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Troy Bassham has been a mental performance coach, teaching mental management fulltime since 2004. He works with athletes of all ages and levels, from high school to professional.
He has authored two books "Attainment, the 12 Elements of Elite Performance" and "Fore the Mind, the Mental Program for Golf" and is the mental coach for Crown Golf Academy.
Our conversation covers:
- How Troy became a mental performance coach
- Why the mental game is vital to success in sport
- Do athletes train correctly in individual sports like golf and shooting?
- How can an athlete gain mental consistency?
- Most important traits of a beginning golfer
- Golf training techniques
- Habits and attitudes of a champion
- Having control of your mind when under pressure
- How elite golfers like Tiger Woods perform under pressure
Subscribe to Sideline Sessions here: https://sidelinesessions.transistor.fm/subscribe
About today’s guest
Troy Bassham has been a mental performance coach, teaching mental management full time since 2004. He has authored two books "Attainment, the 12 Elements of Elite Performance" and "Fore the Mind, the Mental Program for Golf". He is also the mental coach for Crown Golf Academy and works with athletes of all ages and level, from high school to professional. He is the owner of Podium Performance. Learn more at https://mentalmanagement.com.
About the host
Ross Romano is co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and also hosts The Authority Podcast. He began his career in the pro sports industry before becoming a leading communications, marketing, and management expert working with education companies. He is founder and CEO of September Strategies, a coaching and consulting firm that helps organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. He also works directly with professionals at all levels, in all industries, coaching them in their pursuit of success.
Are you a professional looking for insights to reach the next level, find a fulfilling new career, or achieve peak performance? You may be a candidate for performance coaching. Schedule an introductory chat here.
Creators & Guests
What is Sideline Sessions?
Designed for coaches, parents and other stakeholders in the world of youth, scholastic, and amateur sports, this show brings you interviews with leaders at the highest levels of their respective sports.
Hear from coaches and performance experts with experience in the National Football League, National Basketball Association, Olympics, and NCAA Division-I, plus those who run elite youth programs, successful high school teams, and more. Hear about their motivations, philosophies, and strategies for success, and take away actionable insights to support the athletes in your life.
Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in everybody to another episode of Sideline Sessions here on the BE Podcast Network. Thanks as always for being with us. And we're going to have another great conversation here and we are going to touch on a [00:01:00] sport in particular that we haven't talked about yet here on the show, but one that I'm sure a lot of you are interested in and that's golf.
So, and my guest today is Troy Bassham. Troy has been a mental performance coach. Teaching Mental Management full time since 2004. He works with athletes of all ages and levels, from high school to professional. He has authored two books, Attainment, the 12 Elements of Elite Performance, and For the Mind, the Mental Program for Golf.
That's For, F O R E, in golf terminology. And he is the mental coach for Crown Golf Academy. Troy, it's a pleasure to have you here.
Troy Bassham: Well, thanks for having me here. Thanks for getting me up this morning.
Ross Romano: Oh, yeah. Well, I'm looking, I look forward to this, right? Yeah. And sports, that's what gets so many of us up, isn't it? So, let's start with, you know, a little bit of the history, how you got into this. How did you get started with coaching and mental performance coaching?
Troy Bassham: So I grew up in, in an environment where my dad ran, my dad was an international [00:02:00] rifle shooter and was really good in the 1970s. He developed meds in the early 70s. So from 72 to 74, he developed this process to basically a way to think in competition. He wasn't winning, but he's really good technically, but he wasn't winning.
He's like, why am I not winning? And he interviewed Olympic gold medalists for two years and found out that, wait, most of these guys are doing all the winning. It's like 95 percent of the winning is being done by 5 percent of the participants. How do I become a 5%? So he interviewed these people, found some good information and, you know, He created what he called mental management, went on a great career, winning world championships, the Olympics in 76, he held the national record for 14 years, which was quite a feat, and anyway, by the end of the 1970s, he had his own shooting school, so he had an international shooting school, he had people from all over the world come, so, I have a twin brother, Jethro And so we're very [00:03:00] competitive and we're like, well, dad, when can we shoot?
When can we shoot? We were like nine or 10 years old when he started. And he goes, well, you're not old enough. And then you're 11. You're not old enough. You're 12. You're like, when are we ever going to be old enough? And finally, I think it was the summer before our freshman year in high school, he let us shoot and my brother and I played soccer.
We were unlike our father. Who's not coordinated at all. We were pretty coordinated. We kind of back then, this is the eighties. So. We kind of played soccer. I don't know if you really count it compared to today. But we out hustled everybody. We had enough skill to where we could, we were good enough that if we wanted to continue playing, we probably could.
But when you see all these great shooters come in to the program and you're around some of these athletes, and then he had He was teaching mental management full time to people outside of shooting. So you got to be around those individuals. And I mean, there are people in the, in variety of sports and activities.
And so by the time I was 14, [00:04:00] all the way, you know, all the way through college, I'm seeing these people. So I got really good, really quick. And managed to kind of follow my dad's footsteps and junior national champion, went to University of Texas, El Paso on a, on an athletic scholarship, four year All American there.
And there was recruited to go to the Army Marksmanship Unit, where they have a special unit that trains international rifle, shotgun, and pistol. And it was there that I started. I was required to coach. So we run a junior program at the unit. And so when I was there, there was an officer that would run the program and all the shooters would rotate, you know, so I would, you know, it's Tuesday, Thursday is what it was every week.
So I would assist him on Tuesday. Well, if you were on the team, you'd be to Thursday, but it might be two months before I assist and work with those kids, five years later, they say, Hey, Troy, you're We're changing it. We're going to let non commissioned officers be in charge. So you're at, [00:05:00] and I was a sergeant at the time.
And so they put me in charge of it. And I was like, look, we put our 25 a month. How would you like this Ross? 20, you have a son, right?
Ross Romano: I do.
Troy Bassham: Okay. So you're, you have the opportunity for 25 a month. You can take him to the finest facility in the country, around the best shooters in the country. All the equipment's provided, all the ammunition's provided.
It's a safe environment. He can learn the sport, an Olympic sport. For 25 bucks a month from six to nine, every Tuesday, every Thursday, would you sign your kid up for that
Ross Romano: I take almost anything for 25 bucks a month.
Troy Bassham: It's like, you gotta be kidding me. You're going to introduce me to a sport that teaches self focus, self motivation, that kind of stuff.
And what happened is it kind of became a babysitting type service. We, well, I mean, I was sitting there till. 10 o'clock waiting for parents to show up. And when I took over the program and said, [00:06:00] we're worse, we're gonna fix this. So I told the head coach, I said, look, we need to charge 250 a month. This is ridiculous.
You know, I mean, look at what we're offering. He goes, Troy, we can't do that. You know, this is a community service we provide, but 25 recoups our admin cost of like paper, ink, pencils, that kind of stuff. So what I did is I divided the two groups up. So I made it mandatory that the parents of the kids come at the beginning of the year, sat down.
I said, look, here's how it's going to work. I introduced myself and I said, look, we're going to have two ranges. So one half the range I called the fun range. And it helped that I had, it was, the range was divided, which kind of helped. So, and I said, you can go over there. There's, you know, one of the shooters are over there.
And I said, all the equipment's over there. I said, you're going to have a safe environment. They're going to teach you how to shoot. And, you know, you're going to have fun. because that's the fun range. This side I'm in charge of is not going to be fun. This is for competition, for the people who want to get serious.
You know, there is no [00:07:00] equipment. There is no rifles. There's no, you know, shooting equipment. So if you want to shoot for fun, and you want your kids to have fun, and you're interested in competing and being competitive, You need to go to the fund range, but if you want to stay here and provide more of a competitive environment for your athlete or your kid, then stay here, but you need to invest 3, 000 to 5, 000.
I'm going to go get the registration form, so when I come back, whoever's left will know who was in the fund range. Well, half the kids were in the fund range. Mom and Dad were like, I ain't paying that money. But then you've got some that are like, you know, I want to know more about this. And so I said, okay, kids, If mom and dad are going to invest this money, you've got to invest.
So I had a notebook and I said, Look, you're going to write every week in this notebook, and if you don't, there's consequences. Well, half those kids said, I don't want to do that, and they went. So I had about five kids left in the program, and what I did, I started teaching them how to write. Mental management in the beginning.
I made sure the parents understood the same principles that the kids understood. And then I made the parents stay in a certain space. Like your [00:08:00] line is here, you're not allowed to come over here. But when they cross this line and communicate with you, we're going to abide by these principles. And we're going to build the athletes together.
And the people in the fund range, I didn't care. They just want to have fun, safe environment. Some of them would move over, but in six months, we had a national champion. And the whole time, the first five years I was at the unit, not one of our juniors were ranked. And in six months, we have a national champion.
And it's because I did two things. Identify the kid's level of participation. I believe if you don't define the level of participation of the athlete, you might be coaching them the wrong way. So I think there's training to learn, training to compete, and training to win. I wanted a training to compete people that I can move into the training to win category.
The training to learn people, have fun, learn the foundations and then move on from there. Once I got those people divided, it was much easier to coach, it was much easier to get everyone on board. And then the thing is you've got these You know, even though they're small, a handful of people, they're very [00:09:00] competitive, you know.
They're like, I don't want Ross to beat me. I'm going to go home and do dry firing exercises, which is the most boring thing you can do in our sport. You know, put a dot on the wall, pretend we're shooting, but these kids would do it. And then they were challenging each other. Next thing you know, the program takes off.
And so just to fast forward, when I got out of the army about three years later, my dad said, look, I'm going to make middle management more of a priority. And I need someone to run the junior or youth division. Will you do that? Well, I had all that success before, so I said, sure. And, well, I've been doing that ever since.
And it morphed into where now I work with people of all levels and a variety of sports. But golf is probably, it's a primary. Most people I work with are golfers. And then it would be archery, and then it spreads out to other things. But I like sports that are basically, They're proactive, meaning I'm in charge of what I do.
They're not reactive.
Reactive [00:10:00] sports are more fun to play, probably, but when it comes to the middle game, proactive sports, I think, are extremely challenging, and that's what I like to do.
Ross Romano: how much for the athletes? How much of their preparedness to succeed is practice, right? Physical repetitions versus the mental game, you know, the thinking about visualizing, planning ahead. I mean, how would you kind of typically break that down when we're talking about you know, we can specify it related to sports, like shooting, like golf, right?
These type of individual competitions that we're mostly talking about this conversation.
Troy Bassham: Yeah, well, the coaches are definitely You know, I don't know of any coach, like a youth coach all the way up to a professor coach, that's not one of, in my opinion, one of the primary responsibilities is working on the mental performance of the individual. It's [00:11:00] probably the last thing that's really been dived into.
I mean, we've done a great job with equipment. We've done a great job with fitness. We've done a great job with technique. I mean, technical instruction today is, it's gotten so good that these young athletes are getting really good. In my sport, international rifle is a very steep learning curve.
You rarely saw someone in, before they were like 18, 20, that could compete on an international level. In the last Olympics, we had a 16 year old from a country, they were from China. I'm like, how is that? But the advancement. So, the middle game is now that kid, the frontier that is. going on. I think more coaches are kind of getting involved when it comes to mental management.
By definition, mental management is the process of improving the probability having consistent mental performance under pressure on demand. So we focus on two, two parts of that definition. And that's process and consistent. So, the way I look at it is that [00:12:00] results are a variable. I can't control the results.
You know, a coach can't control the results. Athletes can't control the results. The best they can do is influence it. If I put a good game plan together and I'm going up against a team, look at the Final Four happening right now, right? Which is, I mean, this is If you're a sports jockey, I mean, this is one of the best times of the year.
You got the Final Four, and then you got the Masters and golf coming up, right? Back to back, it's, what a way to start, you know, spring into summer kind of thing. And, these coaches have to put a game plan together. Well, if they put a good game plan together, and the athletes, you know, perform, and do what the coach is saying, and it's a perfect game plan, well, guess what the result's gonna be?
You're probably gonna win. For You know, so, but if I think about winning, you know, as a player, I'm going to most likely make a mistake. Well, coach, you know, they're responsible to pay attention to the clock and pay attention to score and pay attention to what's going on. [00:13:00] That's why they, you know, hey, time out, let's regroup, let's do this.
But what are they doing? They're coming with mini game plans within the, in the game. Your job is just to execute the game plan. Well, that's process oriented. So, if we're a golfer, Are you thinking about where the shot's going to go, or it doesn't go, or are you thinking about how to execute the shot? And so you want to be process oriented and not result oriented in competition.
Then the second part to that is you want to be consistent in doing that. You know, most athletes are very mentally consistent about being mentally inconsistent. You know, they're thinking about their environment rather than what they should do. This is why a lot of basketball players when they're, you know, making a free throw, I mean, come on, if you can make a, you're contested and you're 33 feet away from the basket and you drain it and you make it look easy and then you get to the free throw line and you miss it.
And it's like, well, why is that? Well, because think about this. You're constantly moving around [00:14:00] basically trusting your skill set. Once you get the ball, it's just you and the hoop. Now you have time to think and you got people that are, you know, trying to pull your focus. So it's harder for that individual to be consistent, but if they have a mental process, we call it a mental program, then it makes it easier to be consistent.
And so I think coaches, if they can help with that, certainly visualization, I like the term mental rehearsal. You're mentally rehearsing what you're physically going to do. And they go, what does that mean? So you take a golfer that takes a practice swing. Are you feeling that shot you want to make, or are you just swinging the club?
I would argue that most just swing the club. They don't really feel the shot they want to make. I call that imprinting. If I imprint what I want to do, I'm basically consciously saying, Hey, this is what I want to do when I get over the ball. And then once I'm over the ball and I hit the shot, I want to hit the shot as subconscious as possible.
I just want my skill to take over. And so it's basically the responsibility of coaches and parents to help with [00:15:00] that. The question comes, where do you go to get that information? And unfortunately, we haven't had any. Back in 1972, my father was looking for somebody, you know, sports psychology wasn't really a thing.
It was like in its infancy stage. We've come a long way from there. But then what does the athlete want? Do they want to know how to control their emotions? Do they want to know how to think over a ball? Do they want to know how to win? Do they want to know how to succeed at reaching certain goals over time?
And then who's the best person for that? You know, is it a sports psychologist? Is it a hypnotist? Is it someone who is more into the neuroscience of the brain kind of thing? Is it more like what I do is mental performance? We come from a performance background, and so it's very complicated about who you go to, but at least it's getting better and better, and it's exciting.
So, you know, you have a young kid. Imagine what it's going to be like 10, 15 years from now. [00:16:00] You're going to wish you were him.
Ross Romano: Well, we always wish we were younger, so that's going to be the truth. But yeah, I mean, I think what you're saying, I mean, it certainly applies, right, to both coach and athlete and sometimes different ways, but that process of wanting to perform. under pressure consistently. There's that, you know, what that pre work or preparation that goes into being able to do so.
And also in some ways you know, perhaps finding those opportunities to alleviate some of the mental load from during the competition that we should know that we, you know, and I'm thinking about, we just saw one example in the Super Bowl, right? With the overtime and what's the right decision?
Should we kick off? Should we receive, right? That's all the kind of thing that in the moment, in the high stakes, whatever, you know, you don't, it's hard to really that's work that needs to be done [00:17:00] way before you ever get there to determine, okay, when we get to this, when this situation comes up, what are we going to do?
And we already know, and it's automatic. And we're not going to question it or try to, you know, put all the figures together. Same thing for the athletes the free throws, right? That if you don't, practice what those repetitions need to look like. And that process of it's something that thinking cannot help you make a free throw.
It just can prevent you. But really you just have to, but you have to train in a relevant context, right? You have to practice doing that when you're fatigued, just like you'll be fatigued in the game. You have to just get to the point where you have that muscle memory. And that's, I mean, there's.
clearly a mental element of understanding why that's important. What type of training do I need to do? Why is that really, what do I need to do to put myself in position so that when I'm in the real [00:18:00] competition, when it's really happening, I can execute. And if I'm not planning accordingly, or I'm not training in the way that I need to compete, and I'm just, you know, standing in my driveway and just kind of goofing off.
I mean, you can make 30 in a row, but it's not necessarily preparing you for when the pressure is on and when you're not, you know, you're not fully energized. Right. And and blocking that out. And it, you know, there's so many different ways in which obviously the mental and the physical interact. Right.
Troy Bassham: Yeah, and if you don't prepare for that. And you find yourself in a situation, there's no way you're not overthinking. I like the Super Bowl example you gave, because by doing that preparation, you remove the emotional element when you're in the game. Like, we've already planned for this. When this happens, we [00:19:00] do this.
You know, kind of a contingency planning, if you will. As far as we find ourselves in these situations, this is what we do. But you also hit on something interesting about the training part. I'm 100 percent convinced that most young athletes in proactive sports like golf, for example, do not train. At best, they, I call it mindless practice.
They go to the course and once they get to the course, then they decide what they want to work on. You know, I never left the house without knowing exactly what I was going to do and the order I was going to do it in when I got to the range to, to train. and shooting. And so are in golf, we'd call it tra feel oriented, more techn shadow oriented will add to it?
Like we're going t rarely do you see golfers pre shot routine or [00:20:00] the d either. And stay tuned for But they're all have one on the golf course. I still want to go to a tournament and do this, but I know I'll be thrown out. So I won't, but I want to just stop and go, Hey, what did you just do? Right.
What's that thing you do before you hit the ball? They go, what do you mean? Let me eat up practice. We need to get all serious and look like very methodical and. Direct and they're like, Oh, that's my pre shot routine. Wow. Is that important? Yeah, it's very important. How's we set up, set the shot up? I'm like, wow, so important.
You didn't practice it on the driving range, but yet they practice the shots. They practice the putting, they practice the physical part of it, but they're not training the mental part of it. Why not? And so that's what training for the shot is, adding the mental component to the technical. If I don't have the technical feeling of doing it right, it's very hard to mentally rehearse it, right?
How can you visualize what you're supposed to do if you don't know how to do it? And then training the round would be simulation. I'm going to go [00:21:00] play with Ross on Friday afternoon at one o'clock and we're going to do a match play. Well, that's going to simulate a tournament we're going to have later in the year, match play.
I may well be playing in the afternoon at one o'clock against somebody. So I'm going to go in there and it's not going to be us as buddies playing, it's going to be, you know, I'm going to take this just as serious as if it's a legitimate tournament. So I'm going to abide by the same procedures and strategies that I want to implement in that.
If I can't produce a good result in that environment, what makes me think I'm going to do in an actual tournament? I probably won't. And so there's a progression on doing that. And this is where team sports, you know, the coaches take care of that, you know, and I mean, I don't know if college coaches get enough credit, but there's a lot of responsibility these guys have.
They've got to make sure they're going through simulations and make them sure that, okay, this, what if this happens? We've got to be ready for this scenario, that scenario. And there's still got to make sure that these guys are working on their [00:22:00] craft. You know, like you were saying, what's the skill set of the athlete?
You know, if I got one, if I'm a basketball coach and I got one guy that just, he can't make more than 50 percent of his free throws, but he's really good in other areas of the game. I need to make sure I have some sort of training where he gets to work on that, but we also get to work on these other things because other people need work areas.
So I'm kind of glad I'm not a coach in a team environment sport like that, that the scheduling alone, I think is stressful. So yeah.
Ross Romano: right. And this could be an unfair assumption, but it would seem as though, let's, you know, using golf as an example, golf, a sport where you're really You're out there solo, you know, you're fully responsible for making the shot or not. It's very much a skill and a technique sport versus a pure athleticism sport.
And so much of the culture around the game, right around [00:23:00] the etiquette and the quiet that most, if not all golfers, at least anybody who's semi serious about the sport would. agree that mental elements are an important part of their performance. You know, whether they're doing the right things or not whether they're putting that into action, right, if asked.
But I think there's, There still is a lot of debate or resistance and pushback sometimes in the team sports. I mean, you know, you reference basketball as a great example where sometimes there's a, an a, a player who's really successful, three point shooter and doesn't make their free throws, and it's like, well, what, why is this happening?
You're making the much more difficult shot at a high level and the easier one. You're not there. What? That's not a physical thing that has to do with, you know, there's [00:24:00] different levels of focus, right? When you said a hand in your face, you know, how do you make that versus when you're by yourself?
It's called free throw for a reason. It's supposed to be almost free points, right? And but you'll have, let alone figuring out Right. How do I find the time and the right strategy and all the things to help one individual amongst the team, but also when you have sometimes those athletes who are resistant to even the idea of that exploration or that it's a.
That it's an issue, right? Well, if I'm good at these other things, why do I need to be good at that? And as the coach, you're thinking, well, this is because this is going to come down to a critical moment when I really need this to happen. Yeah, but let's go to golf for a bit. And I'm thinking in particular about let's say, you know, a beginner or, you know, or some young person who wants to get interested in the game and maybe they and their parents are interested, but aren't, [00:25:00] haven't had a ton of exposure.
Are there particular traits or things you would look for, you know, from someone who's getting started with the game or is there any You know, is there any limitation or reason why anybody with the right, you know, the proper training and approach and technique can't become successful at a sport like that?
Troy Bassham: I think when it comes to golf the individual definitely needs to have some sort of coordination and athletic ability. Just there's, I don't know how many moving parts are there in a golf swing. You know, there's quite a bit going on. My father wasn't very coordinated, so golf would have not been something he would have excelled in.
He could have spent the same amount of hours training that sport like he did Internex Rifle, and he just would never have been a Jack Nicklaus. You know, but take someone who has some ability, you know, where they can pick up some of the [00:26:00] foundational skills relatively easy enough to where they're motivated to train it.
You know, training skills, we in mental management, we believe that our performance model is we have the conscious mind, the subconscious self image. The conscious is your thoughts, what you think about. The subconscious is your skill level. And then self image, your habits and attitudes, your belief that you can do something.
So building those three. are critical. Everyone does this, does the same thing. They all go after the subconscious in the beginning. They want to develop skill. So how do you develop skill? It's very simple, find a high quality coach that knows what they're doing, that can give you good instruction, and then put a lot of repetition in.
So in golf, it would be, I come to you, you're teaching me how to hit the shot a certain way, you give me some drills to do, you tell me, hey, do these drills so much hours, so many days, during the week, I do that, about a week or two later, I come back, and you're gonna either Confirm what I'm doing right or you're going to counsel me [00:27:00] on correcting some things and trying to make progress.
And so it's very much repetitive. Talent Code, Talents Overrated are two books that illustrate this point very well. If you want to get really good at something, spend 5, 000 hours doing it. And if you want to get great, spend 10, 000 hours of doing it. Well, in golf, how do you get really good in golf when you're not going to spend 5, 000 hours in putting, and ball striking, and chipping, and, you know, pitching, that kind of stuff?
So it becomes to where these players, like, live on the golf course. But I think that aspect of it is pretty straightforward when it comes to the mental component. How do I train how I think, and then how do I build self image at the same time becomes more, more difficult. What I would do is if I had a An athlete that was interested in golf and they had a little bit of a knack for it to where they could kind of pick it up and they were coachable.
I would be making sure that they're learning the mental skills early on in that so we'll help develop the growth even faster. If I had [00:28:00] my way, I would definitely target. athletes before they get through adolescence. So take a 12, 13 year old, they haven't really hit, you know, puberty yet, they're about to go through adolescence, and then you get this dreaded, what, 14, 15, 16 year age, you know, where now they're not a kid anymore, they're, boom, they're a young adult kind of thing.
If I can instill good mental habits, then by the time they're 18 years of age, They're like, well, I just cannot do it any other way but this way. That would be my approach to it, if I could do that. But definitely start with good technical foundation, and then secondly, is look at what are some key mental principles that I need to abide by.
One, I mentioned was the principle of the picture. There is one that I ask all my athletes. I don't care how old they are. I don't care what level they are. The principal reinforcement is the more you think about, talk about, write about something happening. You improve the probability of that thing happening.
I want my athletes talking about what they want to have happen, what should have [00:29:00] happen, not what happened. So the joke I do, Ross, is the last two years I've been asking this question and no one's gotten the answer right. and it's related to what we're talking about with performance and self image.
And so we live in the United States of, everyone says America, and I'm like, no. We live in the United States of negativity, meaning it's socially acceptable to be negative. about what you do. Like people come home and they're like, well, how did it go? Oh, this was bad. That was bad. Whether it's work related, sport related, you have it.
Youth, you know, is no different. High school Cleaves athletes are going to do the same thing. You know, how did it go today? Ah, should have been better. And I can't believe I did this, and this. So they're really hurting their self image and not realizing it. You know, so, well, what if we think about what we want to do?
What if we talk about what we want to do? How much productive would that be? It'd be a lot more productive. And then you can have a sport like golf, where it's socially acceptable to be negative. You finish around a golf with your buddies. You [00:30:00] go into the clubhouse, you're sitting around and what are you talking about?
The good performances or the bad performances? Typically the bad performances. And so I just tell people, look, I know it's a long principle to memorize, but if we can start living by that, it's going to make your development. Easier and faster. And that's my approach into that one. And I do believe, I know this is gonna sound weird since I didn't grow up as a golfer, but I think it's the best sport in the world.
I don't know of another sport. Maybe you do. You can tell me what sport would be equal or better than golf. But I think golf has the most variables of any sport. I don't know if a sport has more variables than golf does. And so I think it makes it mentally challenging for athletes. The courses aren't the same.
They're all different. You know, if you go, if you get to play at the masters, you'll never experience anything like the masters as a professional golfer. And then you go to, you know, a different event, like the players, which is a whole unique event. And then [00:31:00] you go to like. The Waste Management that's held in Arizona, where these fans are allowed to scream and yell and go crazy, which is a whole different environment than what you just explained earlier.
And so it makes the middle game more challenging, because I've got these different variables, the different golf courses, the different, you know, I don't get to choose when I get to play, I don't get to choose who I play with, and the environment's never the same. You know, Mother Nature doesn't like to make weather the Sometimes she likes to throw a little wind in there and a little cold, a little heat, you know, depending on the year, it could be brutal.
Guess what you have to do? You still have to play, you still have to perform. So, starting out with skill level, but introducing some basic techniques. Mental principles, I think are important. And then as the athlete develops and they get more into what I call the intermediate to advanced level, then they need to start becoming even more interested in training the middle game.
And because by that point you're probably competing, you're probably positioned to win. When you're positioned to win, how do you control your thoughts where you're not [00:32:00] getting too far ahead of yourself and, or too hard on yourself? If you, man, I just broke the whole, I gave up the lead. Now what do I got to do?
I got to make it up. I got to do this. Well, that way of thinking is not the way they were thinking the front nine, So why do they think that's going to work? One, to just continue with the thought process you were doing. So if we don't define the optimal thing to think about, We can't master that into our game, meaning I can't duplicate it from what I'm doing in practice into competition.
And if I can do that from competition to competition, I can gain consistency. Well, I can trust that and that will make it harder for my opponent to beat me if I can get there. Most athletes don't approach it that way. Most athletes approach it where I'm going to get technically sound and trust that's going to work.
Going to help me win. Now there are some really good athletes that can win at that level, but when you run into the person like a Tiger Woods in his prime, that was not only technically great, but he was mentally great. [00:33:00] That's why he was so hard to beat, you know, for the longest time. It's like how many cuts in a row?
I think he made like over 74, 75 cuts in a row. It's insane. But I think he. At a young age, his dad instilled the mental, you know, game as important and he took that and he had some rules and stuff that he followed that really gave him an advantage in that part of the game. And if you're going to challenge your mental game, help me, what game challenges the mind more than golf?
And that's why I like it. It's so
Ross Romano: Yeah, I mean, it certainly does. And when you're out there, I think, you know, I'm certainly, I don't have expertise in every sport, but when I think about the equivalent or the most equivalent among team sports, right, there's so many parallels between golf and baseball, right.
And so, you know, cause even within the team context. You're alone in the batter's box or on the pitcher's mound. You have, every field has different dimensions, so you [00:34:00] have to prepare and think ahead if you're an outfielder. Okay, well, if the balls hit over here what's the wall like there?
How close is the crowd? Or, and there's so many things that are about repetition and, you know, the skills and techniques and, you know, similar to your point about Tiger Woods and the same thing applies in, you know, when you're facing you're a batter and you're facing a certain pitcher, which is one of the, one of the ways why he was able to win over and over again, because he was able to stick to what he was doing and he knew that if he could do that for long enough, eventually the other guy's going to make a mistake.
Eventually, if I, you know, stay focused and I keep hitting the shots that I need to hit, even if I'm behind, eventually this other guy is going to mess up. He's going to hit a bad shot. He's going to, you know, get a double bogey. And that's how I catch up. [00:35:00] But I need to stay focused on me because I can't control that.
Right. And it's a similar thing where eventually, you know, if I'm able to focus on. My played approach. Eventually this pitcher is going to make a mistake pitch. Eventually he's going to give me one I can hit, but I can't chase his. I have to stay. I have to be patient. I have to wait. And then when it comes.
You don't miss it, right? And I, you know, there's a lot of you know, and of course, as far as the form and the skills and the techniques similarities there too, but yeah, I mean, those are such big pieces and that kind of relatedly, you know, to that discipline point. How important is it from the coach's perspective and the coach as.
Teacher, right when we're talking mental managemental preparation to help athletes understand the connection between the small things and the big picture. Understand the why, because so much of the training that's required [00:36:00] to be great at any sport. you know, is this repeated focus and repetition of the fundamentals, right?
And of the small things, which not only is it, you know, can it be physically exhausting and mentally exhausting, but it also, it can be, you know, boring, right? It's the things that you need to do over and over again are not exciting, right? To say, I need to, you need to hit this same shot a hundred times in golf, or you know, you need to do it over and the same one, but that's how many times you need to do it to get it right.
Or in a different sport, you know, you're practicing your footwork or a different techniques. It's things that, but the, that what the great athletes do is they're able to go in there and do that. over and over again, so that they, I mean, because ultimately, as much as the emphasis, you know, among the [00:37:00] majority of fans, right, of any sports, is the things that are more entertaining or flashy.
Consistently, it is, I mean, if you look at who are The best performers, they have the sound fundamentals and they only got those through that intense focus, but for a young athlete, right, who is drawn to a sport because of the excitement getting them to the point to say, look, this is what we need to do today.
And I'm sure, right, when there's to your point about knowing what you're doing before you get out the door and when you get to the course, you know, That there's times where okay. Today's training session is we're doing one thing repeatedly and this is what our focus is. And do I, you know, do I get a slumped shoulders and a big sigh, or am I understanding, okay, like this isn't going to be a fun day, but I know that once I have mastered this, it's going to prepare me for the next [00:38:00] thing.
Troy Bassham: Yeah, you hit on one thing that's really, I thought was funny was, you know, most of the things that make you really good are boring. Yeah, they're not exciting. You know, training it, you know, we, we tell people there's four out, there's four things you can do in preparation and competing. And everyone does, everyone starts with train, try easy.
In preparation and try easy in a tournament because it just needs to be fun. This is like, you use soccer, you know your son's in and you know, he's eight years old and you throw him out. There're like, we're just having fun. You know, just, you go out there, have fun in practice, you go there, fun in competition, they might take it a little bit more seriously 'cause it quote counts, but at the end of the day, do we really care if they win or lose or do we just want them to have fun?
But then all of a sudden they say, man, I wanna take this seriously. I wanna learn more. And they wanna develop and then they. They move into the category they try easy in preparation, but they try hard in competition, which doesn't work, you know? And then what they do is they elevate to trying hard in, in training, and they're still trying hard in competition, and that doesn't work.[00:39:00]
The only one that works you try hard in preparation. And you try easy in competition. And the only way to get there is to have trust. And the only way you can have trust is to have a strong mental game along with a strong technical game, which goes back to what you were saying is that you, you do the boring stuff.
And so what are the 5%, you know, the 5 percent are doing really well. They're willing to do what the average athlete's not willing to do, you know, and, you know, Tiger Woods are probably used. In a long time as an example of this, there's a video of him exaggerating movement, you know, in a practice suite.
So I work with a Major League Baseball pitcher and he's going through a small mechanical change. And, you know, one of the things we do in our mental system is we break up the we have an anticipation phase, action phase, reinforcement phase. Anticipation phase are preparing for the task. So, you know, for a golfer, it's like, Okay, what am I doing [00:40:00] to prepare for the shot?
For a baseball pitcher, what am I doing to prepare for a pitch, right? You come up with a strategy. Okay, I'm going to hit this shot at that target. And then you do a practice week where Tiger Woods is over there training on the drying range. He's overemphasizing this move, you know, so he can now get a better idea of what it's supposed to feel like.
So then when he goes to the. To implement that in his routine, he's implementing that feeling. And so this guy I'm working with, he's like, you know, I just, I don't have that technical feeling down, where I can really mentally rehearse it like I want to. So it becomes very difficult to do the preload, which sets up the middle program, which sets up the action phase, right?
To do that. So we're trying to make progress and he said, what can I do now? The season started, you know, you really would like to have spring training two more weeks, right? And I said, well, when you're, do you know what, if you slowed it down, what would it look like? So I just took a you know, [00:41:00] thank God for YouTube, right?
I just go on this phone. Yeah. I don't know how old you are, Ross, but when I was in my twenties, this thing did not exist. Oh, how cool it would have been. And I just took up a video. that I, I had on Tiger Woods where he was implementing this routine and it just looks really funny and looks kind of weird, but he doesn't have it down yet.
And I said, is there a way? So I sent it to him and said, watch that. Is there a way that you can do that? Even in the hotel room, you know, and that kind of stuff. And he said, well, yeah, there's two, two times I could do that. And I'm like, well, what if we just focused on that movement and all you're focusing on is that movement, that release, that grip, that small technical thing that you're doing.
And then when you play catch and warmup, that's okay, am I making progress? And then once you start getting that feeling down, we're going to imprint that. You know, better than a preload. But then the other part is we have the reinforcement phase. So let's say I don't perform the task I want.
So Guffer doesn't hit the green. They [00:42:00] missed the green. What does the average Guffer do? They say a cuss word or two, they get upset, but we're not going to hit every green, right? Our approach is that, what if there's a productive way to evaluate that? Instead of beating ourselves up, we focus on the correction.
How about we do that? And, same concept with baseball. You know, a pitcher, the object of pitching, in my opinion, is very simple. It's to throw a specific pitch in a specific location that you and the catcher agree to. Well then why do you care if the batter hits it? But every pitcher's worried about the batter hitting it.
And like, you're the one that has the advantage, not the batter. The batter had the advantage. You'd be hitting 700, not 300 or 220 or whatever it is. So once you execute the pitch, worry about that, trust the results going to be there and say, good luck if you can hit it.
Ross Romano: Right.
Troy Bassham: And when you put that in perspective, as opposed to, I got to get the guy out.
It makes it easier. It's [00:43:00] like, okay, I didn't hit the green this time. All right, what's the correction? Why need to do this? Well, let's focus on doing that. So it sets itself up. So the next time I have a similar shot, the probability I'm going to do well went up because the last thing I thought about was doing it correctly, not wrong.
And so that I think is what makes the middle game challenging. I'm in the heat of competition, but for a golfer, you've got time. You're an approach shot. You hit it. You've got time to think about it. You can take a few seconds. You know, there's another guy over there that's got to hit his shot, you know, so what are you going to do?
You're going to wait, you know, out of respect, okay, I wait for Ross to hit, okay, he's done, now we can walk up to the green. You know, I miss this putt, and it's like, oh, I should have, and I go and I tap it in, and you see guys just sitting there alone. And they're just mentally beating themselves up. Well, if the other guy's trying to make a five footer, and you missed your six footer that was, you know, In your opinion, easy to make.
Go off to the side, away from him, where you're not distracting [00:44:00] him, and then just, okay, what was the correction? Was it something technical? Was it okay, I need a more break. I need more speed. What is it? You know, have that thought process as opposed to beating yourself up because then what are you going to do when you have a six foot putt in the future?
You're going to have a similar putt like that. Maybe it's the next hole. Maybe it's the next day Maybe it's the next month, but you don't want the last thing you thought about was I missed it I screwed this up and you get to the same scenario. You're like, oh my gosh. So this is why Tiger Woods is so good.
In the Book of Tainment, I used an example of this, where he's in the U. S. I believe it was the U. S. Open, where he had a 15 foot putt. If he makes it, he's in a playoff with Rocco Mediate. I don't know if you remember that, and so I woke up in the morning, ESPN radio was on my alarm, and it was Mike and Mike show, back with Mike Golick and Mike Greenberg [00:45:00] asked Tiger Woods, he goes, Alright, what time, at what time did you, the thought cross your mind that you had to make the budget?
And Tiger immediately, without hesitation, said never. He goes no. I mean, was it when you're reading the pot, when you're over the pot, when you're walking up to the green, like somewhere you had to, you knew you had to make the putt. He goes, never thought of that. He goes, I don't understand.
And he goes, look, I don't remember the specifics, but I think it's like a cup and a half out to the right. I put the speed on that line. If I'm right, there's only one outcome.
Ross Romano: Yeah.
Troy Bassham: And he goes, I don't understand. And then Tiger Woods says, that's why you do what you do. And I do golf. And I thought that was great.
In other words, how can I think about winning? He's thinking about execution. Once you drain that pot, what do you think Rocco Mediate was thinking? I'm done, you know, and so looking at that perspective, and so When I came up, my second book is For the Mind, which is a golf book. [00:46:00] And you I liked your intro when you said it's four spelled F R E golf related, yeah, because how many, you know, we said to go four, I mean, the shots going way off where how many thoughts are way off in La Land and they're all over the place.
So that's why the cover, which some people say I need to redo the cover, but I wanted a picture of. Okay, I'm on the t box, this is what I'm looking at. Where do you think people are thinking? They're not thinking, I need to hit the fairway, they're thinking, don't go right, don't go left, don't go short, don't go in that bunker.
You know, that kind of stuff. If we can control our thoughts under pressure, in a productive manner, and I've got good skill, oh, what chance do you have to beat me? It's going to be very difficult. (ad here)
Ross Romano: Yeah. Absolutely. So, Troy, as we're kind of getting toward the end of our conversation here, there's one thing that we talked about a little bit before we began recording that I wanted to ask about while we have a moment here. And it's a topic that we've had a chance to discuss on a few episodes in the [00:47:00] past, but it's around that college recruitment, college evaluation process.
And and in particular, the preparation, right, that student athletes should make around what they want to be able to answer for a coach who is recruiting them and what they need to ask to find out if that program is a good fit. And I know you have some some things there that you recommend in that regard, which I think are you know, great things for young athletes of any sport to really think about finding.
You know that it's a two way process, right? Of course, we want to impress coaches and we want to get an offer and have opportunities, but we also deserve to to make sure it's going to be a good fit and a place where we can continue to grow and develop.
Troy Bassham: Well, this, and we could have a whole afternoon conversation on this topic. This is a a topic [00:48:00] that I think more needs to be talked about from just recruiting aspect from what parents need to know, what athletes need to know. Coaches are going to, this is my perspective, I'm going to use golf as the primary Golf and rifle shooting are the two college sports I'm most familiar with, and they kind of operate the same way. They're trying to recruit the best player. If you recruit the best players, you don't have to do anything but stay out of the way. You know, just support them and you can be good. Well, it's very hard because there's only one number one junior and how many colleges are out there? You know, let's just simplify and say there's a hundred colleges that are going to offer scholarships.
Well, 99 are not going to get that player. So guess what? They all go after the number two guy, the number three guy, and so on, it goes down the pecking order. What makes it more confusing is there's not a hundred colleges out there looking for athletes. There's more than a hundred. [00:49:00] And there's not just a, you know, a hundred golfers, there's thousands of them trying to get these spots.
So what I tell the athletes is, number one, you gotta define what the goal is. What do you really want to do? Do you want to play D1? Do you want to play D2? Do you really care where you play? Most athletes have an idea. There's some that don't want to go to big program. I got two golfers that I'm working with now.
They're seniors in high school. They're both going to universities that have less than 5, 000 students and they couldn't be happier. And the reason why is that, look, I want to be a big fish in a small pond and I want a classroom where I don't have 500 kids in it. Well then, that eliminates schools like Clemson, and UT, Ohio State, Stanford, etc.
But then you got kids that want the big program. I want D1, I want a competitive environment, I want to be pushed to do that. Okay, so if I have someone that's a freshman in high school, Most players will not, they don't want to contact coaches unless they're [00:50:00] playing well. And I'm like, look, you need a website.
You need to have it where the coach can go, especially in golf. I can go there. Okay. Who's this Ross kid? Okay. Ah, let me go. He's got this website. Boom. I could see a swing. Okay. It looks pretty good. I see his little bio. I see kind of where his scores are. Tournament's not impressive. I don't care about high school.
Oh, he actually competed in the AGG. Yeah. I finished 50th. I don't know about this kid, but let's say a year goes by. You're still emailing this coach, and the coach says, Ah, man, why does he keep emailing me? And I go, wait a minute, he's got three AJA events. Man, the guy's had two top 20s. So what did he see?
He sees progress. So I don't care if you're shooting in the 80s, and a coach is not going to look at you. But if you show progress over and over, and they're going to look at you. Second thing is persistence. The good programs are going to get bombarded by emails. I talked to a guy that's coached at a D1 university for 27 years.[00:51:00]
He said, Troy, you wouldn't believe how many emails I get a week. I ignore most of them. I don't have time. So if you're not persistent, you know, you obviously don't want to harass them, but you want to be able to say, Hey, look, once a month, I'm going to give them an update. It's up to them to see if they have it.
You want to sell yourself whom they're recruiting, not who you are. So my way of looking at it is, When you go on this recruiting trip, so let's say you're fortunate enough, you have five official visits, and you have five schools you want to go to. Well, you can't go to all of them. You gotta pick one of them.
Hopefully the one you want to go to is the one that picks you. And, so as I was telling you before, I think every, at least in, in my opinion, every athlete should ask this question to the coach. If I'm fortunate to come play for you, and be a part of this program and get an education at this university.
Very important we say that, right? Because we're a student athlete, right? What are you going to do to help [00:52:00] me become a better golfer? I want to personalize. I had two, two rifle shooters that went to two of the same universities. They asked both coaches this question. The coaches gave them the same answer.
The great thing about college is this, Well, I want the question of how you are, because if you don't like the coach, you will not like being there. If you can't play for the coach, don't go there. And the best example of that is Larry Bird. He was going to go to Indiana and he left and went to Indiana State.
You need to have a good fit. Second is you should expect this question from the coach. And if I was coaching college, I would ask this question, Ross, I've got one spot. talking to four people. You're one of them. If I recruit you, give me some comfort knowing I'm making the right decision. Now, what are you going to tell them?
If you don't have a pre planned answer then you're going to go, you're probably gonna sound like everyone else. So I have my athletes [00:53:00] fill out a journal. We call it performance analysis. It's a performance analysis, meaning I'm recording my performance, analyzing in a good way. I put what I did in there.
I put what I did well, capital of a goal statement. I say, you take that with you. And when the coach asks you that question, then you say, well, you just hand it to them and they're going to say, what's this? That's my performance analysis. If I'm fortunate enough to complain for you, you'll never have to worry about what I do.
I won't tell you what I do. I'll show you. It's in writing. And the coach now, he's got this drawing, he's looking at it, okay, Ross gave me this thing, I'm looking at this, well this is pretty, you do this, you know, every tournament? No, I do it every practice round, every tournament day, every day I'm practicing and I'm competing, I'm recording in that.
What separates you from the other individuals? And so that's kind of how my approach is. It's a selling it's business. You're selling yourself to university, the university's selling them to you. There's a reason why a lot of these universities have very nice stadiums.
And if they want [00:54:00] Ross, guess what they're gonna do?
And they know Ross likes sports, right? I'm not gonna invite you out to my program in April. I'm gonna say, hey Ross, why don't you come in September, you know? We're playing Ohio State. I'm gonna get you tickets to the game. I'm gonna let you hang out with some of my players. And I'm gonna give you a personal tour of the campus.
Well, I'm gonna go. Imagine you go to a university that doesn't have a good stadium, they don't play against top level competition, and it's like, well that's not the environment I want to go to. There's, you know, my opinion. I might be wrong. I could be wrong, and I'll admit if I am, but it's a business, and these colleges are trying to get your business.
And you know what? You should do the same. You want my business? Then you help me become a better athlete. I don't know of a university that doesn't strive to make you a good student. Every one of them says they're great academically. U. [00:55:00] S. News and Report will tell you how they rank them and that kind of stuff.
It's the only place I know to really get accurate information on where to go. But if you're going to a credible university, academics are probably more to the student than the university. But boy, they do a good job of trying to impress you. I mean, I went to UTEP. No, no one knows where UTEP is.
They go, what's that? University of Texas at El Paso. El Paso. Yeah. Yeah. You go to that campus today compared to when I went there, night and day. Gorgeous campus. I mean, compared to when I went there, it's. Phenomenal. It's a locked in campus now. They've made it it's almost like an art piece compared to when I went there.
Ross Romano: yeah,
Troy Bassham: And they're a smaller D1 program. They're not going to be like Ohio State or UT. type of thing. But make no mistake, they're in business to educate, compete, develop young athletes, develop young academics. And I just think when you're recruiting, don't sell yourself [00:56:00] short. Show you're making progress and sell yourself.
Look, do you want who I am today or do you want who I'm becoming? if I'm a college coach, I don't care how you're performing now. I care how you're gonna perform when I have you in my program. If you're number one in the If you're number 100th in the world and you turn into a diamond in the rough, I look like a hero, you know, so that's kind of how I approach
Ross Romano: the story you tell how you represent yourself and the programs and the universities have certainly practiced it over the years. But it's a great skill for anyone to have in sports in business and, you know, in applying for jobs right that being able to think about okay what.
Yeah. Are the things I can do that are going to be valuable to this organization and how can I represent that and also what are, you know, what environment is going to facilitate my [00:57:00] success and how do I ask those questions and to your point, look if everybody has to make these decisions.
according to their own goals and objectives and works best for them. And if you're really desperate to play a sport at the college level, and then there's only one school where you're going to have an opportunity and you don't want to rock the boat. I understand, but you know, ultimately for the most part if there's a coach who doesn't want to answer questions about how they're going to help you get better and succeed and they're resisting that, then that's probably not a coach you want to play for.
The same as, If you're interviewing for a job and you're asking very reasonable questions about, you know, the workplace culture or, you know, how the teams work together or management styles. Right. And if you have somebody who resists answering those kinds of questions, [00:58:00] well, you're probably not going to end up being happy working with that person.
So. You know, if you have more than one option, you want to be able to make the best choice available and you want to kind of, you know, pursue that information and guess what, you know, the things that we often fear, right? I'm afraid if I ask this question, they're going to, they're not going to want to deal with me.
To the right person that it's, it shows something positive. It shows that you're thinking ahead about your continued improvement. It shows that you are considering how you are going to be your best self, your best performer, right? And the ways in which that dynamic between coach and athlete is, You know, it's a mutual agreement.[00:59:00]
We need to, I want to know what are the goals of this program, of this team, et cetera, and how I can be a positive contributor toward those goals. I also want to know how the program is going to help me be successful as a student athlete. And, you know, it, look, it, To me, if I'm a coach and I want to have people coming into my program who are not seeing, getting an offer as the end of the process, but as the beginning, right?
And saying, okay now's when the real work begins. I want those who are thinking ahead and really considering, look, is this a great fit for both of us? Is this the right place for me? Am I going to be the right contributor? So.
Troy Bassham: yeah, coaches don't, they don't want to have someone there that doesn't really want to be there. They settled. They want people that are going to be there. And I think most coaches will be [01:00:00] receptive to those type of questions. and it makes it easier for them to know who you are as an individual.
And I just find a lot of young high school athletes just, it's like they're afraid to ask questions because they, I just want to play for college program. Golf is one of those, which it's very competitive and there's a ton of athletes, you know, you know, it's a big decision for an 18, 19 year old to make and not, you know, there's no guarantee you're gonna make the right decision.
For me, when I was, I went, I had two full ride offers. I could have gone to Alaska, or I could have gone to El Paso. Well, I grew up in the state of Texas. The difference is the University of Alaska at Fairbanks was, They were nationally ranked. They were in the top three. They'd won the NCAA championships.
Their coach was one of the best coaches in college and UTEP, no one even knew, they weren't even on the map. They've never even had one [01:01:00] person ever go to the NCAAs, but I didn't care. I just needed a coach that was gonna support me and just look, stay out of my way, you know, my dad will help me with the technical part of it.
You know, don't, you just make sure that I got a range to shoot. And I'm there and when I went there, the, you know, the coach is like, look, you know more than I do. And he's like, we'll make an agreement. I'll make you look good. You make me look
Ross Romano: Oh yeah,
Troy Bassham: And so we worked on that agreement and, you know, he liked us shooting and we had paper targets back in the day.
Now they shoot electronic targets, which is kind of, kind of cool. I'm a little jealous. It's like you said earlier, well, I wish we could be younger.
Ross Romano: Yeah,
Troy Bassham: But we shoot these paper targets and I would turn in my air gun. We shoot air gun in 22. I would turn in air gun targets, but not 22 targets. It was 20.
Are you not training 22? I says, no, I'm not shooting that ammo. Cause it's. bad ammo, you [01:02:00] know, and he's like, well, we can't afford this other stuff. And I'm like, can we afford something in between something that's almost as good as this, but way better than that. And we had a discussion. We did, he did some research and he found some ammo that look, I ordered some, let's see how it does.
And I shot with it. I shot like a series. of matches, practice matches with it. And the scores were within two, three points of what the top level ammo was. And, you know, my sport, a case of ammo, 5, 000 rounds of Ely 10X, which is what most people use, it's over 2, 000. It's not like what you'll find at Walmart.
Right. And so for him, it's like, I said, look, there's this, that's really cheap. That's only. Two or three points. Why don't I just use that train and compete with that? And he says, no, I'll buy that. You train with it. And so he created a program where if you're not at this level, you don't get that ammo. So it motivate people to train and that kinda stuff.
And I said, look I'll make sure I make you [01:03:00] look good. Well, how do you make a coach look good? You win. And we did enough winning to where we went to the NCAAs all four years I was there. We finished second one year, and I was four year All American, and he looks like a, you know, a stud, you know, in that regard.
Would I've, would have been better for my shooting career to go to Alaska? Most definitely. I would have gone where there was more, there were people that were as good or better than me there. But, you I just, I don't know. I don't know if they can handle the cold weather, you know, being from Texas. I'm like, that's a long way to be home.
It's cold weather. But my dad would have said, yeah, but think about the benefits. All there is to do is to shoot and go to class. And I'm like, nah, I think I want something. I want to at least, you know, even though it's like a 10 hour drive home, I want to be able to get home for the holidays. If I would've went there, dad has said, nah, we'll see you at Christmas.
I ain't flying you down for. [01:04:00] Thanksgiving, that kind of thing. But these are, the point I'm making is these are hard decisions for a young athlete to make. And I don't know if that's the right decision to make until after it's done. And I look back on my career and I go, okay, well, I'm glad I made the decision.
I wish I didn't make the decision. So asking those questions now, I think most coaches, you know, all the college coaches I know that I personally have had the pleasure to work with, they all went to college and played college. So they were in your shoes doing the same thing you're doing. So I think most of them would be receptive of those questions, especially if they're asked in an honest, you know, I'm serious about this.
I want to do better, but how are you going to help me become better? And if you got one that answers it and you click with them, then. But maybe you don't like the campus as much as this other school. I would tell you, go where you click with the coach and develop and that kind of stuff. So, but I [01:05:00] tell you, I don't think you can be in a better environment right now if you're a high school athlete going into college sports, we're in the best country.
And I mean, the coaches got better, the facilities are better, the universities, what they offer these athletes are better. And if anything, I'm a little envious of these guys, what they. what they have, and what they're provided. If they're going to provide all this stuff, make sure you understand what one program is offering versus another one.
And you know, they, good coaches are hard to keep for a reason.
So.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a good, it's a good lesson to, you know, end on just like when you're in class or, you know, like, right. Ask, asking good questions shows that you're serious about it. And these coaches have, you know, A lot of things they're trying to achieve and they're trying to fill out their roster, whatever their sport is or whatever that looks like.
And they want to [01:06:00] know that they're spending their time meeting with athletes who are serious about their program. Just as you want to personalize the answer when you ask them how they're going to help you, you want to show them. And it doesn't mean that You're obligated to commit to any program that makes an offer that you only have to be serious about one, but as we've, you know, had highlighted in some previous episodes, there's a variety of ways that, that this recruiting process has been cluttered.
By these different services that are essentially spamming, you know, every coach they can find and send it and eventually coaches learn to tune that stuff out and say, look these prospects haven't actually given any thought to our program. They don't know anything about us. And so I'm not going to spend my time following up with them.
I need to talk to. the athletes who actually are, [01:07:00] you know, know that they're paying attention because I want to know that when I do decide who I really want on my program to make offers that they're seriously considering it and hopefully they come here. So don't, yeah, don't be afraid to show that you care that I don't know that there's any coach who's going to be offended by that.
Troy, is there anything else our listeners should check out? We've mentioned your books here, but anything else they should check out? Any other resources or anywhere where they can learn more about the work that you do?
Troy Bassham: The best place probably to go right now is mentalmanagement. com. It's this system that I teach and that's where all of our products are available for purchases and that kind of stuff. And there's a section on there about myself my father, a background of kind of what we do, a little more information there.
There's also Brian Johnson does some really good stuff on YouTube. He does a review of of attainment. And he [01:08:00] does a book review of what's really mine. Those are two that are very well done that you can look up on there. And those are two places I'd go to right now, if they're interested in what we do and that kind of stuff.
And I want to thank you for letting me be able to be on your podcast and share this information. I love what you're doing. I like the aspect of the coaches and the youth and tying that together and providing resources for coaches and parents and athletes is awesome.
Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, yes, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you to our listeners for tuning in. If you have not already, please do subscribe to Sideline Sessions. We're going to continue to bring you conversations with coaches from a variety of sports backgrounds, focuses to give you hopefully all the different perspectives and information that are helpful in your role as a coach, as a parent, as someone who is a coach.
involved with student athletes. So check that out, check out any episodes you've missed so far. We hope they're all valuable to you. And yeah, thanks again, Troy, for being [01:09:00] here.
Troy Bassham: Thank you. Y'all have a good one.