Ep. 69: Ongoing Impacts of the Pandemic on Athletes and Sport

In this episode, Keith, Tim, and Taylor unpack some of the profound impacts that the COVID pandemic has had across the world of sport and on athletes of all ages and levels - including impacts on personal identity, mental health, and performance. We also celebrate the strength and adaptability that has emerged during this challenging time, and discuss how the integration of mindfulness and other wellness strategies can be crucial as echoes of the pandemic linger.  

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Websites Mentioned:

www.mindfulsportperformance.org

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Books Mentioned:

Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement

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Very much appreciated, 

Keith, Tim, and Taylor 

Chapters

• 0:11 COVID's Impact on Athletes and Mindfulness
• 13:18 Athlete Identity's Impact on Mental Health
• 18:34 Athlete Identity and the Pandemic Impact
• 27:12 COVID's Impact on Athletes' Mental Health

Transcript

Keith Kaufman: 0:11

Hi and welcome back to the Mindful Support Performance podcast. I'm Dr Keith Kaufman.

Taylor Brown: 0:16

I'm Dr Tim Pinot and I'm Taylor Brown. How are you guys doing today? I'm doing alright, keith. Thanks for asking. Yeah, it's a beautiful day here in Delaware and looking forward to what this conversation has in store for us, I think we have a pretty good topic to dig into.

Tim Pineau: 0:40

Yeah, Tim, I'm good. Yeah, no, this is like last item of the day. I'm down visiting my folks, and so my wife and I are like working, and my son cannot understand why we are working on vacation, so, like, I'm very happy to like be able to. When we're wrapping up, he's going to be like are you ready to change? I'm wearing a work shirt, you know, that's what. That's how he knows I'm working. I'm wearing a button down here. I'm not sure I can go out and say, yes, it's time for me to change.

Keith Kaufman: 1:11

Oh man, that brings back memories. My father was a physician and so I remember that that was a big thing. Like you knew, when he changed it was, it was game on then for fun.

Taylor Brown: 1:23

So yeah, that's really funny.

Keith Kaufman: 1:26

I am not wrapping up my work day, so I'm a little bit jealous of you. I've got several more hours to go here. I envy that you can go hang out with your son.

Keith Kaufman: 1:36

But but I'm excited to be talking about you, to talking to you guys today, and I think this will be an interesting topic. I know we had we had sort of talked about just just what the impact of COVID has been for athletes, and I was doing a little bit of homework in preparing for this episode. And something that struck me is, you know, number one I don't know that we can really answer this question quite yet in terms of what the the large scale implications are, because I think there's so much more to come in terms of understanding the real impact for anybody, let alone for athletes. But it's interesting that we've kind of moved into the phase that we have now.

Keith Kaufman: 2:24

As a client of mine put earlier this week, it's like it's like we're kind of all really back now.

Keith Kaufman: 2:29

You know the world is back, it's officially back, it's been back for a little while, and so I think there was this acute period. Certainly sports were impacted, just like everything else, when things were really shut down and people lost seasons and people couldn't train, people lost teammates, right, they couldn't be in the groups that they were familiar with, and now a lot of that is restored. But yet I still have a fair amount of clients who talk about the impact that that time had, or still feeling some of that adjustment or still carrying some of the stress, and so it kind of feels like we almost have to talk about this and, in time, points like what, what was the impact while we were going through the worst of the pandemic? And then, now that we're quote unquote, open back up again what are the impacts now? So that was what I was thinking. I don't know how you guys want to structure the conversation, but that's what struck me, yeah no, I mean, I definitely agree.

Tim Pineau: 3:23

I mean we're talking about ripple effects that are going to, I think, continue on into the future. We are, whether it's impact on education, you know certainly sports or performance and just how we relate to, to health and wellness generally. I may think so much is going to change because of this and for some reason, it feels important to also like contextualize this or at least for us as we're talking about this, like the impact of COVID on where this falls. This topic falls in the grand scheme of things. I was looking at the World Health Organization's they saw this COVID dashboard up right and cumulatively, to date, almost 7 million people have died from cold. You know, thinking about, I mean, it's just in the last three years, you know. So I guess I just want our listeners to know that as we talk about this and take what we're talking about seriously, we also recognize where it falls, like on the continuum of what the impact of COVID has been.

Taylor Brown: 4:29

Yeah, I think that's a that's a good point to make, tim, and I think we dance around that point a lot around like what is sports bigger place within society, and I think that's kind of what you're getting at here. Is that, yes, while while there were these impacts on athletes and sports and teams, quite reasonably like the bigger impact was on the loss of life and the way that that, you know, impacted people around the world? So I think that's a good point to make before we get into this conversation.

Tim Pineau: 5:07

And I think it's like there's a direct relationship to right, because some of the athletes, even some of the athletes that I've worked with, lost family members, right, so they didn't just lose the season, you know. It's like, oh, they're also then dealing with the grief, right. That is related to the like, this overall impact of this disease, and so it's like the complexity of how this may have impacted sport, how it may have impacted athletes I think is is kind of like mind boggling, yeah no, I think that's that's really good context for for this conversation.

Keith Kaufman: 5:45

Well, I guess, I guess a question I would have for both of you, and I'm happy to share kind of my experiences with this too. But I guess, just to start off by talking about, I guess, a little bit of mindfulness, you know how, how did you find yourselves, I guess, either for you or in your work, or with your athletes or the athletes themselves, how did you find mindfulness maybe being useful or relevant to to what we were all experiencing during during COVID? I mean, I personally found that it was highly relevant, incredibly relevant to what we were going through. So I'm curious to my CU, nodding your head quite a bit. So, yeah, what, what, what are your thoughts on one of my students?

Tim Pineau: 6:34

No, I mean, your question like immediately takes me back to some of those first meetings that I had with teams that I've been working with.

Tim Pineau: 6:40

You know, like some teams you know, over the course of years, and then COVID hits, you know, and so we were able to maintain our relationships and everything transitioned to virtual for a while, of course, but it was like, oh, I'm so glad that we have been training and talking about mindfulness for so long, because it's been like prepping them to deal with this uncertainty you know we talk about like, you know you think about it.

Tim Pineau: 7:08

Now it's like this trivial uncertainty was like I can't control the weather on game day, right, but kind of the I don't know if you want to call it the mechanism of action like how do we respond to that uncertainty? Well, this is just uncertainty on a huge scale. You know, we don't know when we're going to be back in person. We don't know what the regulations of training are going to look like. We don't know if we're going to be able to train tomorrow, if we get an email tonight that says, oh, someone got COVID, you were a close contact and now you can't show up to practice. So now the team can't practice, like so it? Yeah, just like you're saying, I found it immediately, like so directly relevant to dealing with kind of the intensity of the motion around, like the uncertainty.

Taylor Brown: 7:51

I spent most of 2020 working with a rowing team and I was working with them originally in Florida in January of 2020. I went down and did a one week training camp with them and I was in a mental performance capacity, doing various different sessions with them leading some meditations, doing some more small group work, the guys kind of talking amongst themselves on various topics related to performance and mindfulness. The intention was to, throughout 2020, I was going to go up and work with the team in person throughout their year and throughout their season. Then obviously, we all know what happened in late February and March. For the rest of that year, I was kind of consulting with the coaches and frequently getting on to Zoom calls with the team. It was really.

Taylor Brown: 8:58

I'm sure you both had similar experiences with teams it was painful to be a part of. It was painful to watch a team continue to try to hang on, to hope. Prior to the uh, canceling of the season In March, they were kind of going right into their season. That season got kiboshed. Then the second year as well, 2021, are we going to have a spring season?

Taylor Brown: 9:34

We didn't know for a long time if we were going to have a spring season, but I think one of the biggest struggles was motivation. Of you know, most of them were training by themselves or maybe training with a small group that could have been on campus or at home. I mean, the question is, does motivation I mean we kind of had this discussion in another one of our Zoom, excuse me, another one of our episodes but does motivation decrease when you don't have that outlet of competition? If you don't know when competition is happening, it might not happen for a year. We had no idea at that point how long this was going to be lasting. Some of these guys were like I am having really a hard time continuing to train because it's I don't know when I'm going to go race. I just don't know. That was the biggest thing for me, was the motivation piece.

Keith Kaufman: 10:40

I think that's so interesting, did you notice, taylor? Because something that I picked up on has that kind of evolved over time. In some ways You're mentioning 2020, obviously this stretched for a while into 2021. I don't know how long you guys were away from the water exactly, but for many of my clients they missed multiple months, so cutting across potentially more than one season. I think.

Keith Kaufman: 11:11

At first I always think back. One of the questions that I ask an athlete the first time I meet with them, when I'm just trying to get to know them, is besides your sport, what else do you like to do? I love to ask that question because a lot of times they look at me like I'm crazy. What kind of question is that? I have no idea how to answer that question.

Keith Kaufman: 11:31

I think for that reason, because our identities can be so wrapped around this big pillar, I think initially, with that being taken away, it was like a loss. I saw a lot of grief. I saw a lot of kind of like without a rudder, without a paddle, like you're saying, just a lack of motivation. The work, I think, where I found mindfulness helpful was kind of making space for that. Yes, this is very disorienting. A lot of acceptance around this is the situation we're in and your feelings are valid and they're legitimate.

Keith Kaufman: 12:05

Something interesting that I think started to happen as more time passed and, I think, as people found a little bit more acceptance, was actually starting to find creative ways to engage their sport or even different activities that they didn't ordinarily have time for, and I almost saw like a resurgence of motivation, in a way, like I'm thinking about a youth soccer player that I worked with for a while who was devastated at first because he was away from his team, away from his teammates.

Keith Kaufman: 12:36

He lost everything. Soccer was his life. It was what he cared about more than anything else, and he and I worked for a while on well, what could you do on your own? How could you train under your own? What are the things that you've always wanted to work on that you just haven't had time for because you had so many organized team activities? And he had so much fun developing his own training plans and going out and doing them and tweaking them, and it was like this surge of motivation, whereas at first, I think, just like you're saying, taylor, it was severely compromised. So I don't know if that resonates with you at all in terms of how you saw things evolving over time.

Tim Pineau: 13:13

I don't see a reason to deny it that near the motivation piece it does. Another connection to the long-term life on this work is working on letting go of the sole focus on outcome. Of course, athletes are gonna probably always care about the win, they're always gonna care about the outcome, but figuring out ways for that not to be the only thing they care about, and having worked at really trying to feel attached to all of the different reasons why, like why I do this, why this matters to me. So, even if there isn't a competition on the horizon, like how do I stay motivated? And I found that that was actually quite helpful to a lot of the teams that I was working with. That's what your kind of your anecdote, keith, is making me think about. It's like, yeah, they were able to just be appreciative of like oh, we can be together, right. Like we were apart for so long and now that's like we're training together even if we're not gonna compete, even if that's totally uncertain, like it just feels so good now to be whatever it is, to be back on campus or to be training as a unit again. So, like these other ways that they can tap into to that motivation that isn't solely about, oh, just because I want to win or just because I need to get that outcome, so I found that to be helpful.

Tim Pineau: 14:33

And the other thing, keith, when you mentioned identity, I was just looking at some of the studies that have been done, looking at what has the impact been mental health wise, on athletes, and there was this one that was actually looking at kind of the outcomes for athletes, mental health outcomes for athletes, compared to non athletes. Coming out of the first lockdown and the hypothesis right, they thought that athletes would have more resilience than non athletes and that resilience would be attached to mental health, so that athletes would probably show actually more robust, kind of like better, mental health in comparison to non athletes, and they were right about part of it. They did find a significant relationship between resilience and these overall mental health outcomes, but no difference between athletes and non athletes. They both groups had the resilience they needed to kind of buffer them against some of the mental health outcomes. One of the differences they did find, though, was that athletes reported more anxiety, and the athletes anxiety was mediated by.

Tim Pineau: 15:39

It was some sub category of athlete identity, but essentially like how attached they are to their identity as an athlete. The more attached they were to that identity, the more anxiety they had. The loss just felt bigger to them to some extent. So it's almost like being an athlete put them more at risk for some of these negative mental health impacts because they felt like they lost so much. So I thought that was so interesting, because I think I would have also assumed there was something about being an athlete, having an identity of an athlete, that could be a buffer against some of that.

Taylor Brown: 16:12

Yeah, now you can kind of say that, though it does make sense to me that it would be that the results came out that way, and because I've often thought that, in order for athletes to perform at a high level, there is a certain personal identification with that, like you're not just training and competing to win something, you're training and competing because that has a core implication for who you are.

Taylor Brown: 16:49

And that was certainly my experience as an athlete. And retiring from sports and not really from sports in general, but from elite competition, I guess I really did feel like you know, this wasn't through COVID, but I really did feel like I kind of lost a big part of my identity and had to and I am still reforming what that means, what it means to be me, you know, specifically recently because I've had this back injury lingering and I haven't really been able to row at all and I'm a rowing coach and so there's a huge piece of identity to it, for good or bad, I think. Do you, I guess, a follow up question to that do you experience athletes, work with athletes who you feel like don't really identify with their sport?

Keith Kaufman: 17:45

I mean, that's an interesting question. Most of the folks that I work with sorry, I work with some non-athletes too, but in terms of the athletes that I work with, I would say for a vast majority of them athletics is a pillar of their identity. I think the size of that pillar can vary. I work with some pro athletes who very much see themselves as pro athletes. I work with some amateur athletes who very much see themselves as pro athletes and operate as pro athletes. I have some pro athletes who have trouble seeing themselves as pro athletes. So you know, I think you see a lot of variance in terms of what that identity can look like. But I would say, probably for someone who would sign up to come and work with a sports psychologist, a clinical sports psychologist, the athletics has got to be pretty important to them. So I probably see a certain subset of people I would say.

Tim Pineau: 18:34

That makes a lot of sense to me too, you know, because, yeah, it's hard to imagine, I mean, just how dedicated you have to be, how much of your life and time you have to spend, and I feel like, if you spend all that time and it feels like a sacrifice, there's no way that's sustainable, right? Like it has to feel good on some level that you are dedicating so much time. That the choice between you know, I remember in college, you know like just how many times I had to say like no, I can't do that. I have to get up early for a crew, you know, and there were guys, there were guys on my team who ended up, you know, by junior year, senior year, kind of quitting the team because they were like, I just want to experience what it's like being a college student. I don't want to have to say no to those things anymore.

Tim Pineau: 19:22

I think, because there was a they weren't identifying as much as an athlete and the people who could sustain, who stayed on the team, or the people who, you know, even if there was part of you that wished like, yeah, I wish I could stay out or whatever, it just didn't feel like that big of a sacrifice, because what I really wanted to do was, like practice would be on the team. So I feel like in my clinical work, Taylor, like just in response to your question, or what immediately came up, is like yeah, the people who say that, who, like I, don't really feel as attached to the identity of an athlete, those are the people who come thinking, questioning whether or not they want to be in the sport at all. It's like I don't think I want to do this anymore. It doesn't feel like who I am. I don't want it to be who I am, right, I don't want to do all this sacrificing, and it's like yeah, so I think there almost needs to be some of that, that identity piece to it.

Keith Kaufman: 20:15

Yeah, I guess, as a follow up question, I guess I wonder if there is some distinction that we can make among the type of sport that we're playing and how important the identity, or how central the identity, or therefore, maybe for something like COVID, when there's this massive disruption, the impact and identity. And of course, every sport requires a massive commitment and every sport has its demands. But you guys are coming from the rowing world and rowing is an example, at least to me, of one of those subset of sports where, literally, the commitment is like a lifestyle. If you're not willing to live that lifestyle, if you're not willing to wake up and be on the water at ungodly hours in the morning before you even start the rest of your day, you're not gonna make it very far as a rower, right. And so when that gets taken away from you, it's not just a piece of your life, it's literally maybe the thing that, the glue that holds your whole life together. I don't know, I wonder, I wonder if there could be any differences there.

Taylor Brown: 21:19

Yeah, I'm hesitant to make distinctions among sports, solely because of the fact that I don't wanna disrespect anybody who's doing a sport. Then they go screw those guys they like-.

Keith Kaufman: 21:35

Well, that's not my point.

Taylor Brown: 21:36

Like my sport's hard too, right, like no, I get what your point is and I actually wrote down here sacrifice, perceptions of sacrifice versus lifestyle. And I think and it's kind of a follow up to Tim's point too and I will address that specific question in a second Keith but I wonder in that study if athletes who were a little bit detached from the sport in terms of identity were actually able to be more resilient through the pandemic. Then the athletes who had a really strong attachment in their identity to the sport, so like the ones who were kind of like I could live with or without this, and then it's like taken away, and then it's like I'm gonna be okay, this isn't like my everything versus athletes who really didn't have anything else and they were fully bought in and they were fully identified with the sport, with being an athlete, and then that's all taken away from them. Were they somehow less resilient? And I'm like looking at this detachment as actually like a protective factor in being able to bounce back a little bit more.

Tim Pineau: 22:53

Well, I mean, what that makes me think of is the idea of choice, right? So, yeah, I think being especially when you're talking about elite levels, it's like it does need to be some version of a lifestyle, right, it's so much a part of you. But I think there's a difference between, yeah, these people who might kind of like rigidly be attached to that identity, versus people who feel like they choose that identity. It's like, yes, I wanna do this, I choose this with my time. This way, I choose to dedicate myself here and then, when the unexpected, the unthinkable, happens and it does get taken away, right, because the fact that they experience it as a choice is like well, I can choose to identify with something else. I can choose to reform my identity. Not that that would be easy, not that that would be without its own pain and suffering, but, yeah, I don't know. There's something about this idea of choice that feels potentially really important in what you're saying.

Taylor Brown: 23:54

I agree with that and I don't think that's quite psychological flexibility. But I guess maybe what I'm a sense of adaptability, holding on loosely yeah, non-attachment, I guess, would be kind of what I'm looking for. But I really like that of like, yeah, a rigid holding on to something, rigidly versus a sense of choice. And this brings us right back to mindfulness. I mean, that's kind of what it's. One of the central tenants of the choice comes up so much in our conversations.

Keith Kaufman: 24:26

Judging by your reactions. I just wanna clarify one thing real quick with my question before, which was no shade on any other sport, but you just used the word rigid, right, and I do think there are some sports that require a more rigid commitment than others based on what they demand, and I think maybe that's a word I could have used earlier to sort of make that point more succinctly. And so maybe another way to get at this point that you're making Taylor is like could there be some variability across sport in terms of how resilient someone is or how attached someone is to that identity?

Keith Kaufman: 25:03

I guess I'm not necessarily expecting you guys to know the answer to that. I'm sort of raising it as a speculative kind of question.

Taylor Brown: 25:11

That's really interesting, keith, because I like the way that you phrase that, with rigid commitment versus level of commitment, because you can have a high level of commitment but not be like so rigidly attached to it, if that makes sense, because I think all athletes at high levels are very committed. But I think there's kind of more of an adaptable commitment. But they often refer to and you may have heard of this before as certain sports as cult sports and people kind of look at them like a cult because they have these people who kind of do well one. I think it's sports that require a high level of physical pain and then they require a lot of time, a ton of time. Not that other sports don't, but if you look at, I'm gonna say cross-country running, marathon, rowing, swimming, maybe you could say water polo, things that are just kind of in this category of the people who do them are a little bit I don't know with a good word, tim, you've been in the world. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh oh. Putting Tim on the spot.

Tim Pineau: 26:34

No, no, no, like single-minded. You have to be you have to be.

Keith Kaufman: 26:39

Well, that's my point. Okay, thank you, that's my point, right? Is that? You know? That seems like such a relevant distinction to make here, for what we're talking about with athlete identity and how that might be impacted by the pandemic is that there are certain sports at least the way they're constructed that require a certain amount of single-mindedness that maybe not others requiring quite the same way.

Tim Pineau: 27:00

Not that they don't require commitment, a tremendous I know I very much appreciate the distinction that you're making, because I feel like any sport can right, but not every sport absolutely requires it. And your question the first thing I thought of was was actually Tiger Woods and like, when Tiger Woods was first starting to dominate golf, I remember all these articles coming out about how much time he spent in the weight room and how that was like novel in elite golf. Like, of course, all elite golfers spent all the time you know, practicing their swings and like that. But like Tiger Woods was like expanding it and I'm sure he wasn't the only golfer ever to do it, you know but like that he really talked about how he trained and it was just incorporating more of this single-mindedness of like, yeah, I go to the gym and I lift weights and that's part of my golf and I think about my nutrition and that's for my golf, right.

Tim Pineau: 27:52

Like I think you can take any sport and, if you approach it that way, probably elevate your performance. I mean just thinking about that whole idea of interconnectedness, that like, yeah, how we sleep and what we eat and all these different ways that we train, of course, kind of pour into our ultimate performance. But you can take a sport like golf and I don't play golf, so maybe I'm speaking at a turn but like there are probably things you don't necessarily have to train in the way that, like for crew, you need to train strength, you need to train anaerobic threshold, you need to train endurance. You can't get away with sacrificing any of those, but like I can imagine you could probably get pretty good at golf and like, not go on long runs, you know, like and so John Daly would be a good example of that.

Tim Pineau: 28:39

So yeah, so I think you're right, Keith. Like I think there are probably differences in sports. Someone could approach any sport that way, but I don't think every sport requires it.

Keith Kaufman: 28:53

All right, good, yeah, I appreciate you guys giving me a chance to clarify that a little bit it does feel like there's some relevance to this Again just to speculate on.

Keith Kaufman: 29:04

We're talking about identity, we're talking about law. I mean, everybody, I think, during the pandemic felt profound sense of loss in retirement. Every athlete in some way shape or form who had any kind of attachment to their sport felt some sense of loss. I'm just putting again. I'm looking at you guys. You guys are rowers. I'm thinking about if I was a rower who was accustomed to getting up at 4.30 every single morning to be out on the water and I wasn't doing that anymore. That might be particularly disconcerting, like completely uprooting literally my sleep wake schedule, whereas maybe not every other sport requires that level of disruption.

Tim Pineau: 29:42

Yes, well, no, I mean, actually I think I maybe spoken in some of the podcasts before, but and this was long before COVID, but you know, so I wrote in high school, I wrote through college, I coached for a number of years after college and it was about, you know, like two or three years into grad school, where it just the balance became impossible and I had to give up coaching.

Tim Pineau: 30:06

And that I remember that first fall. I remember ending that last spring, feeling the sense of freedom, like oh my God, I don't have to wake up so early every morning, like holy crap, this is gonna be so nice, right, it had been such an integral part of my life, my identity, for more than 12, 13 years and I got so depressed that that first fall or without it, and it like really surprised me and I mean, and I chose to give it up. So, yeah, I can only imagine the impact of that. Just, I don't know how much that structure was really supporting me and without even really realizing it, like if someone, if that just got taken away, like yeah, that would be a huge impact.

Keith Kaufman: 30:51

Well, I'm mindful of kind of our time and there was that I know. I sort of introduced this at the beginning in suggesting maybe we could split this into time points, and I know we don't have a ton of time left in our episode today. I wonder if we could just spend a few minutes talking about more the present, you know, because I think COVID is still very much with us, and not only are people still continuing to get COVID and every once in a while we have these surges but also, I think the impact, the ripple effects are still being felt, and so I'm curious what you guys are seeing now that we are quote unquote back, now that things are opened up, now that seasons have resumed, pro seasons have resumed, all of that. People are going to games, right. It's not nearly the same amount of concern in terms of being around each other, though you know you do. Often, even in public spaces, you see people wearing masks. You still see it pretty regularly. So where do you see the impact now?

Tim Pineau: 31:46

Yeah, well, another study I was looking at, the NCAA did like a big wellness survey I mean 37,000 athletes across D1, d2, d3, looking at I think it was like the spring 2020 and then fall 2020, and, yeah, they found double like the scores on things like depression and anxiety, other mental health issues, compared to previous surveys previous year.

Tim Pineau: 32:17

So there was this huge increase among college athletes when these mental health concerns, and so then the study that I was looking at was actually looking at like the following year, comparing the numbers to that NCAA survey, and they found even higher rates of depression, even higher rates of anxiety.

Tim Pineau: 32:35

So it was like this continued increasing trajectory, even after athletes came back. And I do think that, in terms of some of the teams I'm working with now, yeah, there is a fragility that seems to be there that I think, even though athletes I definitely see them getting their feet back under them and they're still able to perform well, it's like when things get thrown off, that the reaction to that just seems so, so big. And that's the feedback I'm getting from the coaches too, and not like to a person, not every single athlete, but so many more athletes than in the past. I think that in pre-COVID and I'm sure COVID is not the only factor here. But it's like that, yeah, and maybe it is an artifact of the increased depression and anxiety, or just like this vulnerability to stress, to trauma. Even talk about like little tea trauma, but like yeah, there just does seem to be maybe more that I mean a fragility, I guess.

Taylor Brown: 33:44

Yeah, you said that this might not be the only factor in it. I mean, I think I've seen that too, but I hear just I don't know so much that and I feel like every generation says this about the generations below them, that the kind of this generation of kids that raised on social media, the ones that are in college now, I mean they've had smartphones their entire life and the impact of social media kind of the impact of kind of less socialization, less face-to-face kind of socialization, more online socialization I have to imagine that there's some element there that has coincided with the impacts of COVID. Is there anything? Or is that some of the factors that you're kind of considering there when you say there's more factors that might be causing some of that?

Tim Pineau: 35:00

I think so. I mean, yeah, you read anything piece about about Gen Z kids these days, you know, but it's like, yeah, I do think there is something we're gonna have to rename our podcast.

Keith Kaufman: 35:11

Grumpy old man or something.

Taylor Brown: 35:15

That's sorry, tim. Continue. Gen Z ears listen to the podcast, but you know, if they do we're sorry guys. We like you.

Tim Pineau: 35:24

It's become this like cliche now, like no one makes phone calls anymore you know what I mean. And like, yeah, maybe it's passé to call someone on the phone instead of text them. But I also think it's like because there's anxiety, people get anxious and young people get anxious about the idea of talking to someone on the phone. I think there has been this emphasis Right, because of technology, because of smartphones, because of social media, I'm being able to interact with people in this virtual space and not have to rely on in-person communication.

Tim Pineau: 35:53

And then the pandemic comes and the idea of in-person communication it's actually gets taken off the table. Any pressure whatsoever to have to like build that particular muscle is just gone, right. And then suddenly like, oh, everyone's excited to be back, we want to re-engage in community because, of course, community is incredibly important. But yeah, the the stress and anxiety related to that different kind of connecting, I don't know, it does seem, it does seem to, it does feel, feel generational. But like, not because these, these people are different, but because they just grew up with this kind of technology that I think has had a drastic impact on how community is created. Now.

Keith Kaufman: 36:33

What I know. We're up against the heart stop today. So I'll just say one more thing and then maybe we can wrap up the discussion here. I feel like we just scratched the surface on this one there. There's so much more to talk about, but I guess to to defend the, the younger generation here for just a moment.

Keith Kaufman: 36:50

I was thinking about this, this question to, in preparation for this episode, and I have a. I have a 10 year old, almost 11 year old son and thinking about what he missed out on in terms of just getting to Experiment with different sports. I think that we've seen increasing pressure over the last couple decades to specialize in sports, and at younger and younger ages. For example, my son has played like football, he's played basketball, he's played soccer. He expressed an interest recently in playing baseball but said to me that he was nervous about playing because he felt like he'd be so far behind, because I think a lot of the kids who played baseball have been playing baseball for a lot of years now and there were just literally fewer seasons for him to have the opportunity to spread the love around with different sports and and I kind of wonder how that kind of thing. You know the condensed time frame that some of the younger kids had who were affected by this, how that ultimately will affect their identity as athletes.

Keith Kaufman: 37:48

Moving forward, or this phenomenon of specialization and having to do sports year-round way too early, that's a whole nother episode we could do, you know. I just that that was something that struck me just in terms of yet another thing that perhaps this, this younger generation, missed out on.

Tim Pineau: 38:05

Yeah, yeah, that definitely rings true. I mean, so much was taken away from them, you know, and from all of us. But I think it's just that you know, thinking about kids, you know, not even college athletes, but just like kids elementary, middle school, high school like how the hell did they wrap their heads around what was happening to the world? And like why they couldn't just go see their friends and like, and yeah, again the ripple like we started talking about in the beginning, of the ripple effects of this, I think we're only just beginning to see and understand.

Taylor Brown: 38:43

Well, we should do another 10 years and we'll know more about.

Keith Kaufman: 38:49

We'll make a date now.

Taylor Brown: 38:50

We'll circle back and season 15.

Keith Kaufman: 38:53

Yeah, season 15, season 16 Well, listen to our son say what the hell were we talking about? We?

Tim Pineau: 38:58

really off.

Keith Kaufman: 39:02

Well, thank you guys for the conversation today. As always, I love chatting with you and just take a quick moment and also I don't think Taylor can stay with us, but I will.

Keith Kaufman: 39:13

I will thank our colleague, carol Glass for all of her support of our podcast. If you are interested in connecting with us, the mindful sport performance podcast, we have a social media presence as we're talking about the wonderful benefits of social media, direct you to social media that we are on Instagram at mindful underscore sport underscore podcast. We also have our YouTube channel where we have a whole catalog of Meditations where we and our various guests have led. So if you're interested in some some really interesting free mindfulness practices, check those out. You can also connect with us, the MSP Institute, online at wwwmindfulsportperformanceorg, and we are also on Instagram and on Facebook.

Keith Kaufman: 39:59

I, dr Keith Kaufman, I'm on Instagram and on Twitter, slash X and my handle is at mindful sport doc and our book is still out there mindful sport performance enhancement mental training for athletes and coaches. So If you're interested in our work learning about mindfulness applications for sport, highly recommend checking that out and we always are very welcome and appreciative of your ratings and reviews of our book and of our podcast. And for the first time this season for our podcast, we we are Taking any donations that anyone is willing to give to help us do this work and support our efforts with the pod. Shockingly, podcasters don't generally get paid to do what they do At least we don't and so anything that you can you can help us out with to support our show is incredibly appreciated, and you can Access that in our show. Notes are on our bus route page that houses our podcast. So thank you to everybody who listened, thank you Taylor, thank you Tim, and we'll see you next time.