Aaron Goldberg: Welcome everyone to the PJ Players Podcast.
Today we are here with none other than the Brian Kane mental performance coach.
Welcome.
Brian Cain: Yeah, Goldie.
Thanks for having me, man.
I apologize if I sound like I smoked a carton of Marlboros.
I swear I didn't.
But woke up this morning with a, you know, no voice and I thought
about for a second canceling podcast and I said, you know what?
It, it, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter how I sound.
It matters what comes outta my mouth in terms of how it can impact other people.
So I apologize for the raspiness of the voice.
This is not how I like to roll, but I, I like to roll with a raspy
voice a lot more than I like to cancel a podcast on somebody.
So the content that we bring today doesn't matter how I sound,
it's about how it's gonna impact the people that are listening.
So, thanks for having me.
Aaron Goldberg: Love it, uh, as you've trained me.
My answer to you when you asked.
Good.
Let's go, let's go to work.
So.
Uh, the reason we're here today is having conversations around how
the best athletes in the world, and specifically how the best.
PGA tour players in the world create and convert VA their talent into value.
Mm.
And when players are on the PGA tour, they're all super talented.
Like there's no question there, but what they're doing on the periphery to eek out
a little bit more out of all their talent.
That's what we're really trying to dive into and understand,
Hey, what are the best practices?
How do they actually operate?
Yeah, where they can get better And it doesn't show up.
It's not taking a scratch, handicap golfer to a pro golfer.
This is taking the best of the best and making 'em even better.
Maybe moving from 50th in the world to top 10 in the world, maybe being
20th in the world and moving to number one in the world, that type of thing.
So what I wanted to have the conversation around today is.
How these guys set up a personal operating system for their day.
That day may be an off week.
That day might be tournament week, tournament day.
It's gonna vary.
AM PMT Time Pro-Am Day, practice Day.
But would love to have that conversation with you now.
Brian Cain: Yeah.
I think essentially what we're getting at is everybody that's on the PGA tour
is talented, but how do you become a.
Exactly.
And there's, and there's a difference, right?
And I see this in my work across every sport.
I mean, I've got major league baseball, N-H-L-N-F-L-N-B-A-P-G-A-L-P-G-A-U-F-C,
Olympic.
I mean, I've had a chance, a, a, a privilege to be able to do all those
in the eight UFC world champions that I've had a chance to work with.
Most notably probably George St.
Pierre, who I worked with for a decade.
What is it that they do when they get to the top?
'cause it's often easier to get to the tour than stay on the tour.
Right.
And I have one golfer who I've worked with who made the tour.
After one year back to Korn Ferry and then back up, and now he just, you know,
is in the top 70 right now in FedEx and playing the best golf of his life.
And that's not by accident, right?
Success doesn't happen by accident.
It happens based off of your process.
And I think for the golfers listening to this, the biggest takeaway
I'd want them to to have is your process is working perfectly.
For the results you're getting.
So if you're a top 200 golfer, you probably have a top 200 process.
If you're a top 20 golfer, you probably have a top 20 process.
Now there's unicorns out there, like in baseball with Shohei Ohtani
who you know could do nothing.
Not, not I'm saying that he doesn't do anything.
But a guy who, who, I don't know what his process is, but a guy that
can go out there and hit three home runs and strike out 10 guys in a,
in a game four of a championship series, like that's not the norm.
So we're not talking about those unicorns, we're talking about the
guys specifically that I've worked with that, or the gals that have.
Had the ability to get to the top of the mountain and stay there,
and I've had just as many get to the top and fall back down and some
get back up on top like George St.
Pierre and some disappear.
So we're gonna talk about what their processes are, how they go about
it, and what it really means to go from being talented to being a pro.
Aaron Goldberg: Exactly.
I think we all know how golf, hard golf is, and we're gonna get beat up.
We're gonna have some, some highs and lows.
So how do we recover from those lows?
How do we, one thing you said to me when we were getting ready for this is how
do we make your best days your baseline?
And that's what we wanna dive
Brian Cain: into.
So we were talking about making your best, your baseline.
I think that's a great concept to build off of, you know, and how you take, when
you're at your best, what are you doing?
And I think we've all had those snapshots, you know, into our lives, whether it's
as a PGA golfer or even off the course.
And when I'm at my best, what am I doing?
What's that structure like?
What's that routine like?
What are the, some of the key things I'm doing?
And then being able to take that best and make it your new baseline.
And I like a great example I would use would be.
You know, personally, um, you know, being 240 pounds with a 44 inch waist as a high
school athletic director in Vermont in the mid 2000s and now being able to be a, you
know, now running a hundred mile races and doing things like, I work out now and stay
in a better body composition in a better physical shape at 47 than I probably ever
got to when I was in my 30s And that the large part of that is because of that new.
Mentality and mindset that I had, and it's all mental, right?
The mindset of I'm gonna make my best and my new baseline.
So I think when we're looking at, you know, what does that look like for a PGA
tour golfer, we can dive into the kind of the system and the structure of that for
sure.
Yeah.
Great.
I think it's important
Aaron Goldberg: before we go into the how it's the why.
Mm.
And really understanding like what makes you the athlete, you, the golfer.
Tick and what's important to you.
So walk me through your MVP process and what that means.
Brian Cain: Yeah, so one of the first things that I do with
guys out out of season, right?
Yeah.
I think it depends on when I'm getting access to, to a golfer.
If I'm working with a golfer in season, it's gonna be a lot of your preparation,
your confidence, the body language.
Um, the visualization, the breath, the self-talk on the course, all
those kind of like OnCourse skills.
'cause then when I'm working with an athlete, we're looking at two
things, development and performance.
So performance is happening in, you know, in the season, on the tour when
I'm playing, development happens a little bit more like Monday, Tuesday,
or, you know, in that short time where they're not playing in certain
tournaments or whatever it is.
'cause the golf season doesn't really end.
So one of the things we'd like to look at is called your MVP process.
And MVP stands for mission, vision, and Principles.
And the reason why having a personal MVP process is so important is what
that allows you to do is one key thing.
It allows you to bring your identity to golf instead of
take your identity from golf.
And I think when you look at the full swing documentary, and one of
the things I like most about Scotty Scheffler is where he said like,
golf is what I do, not who I am.
You know?
And I think that's, that's, that's an elite level mindset.
And there's different ways to get there.
The fastest and easiest way I've found to get there with
athletes is to create that MVP.
So identifying your mission.
Your mission is what would you want in your gravestone?
Bigger than winning tournaments, bigger than, you know, getting into a golf hall
of fame, or making X amount of dollars.
The the mission is how, what do I want on my gravestone?
The second piece, the vision is what do I want in my resume?
That's where money earned.
Tournaments won years on the tour.
That's where like the tangible yes or no that I do, it comes into play.
Yep.
But we find though, is that most people don't find fulfillment in outcomes.
In winning a tournament In making X number of dollars fulfillment comes in.
How you use those things that you accomplish to create something bigger.
Yep.
Impacting, impacting people through creating a scholarship in your name
that sends underprivileged kids to school that play golf or something
like an Evans Scholars Foundation with caddies, things like that.
Like that's much bigger fulfillment.
So you want them both.
You want the mission, what do I want on my gravestone You want the vision?
What do I want my resume?
And then you gotta have your core principles.
And the principles are what ground your behavior.
Right.
A set of principles such as, you know, discipline, toughness, selfless,
whatever it is, those are, you know, process, present positive.
Those core principles are what then become like your core values and they drive
your behavior and, and a lot of athletes.
Live off of preference instead of principle.
And if I can share a story, I'm working with a guy named Vitor
Belfort, UFC, world Champion.
I'm in the sauna at his hotel room in Mandalay Bay in Vegas.
He's getting ready to fight Chris Weidman for a UFC title fight the next day.
Vitor is about my age at the time.
He's probably in his, you know, 40, 42 years old and he had won a UFC title
when he was like 18, 19 years old.
So he was 20 years later fighting for a title again and.
I remember sitting in the sauna and he's got blankets on him and he just,
you know, he's, he's dropping all this weight and I'm like, I'm sitting here
with a guy who could literally kill me.
And I said, champ, what is it?
You know, now you wish you knew if you could go back and tell your younger self.
And he looked up sweat, pour off of his face.
You know, face sucked in 'cause he is lost so much water, weight in the sauna.
And he said, caner, if I could go back and talk to a younger Vitor, I would tell 'em
the difference between a boy and a man.
And a man makes decisions out of principle and a boy makes
decisions outta preference.
And I wish I was a man earlier.
I wish I was principle driven earlier.
'cause I would've been more grounded.
I would've been more consistent.
I would've been more successful.
And then he looked at me and said, what are your principles?
And I felt like, I felt like about an inch tall, felt like a boy.
And I'm thinking, man, I just walked through a casino, placed a
couple hands of blackjack and had a couple shots on the way up here.
No.
Which I didn't, but I'm like, prince, I don't know.
And he goes, tomorrow when I see you before the fight, he goes, I
wanna know what your principles are.
So I go back to my hotel room that night.
And I literally Google search, how do you set a, how do you
create a set of core principles?
And I think for the athlete, you know, golfer listening to this, it
would be right down the first 10 to 20 core values that come to your mind.
How do you wanna be known?
And then look at 'em and then trim it down in half and trim it in half until
you get to like, you know, three or five, um, and identify what those are.
And when I've done that with athletes.
The difference that I see when they know what their core principles are and
how they want to show up from a, a core principle or core value standpoint,
they're far more confident in themself.
They're far more grounded, and they're far more consistent.
Aaron Goldberg: It's so powerful.
I mean, in this day and age, whether it's the media, whether it's fans, whether it's
social media, the every player's being told who they are, and it's so easy to
take your identity out of your result.
To be able to fall back or take a step back, not fall back, take a step
back and define yourself and define what your mission is, what your
vision is, what your principles are.
That sets your, your base, your foundation for your life and for
golf, of course, but it helps you go back when, whether it's highs or low.
Sometimes you need it the most at the highs to really make
sure that you're grounded and understand who you are as a person.
So I think it, it really sets the stage for then how do I operate my best day?
Brian Cain: Yeah.
I agreed.
I think success, success will change you, and failure will challenge you.
And the answer to both of those equations on both sides is who do you want to be?
Yeah.
Right.
And when you identify who you wanna be, and it's, this is a, this is.
Like this is an aggressive, I'm trying to be excellent, be the best
version of me, and I'm getting out of comparison to everybody else
who's an animal on the tour, and I'm getting into competing with myself.
Mm-hmm.
And for me to compete with myself, my core principles make the acronym apples.
I need to be accountable.
I need to be present.
I need to run a process.
I need to be loving.
I need to bring energy, I need to serve, I need to give back.
And if I live a day in alignment with apples.
Regardless of the results, usually really good.
If I'm living in alignment with my values, then I'm gonna be fulfilled.
And if I'm fulfilled on that day and I keep stacking days one on top of
each other, it makes a great year.
It makes a great career.
It's no different.
In golf, you don't try to win the tournament.
You try to win the shot, and when you go, literally one shot.
At a time in shot by shot, that gives you the best chance to score well,
to win a tournament, to extend your career, but you don't extend your
career by focusing on the outcome.
You extend it by focusing on the process of all the little decisions
that it takes to get there.
In Nick Saban coaching Alabama is maybe the greatest example of that in team
sport, where he talks about we're not trying to win a national championship
or an SEC title or defend anything.
We're attacking everything that has to do with today.
And if we do that every day, that transitions into one play
or one shot at a time, and that's the best chance for success.
And a lot of people talk about it, but there's very specific system
and detail and drill work that we do to allow athletes to get
Aaron Goldberg: there.
Yeah.
Love it.
Let's talk about the development side of it for a little bit.
So let's say this is an off week, off month.
Uh, hopefully, you know, you're, you got two months off after the playoffs,
uh, getting ready for next year.
Talk to me about AM and PM routines, how they relate to each other.
Mm-hmm.
And how this is gonna set up their day as it relates to both performance and on the
course work, but also their personal life and being able to leave it at the course.
Yeah.
Because, and I know I'm throwing a lot at you in this question, but I
think one of the hardest things for golfers, because it's not a sport where
you're just exhausted after a two hour practice, it's hard to turn it off.
And be like, you know what?
I'm done for the day.
I've accomplished what I wanna accomplish.
I need to move on to the next day.
I need to go home, shut it down, and be present with whether it's your
kids, your wife, your girlfriend, even if it's just by yourself.
You need to be able to be present there too.
So how does that, the question being, how does an AM and PM routine
help set that up for success and how do they interplay together?
Brian Cain: That's a great question.
I wanna actually take it a little bit deeper than that if I can.
Yeah.
And think about the concept of an hourglass, right?
Okay.
So an hourglass is I funnel in, I do a specific task.
I come out, so every shot in golf has an hourglass pre-shot routine,
execute the shot, post shot routine.
You know, and it, to use the language from Vision 54, it would be think
box, commitment line, play box, and then you know, the post shot routine.
Okay.
So I think golfers can understand the analogy of an hourglass.
If I come in, I hit the shot, I come out, well, the same thing
happens for your day, right?
You get ready to go to bed and.
Are you ready to go to bed?
You do your PM routine, you go to bed, you wake up, you have an AM
routine, and now you're in your day.
And that same thing happens for parts of your day.
So if you think about just working a good hourglass, and one of the language
we use with our golfers is like, Hey, how is your hourglass on the course?
How is your hourglass at the course?
How is your hourglass for the day?
How is your hour glass for the tournament?
For the waste management?
Right?
Yeah.
And you know, so, so understanding how you come in and you come out while you're.
AM and PM routine are a big part of that to make sure that you're
starting the day on the right foot.
But in order to do that with the AM routine, the PM
routine has to be in place.
And I want to, I wanna make it really obvious for the people listening
to this, that the AM routine will take care of itself and will fall
into place if do the PM routine.
And a lot of times we put so much emphasis on the AM routine and waking up early.
Well, like you don't compare yourself to other people.
Like early is only relevant to the individual, you know?
Yeah.
Like, but, but the PM routine.
It has to be in place so that you are actually able to get to bed at the said
time that you want to so you can wake up at the time that you want to, to execute.
If my go to bedtime right now with a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, if I'm trying
to go to bed at eight 30 and wake up at four 30 and I choose to stay up and
watch a game or something until 10 30.
The odds of me getting up at four 30 drastically go down
because I, because I wanna sleep.
So I think where it starts, Goldie, is identifying what is
your ideal day look like and what does your ideal week look like?
When the golfers I work with, they have an ideal week for when they're at a
tournament and they have an ideal week or so when they're not at a tournament.
And those routines will adjust a little bit.
But the one thing that's consistent.
If you look at any of the sleep research, I talked to Dr.
Chris Winter in Charlottesville or James Moss, who was at Cornell that
wrote power, sleep, anything you read or research on sleep, they're going to
reference the importance of going to bed and waking up at a consistent time.
And you know, for some golfers it might be 10 to six, it might be
midnight to seven, but depending on tee times and things like that, there
might be an abnormality in there.
But the thing I love about golf is for a large part, you can control what time
you go to bed, what time you wake up, and you can be consistent with it seven
days a week, maybe other than a Sunday travel night or something like that.
Unlike baseball, where there's game times and there's a ton of travel
and things like that that happen and you have to show and go the next day.
So it starts with identifying what is my ideal day.
Look like.
And then what is my ideal go to bed, wake up time look like?
And then what do I need to do from a PM routine to make sure I'm
able to actually get in bed and go to bed at this specific time?
And a PM routine might look like a digital detox.
When do I put my phone down?
And with the athletes I work with, we have a no phone in bed rule.
The phone, the bed is for two things and phone isn't one of them.
So when I, when.
And when I'm not on my phone in, in my bedroom, literally plug it in in the
hotel bathroom or put it somewhere else.
But don't allow yourself to bring your phone into the bed because it's
gonna be too tempting to be on it.
Yeah.
So that's one of the things that's key.
Another one would be like any type of red light blue light
glasses that you can put on.
I use raw optics.
They've been the best ones I've found out of all of them.
So I'll put those on like an hour.
And a half or so before bed, any type of PM supplementation
routine that they might do.
Yep.
Uh, ashwagandha, magnesium, thorn pm supplements, whatever
it is, whatever guys are taking.
And then some type of like, activate my, my parasympathetic, right?
Like I'm gonna do a shift wave chair, or I'm gonna do maybe a hot tub, or I'm
gonna take a hot shower, or I'm gonna do some type of, ideally as a golfer,
um, uh, some type of visualization, especially when they're in a tournament.
Yeah.
Going through my yardage book and how I wanna play.
Maybe there's some type of reading, there's a shower, but there's a
definite like series of steps that they take in that PM routine to go
from kind of like fight or flight.
I'm on into rest and digest and fall asleep.
There's a process there.
Reverse engineer that even further back when they finish going to the golf course.
Okay.
Big part of that hourglass for golf is when does your round start?
And guys will go, why I get to the first tee box or when I, after I
eat in the dining hall and I go over to the range, whatever it is.
And I would say, well, the routine, the, the golf day starts when
you enter your hourglass and your hourglass should start with a shower.
So first tee time, last tee time.
Wherever in there, wherever you're staying.
Once you get in that shower and you get out and you start putting your clothes
on, you're putting on your golf uniform.
And at the end of the day when you're done playing and you take
the uniform off and you shower well, you have to wash away that day.
So the coming outta the hourglass from a golf round, which allows them
to turn their brain off a little bit, has to be structured and intentional.
And I'd recommend something like a journal where I get outta my head and on paper,
well better how, what do I do today?
Maybe they're going through their tiger five stats, whatever.
There's a little analysis that happens, then it's gonna be,
uh, jumping in the shower.
And as I jump in the shower, I'm washing off that day.
Round.
Yeah.
And then I put on clothes that are not my golf clothes.
I put on something else to separate between who and do.
Right.
Separate those two things.
And then laying your clothes out the night before.
So when you wake up in the morning, you already know what you're gonna
do and you're no going to bed.
I'm prepared for tomorrow.
Here's what I need.
I got everything that helps you separate and come out of the golf mindset.
Into going back to be a dad or whatever it is you have to do.
But if you don't have a good routine coming out of the round, that's
when it's hard to turn that off.
And I think any athlete I've worked with myself, even as a
coach, that's one of the hardest things to do is how to turn it off.
Matt Carpenter, major league baseball player, three time Allstar.
I go back it, one of the first team was on one of the first teams I
ever worked with at TCU in 2006.
Okay.
And I remember talking to him after he got done, uh,
plaintiff's career and I said like.
What's something you know now you wish you knew back then?
And he goes, man, I wish I knew how to turn it off earlier.
He goes, I didn't really learn that until I had kids.
He goes, but when you can turn it off, you have more to give
when you need to turn it back on.
And I think that translates into golf
Aaron Goldberg: beautifully.
Exactly.
It's so hard to turn it off in golf.
And if you try to be on 24 7, you can't give it your all the five
hours you're on the golf course.
Yeah.
Or however long you're on the golf course.
But if you can zoom out and say, Hey, as soon as I'm done at the golf course,
I shower, I put on street clothes.
I'm now done for the day.
Yeah.
Obviously you gotta take care of your recovery and all that type of
stuff, but you're turning it off.
It allows you to dial it
Brian Cain: when you're on.
Correct.
And then even when you're on the course, right, they're, you're in and
out of the hour glass the whole time.
Yeah.
It's like, okay, we show up to this tee box and the other group
is getting ready to tee off, or they're, they're still right early
in the fairway, so I'm gonna have.
10 minutes before I tee off, or 15 minutes before I tee off.
Like you get those slow rounds, right?
I mean, I've caddied at the waste management and sometimes you're
waiting like 25, 30 minutes at at the tee box, you're outta the hourglass.
Well, what does that look like?
What am I doing?
Yeah.
And for some guys it depends on where they stand.
Other guys might be like, they grab a water bottle, whatever it is, but when
it's their turn to get ready to go, it's like there's a change in body language.
There's a change in posture.
We enter an hourglass yardage book.
What are We, trying to do, okay, good glove comes out, and that glove
becomes the trigger for the shot.
So like the clothes become the trigger for, I'm the golfer.
I'm not the golfer.
The glove becomes the trigger for, I'm in the shot, I'm outta the shot.
And the trigger becomes important because that allows you to mentally.
Distinguish between the last shot and the next shot, or when I'm out of the
hourglass walking down the fairway, and when I enter my hourglass with a
bag down, talking through the yards with my caddy, getting my glove on and
being ready to commit to that shot.
This very distinct process that most guys do, they just don't do it.
Very intentional, and they don't create meaning to what they're doing.
The meaning is what becomes important.
Like when I take Kevin Roy on the PGA tour, it was brilliant.
One of the things that we've talked about was, you know, after
a shot that he doesn't like.
And he's got some frustration, whatever it is, walk with the
glove, either on or in your hand.
And you might even smack himself in his, in his, in his leg with the glove.
And when it's time to let that shot go, the glove goes in the pocket.
And when you get to the ball, you're back in your hourglass.
But that glove becomes a physical representation of the
last shot that I hit with it.
And when I take it off, that shot's gone.
And when I put it back on, the next shot
starts.
Aaron Goldberg: That's great.
Yeah.
You have to be able to let it go, but it's natural to.
We need to analyze it too.
Yeah.
And being able to have that trigger.
Hit yourself, whatever it is, use that glove as that physical trigger.
It's massive.
Yeah, I know.
I struggled with that when I played, if there were a lot of people
around, there's a lot going on.
It actually helped me because I knew I needed to lock in when it was my
turn to hit when nobody was out there.
And that was usually the case for when I was playing.
Uh, nobody was out watching me.
Uh, I really struggled 'cause it was, you're just, there's
nothing to distract you.
And so I was just kind of trying to be locked in for the entire round and you
Brian Cain: can't, you can't
do that time.
You gotta come in and come out.
You gotta come in, you gotta come out.
And the, the, the physical trigger, the physical association with
something, putting a, a tee in the ground, uh, throwing my ball to my
caddy, getting the ball back a glove.
A putter in one hand, putter in the other hand, whatever it is, all those little
triggers that we identify for each person, they have their own unique aspects to.
It gives them the opportunity to know, when I do this, I'm in the present moment.
And one of the things you said I wanted to go back to was the reflection piece.
And I think in golf, people talk a lot about the pre-shot and then like your time
from when you cross the commitment line or take a breath until you strike the ball.
That time should be the same.
We've all seen the video of Tiger Woods where it's to a millisecond, whatever, but
I think the piece that gets under taught.
Largely under top.
And where I really got this was like in football and baseball
coming out of a player or pitch and getting ready to play the next one.
'cause the next one is coming in golf, the next one is coming.
It's just coming.
And you have a long, longer window.
Yeah, that longer window can be to your advantage to let go of the
shot and process it, or it can be to your detriment where you hold onto
it longer and the longer you hold onto a weight, the heavier it gets.
So the process of coming out of a shot that I like to use is three questions.
One, what was I trying to do?
Two, what happened?
Three, what's my next best decision?
Yeah.
And if you can ask yourself that, what happened?
What was I trying to do?
What's my next best decision that allows you to process that shot?
And most of the time it's gonna be, I was trying to do this and I did
that, and let's get to the next shot.
Right?
But you have to do it on the good ones to make the process the same
as the ones that you don't hit the well the way you want to.
And Kobe Bryant was interviewed by Lewis Howes in the School of Greatness.
And um, the one that hit me there like a ton of bricks, is when Lewis asked
him, Kobe, what does losing feel like?
Okay.
And he said it's exciting.
He goes, it's exciting 'cause there's answers there.
And then Lewis goes, well you probably learn more from losing
than you do from winning, right?
And he goes, well, no, it's gotta be the same.
Kobe Bryant.
I dunno if you ever worked with a sports psychologist, but he says
you have to have the same process.
Whether you win or you lose, the process should be the same.
So you ask yourself, what do I do?
Well, what do I want to do better?
And how am I gonna do the things I wanna do?
Well, well again, and how do I wanna do the things I wanna do better?
Better?
He goes.
But regardless of the outcome, the process should be the same
because that's how you extract a learning, and there's learning there.
Whether you win
Aaron Goldberg: or you lose.
It's
so good, so good.
Nice.
All right.
Walk me through, you mentioned a perfect day, perfect week that you have your,
your players set up and kind of outline.
Let's, let's start with a perfect day.
How do you have a player walk through or outline his perfect day?
And I'm, I'm talking even like logistically, are they writing it
down on a, on a piece of paper?
Do you haven't put it in a Google calendar?
What typically are you doing?
And it may be
Brian Cain: to every player.
Yeah.
I would first, I would first say ideal day, not perfect day.
'cause I think perfect means there's not gonna be any mistakes.
Ideal is, I know there's gonna be mistakes and I have contingencies
already built in my schedule to be able to handle those mistakes.
Love it.
Right?
So I think it starts with understanding that.
Scripting out your day and time blocks and being intentional with it is the key.
Then the next step is actually being able to honor those time blocks.
You know, and I'm, I, I still haven't mastered that piece.
I'm getting better with it.
Um, but I think you have to ask yourself, what's my ideal day?
What, what's my ideal PM routine?
Start time, my ideal go to bedtime, my ideal amount of
time I want to have in bed.
This is where like sports psychology cannot be standalone.
As a field.
Mm-hmm.
It has to be integration.
This is to me the mental performance.
I have to integrate all of these skills, the skill of, of time management,
the skill of organization, nutrition.
When do I need to eat, um, sleep?
What time do I need to get in bed?
The consistency of all that.
The supplementation that comes from blood work, right?
The nutrition that's based off of what my body composition goals
are based off of a DEXA scan.
So all these things get worked in together.
That's why I consider myself mental performance.
And high performance coaching going together because I help
guys coordinate all of this.
So it starts with what time do I start my PM routine because of
what time I want to go to bed.
There's a domino there.
Okay, what time do I wake up?
What's my morning routine look like?
Well, it looks a lot different if you've got kids under the age of four who might
wake up in the middle of the night than it does if you're on the road by yourself.
And then what time do I wanna wake up?
And then what does my day look like?
Largely impacted by what time do I need to get into the shower and
get dressed to get to the course for a workout or for a tea time?
So all these factors come into play.
The one thing that the golfer listening to this wants to do is plan tomorrow,
tonight, if you go to bed without a calendar plan, whether it's written
down an agenda form, like time blocks in a notebook, whether it's done in the
Apple calendar or I use Google Calendar, um, if it's, if it's in your head.
It becomes heavy and you're kind of winging it.
You want to get it outta your head and on paper so you don't have to think about it.
You don't want to have to think about it.
You wanna be able to look at that calendar and that routine.
And the beautiful part about, say, using something like Google Calendar
is you can share that with your caddy.
You can share that with your spouse, you can share that with your agent,
you can share that with other people.
So they're all helping.
No, Hey, I can't, I'm not gonna call this guy right now.
He's on the course doing what he needs to do, but I can simply pull
up his calendar and look at it.
Yeah, so with all the athletes that that I coach, I help them to coordinate that
calendar so they know exactly what it looks like in advance, and now they feel
like they're playing offense, not defense.
Knowing the day's not gonna be perfect.
It's gonna get disrupted by weather or other things that I have to
do that come up unexpectedly.
But we're able to adapt and adjust.
So the key is be structured with what your ideal day looks like in time blocks,
and then be able to adapt and adjust.
And those time blocks are gonna look like am routine, pm routine, sleep,
nutrition at the course recovery, family time, maybe some mental performance
block in there, which probably usually gets doubled down in with a recovery.
And then your free time, right?
If you want free time and you want three hours to watch a Monday night football
Aaron Goldberg: game, schedule it.
Yeah.
No, that's great.
I think I didn't work with you on this when I was playing, but post playing and
now what I'm doing now professionally, my biggest objection when I first heard
this is this is gonna be too structured.
This is gonna be too regimented.
Things happen, you know?
And you made a great clarification.
It's not the perfect day, it's the ideal day.
Yeah.
Because you have to adapt.
You have to be able to adjust.
What I found once I finally bought into it was it actually allowed me more freedom.
Yeah.
Because I knew exactly what I needed to get done that day.
I had a time to do it.
It was the right time to do it, and it provided more free time that I
could then allocate to other things, to my family, to my kids, to my wife,
to working out, whatever it may be.
And it actually allowed me to adjust a lot quicker because I knew, hey, I
have a gap here, or this is a lower priority, I can move this off to the
next day or this time period later on.
So.
I think everyone probably thinks that they're time blocking in their head,
uh, whether they're doing it on paper or not, I really encourage you guys
to do it either on paper or in a,
Brian Cain: a Apple or Google
calendar.
Yeah, get outta your head.
It makes such a big difference.
Get outta your head and on paper.
Right?
And an easy, the analogy is like you're PGA golfer.
You're making, let's say $2 million.
You're making $2 million a year.
You're making millions of dollars a year.
Find me a company that makes a million dollars a year that doesn't
have a group calendar that's shared with the people on that team.
It doesn't exist.
So you are your own business.
You are the CEO of your business.
You're also the janitor.
So you have to do it all.
So like having that calendar allows you to, to, to be more
organized and allows other people around you to be more organized.
But I think at the end of the day, the biggest thing it does
is it allows you to be in the present moment.
And when we perform our best on the course and in life.
We are in the present moment, and I know that for the time block that we have
here together today, there's nothing else that I need to do in this time block.
There's a lot of things I have to do after.
There's a lot of things I've had to do before as you, as you've seen
being here and things that pop up last minute, and we have to adapt and
adjust, which you've seen, but even with that adapt and adjusting, when
you get into the time block, you can completely be where your feet are and
be in that present moment, which gives you the best chance for success, whether
it's doing a podcast or it's trying
Aaron Goldberg: to win in Augusta.
Love it once.
Once you have these idea ideal days built out a and PM routine, what have you seen
as the best way to track it and then have
Brian Cain: self accountability?
Yeah.
Great.
So one of the key principles, or call it frameworks I teach, and it's probably
the number one, if I could teach one framework at all, would be what I call
the four step player development formula.
Step one, set your intention.
What do you want?
That's your MVP process.
Identify what you want for your mission, vision, and principles, and
then your goals for that quarter, personally and professionally.
Yep.
Second step, schedule it.
That's where the Google Calendar comes in.
Do the blocks on my calendar align with what I want in my life, what's on my MVP,
and I think where fulfillment comes from.
And I got this from a mentor of mine named Charlie Smith.
He said, where fulfillment comes from in your life is when what you
do in your life is in alignment with what you want for your life.
I'll say that again.
Where fulfillment comes from is when what you do in your life is in alignment
with what you want for your life, and most people, me included, for the longest
time, move so fast getting to the next thing that we never press pause long
enough to go, what is it I really want?
What does I really, really.
And as what I'm doing in my life, aligning with that.
And when you set your core principles and you get clear on what you really want,
it becomes a filter for decision making to say, does this get me one step closer
or further from what I'm trying to do?
If it's taking me further from what I want to do and who I
wanna be, why am I doing this?
Right.
So step one, set your intention.
What do you want?
Step two, schedule it.
Does your calendar bind with what you want?
Step three, measure it.
And that's where I use a concept called the success checklist.
I interviewed a guy named Marshall Goldsmith, one of the top
executive coaches in the planet.
He wrote a book called What Got You Here Won't Get You There.
20 Workplace Habits That Stunt Your Growth is a Leader.
Massive impact in my life.
So when I read a book that I really like, I call and interview the author.
And I have 'em on my podcast.
And when I interviewed Marshall Goldsmith, I said, what's the best practice?
The one thing that you do with your clients that you feel like would be
easily implemented by any other coach and get ce, have success and get results?
And he said, oh, success checklist.
I said, explain that.
He goes with my clients, we talk every night for anywhere from five
to 15 minutes and we go through their success checklist for the day.
What are the habits they're trying to create?
What are the things they're trying to.
Eliminate, right?
So one might be, did I not have alcohol today?
Another one might be, did I not lose self-control and
blow up on somebody today?
Another one might be from a golfer standpoint, did I do exit drills with
my putting today to work on putting pressure on myself to get better?
Did I do some sort of recovery, whether it be shift, wave, float, tank,
massage, NormaTec, whatever it is.
So.
He would call the client and they would talk through it.
So for me, I use a, a success checklist with an app called Habit Share.
And that habit share is the behaviors that the athlete would want to do that day.
So for example, like did I, did I make my bed?
Did I have my body weight and grams of protein?
Did I, did I lift weights?
If I was supposed to do that today, right?
Did I do these certain drills?
Whatever it is.
Um.
And whatever the behaviors are that they want, they put 'em on that checklist.
And then when we get on our weekly calls, two of the things that I do
at the start of the call is look at your weekly checklist and look at your
calendar and do your behaviors on your checklist that you either check yes or no.
You did, and your calendar aligned with what you're saying you wanna be.
'cause if you wanna be a top 10 player in the world, that's
gonna look a lot different than a top 200 player in the world.
Yeah, right.
If you want to be the best in the world, it's gonna look a lot
different than I'm happy to be on the PGA tour, which a lot of guys are.
Right, because they, they, they like that lifestyle, but that lifestyle
and being on the tour isn't what's gonna get you to stay on the tour.
So the fourth step then is the reflect and refocus.
And that's where I feel like what I do as a coach is bring that level of
accountability, uh, to the player to help them have to reflect every week.
'cause sometimes they won't if they're just moving so fast.
So we get on the call, we're looking at calendar.
Habit share.
How do we perform?
What are the stats going through a well better?
How?
And then we're using that well better how?
And that assessment to go, okay, we recapped that week.
What's the game plan for this week?
What do we gotta do better this week?
Where can, where are we losing time?
Where are we losing strokes?
Where are we gonna get better?
And one of my favorite concepts is from Kevin Roy.
His strokes gained attitude.
We'd say, where are we getting those strokes gained attitude.
Everybody talks about teeter green or putting, but really the biggest
strokes on the PGA tour 'cause everyone's so good is gonna come from
the six inches between your ears.
And where are those strokes gains attitude coming from?
Is it from better visualization the night before going through the yard book?
Is it from better body language on the course?
Is it from Better Self-Talk?
What are we dialing in on this week to get those
Aaron Goldberg: stroke gained attitude?
Love it.
Stroke singing and attitude's a new one for me, but it's great.
I think they need to figure out a
Brian Cain: to measure it.
That's the hard part of the mental game, though, to your point.
Exactly.
The hard part with the mental game.
Why not everybody's really into it?
It's, it's
Aaron Goldberg: how do you measure it?
It's
Brian Cain: How do you measure it?
Yeah.
Largely it is, right?
I mean, there's some people who say you might be able to measure it,
but I, I don't know how you do that.
And I've been doing this for 25 years.
It's not like track man where I can measure everything.
And the hard part, I think for golfers or any athlete, baseball, whatever sport
is, if they can't physically measure
Aaron Goldberg: it, they don't believe that it's real.
Correct.
But that's why I think the success checklist is so huge and as an athlete
you can relate to it so quickly.
Yeah.
It's what's really important about what you said is it's behaviors and habits.
It's not results.
Yeah.
Like it's not a, Hey, did I win a putting contest?
Did I win the round today?
Did I shoot 65?
It's no.
Did I do these behaviors?
Yeah.
The habits and behaviors that lead to improvement and hopefully success.
The the results.
But we can't create
Brian Cain: results if we don't do the behaviors.
This behavioral analytics is essentially what it is, right?
Yeah.
It's looking at the behaviors.
And at the end of the day, do the behaviors that I have align
with what the goals I have are?
And it doesn't guarantee you an outcome, but it gives you
the best chance for success.
And if I'm gonna go all in on anything, it's gonna be what gives
Aaron Goldberg: me the best chance for success.
And if you're measuring that and then you're not getting the results you want.
You have a better baseline to be able to change, Hey, these are the
habits or the behaviors that I maybe need to adapt and change mm-hmm.
In order to improve and not, and get different results than
what I'm getting right now.
Correct.
Love it.
Your results are not random.
No.
Well, you said it in the beginning of the podcast.
If you, if you're,
Brian Cain: I'm gonna butcher it, so I'm gonna have
you say it.
Your process
Aaron Goldberg: is working perfectly for the results that you
get.
Exactly.
If you're getting the results of a top 200 player, that's the
process that you've created.
Yeah, if you're, if the process is working perfectly for.
The results you're getting as a top
Brian Cain: player, that's what you're getting.
Yeah.
And here's some simple questions to ask yourself.
When's the last time I had a DEXA scan and know what my body composition is?
When's the last time I had a macro nutrition or meal plan
based off of my body composition?
When's the last time I had blood work?
And from that blood work I had specific supplementation
program that I was going to take?
What am I doing to track sleep?
Am I wearing aura Whoop Garmin?
What?
What is my ideal sleep environment?
Do I have an eight sleep or a chili pad?
Am I wearing earplugs in an or in an eye mask?
Am I taping my mouth?
Um, you know, what's what?
When is the last time I was doing journaling process?
How often am I visualizing am I watching a mind movie, which on the PGA tour
is great because I can go on and, and I can pull all the great shots that
they have in video and put a mind movie together for the athletes that I have.
When's the last time that I was looking at my calendar?
All those things, like, those are 10, 10 questions right there that we just
ripped off without thinking at all that if you can't answer yes to all
Aaron Goldberg: those, that's low hanging fruit.
Yeah.
I mean it's, it's turning this into optimization.
Correct.
Talent can get players to the PJ Tour and there's the freaks that are gonna
be just uber talented, like you said, of the show haze of the world that
probably can get to top 10 or top 20 in the world just based on talent alone.
Brian Cain: But that's not who we're talking
to here.
Yeah.
And golf is the hardest one to do
Aaron Goldberg: that in.
Exactly.
Because there's no contract.
All of us have seen those players and sometimes they rise up,
but then they maybe don't stay.
How do we stay?
How do
Brian Cain: keep rising?
How do we keep getting better?
Yeah.
And then when you're on top of the game, how do you not get bored?
I think if you watch the Tiger Woods documentary, I think it
was on either HBO or Netflix.
One of the things that I looked at and watched and said, man, this
guy got bored with all the success.
He went to go challenge himself to do Navy SEAL training and other things
that, you know, were, were probably fun, but that's not necessarily in the best
interest of the health of his golf career.
But, you know, it's so, and I see it with guys that, you know, whether it's ion
winners or batting champions that have coached in baseball or UFC fighters that,
that win the title or get to the top, it's like they get bored with success.
In order to not get bored with success, you have to keep redefining what
Aaron Goldberg: success means to you,
what success means to you personally, but also how does it tie back into
Brian Cain: MVP process and not to, you know.
Well, one of the, one of the aspects of the MVP process, right,
is your definition of success.
Yeah.
Another aspect, MVP are your three keys to keep it simple.
When you're playing your best golf, what are the three things you're doing right.
The other part of the MVP process are your affirmations.
When you're talking to yourself, what are you saying?
Right.
And the MVP process, there's also your one word focus.
What's, and that's probably the easiest strategy for everybody to listening
to this, is that for you to become the best version of you and step
into growth for the next month or three months, what's that one word?
Focus?
That if you
Aaron Goldberg: live in alignment with, you're gonna be the best version of you.
Yeah, I mean, I'd love, we're gonna have to do another episode at some point to
dive deeper 'cause this is great stuff.
Good.
And I think the PJ tour players, players would love this.
Save.
Yeah, I'll save them all bros.
After the episode.
Yeah, we, we can go smoke a cigar afterwards.
Something like that.
You know, celebrate, uh, we'll see who wins the World Series,
but, um, either way we win.
We got guys on the both teams.
There you go.
One either way.
There we go.
So, uh, no, this has been super informative.
I think guys are gonna love to hear this.
Everyone from PG tour players, the college players.
Um.
Brian Cain: Tell
Aaron Goldberg: me or tell everyone that's listening.
You have two podcasts.
Brian Cain: We'll put it in the show notes.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah.
Best, I mean, best thing they can do is go to brian kain.com/golf,
B-R-I-A-N-C-A-I n.com/golf.
I have about a 45 minute golf masterclass on there where I take my system of to
10 pillars of mental performance mastery and how it's applied specific to golf.
From there, um, you know, I, I talk about the three steps to maximum growth, total
immersion, learning space, repetition, accountability, partner, and a plan.
So a golfer, listen to this, that goes, man, that was good.
I want more.
Go watch the masterclass.
That's total immersion.
You're getting 45 minutes.
A more mental game that maybe you've ever gotten from there.
Go space repetition.
Space repetition would be my podcast.
Mental performance daily, two to three minutes a day.
Often you guys do it with breakfast or coffee or drive into the course.
I have another podcast, mental Performance Mastery, which is more
long form interviews like this.
The third step is, is.
Um, total immersion learning space, repetition, accountability partner,
and a plan that accountability partner plan would be hire a one-on-one mental
performance coach, whether it be me or a member of our team, Kevin Guzo, who
heads up our golf division is fabulous.
Uh, so if if, if it's that right fit for me and the athlete, then
we would, would get Kevin involved.
Um, but I think that's the plan is total immersion golf masterclass.
Brian king.com/golf
space repetition daily podcast accountability partner plan.
Aaron Goldberg: Let's set up a call and see if it's the
right fit to work together.
It's great.
The mental performance daily is part of my AM routine upon one of the
two or three podcasts I live in.
Listen to on the way into work.
Just sets the tone for the day, brings
Brian Cain: energy, as you say, brings the juice,
brings the juice, and if you're juice useful, you're useful.
If you're useless, you're useless.
And energy is your rich and energy.
And golf looks a lot different than energy in the NFL or college football.
But the guys that played the best, they got energy.
And I always go back to the Novak Kovic, the greatest tennis player
maybe in you know, hour generation.
Then he said in a 60 minutes interview, he said, you know, the
guy asked him, he said, well, you know, I think your greatest gift is.
You have this mental toughness and he goes, I have to correct you.
It is not a gift.
It is something that I have trained and worked on.
He goes on the inside, I, he goes on the outside.
I may look a comic cool and collected, but on the inside I'm going a
hundred miles an hour on the inside.
I'm very, very competitive and very tense.
And sometimes they're self-doubt, but you have to have tools that
you work on to address that.
And you know, for the guys listening to this that are into podcast, um,
Novak Djokovic was on a podcast with Jay Shetty, which I'll send the link
to you that maybe you can throw in the show notes too, or however, but it was.
Phenomenal hearing a guy who's the best maybe ever to do what
he does, number one in the world, in what it took to get there,
Aaron Goldberg: and then more importantly, what it took to stay there.
Yeah, love it.
Can't wait to listen to it.
Awesome.
Brian, thanks for being on.
Looking forward to more conversations.
Yeah, thanks Goldie.
Appreciate it.