The Grind Isn’t Everything: Why "Grind It Out" Mentality Doesn't Work for Youth Athletes

What if working harder isn't the key to athletic success? Join us on HansenAthletics Radio as we challenge the "grind it out" mentality prevalent in team sports and training. Through our discussion, you'll learn why strategic and efficient training methods may lead to more significant achievements and well-being than sheer hard work. We critique the cultural fixation on hustle and grit, proposing a more balanced approach that integrates recovery, nutrition, and enjoyment to prevent burnout and injuries. By examining the real experiences of youth athletes, we aim to promote a sustainable path to success where skill development and recovery are prioritized.

Discover how athletes can thrive with a balanced training schedule that values mental and physical sustainability. We shed light on the vital role parents and coaches play in guiding middle and high school athletes, teaching them that more work doesn’t always equate to better results. Hear our insights on the importance of mindfulness in sports, reflecting on personal experiences to optimize performance while maintaining health. We welcome your thoughts and engagement on social media, hoping our conversation inspires a reevaluation of training practices and helps you or the athletes in your life on their journey to success.

Chapters

• 0:27 The Grind It Out Mentality Debunked
• 13:48 Balanced Approach to Sports Development
• 19:45 Optimizing Sports Performance Through Mindfulness

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

All right, guys, what is up? Welcome to another episode of Hanson Athletics Radio. Today we're going to talk about the grind it out mentality, particularly in team sports or in training. This has been a topic that's been on my mind, you know, for the last five, six years, just working more in depth with youth athletes, high school athletes, college athletes and some of the mentality that is behind that and what goes into sport. So today we're going to talk about some of my thoughts on the grinded out mentality, the old school mentality and kind of unpack. You know that really isn't the most effective way to train your athletes and actually may hinder their performance in sport. So let's get into why grind it out mentality really just doesn't cut it and start with segment one, which is going to be the grind it out mentality explained. It's important to define it out or define the grind it out mentality. It's typically the mindset of, you know, working harder, longer, pushing through obstacles without regard for strategy or efficiency. So, thinking about the coach, that's okay, we're going to. You know, we lost today, so we're going to run more tomorrow. We look like we were out of shape, so we're going to practice for three or four hours instead of an hour and a half, two hours. So just dipping into.

Speaker 1: 1:59

The only way to make improvements in sport is to do more and more and more and more. It's even prevalent in fitness, right, when you look at social media nowadays, you look at, you know, some of the influence that CrossFit's brought. I quickly want to say I like what CrossFit has done in terms of getting people in better shape, learning how to use a barbell. There's so many positive things with CrossFit. You know, the main problem when it relates to this podcast is the idea that doing more and more and more is better for the typical individual or most athletes and we see it all the time right, the more, more, more.

Speaker 1: 2:45

So if you have a youth athlete, if you are a youth athlete listening to this or you are even related to a youth athlete, if you are a youth athlete listening to this or you are even related to a youth athlete, you've probably heard some kind of dramatic story or got insight from the athlete on. You know they've had examples or experiences where you know they've had those three-hour practices. They've, you know, been punished with uh fitness to solve a performance problem. Right, and part of the problem is it's popular culture on social media. Um, there's been some famous athletes that have talked about that. Um, but again, I would just I would challenge you to question when, when a really high level athlete talks about the grinded-out mentality, you know, potentially they just had the genetics, the situation and the gifts to be successful in the sport regardless and if anything, it actually might have lowered their performance, even though their performance was so high that it made them an elite athlete. You know, there's an appeal to it in terms of it looks tough, feels tough and it's kind of an easy fallback instead of kind of diving deeper into why what you're doing isn't working. And then there's just kind of that cultural obsession with the hustle, the grit or just doing the work right.

Speaker 1: 4:12

So jumping into segment two, performance in team sports is not linear. There's a fallacy that work equals results. So the more effort you put in, the better outcomes you get, which isn't necessarily true, right. So better work and having the ability to, you know, recover from that work, come back and do it again at a high intensity, is important. And in sport, skill, so when we talk about, you know, fitness realm versus sport, sport performance relies heavily on the actual sport skills as well. So there's there's definitely a disconnect between you know, just working harder and your actual performance on the field. Okay, so you might be the fittest, you might do the most work, but you know, if an athlete has spent a little bit more time on skill or just inherently they're better at shooting basketball, you know, everything just kind of clicks for them. With that, they might actually still perform much better on the field, even though they're not working as or on the court as hard as you are, right.

Speaker 1: 5:22

So there needs to be that understanding of you. Know, when we assess a team on a loss or unsuccessful season, did that stem from they weren't in good enough shape or did that stem from they couldn't get the ball through the hoop enough times? And those are important questions to ask yourself as well. As are they enjoying being there or is it getting so grueling that they aren't enjoying the sport and they borderline hate the sport? You're never going to get really, really good effort, at least for a long duration of time or for a full season, out of athletes that hate showing up for the sport because of the coaching or how much work you're doing, whatnot. And there needs to be a balance, right, because the more effort you put in, the more fatigue it's going to cause a higher risk of injury. And if there aren't the right focus on recovery protocols or giving these athletes time off, it's a very, very, very slippery slope. And I would say, after working with thousands of youth athletes for the last decade plus, most of them are not focused on recovery, many are not eating well, many are not sleeping as much as they need to, and even down to hydration, there's a lot of athletes that aren't even drinking a lot of water. So luckily they're young, puberty. It's amazing. They can do a lot of volume and get back to a baseline.

Speaker 1: 6:50

But when it comes to talking about performance or high performing athlete, if you don't start to get those things in place, you're not going to be as successful as you could be and potentially, you know, hate the endeavor by the end of it anyway. Um, so that's, that's one way to kind of think about. Like. You know that performance is not linear. Um, there's a, there's, it's multifaceted. So when we talk about performance in sport, um, it's really hard to just draw a straight line on what's going to make you better at sport. Uh, it comes there, you know, there's talent, there's timing. Uh, mental focus, teamwork there's a lot of different things that go into sport performance and therefore you can't just factor out or factor in that the only way that you're going to start winning games is to work harder. Again, I'd say, work smarter, right? Um, as well as you know, performance peaking right.

Speaker 1: 7:50

So I see this mistake a lot, a lot of coaches. I try to get their athletes in the best shape put that in parentheses for those not watching the video the best shape equaling the best performance and also they try to do that before the very first game. So they'll crush these athletes early in the preseason, before the first games, and then they'll get to the games and in the coach's mind, they need to be in shape for that game. The problem is, if you understand human performance and physiology, they can't be peaked out for an entire season. So you're risking peaking them early and then actually having performance declines as you get later into the season, which ideally is the opposite, right. So you come in. You're not quite in good enough shape. Through playing your sport, through the right training methods, through practice, by the end of the season you're in the best shape and performing the best so that you can win the games that matter. The district play the state championships, the tournament runs, all those different things.

Speaker 1: 9:02

Let's talk a little bit about the cost. So segment three, the cost of the grinded out mentality. First off, I see it. You, I mean, if you're outside of the realm it might sound crazy, but there's a lot of burnout and physical toll. I see a lot of athletes that don't enjoy their sport, are burnt out on it, had dreams of playing college when they were younger and now really don't even want to pursue that, just because of how overwhelming the experience has been and that overworking part of it has a huge impact on the mental health and your physical performance.

Speaker 1: 9:34

You know I won't name names, but you know I won't name names, but you know we have three or four athletes right now that you know just started into a sport into the season, rolled into it from another sport. So not only that, they've been going hard for pretty much all year round. If you have a side note, if you have athletes that play you you know, club soccer, club basketball it's very, very, very easy to slide into this situation where athletes are in season all year round. Um, but anyway, back to these athletes. They literally just play their first game and they're already sick of the sport and want to quit. So with that mentality, obviously we try to, you know, shed some positive light on it, try to get them excited to play their sport.

Speaker 1: 10:21

I feel like that's part of our role as strength and conditioning coach is to keep them mentally prepared for sport as well. But it is a challenge because these athletes are already not enjoying it. So that's something that, as a coach, sport coach you need to be paying attention to the morale of the team. That's something that, as a coach, a sport coach you need to be paying attention to the morale of the team. More work when things are kind of falling apart at that morale level with your squad, more work is not going to fix that.

Speaker 1: 10:51

Second part would be undervaluing rest and recovery. So there needs to be an emphasis on strategic rest and recovery and mental downtime. So, as a sport coach, looking into okay, I've got all my periods of where we're going to work, but how am I going to build in recovery and give these athletes an opportunity to recover not only physically but mentally and stay excited about the season? Um, there also needs to be discussions constantly and reminding that about recovery techniques. So sleep, nutrition, mindfulness, um, you know, mode to different modalities that they can use, uh, contrast, bathing, whatever, right. So there's a lot of education that can occur, um, teaching these athletes, and it needs to be valued, because if you're not valuing, you're just valuing the work and you're not having any conversations about rest and recovery. So, again, these youth athletes are really impressionable and they will fall into the mindset of just work, work, work.

Speaker 1: 11:54

And then you run into the you know the burnout, the undervaluing of rest and recovery, and it starts to disrupt the team, the cohesion, the morale that they have as a group. And you can also put a focus on the wrong aspect in terms of team goals when it comes to if it becomes competition between your athletes. You know who can work the hardest. Players are just going to spend their time trying to outshine or work harder than the other one, which can again lead to early burnout or injury as the season gets moving.

Speaker 1: 12:37

Second four we'll kind of jump into what I would call a better approach, smart, strategic work. So, again, we're focused on quality over quantity, working smarter, not harder. You've probably heard these before. We're looking for efficiency, technique and a focus on specific needs of your team. So the set principle you know where you're, you're reverse engineering. You know the issues that your team has with your unique collective of athletes Okay, where are they the weakest? And making sure that you're touching on each one of those things and making the most progress you can. You know where they're weak as well as solidifying where they're strong. Um, next would be kind of understanding your team chemistry and communication, building trust, helping athletes understand their roles on the team and syncing them up with other teammates so that they you know everybody kind of understands where they fall, what, what cog they are within the system and how each role is important and working together is going to help them build that outcome that you're looking for.

Speaker 1: 13:48

Lastly, within the better approach is mental and physical sustainability. You know creating that balance. Like I said about pushing hard, taking breaks, so you got to rest as hard as you train. You got to build that into your schedule as a sport coach. Um, you know whether that's giving them. You know a day, an high and low day, so it's super easy example, not going to fit every situation, but you know you come in and one day of practice you have more work and the athletes are prepared for it. They know that's going to be the demand. And then the next day is more of a skill day where they're getting up more shots, they're working on layups maybe you know situational drills where it's more of a recovery mode but they're going through the motions of getting their shots up and working on their skill development. And this is going to allow for a focus on long-term growth of the athlete, which, again, if you kind of 10,000-foot view middle school and high school should be all about long-term growth, right, and that should be prioritized over short-term intensity. That situation might change if you then step into a high-performing college basketball team that is trying to win a national championship, or you're a professional, and now it's not an emphasis on long-term growth, it's an emphasis on winning and a specific outcome. That's the difference. So it's easy, I think, for middle school and high school athletes to get caught up in this mentality. They see from afar of that short-term intensity when really that doesn't fit the situation that they're in or where they're at in their development journey.

Speaker 1: 15:38

So the next segment would be real-world applications and takeaways. So if you're listening to this episode, you can start to formulate some ideas or plans For athletes. It's how to have an understanding or assess when you're working too hard or if you're working smart, to pay attention to this. But number one is going to be how you feel, right, so, being in tune with your body, how you're feeling. Do you have energy? Are you able to, you know, still go to school and put some focus in there? Uh, how much pain are you in, right? So if you have a lot of nagging injuries, um, achy knees, back, odds are you're doing a little bit too much and you could actually maybe make some more progress if you got a little bit more sleep, ate a little bit more food, took some really focused rest days, rather than adding on to the pile more and more and more when you're already beat up. So number one would be, again, pay attention to how you feel, you know, spend time on recovery and just gauge where you're at as an athlete, and that can be tough for youth. So parents can also, you know, take that advice, kind of observe and see how their mood is. You know what's coming out of their mouth and in terms of you know how they're feeling, and keep an eye on nutrition.

Speaker 1: 17:11

So, and for coaches, you know, fostering that team culture that values, both effort and strategic thinking, leading from the front with that, giving good explanations of what you're doing to practice, why you're doing it and what the intent is with each practice every day. I think if you went around a lot of sport coaches, unfortunately, if you ask them, you know what's the intent with practice. Today they may have no idea right. So, just like when it comes to training in the facility, like at our facility at Hentz Athletics, there's an intent with each day. It's paired with what kind of progress we're trying to make with the athlete, and it should be no different in sport. You should have an idea of what you're trying to work on each day and how you're going to help the team get to where it needs to be.

Speaker 1: 18:01

Second, for the real world, creating that balanced approach or emphasizing that with your, with your youth, with your athletes, with your kids, teaching them how to incorporate recovery work, the importance of teamwork and, you know, starting to give them some ideas of what smart effort and training is you? You know not, for example, on our end. You know we're not trying to max out every day. We're not trying to hit PRS every day. Um, we're really teaching them the process of you know that we're going to build into this. There's ups and downs and when we're having a lot of downs, we got to figure out you know how to recover better and how to start driving that needle upwards. Um, but there needs to be an emphasis just on, you know, that balanced approach versus more work, more work, more work. You know really dialing in on how can we effectively make you the best at your sport.

Speaker 1: 18:58

So, in conclusion, you know key message is more effort does not always lead to better results in life and team sports. It's really about a smart, coordinated effort, working with the other individuals that are with the athletes, understanding what demands they have outside of sport. You know what amount of time they are allotting at practice. What kind of homework do they have. You know home life, having a good idea of what home life looks like. Do they have access to the right type of foods? Do they understand what the right type of foods are and what are they doing at their, their training facility? You know if they're doing that outside, like if they come to us for a private at a private facility, building those connection lines of understanding what's going on and how to compliment each other.

Speaker 1: 19:45

So I just encourage you guys to reflect on your own experiences in sports growing up, or if you're an athlete right now, what's going on in your life right now and what sport looks like for you and consider how you know the grinded out mentality or doing more, more, more might be actually limiting your potential and starting to have those conversations of you know how can I make sure the work that I'm doing is going to pay off the most? Um, so, again, I appreciate you guys for listening. Um, if you guys have the time, please leave us a rating. Uh, subscribe and would love to hear feedback on this episode. Uh, you can always connect with me personally on social media Coach D Hanson, on most platforms, and then our facilities page is at Hanson Athletics. Again, it's pretty much everywhere. If you're watching this on YouTube, subscribe and I appreciate you guys taking the time to listen. Hopefully this gave you some insight into how you can take your performance to the next level. Stay healthy while you do it. No-transcript.