Hey everyone, welcome back to the Mindest Matters Podcast. I am your host Riley Jensen, and today, we are discussing the 5 Things I’d Tell You as a Mental Performance Coach If I Wasn’t Afraid of Hurting Your Feelings
Stop coaching your kid from the bleachers.
When you yell instructions during the game, you’re not helping—you’re creating triangulation. Your kid now has two coaches with two different agendas, and guess whose voice suddenly matters more? Yours. Because you sign the checks and tuck them in at night.
That means they tune out the actual coach—the one who’s with them 5 days a week—and start scanning the stands for Dad’s head nod or Mom’s thumbs-up. You’ve just split their attention and tanked their performance.
Your athlete should love you the most… but they should listen to their coach the most in competition. Keep your mouth shut or sit in the parking lot. Those are the only two options that don’t hurt the team.
Quit telling them “how could anyone miss that play?”
That’s the spotlight effect on steroids, and you’re pumping it straight into their veins.
99% of the crowd is thinking about their own kid, their phone, or where they parked. Nobody is replaying your daughter’s missed serve in slow-motion except you.
Every time you say “everyone noticed,” you add 10 pounds of invisible pressure.
Tell them the truth: “Literally no one will remember that tomorrow except you… and me, because I’m obsessive. Let it go.”
The car ride home is either medicine or poison. You’re choosing poison.
That 12 minutes after the game is sacred. It can refill their tank or drain it for the entire next week.
If you launch into critique the second the door shuts, you’ve turned the car into a coffin. They’re trapped. Seatbelt on, nowhere to run, while the most important voice in their life dissects everything they did wrong.
New rule: First person to talk about the game buys ice cream for the whole family next Friday. Watch how fast everyone shuts up and starts saying “I’m proud of you” instead.
Stats are crack, and you’re the dealer.
Batting average, goals, points—those numbers light up the same part of your brain as slot machines. But they’re a terrible measure of your kid’s actual contribution 90% of the time.
The hustle plays, the screens, the decoy runs, blocks, the locker-room energy, noticing when there are a good teammate—none of that shows up on the stat sheet, but it’s usually why the team wins.
When you only celebrate the numbers, you teach them that invisible work is worthless. Then watch them stop doing it. Congratulate the process louder than the points, or don’t be shocked when they become selfish stat-padders.
Never, ever let them hear you talk about how much this is costing.
The second money enters their brain during competition, performance dies.
“I didn’t want to mess up after that $600 tournament fee” … “We drove six hours for this, you better play well” … those sentences are performance assassins.
If you can’t afford it without guilt-tripping them, don’t sign them up. Simple.
Your kid already feels pressure to justify your sacrifice. Don’t make them carry the receipt in their head while they’re trying to hit a backhand.
Here’s the bottom line: Your athlete doesn’t need another coach, another critic, or another accountant.
They need one safe adult who lets them play without fear, without shame, and without owing anybody anything.
Be that adult.
Everything else is noise.
Like this if it stung a little.
Save it and watch it again next Friday night when you’re tempted to open your mouth in the fourth quarter.
See you on the field.
And keep your coaching voice in the trunk where it belongs.
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