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The last part of it is just a confidence checklist.

Do I know what I want to do?

Can I see myself doing it?

Do I know what happens when I lose my confidence?

Do I know what to do to get it back?

Do I know what I look like when I'm confident?

So it's a series of visualizations that the athlete goes through and as they come out of it now they are optimized to go in focus on the process and have that not be interrupted by any of these triggers.

And now they're in a flow state.

Tuck Taylor is the founder of neurobeast, a science based peak performance company that is designed to give athletes a competitive advantage.

By optimizing the way they perceive and process information, Taylor helps athletes reach optimal levels through enhancing mind, body and spirit.

Tuck attended Palm Harbor University High School where he went on to earn both an athletic and academic scholarship to the University of West Florida at West Florida.

Tuck majored in Exercise Science and graduated with honors.

His love for basketball and his knowledge of exercise science fueled his passion and desire to enter the arena of health, wellness and sports performance training.

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Take some Notes as you listen to this episode with Tuck Taylor, founder of neurobeast.

Hello and welcome to the who Pets podcast.

It's Mike Lindsay here without my co host Jason Sunkel tonight.

But I am pleased to be joined for the second time by Tuck Taylor from neurobeast.

Tuck, welcome back to number two, buddy.

Glad to be back on the show, man.

Looking forward to diving in with you tonight.

Getting a quick update on where you've been, what you've been doing.

And then we're going to dive into a conversation about flow state.

Talk about it from the perspective of an athlete, how you can get there quicker and from the perspective of coaches, how you can get your athletes to the flow state a little bit faster.

But first, talk, give us a quick update kind of on where you've been.

I know you and I talked in our pre call a little bit about some of the different athletes that you've been working with and branching out into other sports.

So just kind of give us a quick feel for, for where you're at, what you've been doing lately.

Yeah, so when we talked before on last episode, I think I was primarily working with basketball, maybe a couple of baseball.

Since then I've been able to work with more NFL players.

Also have some clients out in the Asian pga, some able to work with some golfers.

And I've done extensive work with volleyball, both indoor and beach volleyball.

So branched out a little bit.

It's been great because I'm kind of getting, you know, different perspectives on what athletes need when it comes to the mental game.

And it's actually made me a better practitioner because now I'm able to kind of go into more of the nuanced levels and kind of see what is the same across the board.

Like all athletes need this, you know, and that's why, you know, I wanted to get on to you and talk about flow states, because flow states is one of those things that I think we can all agree that when you see an athlete in flow, when athletes are experiencing flow, they're playing at a lot higher level.

Absolutely.

There's no question about that.

I think any of us who have played sports, and I don't care what sport you're talking about, but I could think back to times when I was a player or as a coach watching a player who you're just like, man, you know, that dude got it into, into the flow state right there.

And I can remember times myself when I'm playing of it just felt like no matter what I was doing, I could Throw up anything and it was going to go in.

And then there were other days where you just knew, man, I don't, I don't have it today.

So if you could get, if you could get to that point where, man, I can, I can get to that flow state easier.

I can make it work for me instead of against me.

I mean, that's an athlete.

That's a, that's a key that any athlete's going to want to unlock.

So let's start with it from the athlete perspective and just talk to me a little bit about how you work with your clients, how you talk to them about achieving that flow state.

Yeah, so the first introduction, the flow state is I have them talk about a time that they were in flow.

So like describing a time that the play felt effortless and their performance was elevated and they were losing kind of a sense of self and became one with the sport.

And they were having fun, right?

Where they were having a lot of fun.

So I have them go back into that and I was like, well, that flow, you know, you were in a flow state or, you know, a lot of people used to call it the zone.

Yep, flow states kind of like the catchphrase now for it.

And so I want them, I always have them go back to it so that they know one, that they can experience it.

Right.

We've all.

We all can kind of get into that state.

And then the next thing I teach them about is this kind of like, what are the requirements?

What.

How do you set the stage for flow?

You know, and it comes from.

There's a multifaceted approach, but one of the main things is how we prepare their mind prior to the game.

And so one of the first steps we always say is like, you gotta make flow a priority.

Like, we all agree that flow is the ultimate state of way of being.

Well, now we got to make flow a priority.

How can we make our game feel more effortless?

How can we make.

How can we reduce self doubt and overthinking and just really be in a state that.

Where we're one with the game and one with our environment?

And so one of the first parts of that is really understanding one, what are the potential things that could take me out of flow?

Right.

Because if flow shouldn't be elusive, flow is actually our natural way of being.

But it's our attachment and our reactions to certain things in our environment that takes us and pulls us out of flow.

And so we, you know, we'll go over it might be they miss us or they Have a bad at bat or they have a not ideal serve, right?

These are things that can potentially take them out.

And so then we go in there and we unpack those things on why those things are taking you out of flow.

Because contrary to popular belief, this is one thing I tell them too, is that you're not performing perfectly in flow.

You're still making mistakes, you're just not triggered by your mistakes.

So you're able to move on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.

And you're staying in this more process based thinking and moment to moment thinking.

Instead of your mind getting too far ahead of you and too far behind you in the past, you're able to stay present in the now moment.

And so the first thing I haven't identified is just different things that can possibly take them out of this divine state.

Right?

And then we, we unpack those things and I help them, you know, depolarize some of the things.

So for instance, one of the things one of my athletes brought up to me one time was that when he walks into the gym and maybe sees an athletic player, someone that looks just physically more gifted, it's hard for him to get into a flow state in those games.

All right?

So that's a polarized that he's polarizing the way that the athlete looks, which is now sending signals to their brain that there's a threat and you can't be in flow when there's a threat in your environment.

Right now your fight or flight nervous system is activated.

So depolarizing that is like, okay, I understand that that guy can do what he can do, but what can I, what do I bring to the table?

He has to guard me, he has to deal with me.

And so now it's not so black and white that this guy is this amazing player.

It's also that I can do some things now, right.

So it kind of disarms the athlete as far as like making them be so revved up about who they're playing and to the where they can go into it at a more base level state of consciousness where they're not, their nervous system isn't too revved up.

Does that make sense to you?

It absolutely does.

Yeah.

I mean, I think when you start talking about, okay, I might have this ideal vision of what it's going to be and then something is interrupting that ideal vision, I have to be able to ignore that, put it away in order for me to get towards the flow state.

If that is that accurate how I'm describing it?

Absolutely.

So that's like what I call, like depolarization.

And the other part is dropping.

And what are we dropping?

We're dropping expectations.

So that's another flow buster, is when you have these toxic expectations.

So like, anything that leads with I have to or I should be or I must.

When you start to put those strict demands on the way that you're performing, and nine times out of 10, you're not going to live up fully to that, you're going to start judging yourself too much while you're performing.

So let's say I say, like, oh, I want to score 30 tonight or I should at least get 20 on this team.

And it's the fourth quarter and you got eight.

Well, now you're like, oh, like I'm underperforming.

I should have been doing that and that.

And now you're no longer present, you're no longer present in the moment.

And that will take you out of that flow state.

And so the times you've played the best are in the times where you're just like, let me see how good I can do.

Let me go out and just have fun.

Let me see.

Right.

It's more from a state of curiosity.

So because now you're curious, you can go out more confident, more trusting, which is now going to prime your nervous system to be more loose, to be more present.

Also, when it goes down to even like blood flow, like your blood flowing better when you're.

There's no threats in your environment, you see better right now.

You can make better decisions.

And now you're going to perform optimally.

Right.

You're going to feel those feel good neurotransmitters and you're going to get into that flow state.

But when athletes go into these games with these, the strict demands on their performance is when they aren't fully optimized to get into flow because there's going to be something that's going to happen that's not optimal and they're going to overly address that.

They're going to spend too much time thinking about that one thing instead of getting on to the next thing.

What vocabulary words, when you ask the athletes to describe what the flow state feels for them, feels like for them.

I'm just curious, what, what words, what vocabulary do people use to describe their flow state when they're talking about that with you?

So there's a sense of ease.

So like things are, things are a lot.

Easy, effortless, fun.

Fun is a big one.

Like One of, one of my sayings is fun is flow and flow is fun.

You know, and you know, we could end this podcast in one sentence is if you want to get into a flow state, set the intention to have fun, Boom, you know, like that's it.

And we can kind of go over some of the nuances of that.

But like, you know, those are, those are the main ways that they describe it.

They also, they also talk about like.

And this is this concept of like action and awareness become one.

And what that is is it's like as you set the intention to do something, it happens.

It's like the game is playing out in theater in your mind and like in your reality.

Actually, like, you, as you want to do something, you do it.

There's no resisting thoughts that you can't do anything.

Right.

Very non resistant, very intuitive.

Right.

I remember a time where I was experimenting with this process that I have for my athletes now to get it in the flow.

And anyways, I was in a game, it was like a Saturday league I was playing in and I was like, I was in full blown flow mode to where I got this offensive rebound and I turned around, like, bring it back out.

But I saw a guy cut.

I just stood over the back of my head and it hit him like right on the money.

But it was like, there was no hesitation, there was no worry of like, what if it goes out of bounds?

What if there was no resistance?

Right.

I was completely clear and I was completely okay either way.

It was just as if my body had its own intelligence.

Yeah, I love that.

I love that phrase.

Your body is almost its own intelligence.

I think about.

And again, I'm going to more relate this as an old man thinking back to my, thinking back to my playing days.

But I know when I had that feeling that, yeah, it feels like you no longer have to think about the processes of what you need to do in order to do whatever it is that you're doing out on the basketball court.

So when I was in that flow state and shooting the ball well, I wasn't focused at all on my mechanics, my balance, my.

I'm catching the ball here, I gotta do this or I gotta do that.

It was just, it was automatic.

And then I'll give you another example which I've shared a couple times now on the podcast.

But it's relevant here in the sense of when you were talking about the distractions that take away from the flow state.

So when I was a high school player, Tuck, I shot, I think 89.5% from the free throw line as a high school player.

And then when I was a sophomore, when I got became a starter at, at Kent State, when I was playing in college and I was about halfway through the season, I was shooting, I think like 93% from the line.

And I never once, ever prior to that time, I never thought about free throws at all.

Like, I was just like, part of my identity was, Mike is a great free throw shooter.

If you put Mike on the free throw line, Mike is not going to miss a free throw.

And then at some point midway through my sophomore year, there was a time where we did a drill where you had to swish like five in a row in order to avoid like getting up the next morning at 6:30 to come in and shoot free throws.

And here I am shooting like 93%.

And for whatever reason, my free throws just completely abandoned me.

So I went to the whole, the full on Chuck Knoblock can't throw to first base.

Ben Simmons can't get to the free throw line.

Yeah, completely.

My shot just completely, it just completely abandoned me, I think the rest of the season.

And then I kind of like Ben Simmons.

I was afraid to get fouled and change sort of the way I played and whatever.

And so my shot just completely collapsed for the remainder of my sophomore year.

And when I think about the contrast between how I felt at that time when I stepped up to the free throw line and how every time I was there, I was just, I was thinking about every single thing I was doing and how do I do this and where's my hand and am I versus when I was playing well in the flow of a game, I never thought about anything about technique.

I was just, I was just playing.

It totally got completely inside my own head.

It's funny now, Tuck.

Cause I talk.

I've talked to a couple different people, sports psychologists on the podcast and like, what would you, what would you have told me to do back then?

Because back then I solved it by myself.

Believe it or not, my coach has never even talked to me about it.

Like, here's a kid who was shooting like 93% from the line and suddenly can't make one.

Nobody ever talked to me about it, so I just kind of had to figure it out and solve it for myself.

And luckily I never got back to the point where I was before that happened.

Like, I never became 93.

I'm never gonna miss, but I got it up.

I shot like 82% as a senior, which honestly might be my best athletic accomplishment.

Of my entire life that I was able to kind of over overcome that and do it by myself for sure.

But to talk about this flow state stuff, it's so amazing to me that, to me that experience with free throws was so anti flow state because to go back to what you talked about off the top, it became such a distraction for me.

It was just like I, when I thought before the game, I'm like, I don't, I don't want to go, I don't want to go up there.

Let's unpack it.

Like yeah, let's do it and let's do it.

So this is interesting is one of the false premises about like sports performance is that when you perform well, you gain confidence.

By performing well, you actually can start to lose confidence.

Because now you have expectations.

Correct.

Now you're like I am a great free throw shooter.

So now exactly.

I have to, I must and I should be shooting better.

And now you have all these expectations now and these strict demands, like telling yourself that you have to shoot 93% from the free throw line is a strict demand.

That's a strict demand on your performance.

Right?

For sure.

Now before when free throw shooting was just this thing you went up and did.

Now you're overly focused, you're overthinking about it.

Your Mrs.

Thing more, they stay with you more you think about them when you're sleeping and they start to ruminate over them.

And it's just not flow based.

It's because you're, you've told yourself by saying it shouldn't be or it has to that the, the result of that performance is attached to your physical well being is what you told your body.

That's exactly right.

Right.

And that, and it's a very subconscious thing, but that's what you told your body.

So now this free throw is more than a free throw.

It's life or death to the body and to the mind.

And so now with that extra pressure, of course it's harder to, it's harder to be in that flow state.

It's harder to make them, make them the way you were before.

You weren't thinking, you were just stepping up and doing it and allowing it to happen.

There is no, there was no technique, there was no opponent.

There was, there was nothing but just shooting and moving on.

Right.

And so that's what ends up happening is as, that's why the mental game is such a big thing even at the high levels is because as these athletes start to accumulate success, success, here come these strict demands that they placed on their performance that they've never placed on themselves before.

You know, they, they're, they're sitting there chilling, just doing their thing, happy to be in the league.

They start playing well, then they, they get signed for 60 million on their extension.

Now it's like, oh, I got paid this real money.

I have to go out and prove to everyone that I'm worth this.

I have to prove to the club.

Now you're in a different state of consciousness that even got you there because you weren't playing with those strict demands before and now you're placing them on yourself.

Now you could become a completely different player.

And that's.

Yeah, it's so true.

Yeah.

And that's why just having.

You can have an intention, right?

I intend to play well, I intend to shoot well.

But you can't have expectations that are strict and that are toxic like that.

Because that, those are, those are, you know, a lot of perfectionists, you know, go through that.

You know, that's, that's the perfectionism trap, you know, and it leads to also a over analysis of whatever, whatever that wrong thing was.

So, for instance, like, you could have had a good game, but you missed five free throws.

You're harping on those five missed free throws.

Like you like everything else that you did that showed up in the stat book, that didn't show up in the stat book has completely been filtered out and you're just zeroing in on that.

And that's what makes these ant hills into mountains, you know, and it keeps people out of flow, you know, when you.

We are our own worst critic.

And that's what keeps a lot of people from just living and being more free and playing more freely because they are judging themselves so harshly.

I feel like it becomes, and I know it did for me, that it becomes a part of.

It's not just how I'm playing, it's part of my identity.

Like part of my identity was Mike's a great free throw shooter.

Like, that was honestly part of how.

And that wasn't necessarily expectations that were placed on me from somebody else.

That was my own expectation.

And I completely relate to you just saying, oh, I missed five free throws and that totally ruined my performance.

Man, if I had a good game and down the stretch at the end of the game, even if the game was over and I got fouled, and God Forbid I went 1 for 2 at the end of the game, whatever, like that one free throw probably just gnawed at me.

And not at me, and not at me.

And that was even when I was still shooting the ball, you know, relatively well.

And it's.

It's amazing now for me to talk to guys like yourself and to some of the other performance coaches that I've talked about, and everybody kind of has the same, basically what you're talking about, right, that.

You can't.

You can't let it become all consuming.

You have to.

You have to just be able to put it aside and accept what the performance is for.

For what it is.

And I just go back to knowing how isolated I felt back in those days when I was just.

It was just me inside of my head trying to figure out.

I didn't talk to anybody.

Nobody talked to me.

And me trying to just figure out, how do I make this work?

How can I get past this?

How can I overcome it?

And it feels like if I'd have had somebody, if the sports psychology business had been around back in 1990, I would have been in a.

I would have been in a lot better shape because somebody would have got to me right away, as soon as it started happening and said, hey, here's some things that you can try.

Let's.

Let's do this and see if we can.

We can knock this out before it becomes this entire psychological warfare that you're having inside your head.

It's kind of crazy.

Absolutely.

Just.

And I was by myself.

It's when.

It's when we lose the curiosity aspect about, like, let's just go see.

What I can do today is what ends up just triggering our nervous system into, like, fight or flight mode.

And your body in fight or flight mode is just optimized to survive in that standpoint.

It's not optimized to do nuanced tasks like shooting and dribbling, passing and seeing cutters.

Like, your.

Your body's essentially going into this, like, safety mode.

Just like when your phone get ready to die, you can press that safety mode.

The screen is going to be a little bit more dim.

Your Internet's not going to work as fast.

It's the same thing when we say constantly or subconsciously.

I have to.

I must.

I should be.

What if.

Oh, boy, here we go again.

Those things like that.

It sets you up to go into.

One of the.

One of the books we refer to is from the Confident Mind.

And in there, he talks about, like, the sewer cycle that you can go into thinking.

It's when you consciously or unconsciously think these things, think these thoughts that lead to these emotions that then lead to these physiological changes that leads to These results.

And so one of the big parts of being mindful as an athlete is understanding in that space between challenge and response.

What am I saying to myself, both consciously and subconsciously?

And if you can lead with curiosity, if you can lead with a little bit of optimism now, your emotions are going to be better now you're going to be more eager and excited to perform.

Like I, like you said, when it became issue with the free throws, you weren't necessarily eager or excited to get to that line anymore.

Right.

The one before you were, you were like, all right, let's see if I can knock both of these down.

It was just like, right?

For sure.

Absolutely.

Keeping your mind open and curious to see what's going to happen is what allows flow state to happen.

And for you to get into these, into these moments because you're not, you're not polluting the brain and overwhelming the brain with extra thinking and so going, going back to flow state, what actually happens is that your brain is actually shutting down during flow state.

The analytical part of the brain that is judging, and that's, you know, very old, maybe overly cognitive, is actually shutting down.

And you're becoming very, very, very subconscious in what you're doing, even to where you're losing sense of self.

Like, you're not worried about how your jersey looks or who's in the audience.

Like, you almost lose orientation of who you are in space and time.

And that's because the mechanism that's responsible for that is actually turning off.

And like I told you in the pre show, this is where this starts to get flow, starts to get, in my opinion, very, very spiritual.

And so what's happened this year, even with a lot of my athletes that we've gone this route is that when you, when you tack flow from a spiritual standpoint, it automatically purifies the mind, which optimizes the body.

But when you just attack flow and mental performance as a whole from a mental standpoint, you may or may not be able to apply those things in time.

Right.

Or, and, or you don't have a inherent foundation to be able to deal with them and understand them and like, understand these things at their core.

So, one, one.

There's a scripture in the Bible is John 3, 30.

It says I must decrease so he can increase.

And when I read that, I started thinking about sports psychology and flow, I was like, wow.

Like, sports psychology says that the brain is shutting down as you're getting into flow, which in my opinion, flow is now the presence of God in your game too.

We'll talk about that too.

But I think flow and God are one of the same because he, he created us.

And as we start to put more trust in our ability and trusting him, it starts to show up more in our game.

But we have to decrease.

We have to let go of overthinking.

We have to let go of these toxic expectations.

We actually have to do less so that we can get into these flow states and play better.

So my question for you then becomes, if I'm an athlete and I want to increase my ability to reach the flow state faster, more often, and I'm getting ready to play a game or head into a practice, what should I be doing?

Where should my mind be at?

What is my process for going through the preparation required to get me ready to achieve that flow state when I get out into whatever the court, the field, whatever it is that I'm going to perform?

Very good.

So here, here's a process that's been relatively unique to our practice and it involves walking.

And so a couple of things happen when you walk is it's bilateral in nature, right?

So as your left foot goes up, your right hand goes up.

And so what ends up happening is you create this hemi sync with your brain where now you're thinking both logically and creatively.

And that's important to know.

And so the first thing that I had the athlete do is like, again, identify anything that might pull you out of flow going into this game.

Like, if I missed a shot, if I get pulled out, if I get this, whatever, right?

And I had them envision that.

And I also had them while they're envisioning that.

I was like, well, how can you not be triggered by that?

How can you allow this to happen and still stay in flow?

What story, what narrative can you tell yourself that will allow you to stay in flow and not overthink these things?

So like, let's say if I missed my first two shots, I realized that gets me out of flow.

Or a question I can ask myself is, are there good players that missed their first two shots?

Heck yeah.

Are there great players that missed their first two shots?

Heck yeah.

So why should I worry about it, right?

And as you're walking, because you're in this state of when you have that hemi sync, you're actually able to come up with even more creative ways to reconcile that thought is because your brain is actually working at a higher level of problem solving when you're walking.

Another thing that occurs is called transient hypo frontality.

It also Happens with low levels, low to moderate levels of physical exercise is that the analytical part of your brain starts to shut down.

So now you're able to view, you're able to the part of your brain that like judges.

So now you're able to like see that, see yourself missing those two shots, but there's no shame or condemnation attached to it, right?

So now you're not, you're, now you're not criticizing yourself overly for doing it.

And now you're able to.

Allows you and opens the door for these creative solutions on how to deal with these things.

And then I have them go through.

So if it's three or four things, you do that with all, all the things that happens.

And then the next step is to envision yourself playing.

So a little bit of visualization work now envision yourself playing the game from a moment to moment basis.

So you're not trying to accomplish anything like you're in the game.

What are you focused on now?

What do you focus on second?

So I call them process based goals.

So you're kind of going through your process based goals.

If I'm a point guard and the other team scores, maybe I'm c.

Cutting around, getting the ball, getting into our transition.

I'm seeing myself do that from a step to step basis, right?

Breaking the game down, things like most fundamental aspects and then the last part of it is just a confidence checklist.

Do I know what I want to do?

Can I see myself doing it?

Do I know what happens when I lose my confidence?

Do I know what to do to get it back?

Do I know what I look like when I'm confident?

So it's a series of visualizations that the athlete goes through.

And as they come out of it now, they are optimized to go in, focus on the process, get deeply ingrained into a focus on the process and have that not be interrupted by any of these triggers.

And now they're in a flow state, right?

How do you as an athlete and how do you think about somebody who in the course of a game of practice that maybe it's not going as well as somebody had hoped.

And so I'm trying to then make adjustments or make corrections as I'm going through.

So maybe I play the first half of a game or maybe I play the first quarter and my shot feels off and I'm not shooting the ball the way I want to.

And yet we're talking a little bit about, right, turning off that conscious mind of being aware of all those things.

How do you kind of balance out the.

I want to get to this flow state where it becomes automatic.

But I also may want to make subtle corrections in whether it's my technique, my approach, all those things that requires more of a cerebral mind.

If that question makes any sense.

How do you balance those two?

It does, it does.

So making your cues while you're playing, making those cues and those corrections more external than internal, the more that you're focused on the internal, you become more self conscious in the body, which is anti flow.

Right, right.

That's.

That's how you can get in someone's head when you're playing.

Like, hey, like I like how you held your follow through.

Like exactly the follow through next time for sure.

And so it, it becomes a simple cues.

Put the ball in the basket.

Like simple.

Like it's mo.

It's the.

@ its most simple fundamental level.

Because you don't want to activate too much critical thinking and flow.

You don't want to be like, oh, I got to keep my elbow and I have to follow through and I have to do this and I have to get my eyes up.

It's.

It.

Flow does all that at once.

Right.

And really it's just having confidence in that and being uninhibited in taking your shots.

Right.

And being okay with missing too.

Because like the other thing with flow is like, well, can I be in flow in a game where I didn't shoot that well?

Yeah, because there's so many other nuances to the game, so many other boxes that you can be checking that those, those missed shots actually become minimal.

Like you're on defense and you stopped your man, he had to pass out.

Right.

You don't get a stat for that.

But that was a good defensive stop for you.

That, that's flow.

And if you can stay present with those different processes, you could still be in a flow state in an optimal state of playing, still be a very effective player without having to play perfectly.

Maybe you didn't shoot well, but you got to the free throw line.

Maybe you didn't shoot well, but you had a lot of assist that game.

You know, you found you've continued to.

That's the thing about being in flow.

You're in the state of like automatically problem solving to where it's like, yeah, maybe I'm not going to shoot as much.

Maybe I'm going to play make.

I'm going to find other ways to do it.

That's what happens in flow.

Is that like, yeah, you might recognize you're not shooting well, but Your mind is so open to other ways to affect the game.

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Learn more@gc.com hoop heads that's gc.com hoop heads when the game or the practice or the performance finishes and an athlete is looking back on, hey, what went well in terms of me getting into flow?

Maybe where did I struggle?

What are those conversations that you have with athletes?

What do those look like at the conclusion of a performance?

That, what do you talk to the athletes about?

How do you sort of analyze and look back at how it went?

So that's, that's, that's a great question.

So one thing that I teach them to do is have a really good athletic filter, which means when even talking about the way that they played, it should be the ESPN highlight version of it first and then a very almost business like response to the things that they did wrong.

I just call it optimization data.

So it could be.

So I had a player that we worked with that plays for the Pacers and he had a good game, but from maybe a social media standpoint, it looks like Brunson got the best of him and he had 43 on his head and there was nothing he can do.

And it was like, this is how I know this guy is like why he's elite is because when he talked about the game, there was no mention of the.

I would say maybe he spent five minutes on talking about the game.

I'd say four minutes of it was all the things that he did well from a nuanced version, like I stayed in flow, I got to my spots, I found my teammates here.

Even though I had a good warm up, I had a good pregame, all the boxes that were checked that were right and then it's like, oh, you know, I could have gave him some different looks, I could have done this, I could have done that and that was it.

And so what that, what that shows me and what that, what that's cultivating in the athlete is as they view themselves as in the athlete role, it's going to be more positive than it is negative, right?

Not we're not giving the missed free throws a bunch of weight, but we are going to give some of the intangible things some weight and some attention that usually don't get any attention.

Like, I had a stop on this play and I did this on this play that might not have showed up in the stat book.

So it's really, you know, in terms of basketball, it's redefining what success is in basketball.

And it's not only going to be the things that show up in the stat book, like really getting down to the nuance of, like what, what a real successful game looks like and having them be able to articulate that when they talk about the game.

Now, if they're harping on some mistake that they had, it's like there's that filter still, isn't there?

The filter is almost made to the filters almost set to magnify their mistakes and filter out the good things that they did.

So that's one thing that we look at is like, how do they describe the game?

That's the ability to one, recognize and acknowledge the nuances of the game, that maybe a player at a lower level might not be able to first of all see and recognize the value of those things.

So I think the higher level that you go, players have a greater ability to be able to sense those nuances.

And then I think the second part of that is the ability to self diagnose, hey, what did I do well?

What did I not do well?

And then to make those necessary adjustments.

And again, I think when you talk about players at the highest level, part of what makes them elite and special is that they understand their own performance so well that they know oftentimes what caused them to perform well or perform poorly in a given moment.

And so to be able to at the end of the performance or at the end of the game, to be able to go back and look at, hey, here's all the little small things that Joe Smith sitting in the third row may not know that I contributed, but I know that those are things that my teammates, my coaches, 100% want me to be doing.

And then conversely, if there's things that I didn't do well, I know how to diagnose those and say, yeah, I was supposed to get here, or maybe I was a step slow defensively in my rotations, or, yeah, I just didn't get to my spots quick enough to be able to get the shots that we were supposed to.

Those kinds of things are, again, a lesser athlete, someone who's less accomplished, isn't going to recognize those things.

So for a player at that level, I think those are the two things to me that set apart pros and guys who are elite is their ability to self diagnose and their ability to be able to recognize the, the more nuanced contributions that they're making, if that makes any sense.

It's, it's all summed up into self awareness.

It's how aware they are themselves.

And absolutely, I even see it because, like, my youngest client right now is 10.

Then I have guys in their 30s.

Right.

So I see it.

Right, well, we'll do a drill.

We'll do like a cognitive conditioning drill.

I'll ask the athlete, how did you do?

And then I had always had them rank themselves 1 through 100.

And the younger kids, they always go towards the negative on how they did.

And so we can have like 25 reps.

They mess up on three, they'll be like, I did about 50%.

I was like, you only met three out of 25.

Like, you know what that, you know, you know what that comes out to.

Right?

You know, so it put it, doing it in time like that.

That's why what I do is very valuable to the athletes because it also gives them the space to learn how to accurately self assess, you know, and that's so important because again, if your filter is in the negative, you're going to always think that you're performing bad.

You're going to always think that you're not good enough.

You're never going to feel that fulfillment you get from playing.

So true.

So true.

All right.

Is there anything else from an athlete perspective in terms of flow that you want to share before we move to what a coach might be able to do to help their team and their players who maybe aren't as familiar with doing it themselves.

What can a coach do to kind of get their athletes more prepared to be in a flow state?

Yeah.

So I would say another thing, and this is from working with pros, I see this a lot, is flow state shouldn't just be something that you're practicing for your sport.

Flow should be a priority for your life.

So it's like trying to find flow in conversations.

I'm sure you get into conversational flows all the time, you know.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Podcast.

So there's, there's different levels of flow and allowing yourself to experience it in different things and different aspects outside of your sport will Allow you to get into it in your sport a lot more easier.

You know, you're practicing getting into flow, doing your homework, or you're practicing conversational flow, or you're working out and you're getting into a flow and recognizing it and feeling it.

And what happens is then you begin to grow this flow sensitivity.

So now you're more aware when you're in it, and you're more sensitive to when maybe you're starting to slip out of it.

And you have the tools and strategies to get back in it, right?

Which is usually the usual tool and strategy is just to get back to the present moment, get back present, like what's in front of me, what do I need to do right now?

And as you do what's present over and over and over again, that's how you start to shift into that state of consciousness, of flow.

So that's big is just practicing these things outside of it and like I said before, also exploring your spirituality.

There's so much.

There's so much in spirituality that coincides with flow and with letting go and submitting and not overthinking that is related to spirituality.

And there's even research on it.

There's called the Spirituality well Being Scale.

And it showed that athletes that were.

That reported they were had.

They were good with their spirit and they understood their spirituality also perform better, right?

Because now they're more equipped to deal with challenges.

They know how to deal with adversity.

Now there's spiritual aspects to handling all those things.

And the whole path for me has been interesting because I got into the peak performance field first through the body, right?

I was a strength and conditioning coach for 10 years.

Then I started the mental route.

I noticed that, like, the mental was starting to make the physical better.

But now as I'm getting into the spiritual, the spiritual is making the mental better, which is making the physical better.

So if you.

If you can have a concept of spirituality and how that relates to you and your life and start to understand it, it will allow you to get into these states of flow a lot easier.

You understand how to surrender to the moment.

You understand how to be obedient to your intuition.

You understand?

And by doing it and living that way, you're able to do it more seamlessly when it comes to your sport.

You're able to let go, right?

I mean, you're letting go of that control.

You're seeding that control.

And I think that's really what you're talking about here when you're talking about bringing the spirituality piece of it into it.

And then.

Oh, go ahead.

One more thing I'll say too, is integrating something into your pregame that allows you to do that.

That is allowing you to feel your body move automatically, right, without thinking.

And I don't know if you follow my page at all, but one of the things that's definitely.

I'm seeing more and more and elite athletes that they're juggling before their performance.

And there's, there's a lot of research on juggling and what it does to the brain.

One of the main things that it does, it increases the white matter in your brain, which is the, basically the conduction.

It increases the speed of the transfer of the signals in your brain.

So things are transferring and flowing a lot faster, which now you're more automatic, you're responding more fluidly to things because the information is going faster in your brain.

And Steph Curry does it.

There's a crazy video of Webinaya juggling before one of the Olympic games.

Sydney, Sydney McLaughlin, the hurdler that has all the world records, she does it.

Jose Alvarez is a big juggler pregame, like the best of the best are starting to integrate more of these physical, mental, spiritual aspects prior to the game so that they can get into that flow state.

I'm a two ball, one and juggler.

That's.

I never, I've never, I've never been able to get to the three balls, two hands.

So.

You're right.

Look at you, man.

That's, that's what I, that's what I, I.

What's, what's funny is.

So I'll tell you a good story.

So I learned that in, I don't know what year I was in high school probably, I'm guessing maybe my junior year of high school in a psychology class.

And it's one of the things that I just remember about that teacher.

And I remember I learned a skill and it's a skill that I still have, still have today.

And I actually have a girl now that is coming to some of the stuff that I do basketball wise.

And her mom called me, we were having a conversation, she had some questions about some stuff.

And in the course of us talking, she's like, hey, you know, I just wanted to let you know that, you know, my dad was Mr.

Pershnicki, who was the guy who taught the psychology class where I learned how to juggle.

And so she's, so, she's like, yeah.

My dad always says, ah, Mike, you know, he's, he's a good, you know, he's a good kid.

And she's laughing because, you know, I'm like, yeah, I'm 54.

She's like, of course, you know, any teacher always refers to.

Doesn't matter how old the people get, right.

They're still, there's still, they're still a kid.

But that's what I remember about him is I couldn't tell you anything about psychology.

I couldn't tell you one thing that I learned in that class, but I remember that juggling was a part of it.

It was a skill that I learned, and it's a skill that I still have today.

I probably should have stuck with it and been able to do the, the three balls.

I might have to put that, I might have to put that on my list to figure out how to do.

I teach all my athletes how to juggle.

I teach all my athletes how to juggle.

And it's.

It's definitely, it's definitely.

I've seen even hockey goalies do it before, before their games.

There's, there's definitely more to it than the research is showing on sports enhancement.

But, you know, it's definitely increasing that white matter.

It's definitely allowing.

Because when you're juggle two, you're not looking at the, you're not looking at your hand catch the ball.

Right.

You're not thinking about.

Right.

You're not thinking about each catch and each throw.

Absolutely not.

Exactly.

So you're kind of getting to that, that level of trust that your body can do what it needs to do when it needs to do it for sure.

Letting go of, like, overthinking.

And it's.

And it's fun.

And it also produces a lot of the feel good chemicals that are responsible for flow.

Like in flow, there's five different neurochemicals, props that are in the brain.

One's called anandamide.

And there's dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins.

And so why flow feels so good is because all of those neurochemicals are simmering in the brain.

And so you know how juggling feels.

As you start juggling, it starts to feel good.

So you're completing a task, you're moving, so the endorphins are there.

And so basically you're just priming the brain to be in these peak levels of flow by doing different hand eye coordination drills and different things like that for your performance.

That's why, like, Steph Curry is someone that I study extensively, but his whole pregame routine is flow.

Based, it's all flow based.

You know, it's all about mind, body, brain, soul integration.

And that's why he's, that's why he did that.

Like there was no better display of him in flow than in the Olympics, you know, and, and the why, you know, he was in peak flow is basically off of that last shot where he, he had two people on him and he was kind of fading.

LeBron's open, KD is open, book is open in the corner.

And Steph's a cerebral player.

Like, it's not like he's going to make bad plays on purpose.

But when you're in flow, you have to be obedient.

Like sometimes what you're going to do is going to be kind of irrational, but you are such.

And you so into that state that you're just obedient to it.

And that's where those moments like that happen.

Those.

How those moments like that originate from is from that, that high level of trust and intuition that you have when you're in flow.

Yep, no doubt.

Yeah, you can see it.

You can see it when a player gets to that level, right?

Yeah, it just feel everything.

You could just see it looks, I go back to the word you used earlier.

It looks easy.

It looks easy when a player is playing at peak performance level.

All right, give me it from the coach's perspective.

If I'm coaching a high school basketball team, what can I do to help my team get to that flow state?

Yeah.

So one thing that comes to mind is when you are breaking down plays and different things like that, making sure that you are chunking it up to a moment to moment basis so the athlete understands the process that they need to be following.

Right.

Like I do this, then I do that.

If this happens, I do that.

So they can stay in the moment of the process so they can continue to be deeply engaged in what's going on.

Right.

When they don't know what's going on, they don't have a task to focus on.

That's what allows crowd noise and all these other things to like get into the brain.

So we call it keep the cup full.

So you keep the cup full with your process based goals.

Also your productive thoughts, like I can do this or get here, get there, run there and sprint back hard.

Like a moment to moment basis.

And then by doing that and by checking on those boxes, you start to feel good, you start to get into a rhythm, you start to understand the flow of the game.

And then you start playing, you start entering into that flow state where you're not overthinking and you know exactly what to do and your decisiveness is heightened.

You know, that's one thing that I saw in Steph in that moment in the Olympics was just how decisive he was.

Like, it's going up, it's going up.

Like there was no like thinking about if this is the right play or not.

Is this what should I do?

So another thing coaches can do is just be more mindful of how they respond to players mistakes.

If the response is too knee jerk and you're too animated and you're yelling and screaming too much, it could cause like a low level of trauma to the athlete to where now they are second guessing everything that they do.

So every shot that they take, every pass that they make, they're, they're thinking in their head, what if this gets stolen?

What if I miss this?

It's coach going to take me out, Is coach going to yell at me?

And it prevents them now that now they're in that sewer cycle that we talked about before.

You know, now they're saying what if?

And they're starting to worry and they're not as confident and now their body becomes more tight and they're in that fight or flight mode that does not allow them to execute nuanced skills and tasks very well.

So just being mindful of that, and those would be my two things is making sure that everything is broken down into a process.

So there's a process for the athlete to be following.

Make sure the athlete knows the process and then just be mindful of how you're responding to that and you know, you could take it a step further.

Is just kind of knowing your athletes triggers too.

So if they, if they are a player that gets down when they miss shots, you know, giving them some positive reinforcement, hey, keep shooting good.

Like, you know, good players miss shots like different phrases like that that help them keep their performance in perspective.

Yeah, knowing your players definitely helps.

And the, the body language piece of how you react as a coach to player mistakes is a huge one.

I know that my son played for a coach that felt like almost every time that something went wrong and the coach would throw his hands up in the air or stomp his feet or put his head down or have some negative reaction.

I'm talking on like every play.

Like seriously, like every play.

I've seen it, I've seen it and.

It just, you know, it just, it just, that just wears on players.

And to that coach's credit he, he improved dramatically from one Season to the other.

I don't know if he watched himself, somebody talk to him, what it may have been, but there was a dramatic, dramatic improvement in that area.

And I'll just.

My own, my own personal story.

It's funny.

So I've had my own kids say to me, dad, every time something goes wrong on the court, you always go like this, put your hand on, you know, put your hands on your head or just like.

And it's one of those things that you don't think about it, but it does.

Like when, when somebody starts to equate coach is unhappy, coach didn't like that play and coach doesn't even have to say anything like coach's hands go up on top of his head and all of a sudden I've conveyed a message.

Message.

And it's knocked a player out of their optimum state to perform at their best because now they're worried about, hey, what's my coach thinking about over on the sideline?

So that's one of those things that as coaches we have to be very cognizant of what it is that we do on the sidelines.

It does have an impact on our players positively and negatively.

Especially when you're talking about how you react to mistakes.

I think that's a really good piece of advice.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And you know, it's, it's a.

If coaches, you know, coaches can get into a coaching flow as well, you know, and one.

Another piece of information would be like, if you're having these visceral responses to everything that goes on, you're probably taking yourself out of your coaching flow for sure.

Decision making is probably not going to be as good what you call after a timeout.

And like the different decisions that you make on the fly might not be as flow based because you're having these visceral responses to everything that goes on during the game.

Instead of saying like, I know that there's going to be turnovers, I know that's going to be missed shots.

I know players are going to make mistakes.

Like, and having a game plan for how you're going to, like you said, physically respond to these things so that you continue to think as clear as possible.

That's what ends up happening.

A lot of these, you know, you get too hot headed.

I had, I had a, when I coached high school, I had, I remember I had an incident where I was just livid about something.

I called the time out and I was just talking about what happened so much that I didn't even drop a play or tell them what they needed to do.

Yep.

I spent the whole time out like raging, you know, so like it definitely can get you off of your game as a coach and out of your flow state as a coach.

If you're not present to that fact as well.

You know, regulating your emotions and staying in that state is going to allow to give you that divine intelligence on what, what decisions to make that impact the game as well.

Self awareness.

I mean, it's the same thing we talk about with players.

Right.

If I'm a coach and when I become aware of the fact that every time something goes wrong, I'm putting my hands on my head and taking a deep sigh, well, I got to change that behavior.

I got to correct that so that doesn't happen so it's not negatively impacting my athletes.

I think that's a really good piece of advice for coaches.

All right, before we finish up, Tuck, is there anything else that we didn't hit on or you want to kind of give one final summary statement and then we'll let you share how people can get in touch with you?

Yeah.

I would just say to sum it up is just don't forget to have fun.

Like it's such a, it's such a cliche term, but when you're having fun again, you're from a neurochemical standpoint, you're producing the chemicals of flow.

Things are more effortless, you're more delightful, you're more fulfilled without having to accomplish a task.

Right.

And that's like the deepest state of flow is when just being out there, you're in a flow state.

They call it the auto telling.

It's like someone that is receiving intrinsic reward for just participating in a task or skill, not saying if they're doing good or doing bad, just the act of participating, they are receiving that fulfillment.

And that's, that's, that's the most sought after level to be at.

And when you can find.

And then one other thing I'll say too, along with that is that we talked a lot about flow being in the game and I did talk about flow being a lifestyle.

But even looking at the athletic journey, the athletic journey needs to be flow based.

And when you can find fun in the weight room, when you can find fun in the classroom, when you can find fun traveling with your teammates and all these things, that's when it becomes flow based.

I work with a lot of collegiate athletes.

When they got that schedule, when they got to school, they were like, coach, how am I going to do this Every Single day where I have 5am weights, 8am practice, 9, 9am classes, 2pm, second practice, 7pm study hall.

How am I going to do that every single day and then travel and do all these other things?

I was like, you got to take it one moment at a time and find the fun and everything.

If you can't find the fun, you be the fun.

You bring the fun to all of that.

And when you think about your college career, when I think about my college career, I think about the good times.

How like the road trips and the different things that we did, maybe going out as a team, like it's not just about what happened on the court and the way we were able to survive those times was having fun with our teammates, you know, so making flow a priority not only for your performance, but also your whole athletic journey is going to be important.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

That's great life advice.

I think anybody who's listening to that, if you can, if you can find the fun in anything that you do, find the fun in your job, find the fun in your daily interactions with your family, all that stuff.

I mean, it's just if you can live in the present and find the fun and what you're doing in the moment, your life is going to be infinitely better.

And that says nothing about what it can do for your athletic performance like we've been talking about here tonight.

So talk before we get out, share how people can reach out to you, find out more about what you're doing.

And then after you do that, I'll jump back in and wrap things up.

All right, so I'm primarily at Instagram, guys.

You can find me at Neuro Beast.

I post a lot of like cognitive training content, a lot of mental skills.

Starting to post more things about spirituality on there.

You can DM me.

One of the services that I am providing is a flow based athletic journey coaching program.

So teaching athletes how to not only get into flow in the games, but to get into flow during their whole entire athletic journey.

So helping them, walking them through a lot of things we talked about today, like helping them commit to a vision, helping them be more self aware, helping them learn how to drop and depolarize and detach from disempowering beliefs and how to engineer new beliefs.

It's a framework that I work from called the peak performance code that I created that allows athletes to cut through all that resistance and so that their journey is more flow based talk.

It's great stuff, man.

I'm so glad that we were able to do this for a second time and talk flow state.

I think anybody who listened coach, athlete, human being, you're going to get something out of what Tuck and I talked about tonight in our conversation.

So really appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to join us.

And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks.

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