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The Pressure Lab is a first-of-its-kind mental fitness podcast built specifically for competitive and youth soccer players navigating the real emotional demands of the game.
This weekly podcast from HEADFIRST, a Philadelphia Union Foundation initiative, is hosted by Keith Wilford who gets into the realities of being a young athlete today. Featuring conversations with pro athletes, coaches, mental health professionals, and youth development experts, each episode is an honest conversations about pressure, identity, confidence, failure, burnout, belonging, and the emotional weight competition can put on you.
No highlight reels. No empty hype. Just real stories, real insight, and practical tools for players and the people around them.
If you’ve ever felt the game get bigger than the field, The Pressure Lab was made for you.
About HeadFirst: HEADFIRST is a mental fitness initiative of the Philadelphia Union Foundation designed to equip young athletes with the tools, language, and mindset to perform under pressure and grow through everything sport puts them through. HEADFIRST is proudly sponsored by Independence Blue Cross and Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. More information at www.myHEADFIRST.org
About the Philadelphia Union Foundation The Philadelphia Union Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, dedicated to creating opportunity, building community, and developing the next generation of athletes and leaders through soccer and education-based programming in Chester, Pennsylvania and the surrounding region. More information at www.philadelphiaunionfoundation.org
About Our Host: Keith Wilford is a Mental Health and Wellness Educator at YSC Academy and founder of The Wilford Movement. A Widener University All-American and MA in Counseling Education, Keith has spent his career at the intersection of sport, education, and youth development. He is a national leader in student development and has coached and counseled student athletes at some of the most competitive academic and athletic programs in the country.
Tag In here: https://forms.gle/VLBmyLFjVmbtZxBb6. In a few honest words, tag in with the heart of why you’re here: why you play, why you coach, why you care, why you support someone you love in sport. Share your moment and add your voice to a space that puts every player’s whole self first.
Having all these emotions and
being in some of these spaces
from time to time.
It's okay because that is life and
you're going to be happy, sad, depressed.
Not confident.
Low self-esteem.
I mean, these these happen all the time.
Step into the pressure Lab,
brought to you by HEADFIRST
to Philadelphia Union
Foundation's mental health initiative.
Here.
We believe mental fitness is as important
as physical fitness.
You train your body every day.
This is where you train your mind.
The pressure, the doubt, the setbacks.
They're all part of the game.
But what you do with it?
That's the skill.
There may not be a better example
than today's guest, Carli Lloyd.
Carli, I want to be able
to be really thoughtful and mindful
of how much you have impacted
not only myself, but I know our audience.
Carli is one of the most
decorated players in U.S.
soccer history, a two time World Cup
champion, two time Olympic gold medalist,
316 caps for the US when his national team
134 international goals.
Her story of being cut from the U-21
national team earlier in her career.
Instead of blaming the system,
questioning her dream,
she made the decision
to lean into her mind.
She chose to train her mind the same way
that she trained her body in years.
Later, that mindset showed up
in the biggest stage of the world.
Cali is built differently
and stands above so many people.
So I'm so thankful to welcome you, Carli.
Yeah, it. I'm looking forward to chatting.
In this podcast, we start off
with this concept of tagging in.
This idea of tagging in is that we're
sort of checking in with our emotions.
And so, you know, my tagging is I'm deeply
thankful and grateful for this time.
I don't take it for granted.
And I know that our audience
really appreciates it as well.
So I want to pass it over to you
and have you tag in.
Yeah. I mean, look, I think
I'm someone who grew up in
a small town in new Jersey,
just right across the bridge.
You know, Philly,
Philly is sort of home to me.
I've been a Philly sports fan
all growing up.
But, you know,
I wasn't pegged as as the next superstar
that was coming out
of high school, college
and then going to make it
onto the national team.
And I think, you know,
my tagging would would be
that my journey was incredibly hard.
And I came to a crossroads
of what you referenced before, of having
a little bit of adversity getting cut
from the under 21 national team.
That was kind of my first
bout of adversity growing up.
You know, everything kind of went
pretty smooth up until that point.
And I came to a crossroad of, you know,
what was I going to do?
Was I going
to, you know, pout and whimper,
or was I going to roll the sleeves up and,
and do all the things that maybe
weren't comfortable, comfortable for me
and, and dig deep.
So, yeah,
I mean, I'm proud of my journey of kind of
where I came from and how hard it was.
You don't want an easy journey.
I think that's what humbles us all
is being able to persevere
through different challenging situations.
And if I can make it
from a really small town and, you know,
not on the radar of everybody else,
then there's loads of other people
that can be successful
in whatever success looks to them.
But that's
what I'm most proud of for sure.
So when
I was reading all of those accomplishments
and I think without overloading,
but just honoring them
like what comes up for you
when you hear them.
You know,
I think when you're in the moment and
you know, you're going
through the trenches and things are hard
and you got to really look
within yourself, you know, it's
just knowing
that emotions are all part of life.
And there's highs, there's lows.
You know, you're going to feel like
you're on top of the world one moment.
And you know, as a World
Cup champion, for example,
and then another moment, you're
the least confident person on the field.
You know, it's just being able
to kind of ride those emotions
and not stay in in
any one of those emotions for too long.
And, you know, that's
what makes people be able to succeed in
life, is being able
to just gut through those.
And, you know,
I just did a lot of uncomfortable things.
I mean, I hated running.
I wasn't a naturally fit player.
I got away with it all the way up
until the under 21 national team.
And then you're amongst
the best of the best.
So that's what my coach said to me.
You know, look, you're talented player.
You've got some really special,
unique qualities.
But you know, you need something
that's going to separate you.
And the most controllable thing
is your fitness, your work ethic,
your attitude, your mentality,
your mental toughness.
You know, all of those things.
That really is kind of the easy bit.
You know, it's it's a skill.
And having all those unique
skill sets that not every player is able
to, you know, work on and get better at.
So I just made a pact myself to
just do all of the things that
that I didn't like doing.
And it wasn't easy.
I mean, it didn't happen overnight.
It took just a whole shift
in my mental thinking
that evolved over the course of my career,
my 17 year career.
I mean, from the start of it
to the end of it, you know,
I was a totally different person,
a player.
It just never stopped.
You know, the training never stopped.
But the, the mental aspect
of of my training
and the game never stopped either.
Did you ever have to be able to separate
Carli Lloyd the player,
and Carli Lloyd the person?
Not really.
I mean, I think when I walked
out of my house, I was still me.
I would say maybe, you know, a bit
with my support system,
my friends, family, husband,
you know, when you play sport in any sport
and you know, you live this lifestyle,
it's around the clock, you know,
even though I'm I'm home
and I'm off per se and not competing.
You know, I in the back of my mind, I'm
still worrying about what I have tomorrow.
You know what time
I have to get up to training
if if I have off the field
obligations, appearances.
I've got to fly here.
You know, it was it was for 17 years,
my professional career.
It was it was constant.
It was like I never shut off.
And you know,
there's varying levels of that to,
to a degree of what people do.
You know, you look at someone like
Djokovic, Tom Brady, myself, Kobe Bryant
I mean, there's real there's no real shut
off until you're completely done playing.
And so that is probably
what the difference was.
But when I came home into kind of my safe
space and,
you know, the the small circle of people
that I have around me, you know,
I could always just be me, you know,
and I was always just Carli to them.
I don't live a majorly
glamorous lifestyle.
I mean, I'm pretty simplistic and blue
collar still.
You know, I growing up in new Jersey,
it's my roots.
So, yeah, I don't feel like I had to ever
separate those two.
You know, I was listening to something
that you had said.
It made me want to ask this question.
You obviously have observed
the movement of the youth game
and how much these kids are playing.
What guidance would you provide for them
to sort of
stay in the right headspace to play
when they're playing so much ball?
It just is so different.
It's so different
from when I played, you know, I played
and I played in one league.
I had ODP that I could compete
in that eventually
got me seen on the regional team.
In the national team,
maybe you have two games in a weekend.
You know, maybe three games
if you go play in a tournament.
I looked forward to the games
every weekend.
You know, we would train and I would be
with a ball every single day.
And you know, for,
for majority of the season.
I'd have a fall season
and a spring season,
you know, I'd be doing that.
But I played other sports.
I played softball, played basketball,
I swam.
You know, what's really hard
is, you know, I did have an off season.
I played basketball all the way up
until my junior year of high school,
and then my last year in high school,
it just became too much.
But I had that winter where I was playing
and using different muscles and I,
you know,
my brain got to shut off soccer
and I got to focus on something different.
And I think that that was really important
because you do need a break.
You know, these kids are
these kids are like,
they're just operating in like, machines,
just grinding
and grinding and constantly,
you know, working and training
and everything is structured
and coaches are blowing their whistle
and teaching here and teaching there
and, you know, not allowing them
to just play freely and grow.
And I get it.
There's a balance of that
where you have to allow that,
but you also need some structure
in there as well.
And then I got to play indoor
in the winter,
you know, obviously
because it's cold here in new Jersey.
So I had that balance of of being able
to still play multiple multi-sports
and then get really excited
to, to come back to soccer.
You know,
every kid has to do with best for them.
If you're if you're good enough
coming through the system
and you maybe aren't in some of these
teams right from the start, you know,
eventually you're going to get seen.
Eventually somebody's
going to figure you out.
And I really, really encourage
everybody to play multiple,
multiple sports.
But the challenging thing is playing
multiple sports is
every sport is all year long.
So it's incredibly hard
because the system
is not allowing for multi-sport
athletes anymore.
And if you look at some of the best,
best athletes in the world,
they all played multiple sports.
I did, you know, and I still made it,
but I was able to use my body
and different muscles
and play different sports
and rest my brain.
I think that's the biggest thing is
these kids get burned out, they get bored.
And how can you get motivated
to play three games in a row
when you've got an hour
break in between some of those games?
Real talk. It's a crazy thing.
I'm curious,
how did you develop your mindset?
I mean, I think a bit
of it was just kind of in me.
I think your roots do that.
You know, for me,
I got to grow up watching so many Philly,
so many greats from Philly,
you know, the Phillies,
Darren Dalton, John Kruk,
you know all of those guys.
You know the Eagles.
You know the Sixers Allen Iverson
you know the swag.
But just the the grit and determination
that he had you know
so I think you know
from what my parents say at an early age
I always tried to do something
that I wasn't good at.
You know if it were school
I would, you know, try to get good grades.
I would, you know, find a way
if if it was some sort of sport,
you know,
throwing a spiral with a football.
And I think a lot of kids nowadays,
you just want to do things
that you're good at.
Yeah.
A lot of people, you know, just quickly
take the easy route and.
Oh, I can't do that.
So I'm not even going to attempt to do it
because I don't want to fail.
And and I was always somebody
that just thrived off of off of that.
And I was definitely,
you know, a tomboy growing up.
So, you know, going to school, I,
I felt the most confident as a girl
when I played sports because then the boys
recognized that and they noticed that.
And then in gym class and then field day.
And when I was playing pickup
with with some of the boys,
you know, they were like, oh, you know,
we want Carly on, on our team.
And and that made me feel good, you know.
And I always felt
like I could show the boys up,
you know, in
that gave me motivation as well.
So I definitely think, you know,
I had kind of a bit of that in me.
And then as the years
kind of progressed along,
you know,
I had to really kind of hone in and,
and look within and kind of
do a lot of the things
that I wasn't comfortable with.
What things can
these 13, 14 year olds start to do?
That can maybe
I don't want to say give them an edge,
but even more or less
just provide some clarity
for their own truth.
I think the biggest thing for me
was changing my mindset
to compete against myself.
I spent a lot of my youth days, you know,
comparing myself to other players and,
you know, blaming coaches or teammates or,
you know,
wearing about all these other people
and things
and really
just not putting my mental space
into something that would be good for me,
that would help
me, that would improve me
as a player and a person.
And so it started with that, you know, I'm
just going out there every single day,
and I'm trying to be better
than I was the day before.
And then the second thing was my work
ethic.
You know, I was a player who relied
on talent for majority of my, my life.
And when I got to
that under 21 level,
you know, everybody's good.
Everybody is the best player
in their area.
And so I had to then shift
my mindset to make sure that, you know,
I was the hardest working play every day.
It didn't matter how great I did
or how many goals I scored,
if I could leave the field and say
to myself, I worked as hard as I could.
Then I had one that day.
And then I would say,
another important thing is,
you know,
just learning to be uncomfortable.
We want to feel good.
We want to do
the things that make us feel good.
Because that's easy.
But you've got to do
a lot of uncomfortable things
in order to be comfortable, in order to,
to push yourself
to, to do greater and greater things.
And that for me was, you know,
that was that was running.
Yeah. I hated running.
You know, I played
I played a sport that involved running.
You sprint, you jog, you walk,
you backpedal, you, you know,
move side to side.
It has everything that you need in there.
And I had to go out every day
and train on my own.
I was uncomfortable.
It would take me, you know,
in the beginning it would take me an hour
to try to get myself out of the door,
to just go run ten minutes.
And then that time just started
getting better and better, less and less.
And those, you know, those were,
you know, three of the big ones
that I would say that
that I really started to work on.
And they were, you know, massive I mean,
all the way up until the end of my career
is joy and fun.
Is that a part of this journey?
Can multiple things be true?
Can you be this massive competitor
and still have fun?
You know, I kind of
I still asked myself that question.
I still look back on my career
and, you know, I was a psycho.
I was, you know, Tom Brady style.
I was I got no friends here.
I'm all business
staying out of the drama.
I'm here to work.
I'm here to get better around the clock.
I mean, I was, you know, I was crazy.
I think back and I'm like, you know,
of course I loved it.
But I wouldn't say that
I was always playing with joy.
There were a lot of times where
I was playing in spite of my coaches,
or in spite of the media,
or in spite of just everybody.
That was always constantly doubting me
for whatever reasons it was.
So yeah, that's a question that's funny
you ask, because that's a question
I keep asking myself every day.
But I have been a little bit different.
But everything worked out
the way that it was supposed to.
I want to go to the 2015
World Cup final
to go back to that moment for yourself.
When you scored those three goals,
can you recall,
like what you were feeling that day,
sort of pre day
and sort of what you felt like
in that very moment when you scored?
I mean, I'll never forget
that moment, that moment we talk about joy
that day I had all joy, pure joy.
It was like I was,
you know, playing in the park
with my friends.
No pressure, no expectations.
You know, and it's funny because,
you know, people can call that moment,
you know, those moments flow or whatever
you want to call it.
But that moment for me was
it was like
I had just released everything.
And then the unthinkable happened.
Not only a hat trick, but scoring
from midfield to complete a hat trick.
We win the World Cup.
It had been 16 years.
I did have joy in those moments, you know.
And then the pictures.
The pictures are so telling of that.
And it's just crazy
because the start of the 2015 World Cup,
I mean, I did not have, you know,
I did not have joy.
I felt the pressure, the expectations.
Our team wasn't playing well,
I wasn't playing well.
And midway through, you know, I was like,
I don't know if I'm going to
I don't know
if I'm going to get out of this.
You know, I don't feel confident.
And in a split second, you know,
so many things can change the way that
that we started the tournament,
the way that I started the tournament, the
way that it ended.
The only thing that people remember
is the last game.
And yeah, it was pure joy for sure.
I think what's so great about you
speaking about that,
I think so many of our athletes are so
their identity is so connected
to their sport.
And I think everybody has that story.
And it just says a lot for anybody
that's listening
that's sort of on this one track.
So if I'm doing this,
this is the thing that I do, as opposed
to pivoting every so often
to see what else I can be in the world.
So if you were talking to that 13
or 14 year old child,
independent of the sport,
what would be some of the things
that you would want them to just think
about regarding just their whole self,
having all these emotions
and and being in some of these spaces
from time to time, it's okay
because that is life
and you're going to be happy,
sad, depressed, you know,
not confident, low self-esteem.
I mean, these these happen all the time.
You know, I'm in these spaces still,
and it's it's just constant work
on trying to just better ourselves
and whether that's reading books,
whether that's speaking to somebody,
whether that's
reaching out to your support system.
Nobody is perfect.
Nobody is the same as another person.
So it goes back to, you know,
not competing against anybody else.
You know,
if we all just try to stay in our own lane
and, and focus on ourselves
and try to better ourselves.
Put your hand up
if you make a mistake and hey,
I'm going to be better the next time.
The world would be a better place.
But everybody,
you know, we everybody on social media
thinks you're an expert at everything.
And they're, you know,
yelling at this person
and tweeting at this person
and they're just deflecting all of their
insecurities on everybody else.
Yeah.
Says as people are sort of pulling in
right now into their driveway from
they drive, I sort of just want to throw
some rapid fire things at you, really,
just to honor
who you are to to provide some inspiration
to this audience
when you look back at everything.
What are you most proud of mentally?
I mean, there
there wasn't one thing in my career
that I wasn't able
to get through and say that again.
There wasn't one thing.
There wasn't one thing in my career
that I wasn't able to persevere through.
Yeah.
And as I got older
and as I had more success,
I feel like they got bigger
and bigger for me to conquer,
but I didn't shy away from it.
What's one mental mistake
that young athletes
that you notice continue to make today?
Being afraid to fail? Yeah.
Keep going.
That's a big one.
Look,
I mean, the amount of times that I failed
over and over and over again.
Failure is feedback.
That's all it is.
Failure gives you the opportunity
to reassess,
to work on something
maybe that you did fail at,
and to come back
and to come back stronger.
I missed a peak in the World Cup
final in 2011.
I was one of three players that missed.
We had a penalty
shoot out a few games prior to that
and I made mine, and when it came down
to it, the most pivotal moment
I skied mine extremely high over the bar
missed from that point on.
The tears, you know, the felt like
I let my team down, felt like I
failed my my country.
I made a pact with myself
that I would never be remembered by that,
and I would work on my PCAs
every single day in four years later.
2015 World Cup Abby Wambach,
who usually stepped up and took them.
She stepped up in our first knockout
round against Colombia.
She missed.
We got another one.
She handed the ball to me
and asked me if I wanted to take it,
and I knew at that point
I was ready to take it.
But she she believed in me for her
to hand me the ball
while she was out on that field.
She believed that I can make it.
I made that one.
Then in the semifinal against Germany,
I had another PK,
stepped up,
made that one, and we're into the final.
So don't be afraid to fail.
All of us greats have failed over and over
again and it's just made us better.
You have talked about
or retired
really the value of becoming a little bit
more vulnerable.
What is the power of vulnerability
or transparency as a young person?
I do look back on my career,
and there were some moments where I did
let my guard down and I became a little
bit more vulnerable around my teammates,
and I think that they saw me as human
and saw that I had emotion
and that ultimately,
I think opened up, you know, a new space
for them, a new grace period for them
that they had with me.
And it is a bit of a weight that that is
lifted off of your shoulders
when you can open up to people.
I do think that it's important.
I think you've got to find those people,
whether it's a coach, a teammate,
a staff member,
you know, family member or whatnot.
But I do think it is important.
Last thing,
Carli, I you know, we talked about the
the coach player
parent relationship.
How should that look?
You've got to respect coaches
whether you like them or not.
And they may not make all the right
decisions.
It's not definitely not an easy job
to be or, you know, in easy position to be
in, you know, and I tried to have grace
with with my coaches as well.
It's not always about picking
the best 11 players
to start a game or the best roster.
It's about compiling the best team
that's going to go out there and compete
and try to win.
And you know, as much as,
you know, parents,
you want to try to fight your kids battles
or you don't want to get in the coach's
ear, I highly recommend you don't do that.
If your son or
daughter, you know, wants to
request a meeting with the coach
and wants to ask a question, you know,
what can they do better? Or
you know, why am I not playing?
I think you've got to put that
in the players responsibility
to have that meeting with the coach,
because then that teaches them
the responsibility
that, you know, maybe at work
when they're in their adult life
and you don't like something
that your boss is doing well,
your parents aren't going to be there
to fight your battles.
So you gotta you gotta try to learn
and navigate and figure it out.
And I think that, you know, that's
that's one of the most important
things is parents
can't fight their kids battles.
And you also have to
sometimes bite your tongue.
Now, if it's, you know, a situation
where it's
not the best environment
or the best things happening.
Yeah, there's certain circumstances,
but at the end of the day,
you know, you've got to let the coach do
its job.
You've got to allow the
the child to be able to persevere
through certain situations.
You can't save them.
You know, sometimes they need to fail
in order to learn
or to get better or to push them more.
And so they, you know,
you've got to be able to navigate
that and know that, you know, it's it's
best probably not to step in.
So in my class, we spent a lot of time
doing meditation and mindfulness work.
Partly because it slows them down,
but also to try to visualize
what they would like to see
for themselves.
Is that a practice
that you have done, that you currently do,
and what do you think about it?
So visualization for me
came into play the 2012 Olympics.
You know, I didn't
I didn't do a ton of it before then.
But I went over to that Olympics in tip
top shape, mentally ready.
I knew that I had prepared
more than anybody else on that field
and the opponents.
And so what I started doing
is the night before the first game,
I started visualizing.
I started sitting in my bed
and I think, you know,
everybody's got to figure out
what how that visualization works for you.
I don't think there's one set way.
I don't think everybody needs to do things
a certain way.
But I put on my headphones,
I listen to some music very lightly
in the background,
and I visualized the game,
and we were playing France
in the opening game.
And,
you know, I remember just
dreaming and visualizing
scoring the winning goal when I came on.
I mean, who doesn't do that, right?
But I also visualized,
you know, getting in tackles
and sprinting to get in the box
on the end of a cross,
things like that, taking shots
from distance.
It wasn't visualizing just results.
It was visualizing a few things
that I wanted to do in that game.
And so that's what started it.
And then the next day.
So every morning before a game,
I started to jog 15 minutes.
I remember being on the treadmill,
jogging.
A reporter from the Wall Street
Journal comes in, get to work out
in, and he's looking at me like,
you have a game tonight.
Why are you jogging?
But for me, it was getting my mind.
It was getting my body ready.
And that is something that I did
for the rest of my career until 2021.
And, I mean, it helped me tremendously.
I went into that first game
against France.
We were losing one nothing to nothing.
I went on,
we come back to one, two, two.
I scored the third goal.
We're winning three two.
We ended up winning four, four, two.
I scored the winning goal and I'm like,
whoa, this stuff works, right?
So I stuck with it.
Obviously when you have something
that, you know, you visualize
and it actually comes to fruition.
So yeah, for the rest of my career,
I did that
and it didn't always work out well,
but it got my mind ready and it was only
just two to 2 or 3 things that I wanted
to really focus on in the game.
And that just helped me,
you know, take the major, expect
the result driven expectations off of me.
But, you know, the power of the mind,
it really does work.
And you hear all of the athletes
talk about the visualization
and just kind of calming your mind
and getting it in that zone.
I can only speak for myself, Carley,
but I know that my hope
is that anybody listening
will pass this on to those who need it.
And so,
you know, I'm running to the sideline
tagging you as my teammate.
And I'm curious
if you have any closing reflections
that sort of came up during this dialog.
You know,
life is
a journey and sports are a journey.
And I think if you can just
try to put things into perspective
that, you know, it's not life and death.
It is a sport. We all love doing it.
It's hard.
There's going to be situations
that you feel like
you're
not going to be able to get through.
But I promise you,
if you just put one foot
in front of the other, compete
against yourself, work extremely hard.
And be proud
walking off the field
like that's all that you can do
and embrace the journey.
If anybody has not told you today
how much, how much you do matter,
and to give yourself permission to feel
all that you need to feel
and most importantly,
like, I am so thankful to our guest,
Carli Lloyd.
And if no one has told you.
Thankful for what you stand for,
how you represent yourself,
and more importantly,
how you show up for us and everybody.
So I'm incredibly thankful.
Incredibly grateful.
And as I tell my students, don't
ever change.
It's what we need.
So I'm so thankful to you, Carly,
I appreciate it.
Yeah. Enjoyed enjoyed chatting.
Everything we talked
about today is educational,
not professional mental health advice.
If you or someone you know needs real
support right now, call or text 988.
That's the Suicide in crisis. Lifeline.
Free and available 24 over seven.