Mental Health in Ultrarunning with Neal Palles | Koopcast Episode 116

Trail and ultra runners, what is going on? What's happening? Welcome to another episode of the KoopCast. As always, I'm your humble host, coach Jason Koop. And this episode of the podcast is about a subject that I have wanted to discuss for a very long time, but I have not had the guts to do so. And also, I really haven't found the right dance partner to work with me on the other side of the mic to talk about something that is extremely important and also topical as this year's Winter Olympics is now unfolding. And that is the aspect of mental health and particularly mental health with athletes. And so what I decided to do is I wanted to bring on one of our fellow coaches, Neil Palace, who a lot of you podcast listeners will recognize Neil from his appearance on the train right podcast with coach Corinne Malcolm, I will link that in the show notes. But in addition to be a fantastic ultra running and endurance coach, Neil also has a dual master's degree in social work and applied sports psychology. And he's also a licensed psychotherapist and sports performance specialist. And so I could think of no better person to help me get my feet wet a little bit talking about things like this publicly than somebody

that I work with, somebody that I trust, and somebody that also works with athletes in a capacity that I work with athletes with, and also has clinical and relevant experience in this area working with people and helping them to improve their mental health. I really enjoyed this conversation with Neil, I did not know where it was going to go, I gave him the reins to kind of go with it wherever he wanted to go with it, because he is the expert in this and I certainly am not. And overall, what I want the listeners to come away with is a toolkit that they can take into their everyday life. So if they know somebody who is struggling, or if they themselves are struggling, you can use pieces within that toolkit to navigate this kind of weird and bizarre and in the landscape that I think that this comes out in the podcast that is sometimes difficult to navigate. And then in addition to that, I wanted the listeners to understand that all of this is okay, we can normalize mental health and bring it into the conversation, just like we do normalize graded pace. And just like we do lactate levels and vert and things like that, we can make this a part of conversation that we can all talk about. And we will all be the better for it. So with that as a backdrop, folks, I'm going to get right out of the way. Here's my conversation about mental health with coach and licensed psychotherapist and sports performance specialist,

Neil Pallas. I was telling you earlier that I'm recording this in my van for the people who aren't watching this on YouTube. And whenever that is the case, my familiarity with what's going on in the outside world just kind of comes like in and out of consciousness almost, right? Because I get connectivity and then I can like come back into the real world and you know, my feeds blow up with everything. But seriously, I pulled I pulled over to this parking lot to record this podcast. This is like this is really recent. So this is not on your outline. I'm using it as the intro so you won't have to opine on it. So I pulled this parking lot to record this intro and I pulled up my newsfeed and on CNBC, the top story that I have is Olympic snowboarder, Sean White on being on being vulnerable with mental health, quote, it is not a weakness. And so yes, Sean White, right, arguably the most famous snowboarder in the world that we kind of go on and on with Chloe Kim, right, who's snowboarder who's also been very public about this as well. Naomi Osaka, who's a professional tennis player, as well as the most kind of recent summer Olympics with Simone Biles.

There have been a number of high profile athletes that have started to be more like honest and open about this aspect of mental health, which I think for a lot of the practitioners like yourself in the space has been a little bit of a breath of fresh air because it gives you that appeal to authority, right? That's that ultimately these are things that that high profile, high performing people actually struggle with as well. And we're going to talk a little bit. We're going to talk a little bit about that. But I thought I would bring it up since it was so topical, because it really does seem like every week there's a new, you know, there's some new story about this. But since we are talking about mental health, and this is a conversation that I've wanted to have for a for a very long time on this podcast. And I've honestly kind of struggled personally to kind of pull the trigger on it, because I realized that I'm not an expert on it. And I don't like to wade too deep into waters like these where I don't have any legitimate amount of expertise. And this is certainly one of those cases. It's the same thing with like eating disorders and things like that. I tread on I tread those waters very, very cautiously. And so I wanted to bring you on the podcast, Neil, to discuss this, because you've got kind of a really cool angle on this, right, where you, you work in the mental health space, but also you're a coach. And so you can kind of ping pong back and forth between these two worlds. And you're in people like yourself, or probably some of the few people in the space that

can a readily identify with the high performing athletes that have these big name stories, but also can take it down to the level of what I'll call the everyday athletes that might be dealing with these issues as well. But before we get into that, like, can you go over your background a little bit? So it doesn't seem like I'm just bringing some random coach on here to talk about this, because that's really, really, really important in this area. Very important, I think. So I'm going to start over here, and then I'm going to go backwards and then forwards. So I'm a licensed clinical social worker. And I have been licensed for 20 years. I, let's go back a billion years ago, early 90s, I went and got an undergrad in psychology, I wanted to help people somehow. And I fell in love with the outdoors, and working outside, and teaching things like rock climbing, backpacking, and mountaineering. And so I got into this program called Outward Bound, worked for Outward Bound for 15 seasons off and on during the summers, teaching, climbing, backpacking, and doing all this stuff, and wanted to figure out where I wanted to go next, and how I could help empower people. And I, well, you know, social work is a place to do that.

I'm going to school social work, and that never happened. I got my master's degree in social work. And I, you know, got licensed and started working for actually doing crisis work. And I still do a lot of crisis work for employee assistance programs, and large behavioral health organizations. And so I have seen kind of the gamut of behavioral health situations coming in from a lot of different levels. And what I got really good at, you know, I don't know how much I've ever talked about this with you or anybody else. But I got really good at is consulting with managers, and consulting about workplace issues and stuff, you know, where some serious stuff happens in the workplace, you know, you know, could be violence in the workplace could be drug addictions in the workplace, lots of stuff coming there into that level. So I worked in crisis, and then do have a private practice starting around 2006, kind of went in and out of that had a child, and still work for behavioral health, but also have a private practice. In there, I fell in love with this idea of sports psychology, you know, and really kind of getting into the performance piece of it, and decided, found a program in 2016, went to a program in 2016, graduated in 2019, from another

program. So I got a second master's degree in applied sports psychology. So I can kind of overlap this sport piece. All the meantime, I'm still getting active in the outdoors running and stuff. And, you know, just, I love learning, you know, and dug into that too. But clinically, that's where I come from. You know, and I said, I'm actually a supervisor for a large employee assistance program during my day job. So I do, I got a lot of hats. I was about to say, there's like 10 hats right there that we can pay. We were fortunate enough to bring you on as a coach for CTS, one of our newer ultramarathon coaches. Remind me again, when that was, Neil, seems like two months ago now. August the fall. Yeah. Yeah. October. I don't know. August, actually. Yeah. And you've been a lifelong endurance athlete.

I want to, yeah. I mean, I look back, you know, I look back, well, I've been running since high school. And, you know, went, you know, did the high school track and stopped when I started getting into the outdoors and was just, but continue to run, stop track and field and start continuing to run. And I've been doing marathon, running marathons since about 2000 and ultras since 2014, where I just, yeah. So, you know, you know, the space, I guess is what I'm saying. We're just, we're talking offline about you consistently doing the lead man, which is all of the lead build events. Yeah. And now you're taking a break and you're just doing like 20 events this year. Yeah. It's only like two or three so far.

So far it's February though. We'll give you time. It's February. Okay. There was a mountain bike race. I was kind of looking at it going, oh, okay. So that that's a perfect backdrop, Neil, because this, this vision that you have now painted for the listeners where you are, where you have all of this varying levels of education and professional development, and you wear all of these different hats. I think the conversation that I want to have with you is basically going to stack all those hats on top of each other and like alchemize them into one, because we're going to talk about athletes very specifically, endurance athletes and probably ultra marathon athletes very specifically, their mental health. What are some of the pitfalls and how can they leverage their support system around them to make sure that they're on the right side of that line, right? And that support system, I can already tell from your facial expression is going to be a big one.

So I mentioned- Can I bring your wife on to talk? She can talk too about this. No, you bring in the whole village, you know, I remember my conversation with Kristen Keim, who I don't know if you're familiar with that one that I had with her, but that's her big phrase, right? Is it, it takes a village. And I'll link that podcast up in the show notes for those of you who have not seen it. This is one of the first podcasts I did probably within the first 20 episodes that I did. But as I, as I mentioned, as I mentioned in the intro, a lot of times, and I think very fortunately, this gets thrust into the spotlight during the most heated and competitive athletic events on the planet. So think like the NBA finals or the Olympics or Wimbledon and these very, very bright spotlights that are cast down upon these athletes with all the millions and millions of eyes that are on them during these competitions. And the fact that a few of them have, have not a few, but I would say several recently have finally kind of come out and said, Hey, listen, this is something that I struggle with.

And Michael Phelps is now a, a spokesperson for an app, right? Where you can get connected with a licensed, a licensed therapist. And that wasn't the case. I mean, geez, Neil, five or six years ago, it almost seems like this is, this is something that's really, really relevant. Um, but I first want to get your take on it from this hybrid, from this hybrid coach and practitioner perspective is how can the everyday athlete look at these types of situations and, and really try to relate that to whatever they are going through? Because we, you know, we like to put these elite athletes on a pedestal and yeah, it's nice that they're, you know, real human beings and things like that. But sometimes the relatable points are things that athletes kind of struggle with. And even athletes that, that I know who have been open about their mental health issues, whenever they see a big time athlete open up about the same thing, it's even hard for them to relate to it. Right. Because it seems like that person is just on a different planet, uh, than they are. So what would you say to the athletes who are casually watching all of these things transpire and trying to find some relatable point to them?

You're seeing the humanness and you're seeing the vulnerability you're seeing. So wait a second, you know, this person out there just struggles too. And for years and years and years, you know, we haven't seen that, you know, we haven't seen it because we, you know, we're, you know, there's this, you know, this layer, you know, we've got to be stoic and, you know, can't share this stuff. They have been, you know, being, they're being incredibly vulnerable being on that stage to begin with. And now to be able to say, Hey, I've got this going on. That's okay for us to talk about. But having people start to talk about this is opening a door saying, uh, sharing this humanity in all of us that, Hey, maybe it's okay that, that, that I'm experiencing this. Cause Hey, this person over there is, you know, certainly there's other people, you know? Yeah. And certainly I could be okay sharing, you know, having that experience too, you know, and it's okay to talk about it. Yeah. If they're at the highest, if they're, if they are at the highest of levels, and I think that, I think the more important point with this is they've made it to the highest of levels, right? And that they, for whatever reason have gone through whatever they're going through and still are able to make it to the highest level. That's incredibly poignant. And I think,

uh, and it's incredible. Yeah. So why is it, why is that so incredible? I mean, we could take it from an athletic standpoint and I look at it as just to get close to that level. Everything has to go, right. You have to have the genetic lottery. You have to have the environmental lottery. You have to not get injured. You have to have the support system around you. And yes, athletes absolutely forge almost all of those, but it is a very rare constellation of events to happen to get to the Simone Biles levels, to get to the Michael Phelps levels, to get to the, to the Naomi Osaka level. And if you were to think about that, any headwind that is in the way could potentially preclude that person to getting to that level. So like, so that's the athletic standpoint, but why else is that so remarkable? You know, see if I can express this in words, um, you know, I think, you know, you know, you know, as we come back and get to come back to the idea of mental health, you know, in this is that even at that level, you, you, you, things go wrong. Things inside aren't always perfect, you know, and there's still a human being. Yeah. You have to have all this stuff going, right. And

you have to have a lot of stuff together, but at the same time, you're okay in having these struggles. You're going to have this day where it's like, I'm, I'm off, you know, and I'm not gonna, I'm not going to perform well, you know, and that's okay. You know, if you, you know, if we could learn from that, if we could see these people, you know, over here, you know, who are doing these incredible things that they're struggling to, they have these struggles too. And then I, you know, I go and do lead man and, you know, I just have just a bad race or I don't finish my race. There's nothing wrong with me. There's nothing that, you know, it's like, you know, it was a bad race. I, you know, yeah. I'm like, I'm going to take the time to, to cry and warn for that. I'm also going to say, okay, you know, what's the next step? You know, maybe if I'm hooked on it and I'm going to go and get some help, which is a good thing to do.

Am I making sense to you there? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's give yourself a little bit of grace, right? And what you're doing, here's the relatable point that I, that, that I take away from the elite athletes and yes, they've had to have everything go right. But for an everyday athlete, you can try to make everything go right to get to the place where you want to do a sub nine hour Leadville trail, 100 mountain bike, right. Or, or, or make it to the finish line in under 12 hours. Right. I mean, you can, you can absolutely, and people are like pouring their hearts and souls and into their training. You will still have headwinds. Training is not perfect. And even when it's really, really good, the outcome is uncertain, right? Even in the best of training cycles, even in the best end, and because of that uncertainty, yeah, there's a chance that you're going to line up and you're not going to do as good as you, as you thought you're going to do, but you know what? Yes. It's a race.

It's a race. There's, you know, there's things, you know, it's mastering the controllables, you know, you talk about it. And I think emotionally, you know, I'll talk, I'll talk about it in mental health. You know, what can you control for yourself right now? You know, you've got control of your hands, your legs, your arms, for the most part, you know, you know, it's, you know, you're controlled, these things, you control what you say, you control what you do. And, you know, some bad stuff happens some days, you know, and you get, you know, and sometimes there's a lot of bad stuff that's happening. And what can you do in that space to take care of you? So some of that might be coming to see someone like me, you know, like a count, you know, a therapist, and some of it might be, you know, okay, you know, you're able to kind of move back the next day and get back up and keep training. But, you know, like you said, there's so much stuff that happens during training, you know, so many variables. I mean, yeah, I mean, let's pull on that a little bit, because I think that, you know, the audience out here, they need help, they need help navigating this, right? And from a lot of different areas, because we're experiencing this right now. Everybody has gone through the lottery process, they put their names into all of these various hats, and then their season kind of shakes out.

And the ones that for whatever reason, think that that coaching, athletic coaching is going to resonate with them, they sign up for coaching, right? And they've somehow made that internal decision that, hey, coaching is right for me, I just got into the Western States 100, I'm going to go find a coach to help me kind of overperform for that. I don't know the answer to this question. And so I'll ask you as the expert, I don't know if the same ease of navigation that I just went through that, you know, that I just went through with that dialogue, is the same with mental health, meaning some things happen, right? And in the athletic case, it's the lottery season, right? And then they resonate with, I think I'm going to need a coach, and then they find a coach. What's the parallel to that in the mental health, in the mental health world?

A huge parallel, I think, you know, tremendous, because, you know, I almost wonder if it's easier for people to say, I'm going to get a coach, you know, and deal with the deal, I'm going to go ahead, I got this going on, I'm going to go ahead and deal, you know, and get a coach to help me perform better. But, you know, and even, this is, you know, says a lot about executive coaching, they'll go get an executive coach, for example, for, you know, they're experiencing anxiety in the workplace or something, and they'll get an executive coach, because they can't, they won't see a therapist. So, it's much easier for people to say, well, I'm going to go to go see it, go work with a coach, because it's still an incredibly huge stigma. What do people have to go through? You know, it depends. I mean, that's what I want to know, right? I mean, I think that's what the audience wants to know, is like, what things transpire to say, you know what, I need to get this checked out? Or you know what, I need to encourage my friends to get this checked out.

You know, I wish it, nothing would have to transpire. I wish they would just go, and you know, and this isn't trying to, you know, bring people in to see therapists. Oh, we all need, but you should be going to see a therapist, just as you would go into your regular checkup. That, you know, it's that nothing should transpire. So, what ends up happening for a lot of people is you end up having to go through a lot of crises and hitting a lot of walls. And finally, you know, well, maybe I'll give this a shot. Maybe they'll go see one therapist. And if that one therapist they didn't connect with, then they don't, you know, they may not go back. But maybe they get that therapist who gives them, you know, they get a little bite on that. And they go back the next time. And they get a little bit more and go, wait a second. You know, this is, I'm learning something here about myself. And maybe I can get a little bit more out of that. It varies tremendously. I just read a statistic. It was one in four people who are, quote unquote, struggling, actually go in to see a therapist. I wish I knew exactly where that statistic came in, came from. But it's one in four who may be struggling with depression or anxiety. Maybe it's an eating disorder. One in four will actually reach out and get that help. What does it take? A lot. A lot.

So how do you get it? How do you get it? But here's the thing is because I ultimately want to help people. Right. And so when I hear that, that it takes a lot. Yeah. To get somebody to even consider seeking out the right help. Nonetheless, finding the right help and then having that right help actually execute into something meaningful. Exactly. But what I want to try to do is understand how people out there or even myself as a coach can reduce those steps such that there's less, there's less struggle to get help. Right. Or there are fewer walls to get out. Or maybe that's inevitable. That's what I'm trying to, that's what I'm trying to kind of like uncover here since this isn't really my wheelhouse. That's one of my goals coming into this field as a social worker and actually into field of coaching too, is kind of integrate some of this stuff into coaching is, is that first of all, part of it's going to be education and understanding that, you know, these are things that are okay to talk about providing that, Hey, you know, this is okay. You and I will go in and see a therapist. That's okay.

Part of it's creating the accessibility and, and maybe, and then educating people about where do you find these resources? Where do you find a therapist? Where do you find, and then being patient enough to search around, look under different stones. I know right now we're, you know, where we are in the country right now is a mental health crisis. And it is very, very hard for a lot of people to get in to see a therapist. And so there's a lot of, but there's a lot of different ways and you have to be really somewhat resourceful, but also, um, uh, persistent in contacting people, calling people, interviewing therapists, interviewing, talking to people on the phone as a coach. I think it's a good idea to have a list, you know, of people that are maybe local to you, you know, locally, maybe, you know, somebody nationally, maybe you know, somebody, you know, somebody and can help navigate that system for you to, or, you know, work, you know, you know, these are some of the people to go to, but we have those lists, like a physical therapist, a list of physical therapists. We should also have that list of psychotherapists as well. I was kind of making that analogy too, but Neil, like when you just went through that, the thing that comes to my mind is that's a lot of work and the accessibility or the lack of accessibility, because all of the hoops you have to jump through

or the work that you have to do or whatever, that seems like it kind of like perpetuates the problem. Yeah. And fortunately, you know, you know, we may need to edit this part here, but you know, I, I see it as a huge problem right now. And, you know, I see it in my day-to-day job where we place 20 phone calls for somebody to get somebody in to see a counselor. And it's really hard, but you know, there, there are other tools out there that can be helpful and definitely in the realm of, you know, for athletes, for example. You know, I know, you know, there's, there's a program called a bigger than the trail, which offers free counseling for athletes. And actually I'm an ambassador for that, for them.

So bigger on the trail, you go to their website, btttt.run, and they scroll down and they'll actually have, if you need to be connected with a therapist, they'll connect you with a therapist. So there are, there are ways it can be challenging sometimes, but this is where, you know, knowing that the help is definitely out there. Sometimes you, you know, you calling your insurance company, you're going to get a list of names. You have to go through all those names. Yeah. You know, I have to go through all of them, you know, yeah. Sorry to look to this kind of sad piece of it, but I think it's, I think it's important to know, but I know that help is out there.

Yeah. But the, but I think the listeners, one of the things that they can take away from this is, is that, that if you want to help somebody that you think is struggling, or if you're in that position and you want to go find help, expect it to work, have some work associated with it. Like you're going to have to, these things don't grow on trees. It's not going to fall and, you know, hit you on the top of the head, like a lightning bolt or anything like that. Like you're going to have to put in a little work. And yes, that's tragic that you probably have to put in more work than, than, than you should because of the accessibility issues that you're mentioning earlier. Right. But I think, you know, if you, I think by setting the expectations up that you're going to have to do a little, little bit of legwork, you're going to have to interview a few, if not several therapists to find one that is the right one for you. You're going to have to badger your insurance company.

If you make any headway with them at all. Badger your insurance company, badger your EAP. I will, I will encourage that forever. Because there are, so to be fair, there are people on the other side of the phone. They are truly out there to help you. I know that from personal experience, but you know, you may need to have to pick up the phone. You may have to look at psychology today as an example. That's a great website where you can just find names of different therapists and just go through the list. And usually on psychology today, they'll list, you know, am I taking new clients or not? And that's another good way to go through that. So here's my selfless question as a coach. I'm the host here, so I can ask selfless questions just to, just, just, just to, just to entertain, just to entertain myself here. But I think, I do think there's a relevant, a relevant point for the audience here is that people out there listening, they, they'll, that, that believe that they have good mental health, they will still know somebody that they want to help. And I have, I have had athletes on my roster where this is, you know, something that I've had to, you know, not had to, but I have tried to help them navigate.

There are other coaches out there that have gone through the exact same thing, training partners, friends, family, you know, the list kind of goes like on and on and on. We all know people are all kind of like humans and things like that. What are people who are out there that are listening to this that want to help a friend or a family member or a training partner, or one of their athletes that they work with? What, what do they kind of like need to like watch out for? Or are there any sort of telltale signs and how do they go about approaching the individual that they want to help with this? Hey, I want to help you out. Cause that's a big barrier as well. Right. The onlookers wanting to come in because they don't know how to navigate the space either. That's why I'm, that's why I have you on a podcast right here. So take the listeners kind of like through that, like friends, family, colleagues, runners, how do we help those people?

Um, normalize it, you know, normalize it, normalize it, empathize with them, you know, join with them. And what I mean by that is, you know, Hey, you know, you know, and this is me is, you know, I see you hurting right now. I see you really struggling with this. You know, I know, uh, you know, I've struggled with this personally, or I've known other people struggle with this and, you know, just getting in to see a therapist might be really helpful. I've gone in, you know, here's, here's a therapist that I use, you know, here's a couple of names. Uh, this might be really helpful for you, but you know, this is struggling with this stuff is normal.

So identifying, first of all, what are they hurting? You know, when you see someone hurting, you know, you're going to feel something probably inside a little bit and noticing that naming that for yourself and helping them to identify that. This is, and that's, that's so challenging. That's so challenging, especially with someone, you know, as a, as a coach, you may not know this person as well, you know, but what, you know, for example, you know, as you know, I'll, I'll kind of go from my perspective, my wife's perspective on me, for example, you know, who years ago was just over training, just, you know, going ballistic, you know, way too many hours, you know, have a family. Hey, you know, do you notice what's going on here? You know, let's, let's, I know this is really hard, but you know, what do you think? You know, you think you can get some help? Can you, can you do that for me? You know, that might be another question. Noticing what's going on when you're feeling that is identifying the, you know, identifying the emotion and helping them to name that.

It's going to be really hard. This isn't easy. This isn't easy, but I, the more that you're able to even just, you know, suggest or encourage or go, Hey, here's a couple of names. I'm, you know, I'm worried about you. I want to make sure you're doing okay. These are great resources right here. You know, even if you do some of the legwork for that person, get on psychology to get on the insurance, you know, you know, uh, you know, get some names of people, talk to friends. Who do you, who do you see? Okay. That's a good person to go to. Let's go. Let's try that name. You know, it's hard, but you know, the more you do that, the more you get in the habit of doing that, the easier that gets, you start breaking down these balls.

It's so from a coaching standpoint, I think one of the reasons a lot of endurance coaches don't have a very good eye on this. And this is my opinion. I can step up on the soapbox for a second is that we are used to letting data drive our decisions. And whether that data comes in the form of a power meter or looking at somebody's normalized graded pace or aerobic decoupling, or even the comments, right? We had this conversation, our coaching group the other day, just looking at the comments and training peaks and using that as like actual visual data. I felt good. I felt bad. My legs felt great. Like just seeing that, right. Seeing that very visual, tangible interpretation of what is going on inside of the athlete, right. External, externally manifesting itself into a green stop or a green go light, a red stop light, a yellow caution light. I feel good. I feel bad. Like that's a very visual representation of all of these internal things that are kind of going on with the athlete with mental health. It's those are, I'm not going to say that they're not there because they are right. They come out in language, they come out in conversation and it comes out in body language and things like that, but it's not as abrupt as, Oh, well, your heart rate variability is crap today.

You know what I mean? Those kinds of things. It's kind of like easy, right? When you, when you look at it and it, I don't know where exactly I was going with that conversation, but just to more back up the statement that you made that it's hard work to peel that up, to peel that open, right? You've got to know the person you've got to really pay attention. You've got to understand what normal dialogue is for them. And then, and then if you have done all of those, then you're kind of in a position to say, Hey, what's going on? If you don't know what's going on in the first place, you have no basis for when it's going astray. Exactly. Exactly. You know, I could, I could ask athletes to, I mean, that's why training peaks can be so good. It can be such a great resource. You could ask them to communicate and put that information in. You check in with athletes a couple, once a week or twice a week, you know, whatever to be doing. But if you don't have that, establishing that relationship, you know, I think is key. And it is harder to further remove from it. Like you said, you're looking at these numbers. You can't really tell. You can tell when somebody, Hey, wait a second. I put you down for an hour and you went for an hour and a half.

You did three hours instead of two hours. What, you know, let's talk about that. What's happening here? You know, um, you know, I noticed you really pushed it the other day, you know, what's, let's, let's have a conversation about that. And you gotta listen, you know, and, and that's hard if we're not, you know, if we're just looking at the data, you know, and that's where, you know, that, yeah, sometimes in that 20 minute phone call. And I can't say, I mean, honestly, as a coach, it's definitely coming at an interesting angle. You know, yeah, I'd love to, you know, if I had to refer someone, hopefully they would be able to come to me and ask me, you know, but you're, you're looking at data and you're connecting with them for 20 minutes a week. We are looking at the tip of the tip of the iceberg sometimes.

And for some of us, some of us, you know, you may have a lot more interaction with some of your athletes than I would. Uh, and, and it gives you a little bit more opportunity than I would to ask those questions. But I use the coaching one. I realize that not everybody is a coach. I kind of use that in this situation or in this circumstance as a little bit of an analogy for day-to-day life, right? Like I know my athletes through their athletic endeavors first and foremost, right? They come to me. I'm going to train for XYZ event. And then I get to know them as a person, as a father, as a wife, as a, you know, CEO, kind of whatever, kind of whatever they are. But I think the other people that are training partners, that are friends, that are colleagues can kind of like use that as a little bit of analogy. They have this one frame of reference for that particular person. I work with this person, right? Like they sit next to me in the cubicle. I go in, we go into a meeting, we, you know, shoot the shit while we're at the water cooler, but they can use that personal relationship and extrapolate it into other areas because we're all human. We're all kind of innate, you know, innately curious about what's going on there. So I would say, even if you're not a coach out there and you have, you know, friends, colleagues, running partners and things like that, you still have a robust enough human skillset. If you listen, I'll let you go on that. So yes. What were you saying? Yeah. Well, listening, listening and, you know, and feeling, you know, and that's, oh God,

you know, that's, that's a hard one for some of us too, you know, and it, but it's recognizing what's going on in that dialogue, even that, you know, say something's off. Maybe I need to ask a question. You know, Hey, is everything going? Okay. You know, you talk about the water cooler. That's a great one, you know, you know, in the workplace, you know, the people that I've worked with in the workplace, I mean, they could see it right there. Once COVID hit, it's been a lot harder, a lot harder. We just had a meeting today for the first time in a year and a half that was actually over zoom, you know, and that's with a bunch of mental therapists. And so it's like, wow, you know, I can see this person, you know, and, but it's, but it's having a, but you're going to have day-to-day interactions with runners, with, you know, cyclists, whoever you're having that interaction with, you know, trust your instinct. And this was, this was really, you know, this is, there's a story I like to tell. So years ago, over 20 years ago, when I'm going into school, I was actually in an internship in a hospital, downtown Chicago. And my, you know, the first couple of weeks doing this internship and I'm going into these, you know, these hospital rooms and my, my supervisor, she asked me, what did you feel?

Because in a conversation with somebody, you might be able to feel something. Learning to identify what that is, is kind of getting to this realm of emotional intelligence and being able to identify that was fear. You know, that was anxiety that was, and some people are really attuned to that and others are not. And that's normal, you know, and it's just this wide spectrum, but the more you kind of attune to that and go where those, Hey, how are you doing? You know, you know, you seem really, you know, really anxious about this. What's, is anything I could help you with, you know, go from there. So I'm going to give you a soapbox and I can give you a good layup to go, go into whatever, whatever. It's an, it's an analogy that I'm going to make it easy for you now. There you go. All right. But I mean, I know that you're really, I know that you're really passionate about this, right. And this, I'm going to lead you in with something that might sound a little bit cliche, but I know that the mental health experts and the therapists and the, and the psychologists out there will, they, who are listening, this will kind of resonate with them. And I'm going to pose it in the form of a question and you can go wherever you want with it. You and I are both, you, one of the thing that we professionally share in common is, is we're coaches, right? You have

a vastly more diverse background than I, than I do. But, but at the end of the day, people are coming to us to kind of improve themselves athletically. But I think a lot of times more fundamentally, we have to think about it a lot more, a lot more deeply than I'm going to improve somebody's threshold speed by 5% in the next three months or something like that. And so the, the saying that kind of gets, that kind of gets thrown around that I think gets a little bit too much trite lip service that I want you to really opine on is, is there health without mental health? Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce you know you know and i kind of use you know just a lot for example stress at home stress at home is ultimately going to impact your training you know your physical situation stress wears and tears on your body we you know we know that increased stress increased

cortisol all that that's going to start you know wear and tear and that's going to impact your training too um you're not going to be healthy physically if you're not taking care of your mental health that it's not a cliche it has to happen and and some people will deal with all that you know a lot of stuff differently and some have dealt developed some really good tools um and and some people may need some extra tools and that's why you go see a therapist that's why you go see a doctor you know hey i you know i cut myself it's infected what do i do you go and get a tool to fix it you get medicine to fix that same thing with mental health this is you know in in order for us to work to function uh as athletes as human beings we need it all together you know all the mental health piece and the physical piece it you know it it's interconnected tremendously you know and you know so many different areas where you know yeah yeah yeah yeah is that my soapbox is that i expected it's like i'm not i was like yeah this is you know so many different pieces of it so many different pieces i expected a 20 minute soliloquy on that because normally you know that just like sends people like you kind of kind of kind of through the room with things it doesn't have to be i mean it's just it just is it just is i think that's really poetic right i mean it just is i've kind

of i don't know if i have the right take on this yet but when i kind of like look at the order rank order of priorities of you know me helping somebody out i don't necessarily put their physical output of anything at the top of the list it's they've got to be a healthy person first because you can only you can only get away with it in the short term right you can only have the discrepancy between physical health and mental health regardless of where the discrepancy is right you have great mental health but poor physical health and i realize that that's over trivializing the buckets but work with me here you have great physical health or poor mental health you can only get away with that for so long that is a that is a temporary state of being before one side tears the other side down and if you don't bring both sides to a adequately functioning state that doesn't mean they have to be equal you know but if you don't bring them to an adequately functioning state it is just a matter of time before one side tears the other side down because they're so invariably linked that's absolutely absolutely yeah i mean there's no question i can't go on because it's i mean this is yeah to me you know i mean i see it personally i see it professionally you know that ultimately you know you you know there's a link in the chain no a weak link

in the chain you know and we want that chain to be strong and if you that's why go you know that's why i really what i really appreciate is when someone goes and sees a therapist before things get bad or even if there's nothing that's bad you know go in hey i just want i'm doing my yearly checkup i just want to talk you know here's some things that are going on oh some great tools to and and they're on their way you know that's great if i see someone for one session two sessions and they they've got what they needed that's a win you know you know 10 sessions is a win you know that's great but if you're coming in for like a checkup another example is a premarital meeting you know couple coming in together you know that wants to talk and just get some tools oh what a great way to start it off you have to go on with all these tools now yeah come back you know come back in a couple years things are you know you're gonna have a baby let's talk some more great here's some more tools before things get ever get bad yeah you always you always pay for the course correction four or tenfold right versus like getting ahead of it like you you know once again all related to kind of like physical training right if for whatever reason you take six months off and all of a sudden you're 15 less fit you're gonna pay for that in four times the amount of time that it takes to improve 15 it's just like it's just so it's just so hard so once again kind of coming back

to our earlier thesis that you know there is no health without mental health i think this course correction piece right that we all too often attribute with physicality is absolutely true on the mental health side if you get ahead of things it's much much easier to stay the course versus if you start falling behind get ahead of things i mean you know you're feeling great that's okay great you go talk to someone i mean you know there's so many people they don't even go in to see their their medical doctor for a yearly physical and and you know and so that's a struggle right there you know getting them getting that blood work once a year maybe twice a year for some athletes or long you know more intervals it's the same thing you know we're doing all that we're spending you know what five hundred dollars a pop for for like you know some extreme blood work and but you know for you know maybe you know an insurance copay or fifty a hundred dollars for therapists you know i'm saying you know average that's once you just kind of do a check-in that's a lot cheaper you know i'm going to sell therapy here i'm not trying to sell myself but i do think you know we put it on the back burner you know way more than our physical health well it's not a marginal gain right i mean the analogy that you just made to the blood work i could come up we could both come up with a hundred of them right now right whether it's some pneumatic compression boots

or a fancy recovery smoothie or whatever and not that they're mutually exclusive but if you're like racking stacking things all of that stuff goes to the bottom and making sure that your mental health is on par and you have good mental health is vastly superior to any of those modalities that you can kind of throw at yourself exactly exactly and you know yeah i you know i mentioned earlier yeah sometimes it is a struggle to find the therapist you know but it's also a struggle sometimes to find the right doctor you know i you know i know people doing that too or the right physical therapist i went through a whole bunch before i got to one that you know that's my go-to go to physical therapist and go in there and out once or twice a year and i'm good um but it's it's but you do like anything you have to put in some legwork for it you know people come into us find it to find a coach they interview a couple coaches you know they may be interviewing coaches outside of them still and it takes work you know that's my next toolkit i don't think i told you this so i mean i've gone through like maybe probably for the last decade or so in my coaching career i've been actively putting together toolkits and one of them is physical therapists so i've got this bank of physical therapists that i can lean on right and i'm always expanding that one of them is a bank of sports psychologists i've kind of put together

put put that together another is a bank of like orthopedic specialists you know somebody's got to go in and get surgery you know i've got some people lean on kind of there the next one and shame on me bad coaching on my part uh for not putting this higher on the priority list but is a bank of people like yourself that i can reach out to and say hey help me out with this where do i send this athlete to where do i send my friend to like things like that like that's something that i'm kind of actively working on it i'm for sure behind the curve on it yeah i i think it's tremendously helpful and you know kind of helping educate too i mean one thing that that i've noticed you know as i'm kind of gone into the you know the performance performance side and the mental health side is that really clarifying for people kind of what some of the roles are now you do have sport clinical sports psychologists who do some of the mental health work too and then some that are very very very specifically and i'm just performance oriented and then you just have some you know people you know over here that just have the performance and some mental health you know and it's kind of nice to find that blend you don't have to you know yeah and you know i like kind of being in all these different worlds i like having this kind of venn diagram which kind of being in the middle you know he's a coach and he does this you know and that way i'm getting to see all these different worlds and interact in that and learn you know um but it's really yeah having that bucket full of people and know okay this this might be a good fit here and it's okay if it's not tell your athlete you know whoever you're whoever you're you know

you were talking as coaches but if you're you know just talking to a friend you know hey this this therapist hey this won't work for me but you know there's there's like 10 other names here that may work for you better you know it's just it's all chemistry so neil let's try to like let's try to put this in a little bit of a package you know how i like to do that it's just like let's try let's try let's try you know how it is yeah no but let's try to let's try to let's try to reasonably like synopsize two two things right i'll let you i'll let you do this because you're the expert here obviously first one is is what are like the basic resources right what are the toolkits that athletes and and people that want to help other people what can they look to to just help them like navigate the space second thing is is where do you advise somebody who is out there that is already raising their hand we already went through how hard the whole thing is to navigate but they're already raising their hand they say hey i want to get a better fix on this where do they start so we'll start with the toolkits first and then once the person's raised their hand and said i need i need to get a handle on this what is their next step so toolkits you know considering mental houses a you know what the insurance who their insurance is you know who your insurance is who if you have an employee assistance program you know i and i i i think those are going to be extremely helpful

resources you can get online for a lot of you know things like blue cross blue shield or united or whoever and access those lists even if you don't have that person's insurance information you should be able to log in and access the list as a guest sometimes you know the next resource too is going to something like psychology today i mean there's so many therapists that list themselves on psychology day you can kind of narrow it down some are you know uh you have the clinical some have the sport information that you know sports psychology side of it but psychology today is a really great resource and a lot of times those therapists will say if they're taking new clients or not so that's a jump right there doctor google doctor google is another resource um but your doctor your medical doctor should have a list of resources your physical therapist should have a list of resources your chiropractor should have a list of resources go to those folks that you know already you know it lists you know someone you listen to the person you're talking to your neighbor said oh hey this therapist call your neighbor to who is that therapist that you work with you know you mentioned that person a couple weeks ago it's great to have that list you should be able to get that you know going online to an insurance company you should be able to get those and then you start making those phone calls and you can you as an outsider can make the phone calls for that person hey just want to check in to see if you've got any availability you know before i refer

this person um i know i've done that for some of the you know some raps you know it's just like okay hey oh great you have availability awesome let's go that you know let's let's here here's a name you know um and that's that's a tool kit right there ask ask ask questions you know there's people that are in the medical profession that know have no somebody so now now that we've got all these tools around us right you're going to insurance okay you're going to the insurance companies you've reached out to psychology today or you've docked you've googled site whatever else is in psychology today and you were trying to compile a list of therapists to go to for the people out there that this is resonating with them i need to go and have somebody help me with this where's their next move next move is picking up the phone you know some some people some therapists can you could schedule online um i don't i don't personally have that kind of thing set up but i i do know some therapists have that set up but i think calling them first you gotta you gotta take that list and make those phone calls and introduce yourself to that person i'm going to get closer here to my screen because i think it's really important to have 10 5 if you could talk 5 10 minutes to this person to see even if there's a little bit of a connection with that person then okay you know the next step you're going to go in you're going to have a first appointment they're going to ask you a lot of

questions you're going to ask your life story sometimes and sometimes they might you know let's just go right you know right to the heart of the matter but they want to get some history from you where this background come from and then even after that first session you may make a decision you know this didn't feel really good it's okay to go find somebody else just like you went to that doctor and that you don't have to go to the medical doctor that you just scheduled an appointment you know that you went in for you could go on to see somebody else but fundamentally one or two times fundamentally what you're saying is make a list and then curate the list right i mean i mean that's i mean that's kind of what i'm getting out of that is is like make a list you can hear all these resources and i'll have these in the show notes for the people that are interested here's how you can make the list from all of these resources and then once you have made that list whether you are making it for yourself or you're making it for a friend then that list needs to get curated somehow and that curation is primarily facilitated by getting on the phone and talking to somebody for 15 minutes and seeing if there is some sort of uh some some some sort of connection between you and the therapist that you're going to speak with this is the same way you established the coaching relationship you know you know it's it's it's the same thing and yeah the thing is and just like in the coaching relationship i don't have any qualms if someone doesn't want to work with me that's okay you know if you if you come into my office and we spend a session or two together and say well i need to

you need to connect in order for this to work you need to connect with someone and that's okay that's human you know you don't hang out with some friends that you know there are some people because you just don't connect with them that's okay and i i think that's important for people to understand as well both on the coaching side and this other this mental health side what we're talking about is is the practitioners that are out there in the space they want to help and they if they're doing their jobs correctly i hate to say this because i'm not in this field i say this about coaching all the time but if they're doing their jobs correctly and for whatever reason they feel that they can't help or they feel that somebody else one of their other colleagues is going to be a better fit or going to be able to help that person it's their obligation this is the way i have your coaching side ethically it's my obligation yeah ethically it's my obligation to refer on you know i have people so well you know neil you know kind of the sports side a little bit more i'm going to refer over to you um someone that you know and i'll refer on to other people or or that you know maybe the client's found somebody else and that's okay you know that i want people a good fit and that's a that's really important for people to understand because it takes a lot of this unknown burden off of them right if they can go if they can go into realizing we just talked about you know kind of on the onset of this podcast how it is a little bit of work right you gotta go find people then you get to interview them and there's a little bit of legwork and insurance and all the

stuff you gotta get to work for it but if if they also know that the person who's on the other end of the line they are going to help them navigate that process as well even after only meeting them for five minutes that i think is that gives a lot of people comfort in starting that process because it is so new to them and they're afraid that they're going to make a mistake or they're going to find the wrong person or not find anybody and things like that like realizing that this ecosystem is here to help you i think you know another point too is you know we know that there are coaches out there that just you know some okay i'm going to use them to frame the back you know you know and and or they're you know i don't say they're bad but they may not have a great you know the personality or whatever it is you may run into that with therapists okay that's great move on to the next one you don't don't feel like you ever have to go to one person check one or two out i always encourage that now let's see three or four at the same time you know just like seeing your coach you know three or four coaches and say that's not gonna help you know but you know feel free you know go ahead and you know find someone who's a good fit don't get discouraged if you find someone who's just not fun you know not good to talk to on the phone or they didn't give you the time of day or they you know they tell you i don't take your insurance you know something like that let's go ahead and find somebody you're comfortable with they're out there

they are definitely out there yeah you don't have to hit a home run right out of the gate right you gotta you gotta be willing to work for a little bit you might make a mistake you might pick the wrong person at first but it's just that's just part of the process like choosing any other practitioner to work with exactly and you know and maybe you see you with someone that it's there's some a little discomfort but maybe you're getting some tools out of that too so i don't want you to just go don't get don't get discouraged we're here well you know we're here to we're here to help you a lot of different ways that's a great way to end it neil um is there anything else that you want to that you want to kind of like divulge to the listeners in terms of helping them navigate the space before we let you go yeah you know i think that was it we talked a lot uh about the resources that are out there um it's okay to ask it's okay to you know a call your insurance 20 times you know it's okay to you know you're not a burden by doing this is where you know people are out there to help you and they're all around you so i mean i think that's the one thing to keep in mind um that the resources are there well neil thanks for coming on i'm gonna let you get back to your dog it seems like people are used to it on zoom so it's not a big deal at all yeah i didn't realize you're picking

that one up it's all good man all good um but no i what i what in all seriousness thank you for helping me curate this conversation i'm gonna try i'm gonna try to do more of them because it's something that i've wanted to do with this podcast there's a couple of areas that i've wanted to get more into and this is and this is one of them because i think it does the listeners a service it's easy to go to you because you and i have a coach to coach professional relationship and so for that i thank you professionally for taking that leap of faith with me thank you for asking me because you know this is this is you know working in this relationship is new to me and i mean i gotta you know you gotta be honest you know i've seen you email i appreciate your feedback i appreciate i appreciate the organization that we're in here because i'm learning a ton i've never done these podcasts before little nerves but you know but it's that's what i'm here is to learn you know and uh you speak a lot about mentors and i'm like i want to use you guys as my mentors if i can help you this is i mean this is where i'm coming from is i want to be a resource to you all too yeah and that's what i was getting at is is i really appreciate you being a resource to not only me but to the rest of our coaching group in an area that we don't already have a lot of resources we are probably under resourced in that area compared to sports physiology and you know lactate you know metabolism and all this other stuff

where we're kind of over resourced but i i appreciate you coming in with your expertise and not only helping me out and help the listeners out uh and helping this podcast kind of break into these water as well but also to the kind of overall coaching group that we work with so thank you no problem sir yeah we're gonna let you go man i gotta get to abby here she's getting both crazy we'll let you get we'll let you get back to the dog go ahead yeah one one thing that i was thinking it's always good to mention that you know if especially when you're talking about mental health is it can trigger some people sometimes is you know making sure people know you're off that hey you know if something you know if you're getting triggered you know we want to know this resource is up for you immediately emergency resources like the national suicide prevention hotline i like you know just even mentioning that to people that that is a resource for you and i can give you the number two right now if you want i got it i got it written down go ahead the national suicide prevention hotline it's a 24-hour hotline and it's uh 800-273-8255 and uh they're available 24 7 i think it's important for people to know that an emergency you know that resource is there for them i appreciate that neil i'll put a link to that in the show notes as well as links to everything else in the show notes all right take care have a good one thanks a lot man i really appreciate this conversation neil enjoy black canyon all right take care all right folks there you have it there you go much thanks to neil for coming on the podcast

today like i said that was something that i really wanted to dip my toes in the water and get my feet wet before i explore this podcast or i explore this topic on this podcast more and more and more and i could not think of anybody better to do that with than neil so i'm incredibly indebted to you for putting up with me for the first time discussing this on this podcast the first time of which i am sure will be many thank you to all the listeners out there i met a lot of you out of the black canyon 100k this weekend and i am incredibly grateful for that thank you for those who came into the van and recorded a question that will get read live on the KoopCast at a later date and time i'm really appreciative that i get to answer all of those questions for you guys it was a real treat for me to run around the course and see uh everybody that was out there if you like this podcast please share it with your friends share it with your colleagues share it with your training partners you give it a like or review on apple podcast that helps the podcast out a tremendous amount but above and beyond all else you guys i hope that you guys got something valuable out of this podcast that you can take into your day to day lives that's it for today folks and as always we will see you out on the trails you