Larissa Mills - The Mental Game Academy

Check out Larissa Mill's SportsShare Channel today!

Join SportsShare for FREE today to access the full interview.

Larissa Mills: [00:00:00] Honestly, I'm gonna say it's a combination that kept showing up, like a frequent behav- like, pattern of behavior. Soparents were getting out of control, and they are. They're, they're allowed todo whatever they want and they're becoming violent. We can't have that around kids. As far... Last I was checking, I don't think that physical or emotionalabuse is acceptable, so by law.

Like, our Olympic development program is in jeopardy in Canada. No matter what sport, we don't have enough children, we don't have enough at the bottom, and they're quittingfaster now than they're staying because they don't have the mental skills to stay.

Like, I just saw these kids this year, we've had over 47complaints in hockey that people bring to us, and one of them was kids were peeing on each other's jerseys in the dressing room, okay?

Because here's the math. There's a math formula here. [00:01:00] 99% of kids are not going pro, right?Let's get that out of our heads. So if we focus on the 99% of kids, we actually will have more kids go pro.

Isn't that weird, right?

You give a kid a phone and their brain wants dopamine, and their whole world begins and ends on this virtual world, which is not the real world.

Cause social media makes us compare ourselves to everything we don't like ourselves. So you got two whammies going on, plus we're not getting connection with our parents. Parents are on their phone five to nine hours a day.

So when we're not getting raised by parents anymore, we're kindof all just roommates now, right? So there's where in grassroots, we're seeing behavioral issues that actually continue and get worse, and this is where we'reat, right?

The problem we get down to is that we focus on [00:02:00] winning. All of them will put in, "We wanna win." But in today's society, you can't do it unless you have alignment, structure, and policies around behavior from parents and, and, and you have education for coaches.

Right now we're not surviving in sports. They're not sustainable.

And then we reduce the phone time. Now, reducing the phone time to two hours or less a day, we do seequite the successful athlete. I have to say there is a clear... Our science is very clear. Out of 7,120-something athletes, two or more, you're out the door, and that's sort of like what we're... So when you work with us, we sit down ina session or a group or a team setting, and in less than a week, we see speed, power, and hockey IQ, soccer IQ, volleyball IQ all start to come back.

Dopamine makes a big change in our brain. So even in a week or two, I had a, I had a AAA [00:03:00] baseball coach call me. He goes, "What are you doing with these kids?" I'm like, "I, I'm just giving them the control to help their nervous system and manage their phones." He's like, "Oh, geez, I should've done this, like, 10 years ago."

We- we're seeing aggression on sidelines, screaming at refs, screaming at other kids, screaming at other coaches, which not cool parents. We, we can't do that, not if we wannabe a real true role model in sports.

That's not a leader, that's a whiner.

And, and because they simply, we can't exist where there's no discipline or consequences because then parents will do whatever they want, right? Like, I have kids who won't take their kids to practices, yet only show up for games 'cause they think their kids are prima donnas.

If, if you are providing a- an exceptional sports experience, right? Because we're not raising pros, we're raising exceptional humans to be fit and productive in society. That's99% of what sports does, right? [00:04:00]If you happen to get out of that, the 1% will make it no matter where they go anyway Right?

And so I really want kids to like themselves because social media tells them that not to like themselves six hours a day. So it's a constant battle, but I think, I think we're winning the war, right?

Kids actually were more generational in their play. We did not see the, the anxiety, depression, and suicide, that we have the saddest kidsever today.

Before you go and complain to your coach about playing time, I want you to really think for just a extra 30 seconds, "Is my child's phone time more than their practice time?"

It's half now. It's half what the parents can do at home, half what coaches can do with the X's and O's. So that would be my only parting wisdom is to just pause, think, and if their phone time exceeds their practice time, then don't complain about their playing time.

[00:05:00]

‍