qualities. What were the skills, what were the personal qualities, the character traits that I employed that helped me build to that and that. What was ever on the surface there, and I think when you go underneath and you start peeling back the layers, that’s the real power in that evidence and that confidence that comes from those goals and steps along the way because it’s something that’s inherent in you and then that connects to this.

Internal and intrinsic more than the externally manifested piece that’s on the surface.

[00:44:25] Julie Young: Yeah. I think speaking of goals and, and I guess that sustainability, another thing I think is a trait when I’m working with these young athletes especially, is when you do see someone with that deep intrinsic and that deep connection to their why, I find that they’ll immediately go, like, in terms of getting one of these smaller goals accomplished, if they come across obstacles, they immediately.

Resort to problem solving to overcome versus someone that is not quite as rooted will use that obstacle as an excuse to bail. And I think that to me is a huge trait.

[00:45:01] Brent Bookwalter: Yes, I haven’t done that, but I love that as a hypothetical even to like work through, if presented with this roadblock or presented with this obstacle, what would be like your default reaction?

And I think even just scanning my brain now and early in my career, I had a pretty violent leg fracture basically right as I was graduating from my undergrad kind of on the doorstep of being a professional cyclist for the first time I had this compound tibia fracture. And so my career was obviously like super in doubt.

We didn’t even know I was gonna really be able to like walk, run, ride a bike, much less race professionally. And when I reflect on that, what my first reaction and first thought was like, I need to and want to get back to riding because I love the bike and I miss exploring and I miss being out there. It wasn’t like, oh, I was so close to signing this contract and like that was gonna mean this amount of dollars and I was gonna have this discovery channel jersey or whatever it was to like parade around and be on the big team bus.

No, my, my instinct really was like, this is about like me being able to like go ride my mountain bike trails and feel the wind on my face so that, that is like a reference point. I’m like, that was a lot of intrinsic and internal drive just to ride my bike. And then the competitiveness sort of like came after and was built from that.

[00:46:19] Chris Case: As Brent just pointed out, sometimes past hardship can become a very powerful why. Here’s Lauren de Crescenso on her. Why and how her experience with A TBI has become a big motivator.

[00:46:33] Lauren De Crescenzo: My why? Yes, this is the big question of the day. Why am I doing any of this? I just love riding my bike. I always have. I always will.

Some pros, they really don’t look forward to like their daily workouts, their daily, like eight hour rides, whatever it is. But I genuinely enjoy riding my bike and sometimes people are like wondering why, and I’m like, I have nothing better to do today. This is like the best thing I can think of to do with my day.

Just ride around, enjoy being outside and being on the bike. Another big why for me, I think again comes back to my, uh, traumatic brain injury 10 years ago. Just. Being like stronger than I was before the traumatic brain injury, that I was able to recover from such a catastrophic and nearly fatal injury to be even sitting here with you guys, like I have to remind myself where I was and that everything I’m doing now is just like such a blessing and I can still do this even better than before.

And I think that speaks to the tenacity and the why, ’cause I’m proving it to myself.

[00:47:38] Julie Young: So Brent, let’s talk about some strategies to ID and tap into that power of the why and just kind of encapsulate what we’ve. All already spoken about, but just give some actionable items to take away from this episode.

[00:47:51] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah, definitely Julie. I think we need and want action if, and there’s gonna be any hope and fight for this mental aspect of performance and us actually carrying it forward and working on it. We gotta have action. It can’t just be all talking and feeling about it. So there’s a number of different ways we can do this.

One of them, which relates to what we talked about kind of at the top of this conversation, goes back to that self-determination theory we discussed in those three elements of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. And I essentially sometimes set these up as columns or buckets are almost sort of checklists.

And if we’re sort of struggling to realize intrinsic motivation and intrinsic drive or explore why, what motivates us? What is important to us? I think designing a week, designing a day, designing a training session with consideration of all three of those areas. So like, let’s create materialize, find some autonomy, some place for us to create choice, be empowered, actually make decision and act, own that decision for us.

Let’s also create some competence that is not always pushing and doing the workout, the interval, the output, the uncharted territory that we never done before. Sometimes we, it’s good we, it’s good to feel good about something competent, capable, and create chances for us to do that. So in the pursuit of evolution, progression development, also giving ourself a chance to.

Have some competence. Get some dunks. Get some layups that feel good. And then so once we’ve worked through some autonomy, created chances for us to realize and act and create some autonomy in the varying day, training session, training cycle, whatever it is, we do the same for competence and relatedness.

So competence, it’s helpful and empowering and motivating to do something that we feel capable and good at, and find some competence. So in the pursuit of progression and evolution. And advancement, yeah, we are often pushing ourselves and doing things that we don’t feel entirely competent at. But stepping back a little bit, finding places in other areas of life even that, yeah, I am good at this.

So this can mean being a friend, it can mean being a son or daughter. This can mean taking the old fishing pole out or playing the guitar or the piano, but doing something that we can realize and create a little piece of competence can really go a long way. One thing we forgot to touch on kind of earlier that I can connect to competence now is.

This sort of like broadened identity. And I think that’s important into why too. Because if our why, if what, what motivates us? If it’s solely centered in just being the best cross country, mountain bike racer ever that we can be, that’s a lot of pressure coming from that one area. So if we can diversify, broaden the identity.

One of our local authors in Asheville here, Brad Stohlberg, in his new book, the Way of Excellence, talks about the identity house and creating and building a lot of different rooms in your identity house and spending time in all of them, even if it’s not equal time. I think that connects nicely to this competence.

It doesn’t just have to be competence on the bike riding our mountain bike. It can be in varying parts of our life and our world.

[00:51:07] Chris Case: What are the rooms in your house of identity?

[00:51:10] Brent Bookwalter: The rooms in my identity house. I’m a father and that is a big room in my identity house right now because our kids are six and.

Working on three or 13. That is that room. Six years ago when my son was born, it started as like a very little room in my house, and now that has grown into like this room that I sit and spend a lot of time in.

[00:51:35] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:35] Brent Bookwalter: I would also say I’m a student practitioner. I wouldn’t call myself a scientist, but like I’m someone who wants to learn and connect and grow.

So I call that a student. That’s definitely a room in my house. I’m a competitor. Competitor adventurer, maybe those are connected together. Just this last weekend I was doing this 200 mile relay running race, which is the first of its kind that I’ve done and that that is part of who I am. Like I like to compete, I like to explore, I like to push myself, and there’s definitely a piece of the identity house that.

Is still a bike racer, less a bike racer, but more of a bike rider in that there’s crossover in that room to the explorer and the competitiveness and adventure, but it is still part of who I am. Yeah, I think another one that comes to mind as I sit here and look at like the beautiful green leafs and all these trees is like.

I’m like a naturalist and someone who feels outside and rooted in nature and that, whether it’s like conservation, engagement, involvement, community sharing, like doing that outside, that’s a bigger room in my identity house too. So those are just a few and we could go kind of, I’m sure all day, but um, that’s right.

[00:52:42] Chris Case: That’s

[00:52:42] Brent Bookwalter: right. But yeah, I think in referencing that to when I was racing professionally. You know, pro bike racer was like big room, kinda like this. The whole downstairs or the whole upstairs and downstairs. And then we’re just trying to like carve out little rooms and dabble into those on the side.

[00:52:57] Chris Case: So one room mansion with a couple outbuildings for other things.

[00:53:02] Brent Bookwalter: Yes, exactly. Or even the Caves. Caves, yeah. Another reference, Courtney Dewal is a professional trail runner and she talks a lot about going into the pain cave and exploring and finding new rooms of the cave. And I love referencing that even to the identity house because sometimes you’re down in the basement and you have the chisel out and you’re trying to like make this new room and you don’t know, like it might not turn into a room, it might go nowhere, but at least you’ve excavated and explored that portion of basement and portion itself now.

[00:53:30] Chris Case: Mm.

[00:53:30] Brent Bookwalter: So yeah, looking for new rooms, looking to build those, excavating those caves. And I think. Connecting that back into the competence is just a reminder that like multiple rooms and parts of identity are important and the competence doesn’t have to come from, if you’re a runner, it doesn’t have to come from nailing the running workout.

It doesn’t have to, if you’re a bike rider, it doesn’t have to come from the cycling specific piece. It can be achieved elsewhere.

[00:53:53] Julie Young: You know what I like about that concept is it creates that sense of balance to me. I mean, it may be a little bit. Nuanced, maybe a little bit different, but I think about there’s kind of some controversy about like young riders, should they just go all in and focus on being riders or should they go to college, go to school, and I guess my feeling is go to school.

Like I think just having that balance, it alleviates the pressure. And I feel like if you have this balance in life of education and maybe you pursue music and you have your social and you have your sport, I think when sport is not going well, like, oh, my music is going well, my school is going well, and I don’t know personally that’s how I operated and I find that very healthy.

[00:54:37] Brent Bookwalter: Absolutely Julie. And that, yeah, this is a hot topic I think of young athlete development today. It’s like. There’s so much demand for early sport specialization that’s often at, it comes at odds with personal growth and development. But it, this discussion and this question is so intertwined with the why, because if you’re racing bikes or if you’re going to this race or you’re trying to win the state championship or the national title or improve your threshold because it is all defining and all of who you are, that is really a precarious position and a setup for a really coming to grief.

I think it’s just not sustainable in most cases. So yeah, I think zooming out some diversification is super valuable and connecting that to the Y, it’s like finding and cultivating if the bike riding and the racing is really important to you and becoming a professional is really important to you. Well, what other aspects of yourself is it fueling?

Are you someone who like loves the science and the working through the training and the numbers is also feeding that well? Sweet. That’s great. Like. We’re also diversified it and like two folded, the sort of pressure that the weight of that pursuit sits on. So yeah, to me the more diversification the better.

And I’m a huge advocate for the schooling, the collegiate pathway. I came from that and definitely am excited to see all young riders give it a look at least before they bounce out and go away

[00:56:00] Chris Case: Before we finish out and talk about relatedness, ’cause we didn’t finish that bucket. There’s one other thing I’d add, Julie, you’ve used the word balance and we’ve talked a little bit about defining competence in inside the sport of choice and outside the sport of choice.

I have a friend and looking at it from sort of the opposite side, he sort of struggles with depression and. What he has developed in his life are the a series of redundancies he calls them. And those are things that help him work through depressive episodes or when his mood is down or low. And it’s like, well, if I can’t turn to riding my bike, then maybe I can get out for a run.

And if I can’t go for a run, maybe I can go lift. Or if I can’t lift, maybe I play the guitar. Or maybe if I can’t play the guitar, I’ll do some art. And so it’s a just a different way of looking at it. But I think it’s the same thing, giving yourself various outlets, various focal points that change over time because you can’t always ride your bike.

Maybe you get injured and you can’t do that. Maybe you have for your wellbeing. Mental and physical wellbeing, you have to shift and do some other things. So call ’em redundancies, call them safety nets even, or call them various aspects of being balanced or competent. It’s nice and they inform one another.

Strangely, I think you could say that all of these things make you a better athlete. It’s sometimes it’s stretched, maybe to see it and it’s indirect, but they all make you a better athlete and therefore they make you a better, healthier person. So relatedness Brent, do you wanna finish off the triad here and talk about that a little bit more in depth?

[00:57:47] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah, I think as humans we all need a bit of relatedness, and I agree with Desi and Ryan here in that this is a core element of creating and sustaining intrinsic drive and motivation is that it’s not gonna happen if we’re out on an island by ourselves. There has to be some relatability, some connectivity, some connectedness.

We’re not siloed off and going through this experience alone, and this is something also that we can actually kind of pull out and put on a list and think like, how am I gonna get this today for, for runners that I work with as a mental coach, sometimes this means when you are injured and you don’t have the relatability of being out there running with your team, that’s really hard.

It’s a big gaping hole. There’s a lot of relatability for a collegiate athlete, a runner who’s injured, walking down to the training room or hobbling down there and wow, like boom. It’s a whole room of relatability in that everyone is going through this together. For me, when I was off in a foreign country and a race and away from.

Yeah, my people, my mountains, my forests, my trails, all the things that I love. Sometimes it was simple as having a brief phone conversation. Sometimes it was simple as picking a cause that aligned with that sense of self that I related to and making a small contribution to it. Whether it was like a financial contribution, writing something and connecting with someone, helping corral or create a volunteer or create an event or commit to an event that provided a relatability boost that then also boosted my internal and intrinsic motivation.

So I think it’s important there as well to like think outside the box and not just think of. Relatability in our sport specific space, but also broaden a little bit to life off the bike or outside the running track or whatever it is.

[00:59:32] Julie Young: So a few things came up for me in this idea of community and one thinking of these kids that I coach and I find for.

The young females, it’s almost the social is the biggest, is one of the biggest drivers. And I’m not saying that’s a generalization, but for many young girls, I feel like the social is a huge part of why they do what they do. And an example is, I coach these two, they’re two twins. A boy and a girl, they’re 14.

And the young boy, he’ll go in the garage by himself, get on the trainer, do his thing, and the girl just wants nothing about it. They’re gonna go to the Miller School. That’s like school that’s gaining a great reputation as a cycling school. She’ll go there and with that big group of other students, it’s awesome.

There’s no struggle, just right into it. No challenges whatsoever. So I think that’s such a good example of like better together and that training group idea. The other way that I think like I tend to use this is if we think about racing, and a lot of times people being stressed or anxious about racing, and the way I like to think of it is having people around us.

They make us better. They bring out the best in us. And so I think that’s for me a good way to think about community as well.

[01:00:49] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah, I love it. And that community, going back to what Chris was saying earlier too. It might happen accidentally if we leave it, the chance. Some of it we might stumble upon into it, but this is, this is another area of like proactive performance, progression and evolution that we can design.

We can give credit to the importance here and actually go in deliberately and intentfully and create those opportunities and that community and that connection and that relatability. And I love those examples. What a cool case study of the twins having, uh, one boy and one girl that you’re both coaching and seeing the differences, whether it’s boy, girl, or just individual one to the other.

Like it highlights that we are not all equal in terms of need and strengths and support that we need.

[01:01:35] Chris Case: I wanna go back. A little bit to that story you told about your evolution as a professional from being intrinsically motivated to extrinsically motivated and how you had to build a team around you to help you get back to your truth.

In this context of what are strategies people can use, what can you say to that? How does one go about surrounding themselves with the right people, the people that are going to help you get to where you need to be?

[01:02:07] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah. It’s tricky building a team. There needs to be some shared vision of like where you’re going.

I think that actually is like a deliberate step. I think as you look and consider to where you wanna go, what you’re trying to achieve, what you’re wanting to realize is that going to race collegiately professionally, the national championship, whatever it is. Being able to sit down, reflect, and so one of the things in terms of deliberate action and planning and work that can be effective towards building that team that supports us is spending the time and effort to first personally articulating and being able to actually describe what that vision is for yourself.

So not just, oh, like I’m national champion at the end of the year. What is the vision for that? Who is there? How does it feel? How are you going about it? Are you. A calm, quiet competitor. Are you a boisterous, loud competitor? Do you have people around you? Are you doing it alone? What does it mean? Does that create anything new?

New space in the sport? New space in your life? Does it open up opportunity? This full vision? We’re not saying that all of this has to come true, but this very alive and vivid vision for what you wanna realize. If you can articulate that and refine it, if you can actually share it with those people in your team and they can then also relate to that, they can understand it, and maybe they know you in ways that you’re not giving yourself credit for, and they can help even refine it further and guide it.

I think that’s an element of this. If you think about working with someone and have someone that’s like deeply part of your personal support team, if you don’t feel comfortable or you can’t articulate and share that vision to them. Well then you have to consider, like they can still support you. They can still be a productive part of your support team, but there also has to be people there with you that can really be with you as you work towards that vision.

So yes, if you go to your doctor to get the blood checkup, you don’t have to bring your vision and read it to ’em and say like, are you with me with this or not? Like, get the blood checkup. That’s part of it. Medical health, that’s important, but for those people that are gonna help you, help hold you accountable to your why, what’s important to you and that day to day moment to moment accountability to motivation, and that why.

There’s gotta be some connection there and some sharedness in that vision. So that’s something that I’d put at the top of my list in terms of building that team out.

[01:04:41] Chris Case: There’s a big component of communication there. Being able to not only articulate what you need, but have them acknowledge that and understand what you need and continue to communicate back and forth about what’s working, what’s not working.

[01:04:59] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah, this isn’t a one and done. This isn’t like, do this and then bury it. It’s like in a great version, this is kept on a tab or kept on a shelf. It’s like that deeper philosophical why you don’t have to have it front and sent on your handlebars every effort you do, but it’s gotta be there where you can grab it and see it, and there’s some accountability to it.

[01:05:19] Julie Young: Kind of circulating in the background a little bit.

[01:05:21] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah, I like that. Yep. Present. Well,

[01:05:24] Chris Case: are we ready to move to our take homes, Julie?

[01:05:28] Julie Young: I think so. Brent, you’ve been on this podcast before. You know how we wrap up with our one minute take homes? So we provide a option. Would you like to go first or would you like to go last?

[01:05:41] Brent Bookwalter: Oh, at one point in the last week I thought about this and I thought, we’re gonna do that take home thing. I should get prepared for that, but I didn’t. So I’ll go last. I’ll piggyback off you all. Pros.

[01:05:52] Chris Case: Ooh,

[01:05:53] Julie Young: Chris.

[01:05:54] Chris Case: I asked a question early on in the episode. The reason I asked it, and the reason I asked it so early in the episode was the sort of representative of the importance in my mind, which is to use, I think, Julie’s analogy of creating roots.

Creating an underlying fundamental reason and purpose for why you do what you do as an athlete, which often is informed by your personal values as a human being is key to everything we spoke about. And also having that inner dialogue with yourself on a daily basis to understand what you need sort of in a more real time in the moment for a particular workout or even a rest day.

It doesn’t have to be an active thing that you need in on a daily basis, but you develop through dialogue with yourself and with others what you need and why you do something and that kinda lives within you, but you also have to be active. Understanding what you need as life fluctuates and as your needs fluctuate in order to get things done that you sort of need to do, want to do, and everything in between.

So we kind of close with, it’s about communication and I think this why is about personal communication, inner dialogue, understanding what you need, communicating that with others and surrounding yourself with people that support you in that vision. Took a lot of time there, but Julie, I’ll turn it over to you.

[01:07:32] Julie Young: I think that was pretty quick and concise, but piggybacking on that, just the communication. I think the consistency and as we said in this episode, like I think we understand the importance of the mental game, but I just don’t think we give it enough respect and consistent work the way we do our physical conditioning.

But you know, in terms of. My takeaway, I think my simple approach as a coach, like not having that formal education that Brent has and all the good tools available. Like for me, when I do see athletes kind of falling into this dread, this kind of lack of enthusiasm, just helping them step back and gain some perspective with that simple question of just taking that time, that quiet time to really check in, like why are they doing this?

And try to, I think the challenge right now, and maybe it’s been forever, but I just think there’s a ton of distracting noise. And I think being aware of that and then really kind of stepping back and taking that time to check in with why they’re doing it. And like Brent said, it doesn’t have to be a full philosophical conversation with yourself every second of every minute of every day, but you know, just.

Every so often, periodically checking in. And I think along these lines, it’s also good to remind yourself like, you don’t have to do this, you get to do this. I think that really can change the feeling. And the final thing that I will often remind athletes of is when they’re kind of getting thrown off, I think their direction that not every day is gonna be awesome.

Like I really like to quote this rule of thirds, like a third of the day are, is good to grade. A third of the day is okay, and a third of the day is lousy. And I think as athletes, if we’re setting ourselves up for this expectation, like every day is gonna be awesome. I mean, it’s obviously not true in life and it’s not true as athletes.

So to me, these are kind of some things that I will employ to help athletes take that step back and gain some perspective.

[01:09:29] Chris Case: Excellent. Brent, let’s close it out.

[01:09:32] Brent Bookwalter: I love it guys. Enough said you guys took it away. One of the things that just jumps out at me listening to both of you talk and I think is in summary, is that.

Just this idea of you doing you the individuality and the joy. Also the pride. We didn’t really touch on that a lot, but the pride and the fun in that. So I’m kind of left with this image of sort of me, myself. What this looks like for me internally is like in the context of my pro cycling career that we talked a lot about or we like to view through the lens of is like me standing on the top of this hill, which I view as my pro cycling career with my flag sort of planted and looking down on the path, not really being immersed in the point on the top, but looking down on that path, that journey it was, and the pride for me having done it my way, realizing some joy, realizing some fun.

As Julie, you talked about, especially referencing the young riders and the motivation and the intrinsic drive there. So I think this idea that there’s so much individuality here, everyone’s why is. Unique to them and there can and should be pride and joy and fun and even accomplishment in us and in ourselves.

So you do, you is kinda like the takeaway in terms of your why. It’s your why. It’s not anyone else’s. What motivates you is different than anyone else’s. So yeah, find out what that is, plant that flag. Stand tall and enjoy. Have some joy and some fun in the path that’s gonna take you there. And that really is where the good stuff and the magic happens.

[01:11:10] Julie Young: Excellent.

[01:11:11] Chris Case: Thanks Brent.

[01:11:12] Brent Bookwalter: Yeah guys, that was fun. Enjoyed it.

[01:11:15] Chris Case: That was another episode of Fast Talk. Subscribe to Fast Talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcast. Be sure to leave us a rating and review. And don’t forget, we’re now on YouTube. Give us a like and subscribe there to and help us reach new audiences.

Join us on social media at Fast Talk Labs for access to our endurance sports knowledge base and continuing education. For coaches, head to Fast Talk labs.com. For Brent Wolter, pat Warner, Lauren Dece, and Julie Young. I’m Chris Case. Thanks for listening.