Ari Miller is the founder of ASM Performance and a Certified Mental Performance Consultant who helps athletes, coaches, executives, and organizations perform more consistently under pressure. Miller began his career as a college basketball coach, serving on staff at St. Michael’s College, Bryant University, and the University of Vermont. He brings more than 15 years of experience in college athletics as a coach, administrator, counselor, and performance specialist. Miller has developed and led mental health, leadership, and performance programs at several NCAA institutions, including Vermont and Johns Hopkins. In 2024, he began working with New York University Athletics as a mental performance consultant for its student-athletes and coaches. Through individual coaching, team workshops, and leadership development, Miller provides practical, evidence-based strategies designed to strengthen confidence, focus, resilience, and sustained high performance.

On this episode Mike and Ari discuss why physical preparation is essential for athletic success, so too is the mental preparation that athletes must undertake. Throughout our conversation, we explore the intricate relationship between mental resilience and athletic performance, delving into strategies that foster confidence, focus, and composure under pressure. Miller shares invaluable insights gleaned from his work with athletes, coaches, and organizations, illustrating how tailored mental performance strategies can lead to sustained high performance. Cultivating a strong mindset is not merely advantageous but essential for those striving to excel in the competitive arena of basketball.

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Grab your notebook before you listen to this episode with Ari Miller, founder of ASM Performance.

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Ari Miller is the founder of ASM Performance and a certified mental performance consultant who helps athletes, coaches, executives and organizations perform more consistently under pressure.

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Grab your notebook before you listen to this episode with Ari Miller, founder of ASM Performance.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast.

It's Mike Cleansing here tonight without my co host, Jason Sunkel, but I am pleased to be joined by Ari Miller from ASM Performance.

Ari, welcome to the Hoop Heads pod.

Mike, thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Great to be here with you.

Absolutely thrilled to have you on.

Looking forward to diving into all of the interesting things that you've been able to do in your career and diving into some specifics about mental performance and how coaches who are listening to the episode can take some of the things that you've done working with teams, working with players, working with coaches and apply them in their own situation.

But I want to start by going back in time to when you were a kid.

Tell me about how you fell in love with basketball.

What do you remember about the early years of the game?

Who were some of your influences?

Just give me an idea of kind of what your childhood looked like in terms of basketball.

Sure.

So I fell in love with basketball pretty early on in my life.

And I grew up in Northern Vermont just outside of Burlington, and in a pretty small town.

Basketball was not something that was necessarily in my family or passed down to me.

It just, I saw the game at a young age and something clicked.

Michigan Seton Hall.

I remember.

I have memories of sitting down with my dad watching that game on TV and just being floored by all of it, every aspect of it.

So got into it at a really young age and just tried to play as much as I could.

The opportunities weren't that plentiful in a pretty, in a small town playing rec basketball on Saturdays.

But, you know, mixed in, learning how to play and trying to become a player with just loving the game itself.

So everything that was, whether it was following the NBA, following college basketball, trying to learn the ins and outs of the game, all of the culture that goes with it, the sneakers, the music, just how the NBA was sort of, you know, I was in that late 80s, early 90s as a kid.

So I got to experience like, you know, the tail end of Bird versus Magic and then the Isaiah Thomas Pistons right into Jordan's, you know, rise to becoming this mythical figure that we all know now.

So that really lined up with just me coming of age where I was already into this thing.

And then it kind of had its.

I don't know what you'd want to call it, but it sort of went from what it was to what it became now through these very dynamic superstars and then all the drama, you know, that goes with that.

So that was what really, you know, all those factors kind of made me fall in love with, with the game, with the NBA, with college basketball.

And, you know, that was really how I got my start as a pretty young age.

What was your favorite championship team of that era when you were young, growing up?

So I have to.

I'm a little bit biased towards the 89 pistons, similar to that the Michigan City hall game.

That's the first finals I remember watching.

They swept the Lakers in four games.

And as a, as a smaller guard, the Pistons won a championship with their.

Probably their two best players being guards.

Joe Dumars was the MVP of the 89 finals.

Isaiah Thomas was who he was.

Rodman wasn't quite himself yet.

He was, I think, his second year they had.

So, I mean, they brought in Mark McGuire that year.

Lane Beer was a big part of their team.

Rick Mahorn, but their key guy was, was listed at 6:1.

He was probably 5:11.

So that, that Pistons team, you know, you can talk about them in a lot of ways and I probably wasn't old enough at the time to understand how they were playing defensively and some of the, the hard fouls in the paint and all the drama that came with that after the fact.

But those 89 pistons always to me, will be kind of the team I first was like, wow, this is incredible to watch these, you know, guys who aren't 7ft tall dominating a series and winning a championship.

Isaiah is a guy who, because of the rift, let's say with Michael Jordan and probably in all circumstances could have, should have been maybe on the Dream Team.

But his fractured relationship with Jordan, I think has maybe knocked him down a peg historically for how great of a player that he was.

And again, in an era where guards were separated more into, this guy's a point guard, this guy's a scorer.

And Isaiah, I think probably walk that line as well as anybody in that era of if you need him to be a pure point guard, he could be that pure point guard and distribute and get other guys involved.

And if you needed him to score even on a turned ankle in the Finals and put up 42 against the Lakers, you could do that as well.

And I think that that's been lost to history just because again, he was on the other side of, of the Jordan rules.

And clearly, I mean, you know, there's a lot of people that have Jordan hanging on their wall and not nearly as many people that have Isaiah Thomas hanging on their wall.

But I think historically Isaiah's probably been underrated, as you said, as one of the few small guards.

Really hadn't seen it in a while until we just saw Jalen Brunson do it this year for the Knicks as a small guy leading the team to a title.

So I think historically Isaiah's pretty underrated.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

I mean the dream team, the walking off after the 90, those 92 playoffs and.

Or 90.

Was it 91 playoffs actually when they don't going into the 92 summer.

That whole drama does take away from, if you really look at it, from 87.

So they win it in 89 and 90.

But in 87 they've got the Celtics beat game five in the Garden.

And that's that famous is that, you know, Bird steals it.

The Pistons win that game, they might go to the finals.

In 88, they go to seven games against the Lakers.

That's what you just bet.

Sprained ankle in game six.

So they won two.

A few things fall different way.

They could have won three or four in a row.

They were that good of a team from 87 to 9 to 91.

So yeah, that I think he gets overlooked.

I think I say this often to some of the players and teams I'm working with.

If we're talking NBA and I'm a little biased because of my age and my era, but he.

Kyrie Irving is a player comp with him.

Kyrie's a little bit more dynamic around the rim and maybe a little longer.

But in terms of just ability with the ball, creativity in the paint shot making, like that's a decent comparison for players who haven't really seen Isaiah play.

I agree with you there.

I think that's a really fair comparison.

And in a lot of ways, just when I think of Isaiah, I think of the ball handling, right.

I think about his ability to get into the lane at that time.

And it's.

The game is so different now, as you well know, the things that you might have tried to do on the floor that I might have tried to do on the floor that we couldn't get away with that would have been called a travel instantaneously that now from a footwork standpoint players can do.

The game has changed so much.

It's funny, even when I'm working with.

The other day I was in the gym with my son and I've always worked on with a couple of my kids Like a step through.

And then I'm always like, you got to keep your back foot down when you go up.

And now I'm like, well, I've been watching games now for the last three years at high school, middle school, college, it never gets called.

I'm like, I gotta readjust my teaching.

Hey, you could step through and now guess what, you could pick up that foot and go with the one footed finish or whatever.

So it's just interesting when you think about again Kyrie versus Isaiah, sort of.

Everybody thinks of Kyrie as having this tremendous bag, which he obviously does.

And yet at the same time the restriction on footwork and pivot feet and just steps and how you can move your body completely different.

And sometimes you wonder again, what would an Isaiah Thomas, what would a Michael Jordan look like with the ability to do some of the footwork things that would have been called a travel in their day that in the modern NBA guys can, I don't get away with.

But it's just become part of the game and the rules have changed or morphed in that way.

So it's interesting to think about, no doubt about it.

And the rules have shifted towards offense as you, I mean the final scores of games over the last 10 years, I mean you go look at some of those nine, the Bulls Jazz games, it's like 88, 85 finals, you know, and it's like yeah, rock fights.

And just I remember thinking like learning about illegal defense, right where it was like you had to go double the ball in the post.

You had either commit to the double or you couldn't be below the free throw line or they would just call, it would be a technical foul.

All these things that have made it like easier to score.

And so yeah, it's interesting to think about what those guys could have done with a game being completely different in so many ways.

I can probably count, Ari, the number of ball screens that I was involved in as a ball handler or as a defender, I might be able to count those over a four year career on maybe one hand.

Maybe I would get to two.

Just wasn't part of the game.

It was all Bobby Knight motion offense.

I think about.

I don't believe I ever penetrated into the lane and then threw a pass from the lane back outside the three point line.

Now I might have dumped it off to somebody cutting or somebody on the opposite block.

But there was no guy fading to the corner for me to hit for a corner three.

There was no me under the rim turning and kicking it back out to the top.

Like those plays I tell players all the time, they didn't exist.

Like, it wasn't even on the radar.

I don't think I ever made that pass once in my entire career.

And now you watch games at every level, and those passes are critically important to how the game is played.

So it's just.

It's really interesting to look at how the game has changed and morphed.

And so let me take that concept and throw it back at you with a question about.

As you're playing the game as a kid, is coaching something that you're thinking about while you're still playing?

Do you feel like you were thinking the game as a coach and thinking, hey, maybe someday that's what I want to do?

Or.

Or do you think you were more focused on, I just love basketball.

I love playing.

I'm thinking about it from a player perspective.

Which one of those maybe fits you better?

I think as I got into high school and started getting around better players and then going away to some summer camps, you know, there was a group, a small group of us, three or four guys who were trying to all play in college, and we went out to.

At that point, it was like five star was the camp to go to.

And we, you know, we were 15 years old and we went to Five Star Camp.

And after doing, you know, that summer, I remember thinking about, wow, I just learned more about basketball in five days than I could possibly have imagined.

So I think that was when I started thinking about, well, I really just love everything about trying to.

The chess match of this game and all the different strategy.

I think simultaneously, what was happening at that point was I was realizing, okay, I'm not very tall or athletic, so if I want to keep playing this game, even to make varsity at my high school, I need to understand I have to think this game.

I've got to be ahead a step or two ahead of everybody else, because I wasn't going to be able to just like, go into a pickup game and go, you know, put my elbows on the rim or block a shot.

So I had to figure out a way to even play, which was to think the game.

So I very, very early on, I think in that point, maybe 14, 15, started thinking about coaching and wanting to be a part of the game in that way.

Even in high school, I started helping out with AAU teams As well.

Like, junior, senior year, I started coaching younger AAU teams in my area.

So I think there was a part of me whether I probably wouldn't have admitted that to you when I was 16, that I, like, came back from Five Star, like, wow, I'm not that good at this game as much as I love it, like, matched up with some guys there, that opened my eyes to it.

So I think that's probably where the coaching part of it came in.

Into play for me was just my overall interest in learning about the game and also realizing, all right, I'll play as long as I can, but a lot of the tools you need to play this game, I just don't think I have physically, so I'll see what I can do.

Yeah, it makes sense.

And five star is another thing.

When you talk about a, A different era of basketball.

I always say, if you were to take the top 15 or 20 high school players today and tell them, okay, you're going to go to Robert Morris or Honesdale or wherever it was that you went, and you're going to play on some converted tennis courts on the asphalt against the other 15 or 20 best players in the country with your shirt off.

And it's just the way that era of basketball was versus the way that it is now and the access that players have to gyms and tournaments and it goes to.

We've.

I've talked about this on the podcast millions of times, but five star, to me just encapsulates the difference between sort of the pickup playground basketball culture that was around certainly when I was a kid, probably was getting closer to flipping as you were, you know, as you were coming up, but then now has flipped completely.

Where those best guys, have they ever played a competitive basketball game outside 5 on 5 on cement or asphalt?

Not.

I'm not, I'm not.

I'm not 100% sure.

So it's always, whenever I hear Five Star, I always have fond memories.

I had a chance to go for, for one, one time.

And again, just like you said, a remarkable experience.

The level of play and even probably more impressive than the level of play, just the level of coaches that you got an opportunity to be exposed to at.

Incredible.

You know, it's just, it was, it was an incredible, incredible experience.

Yeah, that camp may have fueled the fire more than anything for me, just not necessarily to play or to coach, but just to love the sport.

And those experiences with those guys I went with, that was the thrill of our year, to be able to just see if we could Stack up against guys from all over the East.

You know, basically anyone from D.C. to the tip of Maine was at Honesdale or at Robert Morris.

And then on top of that, being from a small town and you know, growing up in Northern Vermont, our junior year we were at a camp with Jay Williams, Steve Blake, Those were the two best guys.

Mike Dunleavy Jr. Was there a bunch of other really high level guys we got to watch, like Jay Williams and Steve Blake basically play a pickup game for the championship, sitting front row.

And they were our age, you know, it was unbelievable.

They were going head to head right in front of us.

It was unbelievable.

I'll never forget that.

And then to see those guys, you know, today go in the ACC and have all those battles in some of the biggest games you could possibly have to get a chance to sit there.

You're 16 years old and you're sitting five seats down from Coach K. Watching those guys play, it was, there was nothing like it, really.

Nothing like that.

That's incredible.

Again, the opportunity to see those guys, like you said, up close, they're your age.

The week I was there, Billy Owens was the guy.

And I still remember Garf talking in front of everybody, standing up.

And Billy Owens was on, he was on the plan where he had to serve milk in the cafeteria so he could get his free, you know, get, get, get to camp for free.

But I remember Garf standing up and goes, here he is, Billy Owens, the Baryshnikov of basketball.

And that was the nickname Carlisle, Pennsylvania, back in the day.

And yeah, just crazy that you think about the names and the players who went through that camp.

It's just, again, it's, it's, it's incredible.

So let's circle back to your circle, back to your journey.

UMass Amherst.

Talk to me a little bit about your college experience, what you were thinking about in terms of career.

You get involved with the basketball program.

Just walk me through kind of the college experience for you.

So I graduated from UMass Amherst.

I started out at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.

I was a D3ish recruit.

I had a few schools recruiting me and ended up going there.

I lasted a couple years there and didn't work out.

Playing wise wasn't quite good enough.

That was a really high level program at that point and pretty much maxed out what I could do as a player and kind of had to get to a crossroads.

I came to a crossroads whether I liked it or not.

And I think that was sort of the beginning of my career.

I didn't really know where to go.

And any of the other Division 3 schools that had been recruiting me were like, well, you didn't play at all last two years.

We don't want you.

So my career kind of ended just because it ended.

And that was always.

That was a really tough time in my life.

It was hard pill to swallow at that point.

And I was trying to figure out, how do I stay involved in basketball?

I want to coach.

And I was lucky enough that the director of operations, Paul Coppo, who's now the head coach of Castleton University, had been an assistant at St. Michael's College, where around where I grew up, I used to go play pickup with those guys.

They'd let me in.

And so he ended up being at UMass and I called him for advice and he was like, well, if you want to get into coaching, come to school here and be a manager and we'll, you know, give you exposure to the game.

So that's what I did.

And I was able to be around Steve Lapis for a couple years, that whole staff, and just sort of learn about high level basketball in a way that there's no real other way to do it than to just be sitting around doing whatever's needed.

And that, that was how I got my start in it.

I did a lot of video stuff.

They didn't have the video corner at that point, so I was learning the video editing software and we were still doing VHS stuff, so I was digitizing vhs, but that takes real time, so you have to.

You can't.

Like, there's no.

You weren't like converting it.

It was just like digitizing in real time.

So I was a lot of time in the film room and being around in the, in the meetings, getting lunch, getting coffee, and learned about not only that level of basketball, but just the dynamics of a coaching staff and the hierarchy, how responsibilities are divided up and just to be around it in any way that I could.

Did you know right when you got involved in it that, hey, this is, this is kind of what I want to do?

Did you know right away?

So.

Yeah, yes and no.

I loved the basketball side of it and I loved being part of the team.

I think I was taken aback by the lifestyle of it and the hours and just how intense and stressful.

And that to me was eye opening for sure.

That part made me maybe Take a step back and say, wow, does this fit my personality?

Could I do this?

But it ended up being that I wanted to give it a shot, but that was it.

Definitely.

I had some pause, like I was, you know, when you didn't really know.

It's interesting in life when you think you like something and then you see what it really is.

You're like, whoa, I didn't realize it was like this.

So that was sort of my, you know, my.

Whatever you would call it.

Like, my just my eyes were open fully to like, this is what high level competitive basketball looks like and what it looks like to be on a coaching staff and the travel and when things don't go well, how it feels and all those things.

It's interesting to hear you say that because I think back to my experience as a player and I know that when I was playing, I was one of those guys that I never really thought about what my coaches were doing.

I never really thought about the game from a coaching perspective.

I usually looked at it from, how can I improve my performance to help our team improve their performance?

And that was kind of where it began and ended for me.

And when you talked about, hey, I'm going to get an opportunity to go and be a manager, I remember thinking as a player, it never once in four years of playing college basketball crossed my mind that, hey, the guys who are managers for our team, maybe one of the reasons why they want to do that is to get into coaching.

That never once crossed my mind.

It was always like, oh, they must like hanging out with the players and the team and all never crossed my mind that being a manager was a pathway to becoming a coach.

And then I think what you talked about in terms of not understanding what is going on on a coaching staff behind the scenes, right, that players don't see, like, I had no idea the amount of time and energy and effort and in the office at whatever time and out of the office at whatever time that my coaching staff was doing in my vision of it, maybe I stop in during class to talk to him about academics and so somebody's in the office and yeah, maybe they get there 15 minutes before practice starts.

And then as soon as practice ends and I'm done with my shower and the locker room clears out, I'm sure they're heading home to dinner and whatever.

And you just don't.

I didn't at least think about in any way, shape or form what that coaching lifestyle looks like.

And I can certainly think where, if you didn't realize that stuff.

And then all of a sudden you're like, hey, I'd like to coach.

And you get into that, you'd be like, whoa, this is way more than what I ever would have, what I ever would have guessed.

And it's funny, Ari, because the year I graduated from school, the NCAA had had two graduate assistant positions leading into.

So I graduated in 92.

So in.

In 93, they cut that back to one.

And almost every school had those staggered.

So I wanted.

I thought, I'm going to try to get into coaching.

My playing career is over.

I don't know if I'm going to get an opportunity to play anywhere.

Let me get into it.

And I sent like 200 letters to people and saying, hey, I'd love to join your staff as a graduate assistant.

And obviously I didn't hear back from everybody, but I heard back from, you know, several people, especially in our league and whatever, and they're like, we'd love to have you, but we have a guy that's coming back for a year because we had him staggered.

So nobody there was.

Basically, the year I came out, there was no jobs.

And I often think about, like, what would have been.

Like, how shocked would I have been to go from what my perception of coaching was to what I was really going to be asked to do.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure I would have been ready for that.

To kind of piggyback off what you said.

You know, you look at it, you're like, whoa.

So you obviously got over that.

So when you go out to start looking for that first opportunity, what does it look like?

So I started out after that experience because I had done so much of the video work.

I ended up working with the company that did the sports editing software.

They were called Pinnacle Systems.

I think they were bought by Exos.

I'm not sure what they're called now, but I started out just going around working with them to try and use that as leverage to get a coaching job.

It was so, as you know, as many of the people listening probably know, it's.

Those are.

The market for getting jobs is nearly impossible.

There's thousands of people that want them every year.

There's very few spots.

So I did that.

And then I was lucky enough at St. Michael's College, was able to get a job in student life there.

So I was living in an on campus apartment, supervising residential life staff and doing all that Stuff and then sort of moonlighting, in theory, as an assistant.

But that was what I really wanted to do, and that was a volunteer position.

So I.

He'd give me, you know, if camp went well, I get a few thousand bucks.

But for the first two years, I made no money coaching and was just trying to learn as much as I could and be around.

And so that was how I got my start, was getting another job and then volunteering as a coach on at the college I was at.

I always say it's the glamorous life of a college basketball coach, right?

It's all the money you're making, it's all the publicity, and you're on TV all the time, and you got a beautiful place to live and all this in so many ways.

There's so many guys that have a start like you, right, that as you said, there's thousands and thousands of people that want to get into it.

There aren't that many jobs.

You have to be willing to work for little or no money.

You have to be willing to move wherever you have to move, and you have to be willing to do whatever it is that a coach or a coaching staff needs you to do when you come on as the low person on the totem pole.

And.

And I think that if you can learn those lessons early and get through those times and still love it, then I think you set yourself up for having an opportunity to have a pretty good career and have some good opportunities.

Because again, like you said, part of.

Right.

What helps you to get a job is the people that you've.

You've connected with.

And when you connect with those people, those people then are the ones that maybe they don't hire you directly, but maybe they end up saying, hey, I got this guy that I know.

Maybe you should hire him.

Because if you're looking for.

If you're looking for a position.

So just walk me through the next couple of steps and kind of how the career progresses.

And even more importantly, what's your mindset in regard to what you want to do with your career and how coaching fits into that.

So, yeah, I'm in my mid-20s at that point, and I think throughout the course of the whole seven years I was in college coaching, what I said to you about my experience at UMass was sort of always on my mind.

As much as I loved basketball and loved teams, there were parts of the profession where I'm like, maybe this isn't a fit for me personally and my personality and who I am and, you know, loving basketball is different from wanting to have college coaching be your career.

That is, those are two very different things.

And you know, I often say this to, to my clients or the guys in the teams I'm working with is that there's basketball and there's college basketball.

Those are also two different things.

And so I'm.

I spent four years at St. Michael's and I was lucky enough at that point that part of being there is I could take graduate level classes either for a really reduced price or for free.

So I started taking psychology graduate level psychology classes, just one or two at a time.

And initially it was I had an interest in coaching and people, and I wanted to sort of leverage those two things and maybe that makes me a better coach.

And so I started out, you know, a class here, a class there, and then as the years go by, I ended up finishing the master's in psychology at St. Michael's which then propelled me into this phase of my career.

But I stayed in coaching for three more years.

I went down to Bryant University, where I was the director of operations there in Smithfield, Rhode Island.

They were in the third year of a four year transition into Division 1.

So we played a Division 1 schedule, but we weren't able to participate in the conference tournament.

We were, you know, the roster was kind of half of the Northeast 10, Division 2 guys were all great players.

And then that's a fantastic league, still is to this day.

And so I spent a year there and then just I got extremely lucky with a coaching change happens at the University of Vermont and then coach John Becker gets promoted and gets the head job.

And he offered me a spot as the director of operations there.

And I went back and did my last two years in coaching on his staff.

And those are some of the two of the best years of my life, both personally and professionally with those group of guys and just with that whole coaching staff.

So I lasted seven full years on the path of like, I'm going to be a college coach.

And what's the tipping point?

Or is it a more gradual realization of maybe this isn't, as you said, the exact match for who I am.

I still want to be involved in this space, but maybe not at the same, maybe not in the same way that you were doing during those seven years.

So how did you make that transition from, all right, I'm kind of on the college basketball coaching track to, I want to be able to shift and get to this mental performance side where I can still be involved with college basketball coaches, teams, players, but I Can do it in a different way.

How did you make that transition?

What was the process?

It was.

I. I kind of felt like I'm at a crossroads here that, you know, for a lot of life reasons, just financially, looking at guys who were five or 10 years ahead of me, who were all getting out of the business.

I had a lot of mentors or people who I'd met where I was calling them to check in, and they were like, dude, I'm out.

Like, I'm.

You know, I'm.

You know, my wife says I'm done, Or, like.

So I started seeing all these people who I really looked up to, and when I called them for advice, they were like, if I were you, like, if I can go back 10 years, I would have left coaching 10 years ago.

So I started hearing that and thinking, okay, well, I got to look in the mirror.

Like, your career and how you pick what you do isn't just about what you love.

It's about trying to blend passion, joy, and the things that you feel connected to with some level of practicality mixed in with what you have talent in.

And I was a fine coach.

I think I was okay.

I wasn't terrible.

I wasn't great.

But the thing that I was.

In hearing feedback from the guys I had recruited or the guys I had coached, the thing that I was always getting a lot of positive was, man, you really helped me with the mental side of things, or you really built a strong relationship with me that felt genuine.

Or I really trusted you.

Like, I haven't trusted another coach.

And I think having that master's in psychology under my belt for a couple years and using, maybe even subconsciously using some of those tactics that I had learned to connect, to talk about anxiety and stress to navigate, like, just getting through a college basketball season, the players were giving me a lot of positive reinforcement around that.

So I think I pieced all of that together over that summer, and I was like, okay, I don't think I want to just completely switch gears.

There are a lot of things about this I love.

What am I actually good at?

What am I talented at?

And what is something that makes me a bit unique in the field that I'm in, as opposed to being just like, a dime a dozen.

Some kid who, like, you know, played a year and change of D3 and then just wanted to coach.

Like, there's a million of those guys.

But how many people are blending basketball?

Having a basic baseline basketball knowledge and experience with mental performance, sports Psychology, things that, like, thinking about how the mind and body are connected, Taking specific basketball topics and connecting them to those either psychological concepts or very specific cognitive things that fall maybe more into mental performance.

I came to this realization that I think that this is something that I might be able to both have massive impact in terms of, like, connecting with young people and maybe changing the course of their life in a way that if I'm teaching them how to, like, shoot off the dribble, not a bad thing, but maybe not as impactful.

And what do I have a chance to make a career in that?

The last thing I wanted to do was be the guy on the other end of that phone call in 10 years with the guy who's in my shoes being like, dude, I gotta get out.

Like, So I felt like that was the smart play was like, to.

To make that shift.

And it was very difficult.

It wasn't like it took me months to really make the decision.

Coach Becker was incredible.

He basically was like, let's talk about it.

Let's take the summer, talk it through.

I mean, he's been a unbelievable person in my life and still is to this day.

But that the way he handled that with me, as someone who was just turned 30 or something, I didn't really know how to handle it.

He really helped me with that.

So how did what you started out doing or what you envisioned you were going to do, how has that changed from when you first made this shift to what you do now?

Does it look a lot like what you thought it would, or does it look different than what you thought when you started on this path?

So when I started on this path, it was still on the periphery.

I was doing a lot of trying to convince people it was important and almost like meeting with ADs or coaches and trying to sell them on the idea that this is a competitive advantage.

For so many years and so often, mental health is sort of combined with mental performance, and they're both.

Mental health is incredibly important, more important than mental performance.

Without your mental health, you can't even get to the mental performance.

But that.

It wasn't really talked about that much.

There wasn't a lot.

There was a handful of programs that had, you know, Dr. Bob Rotella was kind of the pioneer, at least to my knowledge, of working with college hoops.

I think he was with Virginia for many years.

I read all his books.

I was really trying to be like him, but there weren't.

It wasn't like every team had somebody.

So at the beginning, it was a lot of Trying to convince people that this was a value.

And I started out consulting with a local prep school where I lived and I started taking on private clients, so mostly high school players at that point.

And I would meet with them once a week, I would go do talks with teams.

And this was pre Covid, pre zoom.

So everything was in person.

And that was how I started.

The first couple years was just trying to build a business around this idea and it was slow.

I mean there were some months where I was like, what did I do?

Like, I'm not, I'm making no money.

I, I don't know if this is even a real thing.

I think it is, but maybe it isn't.

So had some dark days where I'm like, man, did I make a mistake?

Should I have just stayed in coaching?

Should I have just switched careers?

I was very unsure if this was going to become anything.

So a couple years of that and then it slowly started to pick up steam.

And I think what really propelled it was some high profile athletes talking about it and being more open and vulnerable about working with a mental performance coach.

The challenges that they'd had with anxiety or with the pressure that they felt and how navigating that with a coach actually allowed them to continue their careers.

Michael Phelps comes to my, he had some mental health challenges too, but that was a big one.

You know, Ron Artest in his post game interview after winning with Kobe, like references his sports psychologist.

Little things like that that kind of just happened and allowed gave me some talking points to, you know, have this feel like, oh, this is something that high level athletes are benefiting from.

Let's talk a little bit about some of the specifics that you work with players, teams, coaches with what are some of the big, whether I don't know if issues is the right word or whether it is just certain aspects of mental performance that you feel are common themes that a lot of athletes or coaches or teams deal with in your experience.

So that has shifted a bit over the last couple years with how college basketball has shifted.

But I think there's some themes that come up a lot for me.

Performance anxiety is number one and how we navigate the cognitive and the somatic response to doing something that we really care about that is our full identity.

And this isn't just for basketball players.

This is any person I'm working with and I have private clients who are in other sports.

I have some people that are in the business world.

I've worked with all different kinds of people in the performance space.

But for basketball Specifically at least because that's the sport I played and also felt like it was a big part of my identity.

The weight of what happens in that sport is so catastrophic if it doesn't go well.

And the understanding that if you have a difficult practice or you get coached hard or you're struggling to make shots or whatever's going on for you, the negative thoughts that come with that cognitively are going to be or what's called catastrophizing, where you take the smallest thing and turn it into the worst possible thing and not understanding that you are observing those thoughts and deciding which ones you want to listen to.

What 18 year old knows that.

So you're essentially many, many players become victim to just listening to the negative voice in their head, which we all have, right?

There's, there's varying numbers, but I've seen anywhere from.

Some people have things think it's 30,000 thoughts a day that a person has, right?

And so if you're practicing for three hours and getting coached and this is the most important thing in your life, that's going to be the loudest voice or those voices that you have are going to be the loudest voices.

Now for some people that also translates to a somatic response, meaning that they physically feel that stress or that anxiety to the point where they heart racing, sweating, nauseous.

Now there's a threshold there, right?

There's some of that's natural and exciting and should be there and where's the line, right?

And so deciding where's that line is really important.

And that's something I get to in my individual sessions or setting a barometer for what's expected and what you should feel and what is something that borders on panic or that needs a cognitive skill to navigate.

Now basketball specifically, it's a unique game and I just did a team session today.

There are really specific parts of the game that test us mentally.

And one of the biggest ones is free throw shooting.

And there's some obvious reasons, but if you really get into the weeds with it, if you think about it, it is pretty counterintuitive to the rest of the game.

Like basketball is a flow game.

You may go 10, 12 possessions where there's really no time to think, even if you're open and you have half a second to shoot, whether you're feeling confident or not.

And it goes up, it goes up.

There isn't that much time to hear that, that voice in your head or to feel the somatic response.

But from the second you get fouled to when you go to the line and shoot two free throws can be 40, 60, 70 seconds of stoppage.

Now, in addition to that stoppage, everyone's just staring at you.

So free throw shooting is really about how you navigate attention.

How do you feel about the spotlight being on you?

Do you like attention?

Are you a shy person?

There's all these little things.

So that would be one area where I really get into the weeds with my private clients and my teams.

If you can shoot 75% from the line as a team every time you're getting fouled, that's 1.5 points per possession.

If you're shooting two, that would be the most efficient shot ever.

You're never going to get that in a half court possession.

You're not even going to get that on a layup.

So I try to, for the, for the teams I'm working with or for the players who don't know anything about mental performance, I always try to really connect it to the specificity of basketball.

So it isn't just this general thought that you could hear on TikTok or some corny idea that you're like, oh, I'm never going to use that.

I've found that like some mental performance coaches or some people will just boilerplate it and that's fine, it's not a bad thing.

But to reach a college player or to connect with a team, the work that I do is as specific as possible to, to the experience of the sport.

It's a great answer.

And I'm going to throw a personal experience that I had during college at you and get your advice.

And after you're done giving me this advice, I'm going to wish that you had been there next to me when I went through what I went through.

And I've thrown this at a couple other people and just that have come on the podcast that are in this space and answers have been similar.

But I always love just hearing what somebody would have done or said with me when I was in this experience.

So I'll lay it out for you and then I'll let you, I'll let you take me to the, you know, take me to your office and walk me through the things that I should have done or could have done at the time to, to help me.

So going back to your identity piece, right, As a kid, as a high school player, even as a college player, I would say that the vast majority of my identity was tied up in basketball for sure.

I still have the season free throw shooting record for percentage at my high school.

So I shot, I think, just under 90%.

So I was, quote unquote, known for being a great foul shooter.

Don't shoot, don't file, Mike.

End of the game, Mike's running for the ball.

Mike's stealing the ball from his own teammates to make sure that he's the guy who's getting fouled.

That was the mental toughness piece of that.

Everything was part of my identity.

So I go to college my freshman year, I play sparingly my sophomore year, I start the year, I'm a starter two thirds of the way through the season.

There was not necessarily one thing, but what I remember is, is that we would do a drill at the end of practice where you didn't have to make five free throws, but you had to swish five in a row.

And at some point, I remember it shifted from me trying to just shoot the ball to me trying to aim the ball and get a swish because I didn't want to have to get up at 6 in the morning, which was the punishment to run if you didn't make these five swishes in whatever X amount of time.

And it literally went from me shooting at that point in the season when this happened, I was probably shooting 90% from the line.

And I think I went one for my last 10.

And literally I was in practice scared to death to shoot a free throw.

I literally could not get the ball to the basket.

And the Ben Simmons, the.

Anybody else you want to say, whose career kind of ended, I felt like the yips, whatever.

I just could not.

I could not figure it out.

I changed my routine, I did whatever.

And the whole time, Ari, while this was happening now, again, it's kind of stunning, looking back on it, that I was a 90% free throw shooter who suddenly was shooting air balls and couldn't get the ball anywhere near the basket.

No one, not a teammate, not a coach, not a.

Not a trainer, not anyone came and talked to me about it at all.

And so the season ended, and again, like I said, I ended, I think, 1 for 10 in my last 10 free throws.

And so I leave and over the summer and I go home and I try to figure it out, and I'm just.

It's just me in my head.

My dad, I don't think I really talked about it with him.

It was more like an embarrassment for me.

So I didn't want to talk to anybody about it.

And I changed my routine and I kind of got myself to respectability.

As a junior, I think I shot 76%.

And then as a senior, I shot 82, which to me is a miracle.

I mean, a little.

I might be prouder of that than just about anything I've done.

When I think about just the experience of how low it was when I was at my low point, but I was completely by myself.

I would even thinking about a free throw, like, I could feel my body, like I'd be sitting on a couch and think about me shooting a free throw, and I would tense up and I could feel like just standing there, ready to take a shot.

I could feel my body tense up.

Nothing on anything else.

Not shooting in the game, as you said, free flowing.

I'm just.

I'm not.

I'm not in my own head.

But free throws just became this thing that again, I was.

It was such a part of my identity.

And then suddenly that was just gone and I had no idea what to do, and I was all by myself.

I don't, look, I don't know what happened, but suddenly I've got all this nerves, all this energy that I can't figure out how to channel it in the right way.

What do I do?

What's.

What's the advice?

What do we.

What do you and I talk about?

So what you're described.

First of all, thanks for sharing that with me.

That's a really difficult thing to go through.

And a lot of young players go through something very similar to what you just described.

So the first thing I would probably say to you if you walked into my office or we opened up a call like this is, I wouldn't talk about free throw shooting at all.

I would want to learn about you, and I would want you to get reps. Just verbalizing thoughts and feelings.

Because what you just said in that embarrassment and that like, feeling like, oh, I'm not tough enough, or just the act of holding on to those feelings is a weight you're carrying around.

And if we want, if we just try to, like, go right to them, you're going to probably.

You don't know me at all.

You don't know if you want to.

Who I'm talking.

So that would be my first thing is even in our first couple of sessions, I wouldn't want to talk about free throws at all.

I'd want to hear about your life, your school, your family, talk about the NBA.

Let's Just get, get reps talking just like you would go form shoot before you go into your shooting drill, I would want to just hear you vocalize and verbalize what's going on for you once a couple of those sessions have gone.

Now, again, sometimes this is time sensitive or like there's a game tomorrow.

I always, that can happen.

And you're putting the mental performance coach in a tough spot because you're outside the realm of like the progression.

But if we had time to kill, meaning like we had a couple weeks when I could sense that you were comfortable enough to talk about it, I would want you to describe everything that was going on for you at the line and I'd want to hear you say what you just said, which probably now as an adult is maybe even hard for you to say.

I don't know.

But at 18, what would be very hard for you to say?

And there's probably a lot of emotions that come with that that make you think, I'm a coward, I'm failing, I'm not tough.

And the reality is, is that none of those things are true.

You're just a human being who really cares about basketball.

That's all that's happening right now.

If you were able to verbalize that and get that stuff to the surface, once you felt comfortable with me talking about that, then I would want to get into the weeds and talk to you about how stress and anxiety take an automatic action that our body does and remove our focus from where it needs to be.

The idea being that if you think about walking, when you walk upstairs, you'll trip and trying to reframe those feelings you were having, not as something wrong with you, but a natural progression of being a high level player and then working in cognitive skills in your routine more, more than anything, it would probably be to get you doing very, very specific controlled breathing the second you get fouled.

Okay?

And I've stolen that from Steph Curry.

If you listen to him, if you watch him when he gets fouled or you, you hear him talk about what he does, he's trying to bring his heart rate down.

Like his routine doesn't start with when the ref gives him the ball the second he's fouled, he's starting to do some sort of breathing exercise to bring his heart rate down as low as he can.

Our central nervous system loves symmetry.

So if our heart rate is close to our pace of breath, the fight or flight mechanism shocks that parasympathetic nervous system.

It slows down and you'll feel a sense of calm, you'll feel less in danger.

And you're even describing the somatic response, like the tightness in your chest.

That's a very natural response to anticipating failure.

So that would be.

In a nutshell.

There'd probably be some more avenues we'd go.

But that's what I would do, if you were my client or if I was working with your team, is I'd want you to first get those thoughts and feelings to the surface so you could be honest with what was going on and see that I wasn't judging you for that.

I was actually applauding you for talking about it.

And then once you got there, we then get into the weeds, like, all right, like, this is just about your routine, but, like, what's happening in your body.

My guess is that you maybe were even holding your breath.

I've had some guys say that, like, when they're in a free throw slump or a shooting slump or things are going hard for them, they're actually not breathing at all.

Like, you go to the free throw line, like, almost suffocating.

And that's a natural response to stress, is when you tighten up your chest to protect yourself.

You get no oxygen in your body, and your body does not like that.

So whatever stress or anxiety you're feeling, it gets magnified by the fact you're getting no oxygen.

Makes complete sense.

And it's hard for me to, again, know for sure what.

That I know what it feels like.

Because almost today, again, as an adult, I can take myself back there fairly easily.

Maybe not with the breath, but I certainly can feel that sensation of the tightness.

And I also can think about the fact that I just know that it was such a weight that I carried it with me to class, I carried it with me to dinner.

I carried it with me with my friends.

I carried it with me everywhere that I went.

And there was not a moment where I felt like I could set it down and just do anything.

It was just a constant thought of, how am I going to fix this?

Why is this not working?

This is something that I've always been able to do, and now suddenly I can't do it.

And I think that's.

Again, this is.

I guess I look at it right, as sort of an extreme example of sort of what we're talking about when we're talking about mental performance and being able to maximize what you can do with your mind, to be able to put yourself in the right frame, to be able to perform at your best.

And this is kind of Almost like again not the opposite.

But you're at, I'm at a really low point in this one specific part of my game and then I've got to figure out how to claw my way out of it.

And like I said, it was just when I look back on it now and I think about the resources that you yourself are providing or that lots of schools coaching staffs have people who perform this role.

And then here I was just like, it wasn't like it was hit.

Like everybody could see what was happening at least outside.

Maybe they couldn't see what was going on inside, but they're certainly looking at this guy shooting 90% now.

He's can't even hit the rim in practice.

What, what can we do?

There's got to be something and like I said to, to kind of have figured and solve that out, even though I never solved it to the point where I got back to where I was before that I'm always say that to get back to be and be able to shoot 80 plus percent.

It's like when I look at like it ruined guys careers that guys were completely afraid to ever do anything or get followed.

And so just one of those things that I'm thankful for, for whatever reason, I was able to claw my way out of it to some degree.

So just again one of those things that I never thought I would experience and honestly never really talked about it until I had the podcast and I had a couple of sports psychologists on and I'm like, I'm just curious what people would say and I think your point of getting to know somebody, talking about it, getting feel comfortable being able to acknowledge it and then figuring out hey what, what can we do to make this better?

I think that's always a key, you know, that's always a key thing to, to figuring it out.

So I, I appreciate your, I appreciate your answer and taking the time to indulge me in my, in my trip down, in my trip down, down memory lane.

Let's, let's shift it to the idea of just helping an athlete to get the best out of themselves, to tap into the power of their mind to help them perform better.

What are some things that athletes can do to prime themselves mentally, to get to the point where they're performing at their best, where maybe they're not dealing with a slump, they're not playing poorly, they just want to maximize what they can do.

From a mental standpoint, how do you approach those kinds of conversations?

So it's a really important thing to talk about and the earlier we talk about it, the better.

I think that because the mind and the mind body connection is not something we can see.

It's not like we go in the weight room and lift for six months and we can physically see that we're in better shape.

Or you work on your shot for six months now you're making more shots.

The mind is so elusive and confusing and it's always going to be a moving target.

I say this so often to my, my athletes is if you think you found it, the second you think you found it, you probably will lose it again.

So you have to, you have to come to it with the idea that I'm going to train my mind like I trained my body and I'm not going to try and find this like perfect perspective.

I'm going to maintain psychological flexibility that I can shift and adjust as my career and life changes.

But one of the most, I think, easiest places to start is just really thinking about pre performance routines.

And the value of not in the free throw routine is the most obvious one.

Everybody has a routine that they do.

Anyone that's a serious player has a routine.

Well, there's a reason for that is that when you need to do something under duress or under pressure, the mind likes the comfort of doing something that's done over and over again.

And that applies to pre game, that applies to halftime, that applies to post game, that applies to practice.

So priming your mind, warming your mind up for what it's about to do, even if you're not going to meet with a coach or you're not going to use different mental skills or cognitive skills.

I think just thinking about the idea that pre performance routines are an essential piece of strengthening your mindset, preparing your mind for what it's about to do next.

You can't just roll up to the game, not stretch and play.

So your mind is the same way if you.

And again, there's some flexibility there because we're all different.

Meaning for me if my personality and my character is that I'm a very excited, anxious, wound up person, I might need to calm my mind before a game.

So I've got to think of ways how do I slow down my thinking to and manage my thoughts and emotions so my first shot doesn't fly over the backboard.

There are other personality types who are more reserved and calm and introverted.

They may need to activate their system with their routine.

So it isn't just a boilerplate do X, Y and Z.

It's knowing your personality, understanding your triggers and the things about you that are hard and then forming these routines to then prepare your mind for playing or for whatever it is you have to do.

My, this is the, my whole coaching philosophy really.

You know, my initials are asm, but for my business purposes it stands for awareness, strategy, mastery.

That's my coaching philosophy.

With each app that I work with, we're going to start with that self awareness and really do a self scout.

And we do this and we watch film all the time, right?

Every game we play with every team we're working with, we're watching 20 minutes of clips on how do we guard this, how do we do this?

Well, each of us are the same.

We need a self scout on how we approach hard things, how do we navigate our role changing, how do we navigate transferring to a new school, all the things that come with being a basketball player.

So that's the thing I would say to start is to really think about how am I preparing my mind for what's next.

And the best way to do that is with pre performance routines and not just for a free throw.

How many athletes that you work with, and I don't know if you want to throw a percentage on it or just anecdotally answer the question, but how many athletes are aware of what you just talked about in terms of their style of preparation?

How many athletes have consciously thought about, hey, I want to do this because it helps me to be in the best frame of mind.

I mean, obviously there are some players that I like listening to music or there's the, the guy who, right, has his head down in the locker and he's, he's thinking it through.

And then there's the other guys that want to have it loud and boisterous and they want to be talking those kinds of things, but those feel like, at least to me, more things that I'm just like, that's just what I'm doing.

I'm not necessarily consciously thinking that that's helping me to prepare, to be at my best.

So when you talk to athletes, do they, are they already aware that of some of those things in terms of their style of preparation or most athletes kind of like when you bring that to them, they're like, oh man, I never really even thought about that.

So the, it's probably difficult to put a percentage on it.

But I will say this, it doesn't always mean changing or adding things.

There are many players who come to work with me who are already doing like 90% of what I just said, but they don't Even realize that it's a pre performance ret routine.

So sometimes the answer is to be aware of what I'm already doing and why I'm doing it right.

Sometimes we just subconsciously start doing things that help us perform better because it feels right.

So I would say there's probably 10% of people I come, come across who are like locked in on that already.

They've either had like a mental coach when they were young, they're interested in the mind in the mental game.

So they've read some books, they've.

They're up on it themselves.

The other 90% I have to coach, coach them to either understanding what they're already doing and tweaking it to make it work for them, or starting from scratch and saying, okay, like, clearly what we're doing now isn't working.

Let's, let's hit the reset button and figure out how do we get your pregame routine or your halftime routine into a functional space for you.

So that, that's, that's, it's probably 9 out of 10 people don't have, don't have, have what they need or don't even realize what they're doing.

And then the next iteration that I would say is taking those, those routines or the things that we're formulating and the things that we're bringing to the surface and then applying them to other parts of basketball.

Most notably, how do we come back from a mistake?

That's the next phase.

Like, once we have those routines set, how do we then everyone always says next play, next play.

But very few people tell you how to move on to the next play.

They just say next play.

And then it's up to the athlete to figure out, well, how do I get to the next play?

I feel like, I feel like so much emotion.

I could, I could cry or I could fall over, or I'm feeling anger or frustration or all these things.

So that's the next iteration is once we've got that baseline of awareness to apply it to other parts of the game that are hard for them or the landmine, so to speak, of basketball.

The two fouls in the first half, thinking you're starting and you get there and then your name's not on the board or getting, you know, screamed at in a really negative way, which happens all the time and is part of the game.

A little ankle, you tweak your ankle, but you're not hurt, you're not injured, but it hurts.

All these little things.

So the beginning is the pre performance routines and Bringing the self awareness to the surface.

Once we have that awareness, how do we sprinkle it into these little parts of the game that could deter your focus or could deter your plan?

And what do you have in your tool belt for that?

You know, that ability to bounce back, right, from a mistake, I think is critical in basketball.

The one thing that you can say about it is because it moves so quickly, it does almost force you to, whether you consciously or.

Or subconsciously do it, it forces you to kind of go to the next play.

Because if you don't, very quickly, one mistake becomes two, becomes three becomes four if you don't get on to the next thing.

And so I would guess that talking it through and having a more, I don't know, formal is the right word, but just having a way of thinking about getting to that next play and talking it through with someone like you, to be able to have an understanding of this is what I need to do to get to that next play.

I can see again where that's tremendously valuable.

It's just a quick, you know, again, there's all different types of things that people do to be able to, to get to that from a mental standpoint, but you can see the value in that for sure.

And helping somebody to improve their performance.

I think the other thing that always is interesting to me, and I think it's probably dives a little bit into the mental health side of it too.

But we often hear right of athletes who.

And again, this goes across sports, not just basketball, but as you said, the performance in a game, in a practice, in a stretch of games, is so tied up in who we are, especially as young people, right.

As a high school athlete, as a college athlete, we don't have this long list of career accomplishments that we can look at.

We don't have our spouse, our kids, all those things that maybe we have when we're an adult, that if we have a bad day at work, we don't just evaluate, oh, I'm a terrible marketing account, you know, marketing account guy.

I still have all these other things that are positive.

But a lot of times when we're athletes in high school and college, like everything that is about us has been from the time we were younger is tied up in who we are as a basketball player or an athlete.

So when you run into a situation like that where a player is not performing as well as they would like and it starts to bleed into their regular life and they start to feel down and they're not, then they're not Giving their best effort in class or they're having trouble with friends or relationships.

How do you sort of disassociate that identity as a greater person with their identity as an athlete?

Well, there's always going to be some overlap in what you're describing with the mental performance and the mental health and just the basic well being of a person.

So I'm really careful with anyone I'm working with to set really specific boundaries before we get started around what my work is, what I'm credentialed to do and what I'm not.

And there are many cases where I will stop a session or refer somebody to an academic advisor or refer them to a licensed therapist who if something comes up in one of our sessions or something is to my attention, I'll never compromise that person's trust.

I'll always run it by them first, of course.

But I think that's a big thing in the mental performance world is to be able to have your radar up for when.

Because anything can come up in these sessions.

Anybody, anything.

So to make sure you're not, here's what I'm credentialed to do, here's what I'm not.

And having the, your own ability to self regulate and say, okay, this isn't for me to help you with and that's okay.

Now sometimes those conversations are needed right where it's not a mental health challenge, it's not a clinical disorder, it's not something that could be diagnosed, but your pride or your ego is severely hit or in the last, I don't know, 10 years or so.

With the emergence of social media and Instagram and Nil and branding, we have most athletes, if not all, are putting out their entire social network both either virtual or real things they're going to do before they've done them.

Meaning this is no judgment, like it's all great and people do what they want to do.

But having a full photo shoot of yourself in uniform before you've played a game and all of these things that, like I get it from a promotional standpoint and followers and monetizing, that's all great.

But basketball and any sport is you got to go out and do it on the court.

So if you're saying you're going to do all these things and then you don't do them, that is a very difficult place to be.

You're not just navigating that you aren't playing as much or playing as well.

But now you have to confirm very publicly that everything you said you were going to do, you're not doing.

So a very natural part of playing basketball is failing.

Right.

There's a small percentage of people who are talented enough as freshmen or first years and they go to the right level and based on the roster dynamics or whatever, they get to play.

Not the case for most people right now.

I know we're in a different era now where there's people are transferring schools and everything's changing.

But even then, like when you go to a new place to just expect yourself to just pick everything up, all the terminology, all the different ways we play, like continuity and connection of a team takes time and there's a rhythm to great teams and it's very hard to just recreate that rhythm with a bunch of talent.

Like there's many examples of that at the highest levels of the most talented team doesn't win.

So I think that's why I think giving my athletes some context about what they're trying to do and the world that they're in.

So talking about social media, talking about the landscape, if you're 18 right now, you don't know any different.

You haven't seen any other way to exist in college basketball or pro basketball.

So I'm not always in the problem solving business.

I think I'm sometimes in the.

Let's be honest and real about what the environment that we're in.

If you post on social media that you're going to average 20 points a game and you don't average 20 points a game, you're going to feel a certain kind of way about that.

You're not going to be.

Feel as proud, you're not going to feel as excited to go back home for Christmas or whatever it is.

And none of those feelings are an indication that you're failing.

You're actually probably doing great, but it feels like you're failing.

So that's where I go with it.

Is number one, always having my radar up for when is this outside the realm of what I'm supposed to be doing.

And I always will put those expectations or parameters on it.

And then also being open to those more general conversations that are context and environmental and just being.

Having a conversation of like, okay, this is where we're at.

There isn't maybe a mental skill or a cognitive challenge going on here.

We just got to talk about these dynamics and be really honest about what's going on for you.

And sometimes the clarity of that can take away the pressure of just understanding that like the, the negative self talk and what your mind is telling you is not necessarily the clearest picture.

It might actually be dead wrong.

That's a really great point and I think it's one that I always go back to.

I think in any profession, in anything that you do, I think the ability to be self aware of what's going on I think is always helpful.

Especially if you have someone on the outside of your mind that you can talk to that can help you to become more self aware of things that are going on that may feel devastating on the inside, may feel incredibly crushing.

And yet when you look at it, you're like, hey, it's just this.

And there's all these other things, there's 99% of the game or your life or whatever that are going great.

And let's figure out how we can help with this one little aspect.

And you know, you talked about social media.

I can't even imagine at this point being a college athlete in the, in the social media era and having to deal with just that on top of again, your own self critique, the critique of your coaching staff, your teammates, maybe a couple friends that you talk to after a game, let alone your 15,000 followers or your 20,000 followers or whatever it may be that you have to then somehow answer to them.

It's just a whole nother thing that, as you said, an 18 year old doesn't know any better because that's all that they've ever been in.

For me, I've never been in that.

I can't really imagine what that's like to have that additional pressure compounded on top of what I already felt back when I was playing.

And so it's just again, I think that the takeaway that I get, Ari, when I talk to you or to another person in this space is just the overwhelming need for this profession to be able to help athletes to function at their best.

Because I think that most athletes are in some way, shape or form kind of stuck in their own head and they just need a way to be able to get some of those thoughts out to get the faucet flowing.

And when you get the faucet flowing, I think it allows you then to kind of clear out some of the sludge and then get yourself back to a place where A, you can perform better and B, you can feel better about what it is that you're doing on a day to day basis.

But it's who I just again think back to where we were 20, 30 years ago before this existed.

And I just think there's such a need for it again with Nil and the transfer and the money and all the things that are coming at kids way, way faster than they did and transferring high schools and jumping from AAU team to AAU team and just there's a million different things that kids face.

That man, to be able to have somebody there as a resource.

The Valley.

The value.

The value is huge, let's put it that way.

That's.

That's the way I always, that's the way I always come away from the conversations going I.

As you and I talked in our pre.

In our pre.

Phone call.

Right.

The number of people that tell you, I wish I had this when I was playing.

I.

You can add me to the list of I wish I had this when I was playing because I think the value of it would be, would be tremendous.

Well, that's well said.

And I think my hope is that people continue to engage with this work and as things shift and change rapidly, that we give young athletes or any athletes the space to investigate this and see if the work would be valuable for them or how it could fit into their careers.

The idea of being just your story about free throw shooting, there are many different iterations of that where people feel that they just can't even verbalize what's going on for them.

And thinking about the mind like we think about the body, training the mind like we train the body, the highest levels of basketball, these are skills that are, that are being coached and taught and talked about in the same breath as everything else.

And the more that young athletes understand that and look at it not as, oh, I'm weak or I need to fix something that like, that's not it at all.

What this is, is a way to sharpen your actual ability to play and over a long enough timeline, really calcify some of these skills where they just become reflexes like you don't even think about.

This is just how you play.

And right.

Once you do that mentally now you're at a place where you still need coaching and reinforcement and connection, but you're self fun, you're self regulating a lot better.

And that's when it becomes.

If we had, if we had a lot of young athletes in that space or learning that early, who knows how, how that might look in five or ten years.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I do think that it's needed and I do think there are a lot of athletes that are feeling like they're on an island and it's hard to talk to people even today.

Right.

There's still kind of.

Yeah, that.

That toughness piece of.

Right.

I can.

I can get through it.

I can get through it on my own.

And I think the faster we get away from that and the more we realize that getting ourselves out of our own head is going to be.

Is going to be the best way to do it.

So.

All right, final two, part question,.

Part.

One, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

And the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every day, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge first, and then your biggest joy?

So I think the biggest challenge for me is probably something that a lot of college coaches are also feeling, is that this sport that I've grown to love is almost unrecognizable now.

And the things that drew me to it and the things I love about it, which are connection, growing together as a team, helping people get through the 18 to 22 years of their lives, that has, as beautiful as that still is because of the influx of money and which, of course, everyone should earn what they're worth.

I'm all for that.

But it has now changed the landscape of this really special thing.

So that's my biggest challenge, is being able to adjust myself.

Right.

Like, I'm at a point in my career where it's been the same for a while, and now all of a sudden I blink.

And in.

In two years, it's completely changed.

So in my work with teams, I've had to adjust how I work with teams.

I've had to work with head coaches on, okay, how are we going to get the most value and impact out of this service?

It's not what it was.

Trust is not what it was.

A lot of these people don't know who I am.

Yeah.

That I would say would be my biggest challenge, would be just continuing to adjust to this changing landscape and to realize that it's changing a lot of it for the better.

And how do we, as coaches, as people that are in support roles, how do we adjust with it and still have the most impact?

Second part, most biggest joy.

The greatest joy for me in this work is seeing somebody conquer a challenge, whatever that challenge is for them.

And sometimes in basketball, it's really subtle.

And this coming season, you know, I'm working with.

Starting to work with teams this July, and with my private clients, we're getting ready for their next season.

I don't know what challenges they're going to conquer next season.

And I always look forward to that.

That I'll have a moment where a player I'm working with will go 10 for 10 from the line or, or will do something that clearly is through their mental work or they'll handle adversity in a way that doesn't phase them.

And they'll say to me after that was great, like I don't know what those moments are going to be.

And sometimes they're few and far between.

You never know when it's going to hit you.

But as a coach, as someone who just has spent my whole career trying to be present for others and help them grow, I always look forward to those little moments where somebody hits that next phase of their own development and then they see it and I see it and it's just that's as special as it gets to me.

And that's sort of my purpose in this work is to be a guide for others to find that level of clarity or growth.

Well said.

And I think it sums up the conversation that we just spent an hour and 15 minutes talking through a lot of those points that you just made in that final just capture of of what brings you joy.

Before we wrap up, I want to give you a chance to share how can people connect with you?

Find out more about what you're doing.

Share, email, social media, website, whatever you feel comfortable with.

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

Sure.

Well, thanks so much for having me.

This was great conversation.

I'm on Instagram at Ari Miller CMPC.

My website is ASM coach.com so I would say those are the two ways to connect with me.

So I'll say that again.

Instagram is Ari Miller CMPC and my website is ASM coach.com.

Ari, we'll get all that in the show Notes.

I can't thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us.

Really appreciate it.

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

Thanks.

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