In this episode of Charge Forward Coaching, mental toughness coach James sits down with sports psychologist and youth athlete development expert Dr. Mike Perko, founder of the 500 Fist Bumps movement. Together they explore how a simple tactile gesture — the fist bump — is transforming youth sports culture by building connection, belonging, and mental toughness from the inside out.

Dr. Perko breaks down how the 500 Fist Bumps framework directly develops the 4 C's of mental toughness — control, commitment, challenge, and confidence — in young athletes through consistent positive reinforcement and intentional coach-athlete relationships. From the origin story of 500 Fist Bumps to the neuroscience behind connection and tactile gestures, this conversation is packed with actionable coaching strategies for youth sports coaches, parents, and athletic directors looking to build resilient, emotionally regulated, and high-performing young athletes.

If you work with youth athletes and want to create a culture of belonging, boost sports performance, and develop mental toughness through positive coaching, this episode is for you. Discover why small gestures create lasting psychological impact, how connection fuels perseverance and commitment, and what the future of community health and youth well-being through sports looks like.

Key Takeaways:

The origin story of 500 Fist Bumps and the moment Dr. Perko knew this mattered.

Why connection is the foundation of every other mental skill.

How to practically apply the 500 Fist Bumps approach in practices, games, and classrooms.

The neuroscience behind why small gestures create lasting psychological impact.

How belonging and mental toughness are more connected than most coaches realize.

Simple ways any adult can start using this framework with the young people in their life — starting today.

Sound Bites:

"His work is life changing for youth athletes"

"Creating a culture where everyone understands the rules"

"Building connection on purpose improves performance"

About the Guest: When Mike Perko was six years old, he nervously stepped onto the ice in Ithaca, NY for his first youth hockey practice — and promptly had an asthma attack. A coach knelt down, put a hand on Mike's chest, and gently talked him back to calm. That moment has shaped his life's work ever since in the belief that human connection is as vital as breathing is to child development. Today, Dr. Perko is an Emeritus Full Professor of Public Health, the award-winning author of How to EAT, LEAP, and SLEEP like a SUPERHERO, and the founder of the non-profit 500 Fist Bumps.

A 15-time teaching award winner, he has testified before Congress, delivered over 100 invited talks, and been featured on ESPN Outside the Lines, NPR, The New York Times, and Sports Illustrated. In the spring you'll find him on the sideline in his 47th year of coaching youth sports as Head Women's Lacrosse Coach at Southwest Guilford High School in North Carolina. He and his wife Sarah are the proud parents of Jack, an Army ROTC scholarship student at UNC–Chapel Hill, and Elena, a UNC–Chapel Hill student in the School of Journalism and Media.

About the Host: James Blasco is a CTA Certified Coach, and a Certified Functional Mental Toughness and Resilience coach, and a Certified Neuroscience Coach based in Ormond Beach, Florida, with a rich background in sales, media, and entrepreneurship. Throughout his career, James has excelled in sales and sales coaching for some of the largest media companies, owned three successful businesses, and worked in media relations in the NFL. His diverse experiences have equipped him with a deep understanding of leadership, communication, and the drive needed to achieve success. James is also trained specifically to coach to all aspects of mental toughness and resilience.

Resources: Website: www.chargeforwardcoaching.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chargeforwardcoaching/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChargeForwardCoaching/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chargeforwardcoaching

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChargeForwardCoaching

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/ChargeForwardCoaching

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ChargeForwardCoaching

500 Fist Bumps: www.500FistBumps.org

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Charge Forward Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, James Blasco You know, on this podcast, we talk about mental toughness and specifically the four C's of mental toughness control, commitment, challenge, and confidence. And boy, do we have a special guest with us today. His name is Mike Perko. He is an emeritus professor at UNC Greensboro. He's also the author of Eat, Leap, and Sleep Like a Superhero. He's been featured on ESPN Outside the Lines, NPR.

The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and many, many more. He's also the head women's lacrosse coach at Southwest Guildford High School. And most importantly, he is the founder of what's referred to as 500 Fist Bumps Now, when I first heard about this organization, number one, I could see it was special from the get-go, but I said, wow, what he created through a simple gesture, ties directly.

to what I talk about what I'm trying to help people with on the mental toughness side. And I said, I gotta I gotta talk to this gentleman and I've had great conversations and let me tell ya, he is a fireball. I hope I could keep up with him. Mike, welcome to the program.

James, you're good man. Hey, listen, we are gonna have an amazing conversation today. So let me just throw some of those kudos back to you. you know, you and I connected about a week ago and I had a chance to dig into what you're doing and what you're doing is life changing. So for so many so for so many athletes, and I've been a youth coach now for this will be my forty sixth season. So I've had hundreds of athletes come through, thousands. I've had a Olympic

soccer

player, I've had a World Cup soccer player play for me. I've had many a couple of all Americans at many all conference in all region. So the things that you and I are gonna dig in today, man, I I w what's gonna happen is we're gonna see how our worlds come together. and that's what we're doing together, you know, we're gonna link arms, not just for this generation, but for a future generation. So let's go.

Absolutely. And thank you for that. I appreciate your kind words and in terms of what I'm trying to do as well. So why don't we start the the the basic question? Give us a little bit of your personal background, where you came from, you know, what what got you to UNC, those types of things.

Man. so I grew up in the the cold confines of Ithaca, New York, right? one of six kids, we all had our own snow shovels. So you know how that goes. loved growing up in Ithaca and in in Ithaca, a couple of sports are are really pretty dominant. Cornell Lacrosse is right right in our backyard. In fact, I was a ball boy for the Cornell Lacrosse team when they won three straight national championships.

so that was kind of great to to play lacrosse and and to grow up that way. Also played ice hockey. very quick story. when my dad signed me up for hockey at age six in Ithaca, that was three years too late. Right? Most kids were on the ice at three. so that's my first foray into you know, youth sports. And I stepped on the ice at age six and all of these other kids were zipping past me.

I mean literally is like I thought they were like the best players on the planet. Well I kind of panicked and I literally had an asthma attack. So I'm I'm off to the corner on my ankles holding on to the boards, and a volunteer coach skated over to me. He knelt down, put one hand on my chest, one hand on my back, and just went breathed. And I calmed down and I

I will tell you this as amazing as it is, those actions that that volunteer coach did 50-some years ago are the actual foundation of the things that we're doing now at 500 Fist Bumps So I I've had a a wonderful career. I went to college as a physical education teacher. so I had some great physical education teachers in school.

They knew my name. I I just thought being a a f of a a gym teacher, which is the slang term, it's really physical education teacher, was the greatest job in the world. You get to play every day, you get to have fun, right? kids are funny, you get to mess around with them. So I I absolutely was determined to be a physical education teacher, and that is indeed. I went to East Stroudsburg University where I played soccer for East Stroudsburg. I was a a collegiate athlete.

And

I I loved it. I I absolutely thrived in that environment. I also started coaching about that time. I I'd I'd been coaching for a couple years, but I coached the East Strausburg JV soccer team. and I've always coached. But along the way, I had some really great mentors in what we would call health or community health. So for example, you know, when you go to a doctor, you're their patient. In my field, the community is our patient.

Right. And we try to do the things to make our communities healthier than than the ones that we're we're living in. So we know we try to do the things like just control blood pressures and cholesterols and get people to be moving and all that. And I found an an amazing tie in from my coaching, but also in terms of these kids who when they leave the field, you know, they're gonna be future community members. So along the way my journey has always focused on young athletes.

Because to me, they're the ones who are ready and and and able to be influenced by us, what we c I like to call the adults in the room.

Yeah.

along the way, I I had a a fairly interesting research area, and I I hope you're sitting down for this. So in in the early 90s, I I'd always been interested in

weightlifting and all I was always the smallest kid in the room, right? and so my friends when they were about thirteen or fourteen started lifting weights and they would buy, you know, protein powder and they would say, this stuff is really working. And I would say, Is it really? Is it more the fact that you're lifting weights every day? So I'd always been sort of interested in, you know, my friends who were spending lawn mowing money to buy the, you know, protein powder and a drum. So I continued to study this in high school.

And then when I was getting my master's degree, I got serious about it and I began to look at the use of performance enhancers, mostly steroids at the time, for for non-athletic reasons, what we would just call cosmetic reasons, right? Look good

No.

in front of a mirror, look good at the beach. And at that same time, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire were head to head in that famous home run battle, right? was that ninety eight?

And so my research actually began to sort of hit the news. I ended up testifying in front of Congress in in in New in New York. I was on the Dr. Ruth Westheimer show with Carl with Carl Lewis. so that became that became sort of one of my avenues is is why do kids and I'm talking sixth and seventh grade, why do kids look at look to buy or purchase some sort of performance enhancer?

to to get better at sports, et cetera, when really we know what you know what helps kids get better at sport. Consistency, right? Practice, nutrition, and getting good recovery sleep. I mean, if you want to be a champion, that's the recipe. But I was very interested in the other influences. So anyway, I've had a great, great journey for a couple years. I was the NCAA S expert speaker on that topic. I would go to universities across the country and and do

So this has been my life, James, and you know what I'm doing now, we'll get into here. What I'm doing now, gosh, I wish I'd been doing it my entire career because that's how much I believe.

Yeah, well well, first all, that's a a great, great story. Great history, great background, great experience. and as a young athlete, I I remember drinking those powder shakes and trying to put on weight as a skinny young kid. And yeah, I wish I knew what I know now. That would have helped me a lot in my personal story. But I'll tell you, when I was introduced to 500 Fist Bumps I I went through the website a few times, just like this is amazing.

This is something that takes the framework of the four C's and simplifies it in a unique special way. And so why don't you tell us what 500 Fist Bumps is all about and how it got started?

Well, this this 500 Fist Bumps hit me like a bolt of lightning. This was not something I was planning to do, James. I was not planning to start a a non profit with a board of directors and and spend my days you know, tr helping other organizations get religion about the importance of every single kid on the planet, because we have big goals. Every single kid on the planet. Here here I'm gonna give you the the

The 30 second tour. So we believe that any kid who steps foot on a court, a rink, a track, a mat, in a pool, what have you, should be connected within 30 seconds by the adult in the room so that they feel like they belong on the team. And I will we'll talk about you know what that means in their brain. We'll talk about what that means for them in terms of development, but but this idea

Came to me in the most unexpected place when my son was 10 years old. like most parents, my daughter and my son, we signed them up for all the sports, for the YMCA and the various rec leagues. I mean, they they played tennis and they swam and they played soccer. I even got Jack and my son into hockey and and all of that. So

I had noticed that there was a lacrosse camp in a town next to us. And having grown up with a lacrosse stick in my hand, I said to him, I said, Jack, I'm going to sign you up for this camp. And he was 10 years old at the time. And I think that your your expertise in in athletics, this is going to be a really telling moment because at age 10, my son was beginning to develop an ego. And what I mean by that is he was looking at himself and and the world around him.

And

what was happening when he was 10 is some of his friends were being picked for academy teams, you know, U, U ten, U11, elite teams. And and lacrosse was a new sport for him. And so he said to me, he says, Hey Dad, am I gonna be the only new kid at this lacrosse camp? Because he just didn't want to stick out. So I called the director and I said, Hey, I got a kid who's gonna play the sport for the first time. Are are there gonna be other new kids there that, you know, he can hang out with it?

And the guy says, sure, absolutely, we've got a lot of interest in this camp. So we go to the camp on the day it started on a Monday. And I knew within 10 seconds of pulling into that parking lot that my son was the only beginner that day. And my son knew within 11 seconds, and he didn't want to get out of the car. What had happened was there was not a whole lot of interest in lacrosse and Kernersville, North Carolina in the middle of summer. So what they had to do was turn it into a T-E-A-M.

Camp. So on the field that he was about to step on, so he was a 10-year-old was a high school lacrosse team. Now, all of these kids were four to five years older and a foot and a half taller. So my poor son gets out. He's got his brand new white mesh jersey on, you know, there's not a grass stain on it. I had to cut his stick down from a regular size to this size. And his his enthusiasm level as he walked onto the field was zero, right? Now he's standing.

Next to these kids, they've all got their club pennies on, they all knew each other. I've literally got a picture of him standing in the shadows of every kid out there. So I thought as I sat back in my lawn chair, this is gonna be one of the worst days ever. Little did I know, James, that in the next three minutes that camp experience would go from horrible to great for my son, and my life was gonna change because the coach of the day, not even the coach of the week, the coach of the day called everybody together.

He says, okay, fellas, here's how this camp's gonna go. He says, every time you go through a drill, line drill, passing drill, or you make a shot on goal and you score, you're gonna get a Fist Bump from everybody around you. But every time you screw up, you don't get a ground ball, you miss the pass, or you don't score, you're gonna get a Fist Bump from everyone around you because yes, we're trying to make you a better cross player.

But at the end of the day, we're trying to make you a better human being. And the only way to do that is to make sure that you know you have to have each other's backs because every single one of you as an athlete is going to have a great day and you're going to have the worst day ever. So with that, he said, How many Fist Bumps do you think we can get in the next hour? And one kid who I'm thankful for every day, but I never saw who it was, said, 500. And the coach, without batting an eye, clapped his hands. He goes, All right, fellas, let's go. 500 Fist Bumps in the next hour.

Well,

I sat back in my lawn chair and I watched my son go through these drills. Now he couldn't pick up a ground ball to save his life, but when he did and he got to the end of the line and he handed it off, he got Fist Bumps from all of these guys. And so he's kind of jumping up and down, waiting to go again. And he's giving Fist Bumps to all these big fellas as they're coming through. Honestly, I sat back, he had a a tremendous day, had a great week, but I'll finish the story here. At the end of the

First day, he gets in the truck and he's about ready to pass out because he's had such a great time. And I go, I go, Jack, how was that? He goes, best day ever. Now, an hour earlier, worst day ever. In 10 seconds, this coach, now see, here's the beauty of it, James. Here's here's here's here's the meat. That coach in 10 seconds had created a culture where everybody understood the rules. There was a it was low-hanging fruit, everybody knows what a Fist Bump was.

But it was it everybody could also respond. I didn't need a training video. You didn't need to have to sit them down and put it on a whiteboard. And I thought, you know, there's something to this. Now I'm gonna add a little codicil to the story. Jack continues to play sports after that week. In fact, for three years, he was on the North Carolina Olympic Development Soccer team. And and he quit. He ended up quitting and only played high school sports. And when we kind of talked to him about why, he says, you know.

Now, one of those coaches knows my name. And when I go to practice, I'm just an orange penny. They throw me an orange penny because I know I'm just a practice player. And I thought to myself, you know, I never saw that magic happen again that coach put together in 10 seconds. And I said, there's something here. And so we spent a couple of years digging into the literature about building connection and belonging among athletes and how how simple it would be. But it it's the adult in the room, it's the coaches.

That have to do it. So that's what we do. We work with about 10 organizations currently. I did a training last night at the YMCA. Ten organizations currently where the we get the CEOs, we don't go to the coaches or the staff, we go to the CEOs and say, look, man, you you're flying your flag about youth development. Let me tell you how to make it as easy as possible to make it as great as possible. So that's what we do. We work with organizations to implement this connection culture, which is which is really pretty simple.

That youth coach when I was a hockey player, he he did it. He did it. so that's what we do. Five hundred Fist Bumps is is the world's easiest way for a kid on any sport field or even in schools to feel like they belong and are connected within 30 seconds.

I love that story. And not because it's just like a feel-good story. I I love the actual intent of a coach and you and the other folks who who do this to help change a person's mindset in such a positive and constructive way, in such a simple way. I think that's that's the key behind it. When I first heard that story and I was, you know, getting the vibe of

what 500 Fist Bumps was about. I'm I'm here in my house alone. My wife's at work. And you know, I'm looking for like the cats, the Fist Bump Like this is we got to start like right now. It's such a good thing. But when you do that, even like on the golf course with my buddies, there's something there is something magical. It changes. And one of the things I was attracted to about the 4C framework of mental toughness was there's a lot of science and research behind it. And so it's it's validated in a way that

You know it, it's almost like a tangible thing that you could begin to apply through simple exercises and things like that. What is the science behind the Fist Bump? Because I know there's a science behind it. And it's not just, hey, you know, good job, whatever. There's way more to it

So here's my here's my public health hat. So I was a professor for thirty years. The kids that I trained in both I I ran I ran two top eight, top ten doctoral programs in the in the country. And I've had I estimated when I retired, I had over 8,000 students that I was lucky enough to teach. So we we implement fundamentals of of of public health, and that is the belief that everyone has the right to be healthy. Now

The those that have the least control are usually kids, right? So we as the adults in the room have to create the environments for people to be, for kids to come through that childhood experience without for, you know, we're not gonna use big terms here, but for for lack of a better term, for without trauma, right? Kids growing up today are are are just in a different space than when you and I grew up, right? There's a lot of things going on that they don't have control over.

they can't understand some things, and they're carrying some sort of maybe some stress or anxiety. gosh, we know that the kids are being bullied still, whether it's social media, etc. And they're just carrying this stuff. So we call those adverse childhood experiences. That's actually the term that's used, and they

They count, researchers count the number of adverse childhood experiences that kids could have in various times. And and a high score of six or seven means that maybe when they become adults, they may manifest some some conditions, right? High blood pressure, various things that that may make them seek out a clinician. So we know those things exist. And what 500 Fist Bumps does, and this is our theoretical foundation, is we create with organizations that we work with.

On purpose and intentional moments, positive childhood experiences. I'm just gonna give you here's how it works. When a kid comes in the door or steps foot on a on a track or a mat or a pool, whatever, we train the coaches. Actually, we we we work with these organizations. This is policy, by the way. This isn't something that we think they should do. This is something that they sign up for. When that kid walks on, we want them within 30 seconds to acknowledge that kid by name.

Okay, I know there's there's there's lots of kids on fields, but the adults in the room do this. And the other thing is is there's a ritual. We use the Fist Bump because it's universal, but you can do whatever you want. You got high five, you can do special things, but there is a connection that must be made on purpose so that kid feels seen. The the other parts of our our formula are if there's if it's a little kid, man, get down on their level. Right? Don't stand over top of them. Get down on their level.

Be eye to eye and say, I am here for you. And then these are behaviors that we are we train to be consistent over time. I ran a great great graphic the other day that just basically said if a 500 Fist Bump organization had 60 kids and did it for over a year, they would increase their level of of of resistance against various types of trauma, et cetera, by eighty-two percent.

So James.

Wow.

You you hit the nail on the head. And I want to get into your stuff here, but you hit the nail on the head when when you said, Man, this is so easy. We kept it easy on purpose. Our training videos are less than five minutes long. And that's the longest that we have. Right? So if you can't get this in thirty seconds, I'm gonna hold a n a mirror under your nose because I'm not sure you're breathing, man, because this is basic human being stuff.

Well, I'll tell you, if for those of you out there, I got it in like 30 seconds. So if I could get it in 30 seconds, everybody else could absolutely get it in 30 seconds. Yeah, the simple thing is is such an important part of it, I believe too. And the the thing about what I saw in the Fist Bump and what you're doing, what it really does, what it really accomplishes. What I really saw between that and the four C's made me so happy because

Oftentimes, even myself, I get talking about mental toughness. And it's easy to go down the rabbit hole of the complexity of it, because there is a lot of stuff behind it. And I've often wondered what what would be the easiest way to kind of share or at least get people to understand the initial part of growing your mental toughness. And the Fist Bump is like, I'm like, my God, that is like the simplest thing. It's beautiful. So I I'd like to kind of

connect these four C's, And I want to start with control. And for those of you have paid attention to the podcast in the past, control really is about two factors, emotional control and and life control. And I want to kind of zero in on that emotional control. What when somebody does the Fist Bump when they're getting that type of encouragement, how do you see it impact that part of mental toughness, the emotional side

Because in sports, you know, it's like your son. I mean, you go in and you're like a train wreck and and then it could change within an hour. So how do you see it impacting the emotional side for athletes, young athletes?

Okay,

They found that whether it was a rookie or the highest paid player on that team, they all improved their performance. So building connection on purpose. Now, you know, there's a lot of money in the NBA and winning is everything. I am all about, I am all about creating champions, right? So what we tell coaches, I had a f a coach of a five-year-old team come up to me and said, I'm not doing this stuff. I'm not doing this this Bump stuff. I want to create a champion.

at five. Now he was coaching five year olds. I looked at him I said, well listen, listen, dude, you you go for it. But I'm just here to tell you right now that if your team was actually a team and they looked out for each other and they showed that visibly, you're gonna have a much better season. But good luck. So you know that that's the piece I wanted you to know. And let me tell you this other very quick story. I I have a summer camp

in for lacrosse and eight eighth grade rising ninth grader came and she she took it and she said I've never played lacrosse but I'm a goalie in soccer would you and I said would you like to be a goalie in lacrosse and she said sure this is the most competitive athlete I've ever seen all right I mean she is the most competitive athlete so I put a stick in her hand for the first time in ninth grade she'd never played lacrosse ninth grade all conference tenth grade all conference eleventh grade

All conference third in the nation for saves versus shots. And she's entering her senior year. Listen, people develop at different times, but they're all competitive. That piece that you're talking about right there, if you show and coaches, you know, there's hard coaching and there's there's I wouldn't call it soft coaching, but more emotional coaching. I'm just telling you right now, if you can show that these people are human beings, you treat them like human beings, they're gonna perform.

No doubt. No doubt. And that that's a that's another great you have a lot of great stories. super impressive. I want to hear what happens her senior year, you know, all that she's

You do.

doing. another C is commitment, and that's made up of, you know, goal orientation and basically achievement orientation. you're gonna follow through on, you know, trying to achieve that goal. The story of your son and the coach and the initial Fist Bumps it like

To me, you can see it turned to switch, He was committed then at that point to follow through the rest of that practice and to give up a hundred percent. How important is it for kids to stick to activities? And how I I know the Fist Bump but what other ways can you encourage kids to stick to something that's hard? Because most things are hard. They're probably gonna fail. And if they keep going with it, who knows? They're gonna be really good, a really good goalie, you know, that type of thing.

Yeah, so you know, I'll just say right now, James, we've all had coaches or teachers or mentors that we can to this day remember what they what you know, how they looked, what they wore, how they smelled. I mean, I've had people tell me I remember my second grade teacher smelled so good. I mean, and they're fifty years old. So to me, we all have that mentor, but moving forward and if we want consistency, you have to create the culture where every coach

is that coach. Every mentor is that mentor. And and how we do it is by creating the culture. Now crep culture's already created. you know, and the reason why kids quit sports often is because we forget that they're they're an entity. And if they're not seen, if they're not encouraged, there's no reason for them to commit to coming out on that field. In fact they they will, you know, take a hike. We have to create the environment that the minute they step onto the field or court or whatever it is,

They're entering a space where they know that they are are they belong and they will be committed. They will come back year after year after year. And and in the best possible world when their adults come back to do that very thing that was done to them.

And I find that

wildly important because a lot of the successful people that I've had a chance to to meet or know or be friends with, whatever, one of the biggest things about their success was they just didn't stop. It wasn't that they were the greatest. It wasn't that they necessarily outworked everybody. They just kept working. And so if a Fist Bump could help a kid do that and just stick to it one more practice, one more season, whatever, that's

mind blowing to me. That's awesome.

Honestly, how hard is that? Right?

Right. I mean, here it is, just a simple gesture that for that moment changes what they're thinking inside. that's all it takes. You just need these little steps over and over and over again. And a year later, ten years later, you you literally have a different human being, different from what they would have been.

I say it all the time, the difference between the worst day ever and the best day ever is someone seeing you and doing that.

I touched on the fact that you're gonna fail a lot and it's gonna happen, it doesn't matter whether it's sports or your job or relationships. it's gonna happen and one of the C's is about challenge and risk orientation, but the other side of it is learning orientation. To me, the Fist pump does a great job representing that and helping somebody understand that, hey, you just you just failed. You didn't get the ground or whatever, but bam.

Try again and learn from that. What what does that represent to you in terms of level of importance of that Fist Bump to getting off your butt and doing it again?

Well, you and I both love athletes. I mean, you you've made it your profession to work with athletes and make them the best athletes possible. But it's it's a spectrum, right? Here's a couple of things that that coaches or your listeners need to realize that when kids are growing up and they are capable of certain things. Like when you're between six and eight, you're only capable of a couple of things developmentally. And I mean you just haven't developed like fine motor skills.

Okay. When you're eight to ten, you are a little bit more able to do certain things. And coaches need to know what's what's happening at that level. All kids are gonna start at some point. I put a lacrosse stick in half of my athlete's hands for the first time, right? And they don't want to look bad. I coach high school and they don't want to look bad in front of their friends. So we we have a real theory, a real philosophy of

Keeping kids in the game by not, you know, that that hardcore coaching, but I'm not soft on them either, right? If they screw up, because it is a challenge to to have a stick in your hand and to try to scoop up a ball, it's really hard. So what we do as a phys ed physical education person is I will break it down. Listen, you did everything great. You put your right foot forward, you put your left hand down. It was really great. Now let's work on the next step.

So you've got to put that kid in the practice. Well, I I like to say put the player in the practice and give them some ownership of it. So we just we break it down. Too often we just say, come on, it's so easy. How come you cannot pick up a ground ball? I'm telling you right now, you're gonna have kids quitting simply because that one bad day they're having and the coach says that, they're they're walking off the field to the other field saying, I'm just gonna go play soccer or something.

And challenge is part of life. don't get me wrong, we're all gonna their kids are all gonna face challenges, but man man, if they feel like they're doing it alone, you know. It's not gonna work out.

Absolutely. It it it is our job as the adults in a room to understand that. I you know, I'll be honest, for a long time as a young parent, years or year ago, I didn't fully understand that. You know, as I kind of kind of try to bulldoze through helping the kids through certain, you know, athletic periods and things like that. It's taken a long time to really better understand those nuances and the importance of those.

one of the four C's well the last four C is confidence. And some out there say this is maybe the most important of the four C's, but confidence is your confidence and abilities, but also your interpersonal confidence, in working with other people and kind of sticking up for yourself and you know, sharing ideas that others may not agree with. The the Fist Bump for me represents the effort required.

To gain confidence, because in my opinion, real confidence only comes through practice, preparation, and knowing that you can do a certain thing. And because you you've done it so often, it's just natural to you. Is do you feel the same way about that? How does confidence intertwine with the Fist Bump?

That's a great question. You know, in in athletics, confidence comes with competence, right? The more ground balls, that's what we do, you know, we pick up a hundred ground balls per practice. And the the when you get better at it, it's gonna build your your confidence. And then that's one level. And then you go into the game and that's a whole nother story when the when the energy is flowing and you got people running all around. but to me, confidence is is those opportunities.

Again, it goes back to the adult in the room and I I appreciate you using that term because that's exactly what it is. You you talked a little bit about, you know, parenting. We all we all are are parents and we never you know, we don't get it right, but we we keep trying. But the one thing that we have found is when we realize that that person in front of us, even though they're six or seven or eight, needs to know that that them being there is is important.

We just think this is a superpower. We just think even if you're a volunteer coach with no background, you got called the night before by the executive director and said, Hey, your son or daughter doesn't have a coach, would you be the coach? And you say, Okay, I've never played soccer in my life. But one thing that you do have is this superpower to make sure that every kid knows at the end of that practice that that you saw them and that your your job.

is to bring out the confidence in that kid. And we can do that simply by saying, I'm glad you're here tonight. Right? Just just acknowledgement. And you call them by their name. Sue, I'm so glad you're here tonight. We're going to work hard. You're going to make some mistakes, but let's keep going because you're going to get better. You may you that may be confidence, but I'll tell you what, they jump out of the car next practice and they keep building on that skill. And pretty soon when they're in the game, guess what?

You know, we know this and I'll stop talking, but we know this. People develop at different ages, right? We cannot say a seven year old who can really dribble the ball like Messi is is is going to be the best player ever in front of everyone else because every other seven year old is gonna say, I don't I don't wanna be here. Because man, that the one seven year old that can't even tie his shoes when he's eleven or she's eleven, and suddenly they develop, right? They get it. They get that confidence, man, man.

We that's why we just can't quit on them.

Absolutely. In a lot of cases I was that way. I was, you know, certain things I was trying to do when early on I wasn't real good at. I was intimidated, you know, little league, things like that. But then it's like just a couple years later, all of a sudden the light bulb went off and it was totally, totally different. so I have a couple more questions, but we're I'm gonna have to have you back on because there's so much more to dive into. but well the first question would be, where do you see 500 Fist Bumps and

Not just the organization, but what it will do for the future. Where do you see it like ten years from now?

Thank you for asking that. yeah, so I'm gonna get deadly serious here for a second because I I do wear a a public health educators hat. And we with the advent of various things over technologically over the last ten or fifteen years, the the the task force that make recommendations for our kids are scrambling to figure out you know, what is the effect of social media on kids ten to fifteen years from now? We we simply don't know.

What did the effect of of of COVID? What is the effect of COVID going to have on our kids 10 to 15 years? But I will tell you this COVID or no COVID, even before COVID happened, kids were rising in terms of presenting with more depression and and social isolation and and and loneliness. All that to say, if you remember the film Jaws, right? When when the shark comes out of water for the first time, and Chief Brody is, you know, throwing some chum in there.

And he sees it, he turns and he says, We're gonna need a bigger boat. Right now, right now, we don't need know the size of that boat. And so I'm gonna say the size of the net we're going to need. So 10 years from now, I honestly want buy-in from really important organizations and brands, etc., to say these are the kids in our communities, right? These are the kids that when I walk out my back door, I see playing outside.

They deserve, they deserve for me, the adult in the room, to make every effort possible that their development is healthy. That's it. That is not a massive ask. and I I'll I'll I'll tell you this real real quickly. all seven living surgeon generals met a couple years ago and they addressed what they said was the single most important public health issue of the day, and it was a child's mental health.

And here's what they said. Their their statement to the press was this. Health does not happen in a doctor's office or in the hallways of a hospital. Health happens right outside your back door. And the most important thing we can do for kids right now is to create, are you ready? Create small moments of human connection that weave the fabric of health into our communities. That's 500 Fist Bumps right there. Small moments of human connection.

that weave the fabric of health into our community. So my audacious massive goal is that every organization that is youth serving greets every single kid by name. Boom. Fist Bump. Glad you're here.

That that first of all, I love big goals. I think you have one of the most important big goals out there. And it could be accomplished if if we collectively, as adults in a room, get our act together and make a plan and go ahead and do it. So I really appreciate everything you're doing. I think you're an amazing individual. I think your organization is even ten times that it's it's so special. how can people get in touch with

500 Fist Bumps and yourself.

www.500fistbumps.org. that's it. Check check us out. They have our contact information is there. we are about 14 months old. So we are about to begin our first fundraising effort so that we can continue to do everything for free. We don't want to charge any local organization a dime to to come in and train their their folks to to do this. So

but I I'd I just you know, I can talk about this all day, James. You and I are gonna do this again. and and we're gonna find these connections and link arms and see how you and I can can make the world a better place.

Absolutely. And I've I'm looking at the outline that I sent you. I'm like, my gosh, I think we might have covered half of of that. So we definitely will have a part two for those of you out there be on the lookout. Mike, thank you so much for being on the podcast. we've all learned a lot. I can't wait to somehow collaborate with you to get to that goal ten years from now. I'm happy to do that.

Ace, listen, you're a good man. I connected with you the minute we s we talked about family and kids and all of that. So let's let's get your audience just thinking about this, man. Let's ask your audience watching this, by the end of the day, they will have Fist bumped five people. Because remember, the difference between the worst day ever and the best day ever is just one Fist Bump.

Absolutely. Well, let's do a virtual Fist Bump There you go. Bam.

That's fair.

Awesome. All right. Well, thanks again. And for the rest of you out there, don't forget to like and share and subscribe and all that good stuff. You could always go to chargeforwardcoaching.com to learn a little bit more about mental toughness and me and my coaching, and maybe it's a good fit for you. But regardless of that, just keep charging forward.