Brainy Moms

Beyond the Win: Tips for Parenting Young Athletes & Dancers | Dr. Chelsea Pierotti

• Dr. Amy Moore • Season 5 • Episode 512

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Wondering how to best parent your competitive athlete or dancer? Dr. Chelsea Pierotti joins Dr. Amy and Sandy on this episode of the Brainy Moms podcast to reveal the psychology behind peak performance and what parents can do to help—and sometimes, what they should stop doing.

Drawing from her background as both a sports psychologist and professional ballet dancer, Dr. Chelsea shares why dancers face unique mental challenges as "artistic athletes." Unlike team sports with constant reactions, dancers follow choreographed routines that leave dangerous space for overthinking. She explains why even elite performers need strategies to stay present while letting physical skills flow automatically.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn as Dr. Chelsea unpacks why training for unexpected difficulties builds genuine confidence. Just as Olympic champion Michael Phelps practiced with broken goggles, dancers need to experience music cuts or costume malfunctions in practice to develop true resilience. This "training for the rare" teaches athletes they can handle anything—a skill that transfers far beyond performance.

Parents will particularly appreciate Dr. Chelsea's clear guidance on their proper role in youth sports. She advises parents to be supportive managers handling logistics, while gradually teaching children to communicate directly with coaches. Her mantra "control the controllables" helps athletes focus exclusively on their attention, actions, and effort—letting go of judges, referees, and other external factors they cannot change.

Perhaps most valuable is our discussion of redefining success beyond winning. By focusing on the "gain" (progress made) rather than the "gap" (distance from perfection), athletes develop healthier mindsets and lasting motivation. The 1% rule she shares demonstrates how small daily improvements compound into remarkable growth.

Ready to help your young performer develop mental toughness that serves them in competition and beyond? Listen now and discover how to support the journey of your athlete or dancer without stepping into the coach's lane.

Highlights from this episode:

  • Dancers face unique challenges as "artistic athletes" with subjective judging similar to gymnastics and figure skating
  • Performance psychology helps athletes manage overthinking during routines when automaticity takes over
  • Elite athletes train for unexpected situations to build true confidence that can handle adversity
  • Parents should be supportive managers rather than trying to fix technical issues
  • By middle school, athletes should be communicating directly with coaches
  • "Control the controllables" – focus on attention, actions, and effort, not external factors
  • Define success based on progress and improvement rather than just winning
  • Mental skills developed in sports translate to all areas of life
  • The 1% rule promotes small daily improvements that compound over time
  • Allowing children to experience negative emotions helps them develop resilience

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Dr. Amy Moore:

Hi, smart moms and dads, welcome to this episode of the Brainy Moms podcast brought to you today by LearningRx Brain Training Centers. I'm Dr Amy Moore here with Sandy Zimalis, and Sandy and I are going to have a conversation today with Dr Chelsea Perotti. Dr Chelsea is a sports psychologist, a professor and a sports psychology consultant, typically for dancers, but she also talks about how we should work with young athletes in general, particularly competitive athletes. So, as a speaker, workshop teacher and podcast host, dr Chelsea's mission is to create a happier, more successful dancer through positive mental skills. She's the host of the podcast Passion for Dance and is going to talk to us about how parents can help best support their kids who are dancers or other competitive athletes.

Dr. Amy Moore:

I'm super excited to have this conversation because, sandy, you were a competitive swimmer, usa swim coach, right and I'm going to sit here and just not have anything to say because I never competed in anything. I was a theater kid. But, right, as a psychologist, I think it's super important to be able to offer advice to parents when they do have athletes that are struggling with disappointment from losses or when they're in their heads about what it looks like to compete at those high levels, and so I'm excited to have this conversation with her.

Sandy Zamalis:

Yeah, me too, and it can be really tricky as a parent to get yourself out of the equation and really look at it from your kid's perspective and help them think through what being competitive looks like, what it means, what who do you compare yourself against? What kind of work ethic are you developing? All of those are great topics and I'm excited to go over those. Yeah me too.

Dr. Amy Moore:

All right, let's welcome Dr Chelsea Parati. Hello Chelsea, hello, do you have the super cool Sure Mike?

Sandy Zamalis:

With the boom.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Yeah, so I did that during COVID and I talk with my hands and so I would keep, I would hit it over and over again and finally said this is not going to work for me.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Yes, I know I've done, I've played with lots of different mics and finally this one. I like that. It like retracts and sits over here and then it's just ready when I need it. And, yeah, all the iterations that we've had to learn how to do.

Dr. Amy Moore:

I can't tell you how many mics I bought, and so we were Sandy and I were joking because we're on opposite sides of the country, but we're going to do some in-person recording this summer that she's going to carry. We both have. What do we have? The Yeti, oh, the Yetis. Yeah, yeah, and she's. I'm going to just bring my Yeti and they weigh 20 pounds. I mean, they're so heavy and I'm like you're going to need a second suitcase just to bring your Yeti. Yes, we're so excited to have this conversation with you today.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Thank you for having me Happy to be here.

Sandy Zamalis:

We love to get started by having our guests tell us more about their passion and how they got started. So let's start there. How did you get involved in sports psychology, especially with dancers?

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Sure, my passions really aligned. I've always loved teaching and I've always loved dance and I realized I could do both, bring in the coaching, bring in the teaching to that art. So I grew up a dancer, I was a professional ballet dancer and then alongside was doing the academic pursuit. And for a long time I thought they were two different things. I was going to have my academic life and then I was going to have my dancer life. And not until grad school did I find the field of sports psychology. But then I realized I could take my passion for human behavior and understanding relationships and the social psychology side and bring it to sport. And so once I realized that was a field and my two passions could come together, everything clicked. It was easy from then. That's exactly what I wanted to do. So now I feel very lucky that I've been able to do something that really aligns two of my passions every day.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Do you wish that you had known what you know now, when you were growing up and dancing competitively?

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Absolutely. I think that is a large majority of what I create now is what I wish I had, and that's not to shame my former teachers, and there's just we know so much that we didn't know then. And the culture of sport youth sport especially is completely different, some better, some worse. But being able to have the awareness that I have now I think would have had a much, would have had a positive impact on my training at the time and I still loved my time as a dancer and was, quote unquote, successful. But I think it would have been better had I known all the mental skills and the work that I do now for sure. So that's definitely. My mission now is to create those happier, more successful dancers, learning these mental skills now, in childhood, rather than waiting successful dancers learning these mental skills now, in childhood, rather than waiting.

Dr. Amy Moore:

And I would think that a lot of the ideas that you're applying to the dance world are pretty mainstream thoughts with competitive athletes already right, and so we talk about optimal level of arousal or anxiety right, and the and I. But we think of dance as an art right, it's artsy, it's along with singing and musicians, and so to be able to take all of this great performance, research and understanding of that brain body connection into the dance world must have just opened up.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

It's been wonderful understanding, yeah, and there's not. It's getting better. There's not a lot of people who've made that cross and now we have more and more. But yes, I think of dancers as athletes first, but they are artistic athletes and so dance is not always competitive. Sometimes it is more on the pure art side and sometimes it's very competitive. You have national titles for both, like high school and collegiate levels. You have all-star programs, you have the intense competitive nature that you see in any youth sport, so it's skill-wise very much the same.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

There's some things that apply a little bit differently and I equate it. Competitive dance, I equate to any sport that has subjective judging. So that happens in gymnastics, ice skating, diving. There's so many opportunities where sport is evaluated by another human and that brings in different challenges as an athlete. So I align my work more with those types of sports where you have less objective outcomes that you have to worry about, but then acknowledging that it is an art and sometimes it is not competitive, but you still want to be your personal best, right, in a ballet career, you still want the role that you want to make, the company that you want to make, and it's still the same. All the same skills still apply, even if it is an art form and it's used with magicians. Actually, that's probably true too. I was going to say musicians and singers and same. It all applies.

Dr. Amy Moore:

So my son is a music performance major, my youngest is a music performance major and has done worldwide tours in music, and he has had to work really hard on lowering the stress and anxiety that he feels right before the performance, even though, yes, it is creative and musicians do have a little bit of space that they can work within, even when they're performing in a full symphony. But it's still that. How do I get on stage and not fall apart? Yeah, same thing. How do I get on the field and not fall apart? How do I get the dance floor and not fall apart? And it's.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

I think one of the reasons it's challenging for musicians and dancers or also, similarly, ice skaters, divers people who have kind of choreography like you come out and you have a plan, I know what I'm singing, I know what I'm playing, it's scripted so we don't react as much to what's going on around us.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

It's not like a traditional team sport where your play is constantly in reaction to your teammates and everyone around you, that you have to be a lot more.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Your attention has to be locked in. As a performer, especially when you are advanced and you know your stuff, your brain can wander because your body will do what it's supposed to do, or you can you have more space to allow for the overthinking and the panic, and I think a lot of advanced artists will say, yeah, I can have a whole story happening in my head outside of what I'm performing, like it's, you just have the space for it. So that training of being able to let go of the overthinking, to be able to focus on what is actually helpful in that moment, becomes really powerful for artists to make sure that they are not thinking the wrong thing. And then you make those mistakes on stage and then you have time to think about your mistake, which causes another mistake and you have that like snowball effect on stage. So, yeah, that training becomes it's important for everybody. But I think it's really important when you have those closed skills and there's closed skills in other sports, but it happens a lot for artists.

Dr. Amy Moore:

And the audience is not giving you feedback until the end of your performance the way they are during a basketball game or a football game or a soccer game, right, Like you're getting cheers with every good play, right, which of course has to be motivating. But then to be in a sport or a performance situation where you don't hear clapping until the very end, your mind also has to be thinking what do they think of me?

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Oh, you have time to interpret everything, and if you can see the judges, which is true in some of these situations, then you have time to look at their face and then you start processing. They're not even looking at me, or they're oh, oh, no, they're writing. What are they writing? And then you're thinking about that instead of thinking about what you should be executing, and that distraction can be devastating to your performance. Even if muscle memory is there, it's not actually good for a peak performance. You don't want to just be an autopilot, so being able to have that attentional control becomes really important. When you can, you're looking for feedback, to your point that there isn't any, so you try to find it. You're like oh, they're too quiet, or was that a gasp or who's? You find feedback that's not there. You create it in your head and can spin on it if you're not careful.

Sandy Zamalis:

I love that angle. We're talking a lot of brain training kind of vocabulary in this conversation and my brain is pinging but, I, love the kind of thought of okay, there's the more dedicated sports that have more objective realities.

Sandy Zamalis:

I was a swim coach, so you either get your time or you don't. Or you beat the person in front of you or you don't, but there's an underlying skillset of automaticity that really helps you be able to be successful in that process. And what I'm hearing you say is that there's a lot of automaticity that goes into a more subjective sport too, but it could actually be an Achilles heel because you're not necessarily in your body really working through the process, and that's fascinating to think about when they're supposed to.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

But if it's purely automatic, for most people negative thoughts will creep in. That is also natural, right. So if we rely too heavy on the automaticity, you will go to a negative place. And then for anybody who is working with music, we want your art to be driven by the music, whether it's paced by the music, the emotion of the music, that communication, and so you want the physical skill to be driven by the music, whether it's paced by the music, the emotion of the music, that communication, and so you want the physical skill to be more automatic, so that the emotion and the attention can be projecting what it's supposed to Like. What story are you trying to share? What emotion are you trying to connect? And that is about being in the present moment. So it's let the physicality be more automatic. You can trust your training, you can trust your skills I've done this many times but that the thought in the moment is in the present moment and emotional in each count, in each story, throughout your performance.

Dr. Amy Moore:

And I would think that by like building that automaticity, by practicing and rehearsing and being as prepared as possible, like you can't just show up and wing it and expect to be in that place, right, because then you're worried, oh I'm going to forget my next step, or I'm going to forget my next note, or and so I think something beautiful happens when you look at the difference between amateurs and pros, you can see it on their faces, right. There's something in the way they move or play that's almost gazelle, when they've gotten to that point of being fully present but also have that automaticity.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Oh, absolutely, and that's it sounds like you're getting at that flow state which is what a lot of artists are talking about, of being able to have a peak performance, be your absolute best on stage. But that happens at the peak of your physical skill. You're not going to magically be better than you were in the studio yesterday. It's your physical skill is still has to be trained and honed to be its best. But then in order for that best to show up on stage, you have to have the cognitive side and that ability to combine your passion to be in the present moment and flow on stage is wonderful. But I think of that more if it is in the pure art side, or dancers who are doing improvisation or actors who are doing improv, where you're really bouncing off each other and letting that flow.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

In sports psychology we talk about the difference between flow and clutch is really more of a sport thing. That is still true for artists and especially when it's competitive. That flow is more of a step back and let it be. Clutch is more of a dialed in. I'm going to make this happen and I think that's where athletes are more comfortable. They understand that I've done the work, I'm prepared and now I'm drilled in and I'm going to make this happen. I'm not just going to sit back and hope it does, and that sort of clutch attention can be really powerful for any athlete.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Yeah, I was the only sport I ever participated in my entire life was bowling, and so I bowled competitively. From the time I was six years old, I was a clutch bowler where if I had been distracted, I knew, okay, I can get a turkey here at the end and just pull this out. And so that was my nickname out there was clutch, because they knew, even if I had some bad frames, I was going to pull it out with a turkey at the end. Right, like you, you can engage when you need to.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Right and I think everybody's favorite athlete, pick your favorite athlete. Elite athletes are clutch. They know how to control their focus. And and I keep saying focus, it's more than that right, it's your arousal regulation, it's your thought, it's everything being able to align to be your best. And it's intentional. And I think people think at that elite level, they just it's that X factor, they just have it. And yes, there is some level of that. They're just different but part of it is intentional. If they've trained how to lock in and make sure they're their best in those peak moments, right, if you're going to kick the Superbowl winning field goal, if you're going to have the penalty kick in soccer like when you have all eyes on you big moment in sport it's clutch, it's not step back and hope it happens. It's a very intentional, focused physiologically and cognitively so that you're your best in that moment.

Sandy Zamalis:

Yeah, it sounds like really one of the themes that you try to get across, probably to your clients, is that skill building is necessary. We don't want to over practice or under practice. There's a sweet spot that we need to focus on.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Yeah, yeah, and I have so much of my work. We talk about confidence and some of that is a stage presence thing, where any artist wants to be confident on stage. But any athlete wants to be confident in those clutch moments and when dancers will say I just need to be more confident on stage, how do I get more confident? Confidence comes in action. It's the training beforehand and trusting I've done this before, I will do it again but also trusting that you can do hard things. And so it's that training of making small mistakes, being a little uncomfortable, pushing yourself out of that comfort zone and knowing you can handle it.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Because too much training for any athlete happens in this comfort zone of I'm safe here, I'm comfortable here, I'm going to, I'm going to work hard, sure, but nothing that's overly scary. And then you get into a big moment and now there's no confidence that you can handle that moment because you're not used to it. You've never had the racing heart take over, you've never had your hands start shaking, you've never had your breath be completely shallow and out of control. So it's putting yourself in practice, situations where you have to learn to regulate that in those small mini moments all the way up to the big ones, and some of I was working with some high school athletes recently that they were so talented and the best of the best in their state that they rarely made mistakes.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

They were just nearly perfection all the time, to the point that they never trained what to do when you make a mistake because they just never did. And then if you've never trained that, they had one small mistake and a very big event and they crumbled and it wasn't a lack of talent and it wasn't a lack of work ethic before that. But that confidence and training is also training what to do when it's not perfect because it's never perfect and making sure you have a plan mentally and physiologically to overcome that. And in dance there's no like timeout, it's like you got to overcome it in the next two counts before you keep going. So figuring out that that preparation piece like you said it is the physical preparation has to happen, but so does the mental.

Sandy Zamalis:

Yeah, my favorite story. So I was a swim coach for years and we were very close to the Baltimore aquaticatic Club, which is where Michael Phelps is from and one of the best stories ever the year he won like the 200 fly that year and his goggles had filled up with water and he won. And he's told the story of how one of his parts of his training was that his coach, bob Bowman, would break his goggles on occasion so that he'd have to swim with goggles full of water so that he could, because he was an elite swimmer always. He was always really good. I think he got his first Olympics when he was still a teenager, if I remember correctly. So he needed those adversarial kinds of situations so that he would know what to do in those moments and so many athletes are seeking perfection, and so that's a lot of my mindset.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Work too is that can't be the goal, because that's just not human and that's not how you're going to behave. And if you're seeking perfection. One you're never satisfied or happy with your performance, which is a problem. And two always moves.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Yeah. And two, if you are seeking perfection and the smallest thing happens, then you have that chain reaction where there's mistake after mistake rather than small tiny thing that you could recover from, but training that recovery is huge. So we do the same thing in dance. It'll be like the music randomly goes out. What do you do? Do you finish it? Do you? Your shoe falls off? I had that happen to dancers once, I like. How do you handle it If these small mistakes are happening but you're on stage and you have to keep going, and being able to learn that recovery is such an important skill that you can learn in any sport, and then I'm also always a big advocate it translates to the whole rest of your life. If you can learn that skill of being able to recover from small mistakes in the moment or big for that matter, makes a huge difference, and sport just happens to be a great way to learn that.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Yeah, I published this article on accelerating expertise using, like immersive learning experiences, and that article was specific to training military leadership. Right, because we graduate these 22 year olds from our military academies and we put them in charge of life or death situations. Right, and they don't have the life experience to necessarily be able to handle the rare. And the same thing happens with airline pilots, and so it's why Sully Sullivan was able to land on the Hudson. Right, because of all of the experience he was able to then say I know everything there is to know about this airplane and how it will behave if I do this. But without training for the rare, without building the what ifs and all the contingencies, it's easy to see how a young athlete would fall apart when something unplanned for happens.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Yeah, it becomes really powerful in your training to talk about it, to practice it, and it's scaffolded just the way we learn anything else right? What you would use to interrupt the training of an eight-year-old looks different than a 12 and a 16, and developmentally appropriate too. But practicing for the rare. I like that phrase, that unknown for what could happen, because again, that's where the confidence comes from. It's not that you're confident you'll be perfect, it's that you're confident I know what to do when any little thing happens and I will still have a peak performance on stage. I can still be focused and in control of that moment.

Sandy Zamalis:

What tips do you have for parents for those types of scenarios? Because it's one thing for a coach to do it right, but parental support is really important on the back end. So what do you say to parents to help build these resilience skills?

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Sport parenting is a whole field and a whole area of research and a whole area of work. I will plug a company called Mindful Sport Parenting If you're listening. They are wonderful. It's my doctoral mentor has created this great work because we've learned a lot about what parents can do that is actually helpful for their children and what's not. And usually it's very well-meaning parents and they want the best for their child but they end up harming either their relationship or their child's relationship with their sport.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

So, building resilient kids I think you separate building a resilient child at home in their schoolwork, in your life at home. You can work on it there in their sport. That's not your lane and your lane in sport is to be supportive, to be happy to listen, to encourage and just be that support person they should be getting. Like you said, it's coming from coach. They should be getting that resilience and that training and that challenge. And so it's using the language of things like challenges are good. I'm excited. What challenged you today in school? Right, just building this understanding that we like, and I'm proud of you when you put in the effort, not just when you get the A, but when you worked really hard for that math test and it wasn't perfect, but I know you worked on it and I'm proud of your effort. So it's the resilience within home. But then in sport world you are just support and just that positive person, that place to listen.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

So many parents want to go fix things. That's not your place to go fix things, and I'm speaking as a sport mom too, so I get the desire to want to go fix things. But it's your role as a parent to be more of the manager in a sense, especially if your child is younger. Do they have the right equipment? Are we on time? What do we need? Help them learn the autonomy. Do you have your water bottle? That side of it. But the actual resilience on the field is for coaches and for the child to learn. You're just the support system, amen.

Dr. Amy Moore:

What is your advice to parents on who should be communicating concerns to the coach? Is it you or is it your child, and is it age dependent?

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

It's developmental, Sure, it's age dependent. As much as possible it's from the child, and I think everything has a caveat right. There are certain concerns that are of an adult nature. If there's something serious going on that you feel is not really about your child, you're observing something else. I don't want to be vague about this. Let's see.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

I think it's very rare that I would say a child should not be involved in the conversation. That would have to be. We're at like a criminal level of something happening right. Other than that, I think a child should be in the conversation. So, even if it's a really small child and parent and coach are talking together and you're encouraging the child to talk to the coach and maybe you've practiced that conversation or you've practiced what you want to say or how you're going to say it, and then so that's like elementary school and then into middle school again. They may want to practice, but they're having that conversation, they're going up to coach, they're asking whatever it is, If they want more playing time, what do I have to do to get to start? I feel like I'm not contributing to the team that much. It seems like you're disappointed, Like whatever the child is feeling, you listen and then help them with a script or help them with what they need to say, and then they go say it by high school. It's entirely athlete. I think that's where the overbearing meaning but overbearing parents when they're trying to fix it with the coach are going to damage the relationship between the coach and the child. It with the coach are going to damage the relationship between the coach and the child. And it's also just the larger life lessons about what is that child learning? And we know that going in and fixing all the problems is not setting them up for success and is actually probably going to harm them in the longterm.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

And now, as a college professor, I have parents who want to try to get involved. I'm like I legally can't talk to you, so go sorry, tell your child to talk to me. But I see athlete, I see sport. Parents do that all the way through high school and be way over involved and then suddenly their child has no skills in when they're 18 or they're trying to go on to be an adult. So there's that scaffolding, but child is always present. And then by middle school child is running that conversation and stepping up and asking the question.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

And I also I coached for 14 years too. I coached a high school program, so I also understand that coaches are so much more willing to make changes and to listen to the child and to understand. When it's coming from the child, it's very easy to be like, oh, the parent. And I'll also add that I think a lot of times parents feel like it's this huge deal and they're so upset when really the child just wanted to vent for a little while and they're actually okay. And once they were heard, they're okay. But the parent then makes it worse or makes it a bigger deal than it was, because we don't want our childs to sit in any kind of negative emotion. We want to fix it, but you got to let them sit in it, be next to them, know that they're safe, but let them have negative emotions are normal and not just trying to make it go away.

Sandy Zamalis:

I love that you pointed that out, cause I think what we unintentionally do is put our kids in this weird middle spot where we're in a situation like a competition and I'm having I have my mom in my ear and I have my coach in my ear and who do I listen to in this moment where I need to perform? And then, of course, what's going to happen? My performance is going to be affected because I'm going to upset one of them. Yeah, so, who am I going to upset?

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Yeah, I'm putting them in the middle is it's unfair to them, of course, and if the ultimate goal is for that child to have their best performance and I think that's the best approach to sport parenting is considering yourself an ally with the coaches. Like you, both want what's best for your child. You both want this child to be their best on the field. So how can you work together to do that and staying in your lane to contribute to that, and that's how your child is going to be their best.

Sandy Zamalis:

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Dr. Amy Moore:

All right. So I want to talk a little bit about the child who is dabbling in different sports and activities and hasn't really decided what it is that they do enjoy and where they do want to invest a long time in. What do you say to parents when you have a child who starts a sports season and is miserable and doesn't want to finish?

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Age dependent a little bit, but for the most part I would hope and suggest you set the expectation at the beginning that we finish, and that conversation has happened. But it also depends on what that is. So if they're dabbling in a rec sport and you're talking about soccer one day a week for eight weeks, like, we can handle it and we can make this happen. If the commitment is much bigger than that, like, then it starts to become challenging. But I think in general, if you've set it out at the forefront, this is the expectation, this is what we're going to do, and you may not like it. But what are we learning, even if we don't like it? And it goes back to that lesson of like I can do hard things and maybe it turns out. I don't like soccer and I have four weeks left and that's not fun, but we can talk about it. What makes it not fun? Do you find any fun in it? What are we learning from this that will help us in the future? And that's just. Sometimes we have to do hard things and it's actually minimally hard, but it's hard to that eight-year-old to stick it out and not want to do it anymore. So I think there's two sides, because there's that child who wants to quit early and encouraging them as much as possible to stay committed, because also putting my coach head on you end up causing problems for everybody else when you quit in the middle. And that's also an important lesson of what are you doing to the teammates if you don don't want to finish this project, and it's going to happen in school and it's going to happen in work, and you can't bail halfway through because they were counting on everybody being there. So I think that's an important life lesson to work through.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

And then there's the opposite side of the parents who want their kids to specialize and be very intense in a sport at a very young age. And there's an in-between here. We don't have to be. Specializing young is actually, we know, really bad for your body and for your motivation. But then parents feel this pressure that you have to be at this. You know this elite club six days a week when you're eight, kind of thing.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

So there's both. And then there's the parent. That's oh, you don't like it. Okay, we'll stop and just remove any uncomfortable, any uncomfortable emotion at all. We'll just leave it, cause then the lesson in that is, if I can't about it, then I don't have to do it and I always tell parents. I know your instinct in that moment is to help them not be uncomfortable, but think about the life skill you want them to have. So yes, they're uncomfortable right now, they don't want to finish soccer and they're eight. Do you want them to be assigned an elective their freshman year of high school? Hate it and then just expect their schedule to be changed. What if they can't? They now have to stick out this elective for the whole semester. And how do they handle that? And then that challenge just keeps going right. There's always going to be something that you have to handle, that you can't just magically make it go away. So if you want your child to have that skill in the future, this is the backbone of that and it has to start when they're young.

Dr. Amy Moore:

I have this conversation with parents frequently, and I think where there's an exception and where there's this fuzzy gray area and I'd love to hear your opinion on that is when you have a child with an anxiety disorder, when you have a child who is struggling with rejection-sensitive dysphoria, when there's something that competing, or even the social dynamics that are happening in a team sport is really exacerbating this pathology that this child is already wrestling with.

Dr. Amy Moore:

And so, on one hand, we know as psychologists that the only way to conquer anxiety is to go through anxiety right and to be able to build that evidence that, yes, you can do this despite those uncomfortable feelings in your body. But, at the same time, incremental progress in being exposed to that which is causing anxiety is probably the thing that's going to be the most successful, and not throwing you in the deep end of something that is keeping you in fight or flight right so that you can't even work through it. And so is it an option then to say to a coach at the beginning of a season this is the situation right we want to see if this will work, but we also want an exit strategy.

Dr. Amy Moore:

if it's too much, give us your thoughts.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

I think so. I completely agree and I hear you. I think there are situations where that sport participation is making it worse. And then there's a good chance that child's anxiety or like clinical level is making it hard on their teammates and coaches too, like it's probably hurting everybody's, the culture of the whole program and it might be best for that child to leave for the child and for everybody else. As far as having a conversation, I'm all for that. I think communication at the beginning is always good, being able to let coaches know what they could expect or what might be happening, and I think it's acceptable.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

If you are signing up for and know what you're participating in. Like is the goal to let's test this out, like you said, this incremental progress. So let's test it out on a summer camp that does this for a week. We're not going to harm anybody. Okay, then let's test it out in a once a week rec thing.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Like not testing it on something where you are committing to an entire nine month season. You're buying all this equipment because that's where this pressure comes in of. You can't leave this. So it's choosing what you're enrolling in a way where leaving doesn't harm the team so much and you have that exit strategy and you can talk through it, but you're not excluding your child from participating, cause I think working through it could be the best thing and knowing that they can, but doing it in a place where, if they are even in the middle of a game, they're halfway through the game and they're like I can't, and coach knows and can hold them and the team is okay without them.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

That it's what are you signing up for, and just being aware of how that impacts everybody else as well, so that there's less blowback on your child when you leave and that helps protect them as well. But you have that exit strategy. If it's when we're talking about clinical levels of anxiety and I think that's very it's an important point that I only work within non-clinical levels. So if I have an athlete who is at a clinical level of anxiety or depression or substance use, they are referred to a counseling or clinical psychologist and so strategies look different and they're always going to be individualized and knowing like that, this kind of broad advice is not necessarily meant for that clinical population, and then you have to think about what your child needs in that moment. That might be very different advocacy.

Dr. Amy Moore:

So it's like you need to set a foundation. Right. Here's how we're going to function when we encounter a stressful situation. Right here are some techniques that you can use to regulate your emotions or your nervous system, so that once that's all that foundation is all laid in counseling, then maybe you can come in and then apply that to a competitive setting.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Absolutely come in and then apply that to a competitive setting. Absolutely. And I share with a lot of my high school athletes especially that there's this difference between mental health and mental toughness and I think our society has conflated the two and information misinformation's out there and our children think, oh, if I have an anxiety disorder, I can't possibly be in a competitive sport because I'll panic and I'll freak out and I'll ruin it for my team or I'll be embarrassed, and so they. If I have this thing that I'm struggling with, that is very real then I can't possibly handle a tough situation like a competitive sport. And there there are two different things right, that mental health, your overall sense of wellbeing, and that can be handled and treated and cared for in counseling. And then I like your point you take those skills and you go apply them.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

And mental toughness is about your awareness of your emotions, being able to notice how you're feeling and regulating them in the moment. And you can do that if you have a disorder or not, like you can have a diagnosis of any kind and still learn mental toughness. And there's some wonderful elite athletes who have been so open about that Simone Biles comes to mind. There's these athletes who are the most mentally tough athletes you could ever hope to model after, who have a mental health conversation at least, whether they've talked about a diagnosis or not. They're admitting counseling and that. So for any athlete like, it's both, and you can have this mental health struggle and learn mental toughness through sport and take the counseling techniques and apply them to your sport and not shy away from sport and feel like you're not able to rise up to that elite level that you want. You can absolutely do both.

Sandy Zamalis:

One of the things that you talk about and I know we're talking like some clinical anxiety. So if we bring it back to just an average level of anxiety and dealing with stress, stressful situations, you talk about controlling the controllables. How do you help your athletes do that?

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Yeah, that's my favorite. It is my own personal life mantra. If you ask my children, what does mom say? All the time it's that.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

So, the idea being, when you are up against something scary, something that feels overwhelming, something that's really upsetting, bad news that orienting your thoughts to what is in my control right now, what is not in my control that I need to let go of, and then, whatever's in my control, can I do something about it right now. Sometimes you really can't do anything about it and sometimes you can, and so that taking action can help. So control the controllables. I teach my athletes to just pause and have that awareness first, and knowing that usually things that we are really upset about or feeling really overwhelmed about is in the past or the future and not right now. And so you're worried about a past mistake, or you're worried about what could happen on stage in the next 30 minutes, or you're worried about if I mess this up, my team is going to be so mad at me, coach will bench me. It's all past or future. And so, being more aware of, yep, that's not in my control right now. I can't control what coach is going to say at the end of this game.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

What is in my control right now is essentially three things. It's your attention. So, being in the moment, locked in, what am I doing right now? That kind of concentration piece, your actions, what are you actually doing with your body, with your voice? I say, like you can control how you talk to your teammates.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

You can control how you talk to your coach. You can't control how your teammate talks to you, and sometimes those dynamics are hard. You can't control what a ref is doing. You can't control if the sun is in your eyes. There's so much of that you can't control. So what is in your control, then, are your actions how you are warming up before the game, making sure that you ate well or you have good snacks, that you have. And then the third thing that's in your control is your effort, and knowing that all I can do in this moment is be locked in, focus on what I can do and give that my full effort. And so controlling the controllables is your actions or concentration and your effort, and then letting go of the things that are not in your control so that you can be locked in when you need to perform.

Dr. Amy Moore:

I love that. So I always tell people there are three ways that you can handle a problem Change what you can change, reframe how you think about what you can't change, or stay miserable. And most people choose to not stay miserable, right, so they're going to work on changing what they can change and rethinking about what they can't. What would be some suggestions in the sports setting for reframing how you think about those things you can't control?

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Absolutely so. That cognitive reframe that you might learn in any kind of therapeutic sense works just as well in this kind of sport context. And so it's noticing first either the negative thought so a lot of the things we can't control might be worries about again what a coach or what the crowd's going to think, or this judge isn't going to like me, or what if I make this mistake. And so it's practicing a sometimes it's a script instead of a what if it's I will? What if I make a mistake? I will have a wonderful performance? What if I fall? What if I have my best performance? Just trying to think of it the other way, intentionally inserting something else. That's the CBT version of that. Being able to intentionally think of something different, I think, is that is just the reminder of it.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

If that ref made a terrible call, and now I'm mad and now I'm frustrated and being able to say, okay, I can't control what the ref did, I can control what I do in this moment. And I, what do I want? I still want to execute the skill, I still want to be my best in this moment. So I have to let that go and think about the skill, or think about my teammate, or think about my body and coming back to yourself and your body. So I think the reframe from the control, the controllables, is just knowing and noticing what's not in your control and reframing it to something that is and I can and I will statements that can be very powerful. Sometimes they're just deemed positive affirmations, but I think they're. It's intentionally changing that negative self-talk to I can or I will in the moment.

Dr. Amy Moore:

So what about those people who have this really strong sense of justice, right? So they're in a sport where there are subjective evaluations and you talked about the ones where it's dance judges, gymnastic judges, diving judges, but referee calls are also subjective sometimes. And so what do you say to the teen who has just this strong sense of justice? That call was wrong, we were robbed, we should have won this right. What do you say? How do you reconcile that sense of justice with just something we can't control?

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

It is something we can't control. I think that comes down to your goals and how you have oriented success. So for any athlete, but especially those in purely subjective sports, if your only sense of success is winning, so I'm not happy unless I won. But ultimately, whether or not you won was somebody else's opinion, that you can't control. So having a sense of success, that is in your control. So I had a successful game. If I stay focused and I give my full effort, the whole game right, I have a successful performance on stage. If I'm mindful and I did my preparations and I was ready and I had my personal best on stage. If that judge doesn't choose me, then that's okay. So it's that sense of success and defining it before the game, before the season, before the performance of success has to be in your control, because otherwise you're handing it to somebody else and then you get stuck in that thought spiral of we were robbed.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

This is unfair and because in some cases maybe it is true Refs make mistakes too. They're also human. So maybe there really was a bad call that had a huge consequence. And so I guess what I say to it in that moment is you are allowed to feel what you feel and be upset, and sometimes there may be a true like mourning period to our season ended on a bad call. And just brushing that off is not always healthy either Like it's okay to sin in it and be upset and be mad. And again with the negative emotion like it's okay be disappointed.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

But then that's the mental toughness is taking the disappointment and saying I'm allowed to be disappointed and I'm frustrated and I can't do anything about it. So what am I going to do to recover? And the mental toughness comes in that recovery side of now letting go of what I couldn't control, what is in my control now, and then maybe tangibly reflecting back on what did go well. What performance am I really proud of? We're in a generation now where there's video of everything. So go watch old video of something that you're really proud of and happy to have experienced. And it's that reframe around like that one bad call hurt and it was not fair, but it doesn't define who I am as an athlete and I'm still strong and I'm still proud of what we did and I'm still ready to move on to the next game or the next season.

Dr. Amy Moore:

I love that and I think if we can get parents on board with helping their kids define what success is and for parents to really work on their view of what success is exactly, man, you could change the world of youth sports.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Yeah, and I always. It's not that you can't have. We call them outcome goals. So winning the state championship, being chosen for that ballet company, like you can have the outcome goal and say I am not happy until I am a professional or until I make this college team like have those goals. They can be very motivational, they can be very powerful, but what happens is parents then latch onto that. Okay, my kid wants to play for that college. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure they get that dream again meaning.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

But then that outcome becomes the only measure of success. Instead of have the outcome, make the vision board dream it, feel it. That's awesome. But then the actual goals and measure of success they're called progress or performance goals. But they're in your control, your effort, your training goals. How many days a week are you going to do the strength training? How are you going to meal prep so you have better snacks before you have to go to practice? Are you like control what you can and meet those goals along the way? And if you do that, the big outcome is more likely. But then, if it gets to the point where it is subjective and the coach chooses you or not, you've done everything you could leading up to that moment and then you can be proud of who you are. Back to your own values. There's again a mourning period is normal and fine, but then knowing I did everything I could and I'm still proud of what I've done, even if this person made a choice that I wish was different, yeah, we're reading a book right now a bunch of colleagues.

Sandy Zamalis:

It's called the Gap and the Gain and the principle is this stop measuring yourself against the gap and always measure against the gain. So you're always measuring backwards how far have I come? What would I accomplish in this? And that's what keeps that motivation going forward, cause then you can see your progress.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Absolutely, and your strongest athletes are going to make smaller, are going to make progress in smaller chunks. You don't like master a new skill in a week. It might take you three years to get that down. So if you're only measuring the gain, then sometimes it's a bigger gap and now I don't want to flip those words but a bigger. It takes longer to get to that gain and so you don't see it as much.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

And I see the athletes who are like I'm not making any progress, I still can't do that skill. I've been trying for six months and I suck and I'm never going to get it. Instead of looking backwards and okay, even if you can't do the skill yet, even if it's not mastered yet, are you better than you were six months ago and have you made growth? Are you stronger? Are you, are you more resilient? What has, what, have you gained in the last six months, even if you're not there yet? And that reframe is is huge. I like that gap and gain makes a lot of sense and it's a huge for motivation in anything, not just sport.

Dr. Amy Moore:

And you talk about the 1% rule, right. You could make 1% improvement increments.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Yeah.

Dr. Amy Moore:

And that's success too.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

It is because we know the math behind that of that compounds. So you're going to get so much better than you think you are with just 1%. But it's the reframe for athletes when they're again stuck in like a skill. They're like they set this performance goal or progress goal of I'm gonna get this specific skill by the end of the season or I'm gonna have go to any sport, I'm gonna have this shooting average, I'm gonna have they have that outcome goal for their season.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

But then that doesn't translate to showing up at practice after school today. That is I don't wanna be here or I'm tired today or it's hard to find the motivation in that day. And that's where more of that 1% of what's one thing that I'm going to focus on in practice today, I'm going to focus on my attention. I'm going to focus on the it can be physical. I'm going to focus on how my explosion in my jumps. I'm going to focus on one thing and try to make that thing better today and then if you do that every day, it compounds to such incredible growth. But we can get stuck in the monotony, especially I keep going to high school athletes. But high school and college, where you have specialized. You are working very hard at one thing every day, over and over again. Being able to find that motivation again can be hard, and that's where burnout happens with these kids that they are so intense in their sport their whole life and they hit 16, 17. And they're like I can't do this anymore, I'm out, yeah.

Dr. Amy Moore:

I have loved this conversation. It's been fantastic.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Me too. Always fun to talk to.

Sandy Zamalis:

Always fun to talk to other people you didn't think you would, because you're not a sports person. There you go.

Dr. Amy Moore:

And I have a really bad memory because clearly I need some of my cognitive training. But I'm like, yeah, I've never played sports and I'm like I competitively bowled my entire life.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

But I can say that a leisure hobby, not necessarily a sport.

Dr. Amy Moore:

But when you said clutch, I'm like, oh yeah, that was me.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

And you can be clutch in anything, and I think that's what I've found about all my work in sports psychology and when I get to teach it to my college students, I'm like this is true everywhere. When you go to your first job interview, use your deep breathing, use your cognitive reframing, take all of these skills to the rest of your life. Like this, sport again just happens to be the vehicle with which I teach it and which a lot of people learn it but you can learn it in anything.

Dr. Amy Moore:

It's the pursuit of something, whatever that is. You take these peak performance skills with you. Yeah, and my experience has been just the opposite. I've taken what I learned in sports psychology in college and have applied that in a therapeutic setting.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Right, it was one of my favorite psychology courses and like when you think about that optimal level of arousal regulation that morning, like it didn't matter how experienced I am, how confident I am, I still had to deep breath, focus on what I can control in this moment. Like students are going to get up and walk around, somebody's going to talk, somebody's going to say something that throws me, but I have that all the same arousal regulation, thought, control, deep breath, and then I can execute in that moment, which happened to just be teaching a lecture. So it's that same skill everywhere, yeah absolutely, Dr Chelsea.

Dr. Amy Moore:

How can our listeners find more of you?

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Yeah, especially if you are in dance or the arts. I have a podcast called Passion for Dance that talks through all of these mental skills, and so Passion for Dance, wherever you get your podcasts. And otherwise, my I'm on my website is just my name Chelsea paradicom. Paradi is P I E R O T? I.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Awesome. Thanks so much for being with us today.

Dr. Chelsea Pierotti:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was really fun.

Dr. Amy Moore:

Yeah, this was a great conversation. All right, moms, thanks so much for being with us today. Hey, if you like our show, we would love it if you would leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts so that we can reach more parents like you. We'd love it if you would follow us on social media. We are at the Brainy Moms and if you would rather see our faces, we're on YouTube at the Brainy Moms. And if you want to see Sandy talk more about cognitive training and how the brain learns, you can see some demos and really cool stuff on her TikTok channel at thebraintrainerlady. So, look, that is all the smart stuff that we have for you today. We hope that you feel a little smarter and we're going to catch you next time.

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