The next time you drive your sons and daughters into their games and see them fall in love with their phone, Larissa Mills hopes you remember something.
“The brain takes 22 minutes to refocus,” she tells USA Today Sports. “We waste less innings, periods, half of our decision-making skills. So why didn’t you care?
We are very focused on preparing our kids to play through relentless practice and personal training outside our team. But do we underestimate the power to develop what is within them?
Mills will oversee the London-based Mental Game Academy, based in Ontario. She holds degrees in sociology, psychology and education. She is also a mother of three, mined the spiritual aspects of thousands of athletes from young people through occupational levels in the US and Canada.
And she paid attention to you.
“Our kids call for 4-8-12 hours a day,” she says. “When are they learning psychological skills? They aren’t, their parents call four to nine hours a day. So when are their parents connected? When are their children self-sufficient? Are they learning identity? When are they learning how to deal with it and trying not to get angry or hit people?
“I saw a hockey dad get off the ice and hit two references for a 14-year-old, and I saw a fight in the arena two weeks ago.”
The Mental Game Academy helps athletes raise emotional and social awareness and helps them understand how much stock they have in the process.
“The phone is one issue,” she says. “Parents who don’t teach mental skills are other issues.”
“Mental Games” can give anyone an advantage regardless of age or exercise level. In some cases, you can drive you to high levels of university and professional achievements. For young athletes, it can unlock your potential completely.
“People say kids have changed,” says Mills. “No, kids haven’t changed. We’ve reduced the standard. Let’s allow reduced behavioral issues to increase our level of performance.”
She offers five ways that can help child athletes develop powerful psychological games.
“Dopamine makes us dope.”
Create a phone routine to calm our nervous system and give us confidence.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that acts as a chemical messenger between neurons and the rest of the brain. According to the Cleveland Clinic, you’ll be releasing a large amount of dopamine through experiences that make your body enjoyable. They can also stimulate addictive habits.
“Dopamine slows us down and makes us feel like our brains are in the oil,” says Mills.
Telephone use can cause a surge in dopamine and cortisol, the hormones released by the adrenal glands, resulting in lower confidence and lower decision-making.
Mills looks at his phone before the game and compares eating heavy Canadian delicacy of fries, cheese curds and brown gravy.
“It’s the same thing as telling you something negative about your brain or watching a phone call before a game or practice,” she says. “You’re destroying your nervous system. …The symptoms of telephone addiction are almost the same as those of anxiety.”
The children touched the phone and Mills decided to take about 176 times per day through resources from the US, Canada, the UK and Australia.
We cannot completely stop using our cell phones, a line of communication with our children. Instead, choose several times a day. In a short amount of time, you can return the phone and answer text messages.
I clean up the phone and interact with my kids for at least an hour a day. Share your meal or go outside.
“I want you to control your phone,” Mills said. “Don’t let the phone control you. Your brain will become burnout if it’s 176 times a day.
“Children need to be bored and play. Our brains aren’t designed to simply be on technology. They are designed to talk and walk, so psychologically, We are hindering development.”
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Mills bans athletes who care about using their phones two hours before games or practice, or an hour before bedtime.
How do phone calls and social media affect performance?
“It just takes it,” she says.
Within 30 seconds of scrolling, our brains say we can automatically rewire what we think is a fun experience for the negative.
“Social media allows us to compare ourselves to everyone else online,” she says. “This is automatic. It’s called a defense mechanism. So, all of a sudden, “I’m not fast enough, I’m not good enough, I’m not good enough, my stats aren’t good enough. Why he Are the reels getting more of what you like than mine?” It starts this spiral-out feeling of control that the kids don’t have a stopper. ”
She hears from athletes who help train harder, but help them become more social, by reducing their phone times to less than two hours a day. School is also easy.
“Of course, cognitive processing is running three times faster than last week,” says Mills. “My volleyball coach called me yesterday and said, “Larissa, I don’t know what you did, but they’re really offensive now.”
“Increasing confidence will take over aggression and fearlessness.”
“I’m a Power”: Teaching young athletes effective self-talk
When we sit alone on a golf course or in a dugout, it can be difficult to stay mentally strong. We’ll pass through our minds before we take the next stroke or the next pitch promotes our performance.
Use your time to plan your attack. Remember when you actually sink the same putt. Visualize it to hit by plunging an external pitch into the right field, or drive inside to the field gap in the center of the left.
Watch as you throw all your pitches in the exact place you want.
“When they’re ready, these kids are killing it,” says Mills. “Children who are on their phones in the dugout will quickly come back and make mistakes. Their brains become very, very unsettling.”
We know that even a small success can boost your children’s confidence. Mills can ask athletes to create personal mantras and elevate them.
Have your younger kids, or your Little League team and actually say loudly. With repeated repetition, it can lead to cognitive flows during play.
“No one can get inside my head.”
For athletes to play, they must stop negative self-talk. It starts with what they hear from the parents of the bystander.
When we feel negative thoughts creeping up from our teammates trying to get edges during a tryout or from our opponents trying to rattle us in the game, we are responsible for dodging those thoughts. Be intentional and powerful about it.
“No one can get into my head,” we can tell ourselves. “You guys will keep hell from my head.”
Social media can manufacture negativity, even NHL players.
“Why are you looking online after your game?” Mills sometimes has to tell her high-level athletes. “You make $10 million a year. Don’t compare yourself. And all these idiots that you want to judge you will judge you, and they have no place to judge you. The only people who see you for feedback are you and your coach. That’s it. The rest of the world doesn’t matter.”
But what if our parents are the voices of those ideas? About 60% of children who came to see Mills and her peers say their parents have a negative effect on their sport.
“I couldn’t believe the amount of parents coaching from the bystanders, ruining the child’s experience,” she says. “They can’t hear you. If they hear you, what you actually do is to interfere with them.
“Now my brain is yellow at the traffic lights and it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m really worried about Mom and Dad playing me.” Our instinct to pass the ball, kick the ball, shoot the ball, if we follow (them) it is possible to perform better than our coaches and parents think about what they want from us. It will be more sexual. ”
When we yell at them they get shut down even more. Instead, stick to confidence.
“When parents hear this conversation, the relationship usually improves between the parent and child,” says Mills.
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Mills provides the lifting and power of teens who spent more than 18,000 hours on their mobile phones by the age of 16.
“Kids today can’t get a coach because they have six seconds of attention,” she says. “They don’t know how to track them. They don’t know how to get feedback. They think criticism and feedback are screaming. They don’t. Coaches have problems. D- You cannot use Word or C-word. This is discipline or consequence.”
Adopting a telephone regime for your child is the first step. Next, you need to encourage people to talk to others in real time. Talk to them to the center and line them up next to the ice, although they may not know much about it. We will waving and talking to the other person or judge.
Even if you voiced against it from the bleachers, you’ll be able to accept constructive criticism from your coach.
“There are always weaknesses in teams,” says Mills, who coaches volleyball. “Who are you going offline or who’s going to go to the horse collar? Don’t feed them. You have to be mentally strong and be able to see it all. But many kids just become bait and don’t think about the team. And they get asked for a penalty.”
As Mills says, we need to be offensive as athletes, but we naturally come when we are more calm.
When we control ourselves, we not only help our teammates, but also set personal boundaries that can carry us throughout our lives.
Jeff Nelligan, father of three sons and author of a book on sports parenting, a guest on Mills’ podcast, says this is perhaps her most moving lesson.
“She’s like an evangelist to talk about cultivating a steadfast young man with following everything,” he says.
(This story has been updated to add new information.)
Coach Steve Borelli has been an editor and writer for USA Today since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are currently sports parents for two high school students. His columns are posted weekly. Click here for more information about his past columns.
Do you have a question for Coach Steve who wants to answer in the column? Email him to sborelli@usatoday.com