KiAi the art of energy integration

Jamie Leno Zimron is the developer of The KiAi Way, a leading-edge integrative, body based peak performance training. Jamie grew up in Wisconsin and at age seven was introduced to golf when her parents took up the sport. Jamie became a state and national junior golf champion and played competitively until she entered Stanford University and became interested in the martial art of Aikido. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford she earned her Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology, and continued to practice and teach Aikido. She founded and was the Chief Instructor of the Women’s Aikido School/Aikido Arts Center in San Francisco for many years. Along with her vast experience in golf, Aikido, bodywork and psychotherapy, Jamie is certified through the LPGA as a Class A Teaching Professional. She owns and operates KiAi Golf and founded The KiAi Way Inc. a company she formed in 2001 to bring innovative high performance principles and practices to golf, leadership and workplace wellness.

SZ: When you began playing golf what were the mental training programs for you at that time?

JZ: There were none except my dad was a big proponent of Dale Carnegie, PMA (Positive Mental Attitude). If there was anything I just had PMA, which was helpful.

SZ: The things we focus our thoughts on connected to mental dialogue is considered a mental training practice.

JZ: It’s interesting how Dale Carnegie’s programs from back in the 1940’s became expressed in modern mental trainings. My father’s “PMA all the way” from Dale Carnegie became like a mantra.

SZ: Dale Carnegie was instrumental for your mental game because he influenced your father and your father influenced you. Did you take any Dale Carnegie programs?

JZ: My dad was a Dale Carnegie program! Every day he woke up us kids at six in the morning even in the middle of the Wisconsin winter and said, “What’s today kids? And we had to answer “The best day of our lives until tomorrow - no matter how we felt.”

SZ: It wasn’t like you had to get up and sit around the breakfast table and recite Dale Carnegie secrets to success quotes?

JZ: Well we sort of did. Breakfast was early in the morning and Wisconsin mornings are really cold in the winter. The conversation was like, “Sit up straight it’s a wonderful day. Best day of my life until tomorrow. PMA all the way!” That was breakfast.

SZ: Did you feel that?

JZ: No I didn’t necessarily feel it but whether I felt it or not that’s what we got. My dad acted that way whether he felt it or not. He was a Depression era child and had a very rough life growing up. He pulled himself up by his boot straps. Dale Carnegie was a role model who had gotten over his fears of public speaking and made a great success of himself through the power of positive thinking.

SZ: You mentioned a story about how Dale Carnegie training from your dad focused your thoughts to make a crucial, clutch seventy-two foot putt in a golf tournament.

JZ: I was defending State Champion and playing in a semi-final match. I was one hole down going into the 18th hole and had to tie the hole to get into a sudden death play-off. It was a five par and my opponent was already on the green in three with a giant green. I had this monster putt to make  from the fringe of the green. My opponent had a fairly long putt but mine was much longer. I just walked up the hill to the green thinking, “Anything is possible, never give up.” I ended up sinking the ball into the hole. A newspaper reporter later measured it and put my seventy-two foot putt in headlines. I went on to win the sudden death holes and the next day won the tournament to become the Wisconsin State Champion all over again.

SZ: Do you remember feeling as though you were in a meditative state? What was the experience for you?

JZ: Interesting question. When I think about it I was in a bit of an altered zone state because everything was sort of a blur, behind and around me. I was definitely in an extra-focused state. I wasn’t nervous, my heart wasn’t pounding, there was no sense of dread or negativity. I just looked over the putt, went up and stroked it and it rolled right into the hole. The whole thing was sort of surreal.

SZ: Were you saying a mantra?

JZ: Not really. I remember being in a really quiet state, feeling slightly scared walking up to the green and thinking, “I’ve really got to make this.” Then I just went about my business and everything else kind of receded into the background. It was general positivity like, “This can be done. I can still win this. This is possible.” My main interest was to get the ball close enough to the hole to two putt, while hoping she might three-putt. I knew it wasn’t over. I could still win. Making that putt was thrilling and I guess I had made mental space for it to happen. 

SZ: You were able to take that day’s victory and be successful the next day to win the Championship. Sometimes players after experiencing a huge success the next day are flat.

JZ: I didn’t feel that the next day. The next day for me was a piece of cake. I think I won by a lot and everything seemed easy. I was in an extremely positive whole state. I can feel that right now as I think about it. I felt very whole, mentally and physically strong.

SZ: Why did you shift your athletic direction from golf to Aikido?

JZ: I shifted my direction from golf to Aikido when I entered college. I had had the opportunity to play professional golf as I was ranked in the Top Ten in the national with player’s who are now in the LPGA Hall of Fame. When I began college Title IX had not yet come to pass and I developed other interests. These athletic interests included an introduction to the martial art Aikido. I became involved in golf again in the late 1990’s when a friend asked for a golf lesson. At the time I was living in San Diego and when my friend asked for the golf lesson I taught it like an Aikido lesson. I brought my sword and she brought her 7-iron to the Torrey Pines driving range.

SZ: You brought a sword? What did you do with the sword?

JZ: A sword and a golf iron are very similar. The way you hold the sword is almost exactly the way you hold a golf club. I brought my sword to show her the the proper grip, club face position, and how to use her energy from her belly-center through the club to make better contact with the golf ball. I showed her how to stand to have more balance and stability like a martial artist does. I was using my sword to show her these things and then we used her golf club and she began making these beautiful swings and hitting the ball in ways she had never hit before. All this happened within an hour and it was fun and easy for me to teach. I had been teaching martial arts and I knew golf so this lesson for my friend was what started my program of combining martial arts and golf. More friends began asking for lessons so I began to develop my program KiAi Golf, which blends martial arts, sport psychology and body-mind fitness with golf instruction.

SZ: KiAi Golf is your branded name.

JZ: Yes. Ki, is the life energy and Ai, means love, unity, harmony, oneness. KiAi is about holistic integration. Using your energy, mind, body and spirit all working harmoniously together. When everything is working together - like gears in a finely tuned car or a great orchestra, everything works well. The idea is that you are the master of that. You are in charge of things working together. You can’t have your mind saying one thing, while your emotions are feeling something else and undermining your belief. You can’t have your mind saying, “I can reach this green” while emotionally you’re flooded with fear of the water hazard or bunkers ahead of you. Emotions can overtake your mind, your hands may begin shaking or sweating and your physical motor control becomes compromised. There needs to be synchronized harmony in your thoughts, emotions and movement. And there are self-mastery skills to learn and practice.

SZ: Avoiding distracting thoughts.

JZ: Yes,and you are the one in charge of that. That’s what I teach. I call it Body/Mind Technology. There are principles and practices that are like a roadmap to “the zone.” When we are centered and relaxed, grounded, when we breathe, have a quiet mind and not in the reactivity of stress, fear, anxiety or anger we calm down. We move into more balanced and harmonious states. It’s very practical and the effects are tangible. It’s actually somatic psychology. Somatic psychology is the integration of body/mind interaction.

SZ: The terminology in biofeedback is psychophysiology.

JZ: I think a big mistake made in sports training is that physical training is frequently taught separately from the mental. For example people go to an office to learn visualization techniques which is good but it’s more effective when it’s presented in a more integrative way. The steps I’ve taken are in uniquely combining my knowledge as a golf professional with my training in martial arts, fitness, bodywork, and psychology to offer clients more holistic peak performance training.

I try to give clients whether it’s through golf or corporate leadership training, generic tools to teach them to center themselves in their body. They are taught how to focus, how to quiet their minds, and be in an integrated zone. People get to a place I call the, “Stress Mess.” Stress is a biochemical/psychophysiological happening in the body. Our thoughts and feelings are influenced by stress hormones and chemicals. We need to calm that down so we are able to think better, feel better and perform better. People need to have ways to move from “stress mess” when it happens. To shift themselves into a more integrated zone where the person is centered, calm, balanced, focused. It’s like driving a car. You are always making little adjustments. In golf it could be that you just hit a great shot and then you miss a putt. All of a sudden the golfer is in the “stress mess.”  The person can get out of it back to the integrated zone. They can learn the road map back to center when they get off track. Something unknown is always going to happen when people play. I teach an easy demystified road map out of the “stress mess” back into the zone.

SZ: Explain what KiAi Golf is and what a client would expect from the experience.

JZ: The idea of using martial arts in golf has been taken up in recent years by great names like, Phil Mickelson, Annika Sorenstam, and Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods has a very strong East/West background. A client can expect to understand the golf swing in new ways and to discover how to use their lower body and core power properly. They will understand that a relaxed, centered, balanced, swing motion is going to get them a lot further in their performance than trying to kill the ball with their arms and upper body tension. They can expect to gain a lot more power, accuracy, consistency and a more positive mental game that keeps their swing motion relaxed and contact centered when striking the ball. They can also expect a great fitness program called, “Make Your Golf Club Your Health Club.”

SZ: What is this?

JZ: These are new warm-up exercises and a fitness program to create balance, core strength, flexibility and focus - using their golf club. They don’t have to go to a gym, lay down on a mat, get exercise balls or ropes and pulleys for their conditioning. They use their golf club. The exercises can be done either indoors or out. On the golf course you have to keep re-centering, re-grounding, re-balancing yourself. The exercises have them work on their fitness, their focus and their swing patterns so that they gain power, accuracy, consistency and confidence.

SZ: What is the typical amount of practice required for people to benefit from KiAi training?

JZ: When people do the exercises 5,10,15 minutes a day it is going to help them. The martial arts training idea is daily practice. When you do something every day you are working on ingraining it. To benefit the most it needs to be in the context of daily training. Routine becomes a part of you and everything I’ve designed is technically correct.

SZ: How is Aikido different from other martial arts or yoga practices?

JZ: Karate is a linear and combative martial art. You spar, you win or lose. Aikido did away with competition. The notion of “Ai” / harmony is this idea of going with the flow. Ki is using your inborn energy- power not just your muscles or will power. This is what makes it different. Aikido is almost dance-like because it uses the notion of blending, moving with and harmonizing to access energetic integrative power instead of brute force muscle power. It’s known as the most advanced martial art philosophically and spiritually, and helps us develop much greater mind-body control and self-mastery.
SZ: Jamie thank you for taking the time for this interview and sharing your thoughts on integrating mind/body training in golf.

*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
*This article may also be read @ Examiner

Has sport psychology influenced sport reporting

Dennis O’Donnell is the Sports Director at CBS 5. He appears Sunday through Thursday on KPIX 5 News. O’Donnell has been a fixture in Bay Area sports broadcasting since 1982. Prior to CBS 5, O’Donnell was executive sports producer at KRON-TV. O’Donnell is the pre-season voice of the San Francisco 49er’s, calling the play-by-play on CBS 5 and has called play-by-play for over 100 sporting events since 1999, including Stanford and USF basketball for Fox Sports and Bay TV. In addition to a daily sportscast on CBS 5 Eyewitness News, O’Donnell hosts or has hosted CBS 5’s
post-game show, “The 5th Quarter,” “49er’s Preview,” “Last Honest Sports Show,” and the number-one rated Sunday night sports show, “Gameday.”

SZ: What sports did you play growing up?

O’Donnell: I played baseball, basketball and wrestled all up to and through high school.

SZ: As an athlete growing up what memories do you have around the subject of sport psychology? Did parents/coaches talk about sport psychology and performance?

O’Donnell: Sport psychology was discussed in rudimentary terms. For example, “Imagine yourself being in a situation, what would you do? How would you act? How would you prepare yourself mentally so you are prepared physically?”

SZ: Coaches you worked with were talking about visualization techniques?

O’Donnell: Absolutely, but not to the extent that they are today. The old cliche, “Golf is 90% mental.” I think that was true when I was growing up. I’m not so old where sport psychology had not yet entered the realm of youth sports. (laughing). But it wasn’t very deep. Things like, imagine being mentally prepared before walking up to the plate with the bases loaded, notice the positioning of the infielders, and the outfielders. Notice where you are going to find a hole, that sort of thing. The discussion of sport psychology was definitely on a secondary level. It was never the priority of the practice. We didn’t start with that type of thing but it was definitely part of the conversation.

SZ: Today coaches/athletes talk freely about “the mental game.” What does this term mean to you as a sports reporter? 

O’Donnell: I think a lot of the questions we as reporters ask pertain to the mental aspect of the game. Both in the preparation of the game and post game. For instance I may ask a coach, “What was your thought process when you called a time out leaving you without one at the end of the game?” That’s sort of the mental aspect of the game. A question to a quarterback might be, “What did you see at the line of scrimmage that made you decide to call the audible?” In baseball, a question to a coach may be, “Was there any thought to making a pitching change since the batter has had so much success against this pitcher in the past?” So much of competition I think of as a chess match. Often football coaches sort of use that term. The mental game is fairly significant in terms of analyzing what went right or what went wrong in a game. The mental strategy in most cases precedes the physical strategy. A lot of post game questions will pertain to that.

SZ: Is that different from the types of questions that sport reporters asked before? In the last several years have you noticed a shift into more sport psychology type questions?

O’Donnell: I wouldn’t say so. If a play doesn’t work. Or if a team loses a game the questions are going to be, “Well why did you do this? Or why did you try that?  Or why didn’t you change the pitcher? Why didn’t you have a pinch hitter in that situation?” All those questions really revolve around a strategical approach that in my opinion is the mental aspect of the game. But I don’t think, speaking from my perspective personally, that there’s been a dramatic shift in the last twenty years. It’s still what it was about then and what it’s about now.

SZ: Pete Carroll, coach of the Seattle Seahawks, is building a team culture and drafting players who fit into his sport psychology methodology. For example, they have a hands on high performance coach who engages the players in meditation and coaches are being retrained in their communication style with players. If teams like the Seahawks who are quite enthusiastic about the benefits of sport psychology, win the Super Bowl, will winning influence the focus on media reporting and the impact of sport psychology on other team cultures? Is there a ripple effect?

O’Donnell: I think the NFL is a copy cat league. If you look at the read options strategy by the 49er’s for instance, several other teams tried some version of the read option or drafted player’s with abilities that would fit that system. It also forced virtually every team in the NFL to spend the off season figuring out how to defend the read option play. Consequently if Seattle wins the Super Bowl you can bet other teams will scrutinize every aspect of that organization and figure out how to copy it.

However I think psychology is a bit tricky because it’s more difficult to see tangible effects. For example, you can see how Colin Kaepernick’s skill sets for the 49er’s compliment the read option strategy. But I think it would be more of a challenge to see how a psychological approach helps a team win a football game.

SZ: The impact it has on the overall team performance.

O’Donnell: To me what comes to light are issues you have inside the locker room. Of course the Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin situation in Miami is the obvious one that comes to mind. If there is a sport psychologist like there is in Seattle embedded in this locker room with fifty-three guys and the fifty-three guys trust this person enough to speak to him about issues that are going on in the locker room that they are uncomfortable enough with then I think there’s a huge benefit to that. You could argue that had that person been in the Miami locker room that perhaps the whole situation could possibly been avoided.

If you look at the 49er’s when I first started reporting, even the S.F. Giants, the Giants had a fellow named Dr. Joel Kirsch working with the team. The Giants were one of the first teams that I recall that had an actual sport psychologist. He was more performance related for example, “How do you maximize your potential as a baseball player?” The 49er’s had Dr. Harry Edwards, a sociologist. I know that during the 1980’s the 49er’s had some issues among the player’s in the locker room that Dr. Edwards worked with and assisted with. Dr. Edwards may still be associated with the 49er’s. There is a definite value to having a sport psychologist associated with a team. You’ve got fifty-three guys in a locker room and they’re not all going to get along. They come from different socioeconomic backgrounds and academic backgrounds. When you put fifty-three men in a locker room, this sort of melting pot, they aren’t all going to get along. There are instances I know of where a sport psychologist has sort of calmed the waters between players.

As a reporter when it comes to issues in the locker room and you’re trying to find out why a player is having trouble assimilating, it’s difficult to find out what happened behind the walls of an organization. The coaches aren’t going to be very forthcoming obviously and the player’s aren’t going to be very forthcoming. It’s difficult finding out what’s going on inside the locker room because as a reporter you’re not inside it. When it comes to a sport psychologist solving issues in the locker room it’s hard to get that information. Sometimes you get it years later. In the case of Jonathan Martin and Richie Incognito, there’s been such a dogged pursuit of what really happened. Everyone has been working on that one and we’re slowly getting layers and layers unfolded to find out what happened but we still don’t know.

SZ: Because of the locker room code.

O’Donnell: Absolutely. No player’s want to talk about the dirty laundry to a sports reporter.

SZ: I see more information in the media around mental preparation and information about sport psychology.

O’Donnell: In terms of how I prepare for an interview, be it a pre-game interview or a post-game interview, during pre-game interviews there is more time to analyze the questions and what you’ve looking for. During post-game interviews as a reporter, you’re reacting to what happened in a particular game. I think I’ve always been cognizant of the mental aspect of a game. The “why” questions usually pertain to the mental aspects of the game not the physical. I can’t distinguish the difference between how I asked reporting questions thirty years ago as to how I do it today based on a psychological approach. You might find a difference in other media. I would guess that today’s athlete’s see a much greater difference in the psychological approach than they did thirty years ago, right?

SZ: Yes, definitely.

O’Donnell: I think the team investment in the athlete is so great today. The economic structure of a player’s contract is so significantly different today than it was thirty years ago. Teams want to and look to use every possible benefit that they can to keep the player engaged. To keep the player healthy both physically and mentally. The investment is too big not to. So definitely from an outsiders perspective I clearly see that and that has definitely changed in the last thirty years. Does it affect the way I report the news? No.

SZ: Dennis thank you so very much for talking with me today and sharing your views of sports reporting and it’s relationship to sport psychology.


*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
*This article can also be read @ examiner.
*Photo KPIX media

Biofeedback for athletic performance

Dr. Leah Lagos, Psy.D. B.C.B. specializes in sport psychology and is board certified in biofeedback. As a licensed clinical psychologist she maintains a private practice in Manhattan where she works with children, adults, business executives and athletes of all ages and competitive levels to help boost individual health and performance. Highlights of her work include conducting interviews for NFL teams, as part of Professional Sports Consultants for more than seven years, Dr. Lagos has served as a consultant to PGA tour players to provide on-site support at tournaments such as the Masters’ Tournament in Augusta, GA. Dr. Lagos has served as a consultant to US Olympians providing consultation and on-site support at venues such as the London Olympics. Dr. Lagos is also a lecturer, author of published studies, and Chair of the Optimal Performance Section of the Association for Applied Physiology and Biofeedback. Her research interests are in the implementation of heart rate variability biofeedback with golfers. Through a combination of traditional psychological approaches and biofeedback, Dr. Lagos works with clients to improve mood, reduce anxiety, decrease muscle tension and improve focus.

SZ: Did you participate in a competitive sport growing up?

Dr. Lagos: I did. As a high school athlete I was on the track team as well as the cross country team. In college at the University of Florida I rowed with the crew team.

SZ: Do you compete competitively now?
Dr. Lagos: I am an avid weekend warrior. I play golf, tennis, run and some dancing.

SZ: When did you become interested in biofeedback and the uses of biofeedback to help athletes?

Dr. Lagos: During graduate school at Rutgers University, I worked with Dr. Paul Lehrer who is well known for his work in heart rate variability biofeedback particularly to treat anxiety and health conditions related to anxiety. I approached him during graduate school because as a specialist in sport psychology I noted that about 90% of my athlete clients were coming to me struggling with, “How do I manage anxiety in sport?” I posed the question, “Do you think this could be helpful for enhancing performance?” That question was for the next seven years of my research and work with athletes using biofeedback to help reduce anxiety.

I began working with Dr. Lehrer and Dr. Evgeny Vaschillo, who had been the Russian physiologist for the Russian Olympic team many years ago. For two years I worked with the Rutgers golf team using biofeedback to enhance health and performance. We found that biofeedback had specific health benefits including, improving mood, reducing anxiety as well as some important performance benefits. Athletes who used to be affected by their anxiety could now perform at their peak during moments of challenge.

SZ: A sixteen year old golfer who has played for about four years currently plays and/or practices about two to three times a week. His goal is to play on the golf team at school but hasn’t made it yet. One area holding back his progress is that he has difficulty getting his momentum/focus going in the early rounds. It takes about two or three holes before he feel he settles into his game. How could biofeedback be useful to this player?

Dr. Lagos: It can be useful in the sense that anxiety and stress actually change how our body functions. It increases muscle tension, it changes our mood and it can impact our ability to focus. What we found with biofeedback is that as athletes improve their control over their autonomic nervous system they gain control over how their body responds to stress. One area that it impacts is gaining momentum or focus. His ability to manage stress would be significantly stronger after the biofeedback allowing him to have stronger focus, more effective focus, more efficient focus that happens more quickly as well as for a longer duration.

SZ: Over time this builds confidence in the athletes abilities.

Dr. Lagos: Absolutely.

SZ: What is an assessment of mental/emotional strengths? What does an assessment involve?

Dr. Lagos: The mental assessment usually occurs in the initial meetings in the office. I ask questions about their history of sport, their ability to manage stress and how they’ve coped with stress. I often times conduct a physiological assessment, called a Stress Profile. The Stress Profile has several different tasks such as counting backwards by seven, a Stroop Test, or when the client isn’t expecting it I clap my hands to create an unexpected scare. It allows me to see how their body actually reacts to the stressor. While the athlete is taking the test there are different physiological modalities that are being monitored including, galvanic skin response, brain activity, heart rate variability, respiration, and muscle tension. I look at how all of these areas respond during these different activities to see if there’s a particular area that we need to target and the areas that the athlete is particular strong in. Included in the assessment is having the athlete just talk to me about their perceived mental/emotional strengths and how they utilize these on the golf course. With all their physical training athletes tend to be very aware of their strengths.

Depending on the age of the golfer and with their permission, I may include the parent or a significant other in the assessment phase. What I’ve found is that parents, and significant others have a lot of specialized insight about the athlete that can expand the assessment of the athletes mental/emotional strengths.

SZ: Would you invite a coach in?

Dr. Lagos: In the very beginning just because the focus really is on the athlete and because the sessions are a confidential relationship, the parent knows, the significant other knows I don’t always bring the coach in.

SZ: A coach has such a powerful influence, the way that they deliver their verbal messages can influence the stress level of the athlete.

Dr. Lagos: Absolutely and what you’re saying is a very interesting point. There are certain types of athletes who I call physiologically gifted who have specialized responses to how coaches speak to them. In those cases I will bring a coach in, of course with the athletes approval, to help the coach learn about how their athlete actually has a physiological response to how they are being coached.

SZ: When a client begins a biofeedback training program how much time is spent in the office? How much if any time would be spent with the client on the golf course?

Dr. Lagos: The actual biofeedback training program requires meeting with me once a week for ten weeks in the office. The first year I worked with the Rutgers golf team I only met with the athletes in the office. At the end of our first year working together I asked them as a team about the process and how they liked it. They all loved it and asked me to work with them again the following year. This time though they asked for more training on how to actually use the skills on the golf course. So I implemented some virtual reality training sessions during week one, four, seven and ten at a virtual reality golf center. Being out on the golf course would have been just as effective but it was snowing at the time so this was the next best option.

SZ: Biofeedback is a process in that with low-tech, high-tech, or no-tech tools the client becomes aware of the interrelationship between the psychological and physiological processes of their body’s communication which is dynamic and bidirectional. With awareness and training clients can over time voluntarily learn how to change physiological activity. Biofeedback requires that the client practice at home. Generally how much individualized homework will the client be required to do on his/her own?
What type of equipment would a client expect to use?

Dr. Lagos: Initially the client learns to voluntarily change their physiological activity but the aim of this is that after ten weeks where the client meets with me once per week and practices breathing exercises at home twice a day for twenty minutes they gain the ability to regulate how their body responds to stress involuntarily. The goal of this is that they are training a muscle, the heart, how to respond on its own automatically during moments of stress. If an athlete before a meet or a tournament feels tremendous anxiety there is going to be a need to voluntarily change the physiological activity but there’s also moments during let’s say a basketball game where the athlete doesn’t have much time to voluntarily change it and that’s why we’re doing the training because the stress response becomes moderated by the improved autonomic control that’s garnered by the biofeedback. Over time it becomes an involuntary response. We’ve studied and documented it to see if we could make this a shorter or faster training. Every athlete wants to be able to come in here and do it after two sessions. It does not work like that. Ten sessions tends to be the rule of thumb that produces the greatest effect. We do see changes begin to start happening as soon as week four but the maximum changes tend to occur around or after week ten. I’ve had athletes that continue doing this after the ten weeks and we continue to see gains in most of these athletes.

SZ: In there any drop off after a certain amount of time?

Dr. Lagos: What we found is that they don’t have to continue practice the breathing exercises twice a day for twenty minutes a day after the initial ten weeks. After the initial training breathing can be practiced once a day for twenty minutes to maintain the same level. Some athletes during their sport season practice twice a day and in the off season drop off to once a day practices.

The only equipment the athlete needs at home is a Breath Pacer. It’s a pacer you can get for the i-phone or for your computer. There are several applications out where you can actually set the breathing pacer to what’s called resonance frequency. That’s the rate of breathing identified in here by me or another biofeedback practitioner. Resonance frequency produces optimal heart rate oscillation. Everyone has a different rate of breathing that produces optimal heart rate. Oscillation, meaning as you inhale your heart rate goes up and as you exhale your heart rate goes down. These changes reflect important changes in autonomic control.

SZ: If there are not any issues such as technical flaws, impeding performance how much time will it typically take before an athlete begins to notice improvement in their mental game? How is that level of improvement measured?

Dr. Lagos: If the athlete has been practicing at a hundred percent and meeting with me once a week we begin to notice improvements in their ability to focus, their mood, and reductions in anxiety at week four. Those changes tend to increase and amplify through week ten and beyond. We measure the level of improvement certainly in sport performance comparing it at week one, four, seven and ten. I also have them fill out a questionnaire regarding mood, regarding anxiety, and regarding muscle tension at those intervals. I have them complete a before and after Stress Profile that looks at the physiological modalities that I spoke about earlier, galvanic skin response, respiration rate, heart rate and we look at how the athlete is performing under stress, at week one versus week ten.

SZ: You were the lead author of “Virtual Reality Assisted Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback: A Strategy to Enhance Golf Performance,” published in AAPB’s Biofeedback Magazine in 2011. Explain in layman’s terms what virtual reality assisted heart rate variability biofeedback is and how would a player access this method of biofeedback?

Dr. Lagos: The golfers are playing golf through a program and what it allows us to do is to bring biofeedback into the golf setting. At the virtual reality center you can recreate specific courses that the athlete may play. You can also recreate sounds such as applause, which some golfers are sensitive to. The golfer in this setting can learn to access their breathing and through biofeedback mitigate their stress response. The virtual reality is a method to bring biofeedback breathing to the golf course so that it isn’t just a procedure the athlete learns in the office.

SZ: Do you hook the athlete you are working with up to a portable biofeedback monitoring system such as the NeXus?

Dr. Lagos: We used Polar devices. Watches and heart rate monitors strapped around the athlete’s chest. It was a way for us to collect data about the heart rate responses during stress. If you use the Thought Technology portable device you can now collect more data than through the Polar devices, which tracks heart rate.

SZ: Moving away from the topic of golf for a moment you have been doing research on the impact of ten weeks of heart rate variability biofeedback training on the post concussion symptoms of young athletes who have experienced mild traumatic brain injuries. What are some of the findings you have discovered through this research?

Dr. Lagos: In terms of post concussion syndrome as we know both in the news and research there is an increasing problem not only with professional athletes but athletes who make up the largest population, youth athletes. Post concussion is defined as having symptoms related to concussion for three weeks or longer. It means that some athletes are not healing within the normal time frame. Traditional therapies have included such things as cognitive behavioral therapy as well as anti-depressants and they’ve had limited effectiveness in actually treating post concussion syndrome.

About seven years ago I was at the University of Miami and a neurologist called me and said, “Dr. Lagos I have an athlete here who has had her second concussion. Medicine isn’t working, therapy isn’t working. Do you think your biofeedback can help her.” I said that there is no evidence at this time that heart rate variability biofeedback can improve brain functioning but I told him the if she is experiencing depression, anxiety, and problems focusing, biofeedback is likely to help her. He then referred the athlete to me.

This athlete has given me permission to discuss her case. In fact this athlete has created a non-profit organization for athletes who are suffering from post concussion syndrome. She came to me and her mood improved by about week six. Her anxiety reduced and around week seven she came in and said, “Dr. Lagos I can read again. I haven’t been able to read past three sentences in over six months. It’s due to biofeedback.” I said there’s really not a ton of research in this area, it’s an interesting concept but let’s not be too hasty, although we will continue doing it.

I told this story to a sport medicine doctor who was treating high school athletes with post concussion syndrome in New Jersey. He said, “Well if you can tell me you can improve the mood, reduce the anxiety and enhance the focus of kids who are simply not able to attend school because they are laying in bed and don’t have any other alternative, I think it’s a great option.” In the past three years this doctor has sent me over thirty high school athletes with this debilitating condition. What I began finding is that at week seven they are reporting the same types of results as my athlete at the University of Miami. Biofeedback treatment was not only improving mood, reducing anxiety and enhancing focus this was impacting their cognitive functioning. So I published my first case study in this area. It was the first and only research in this area about the potential for this to help athletes who are suffering from post concussion syndrome.

We found in this case study and reported that several symptoms of the concussion had reduced. Not just anxiety but headaches had decreased and then there was also some shifts in cognitive functioning that prior to working with biofeedback hadn’t changed. We need further studies and I’ve recommended along with my colleagues who co-authored the article with me that further studies be conducted in a randomized controlled trial.

SZ: Biofeedback requires a state of self reflection and inner connection which is sometimes a challenge for young athletes to access within themselves. What advice do you have that works to keeps these kids using biofeedback long enough so they understand they do have the capability to manage their mind/body connection?

Dr. Lagos: After about two weeks the athletes I work with see, feel and embrace the changes of being able to control their stress response and it’s only the beginning. It becomes self reinforcing. The first two weeks I say to them, “Let’s set some clear goals. What do you want out of this process? Let’s stay very focused on these goals and keep checking in with these goals every three weeks and see how you are doing with your progress.” I tell them upfront that they are not going to feel much of a change except it’ll be slightly more relaxing and they may sleep a little bit better. After about four weeks they will notice some difference. It takes about a month, although after two weeks there’s enough change and it’s reinforcing.

SZ: How do you monitor the quality of the practices?

Dr. Lagos: It’s generally self report. I ask them to fill out a training card for each of their practices. The cards have fields to write in the time they start, the time they finish and their mood on the scale of one to four. For example recording their level of anxiety, level four would be the highest and level one the lowest level of anxiety. We track those changes over time and we have data for each of their breathing sessions for the ten weeks.

SZ: Do you have an upcoming appearances, or research coming out that you would like the public to be aware of?

Dr. Lagos:  I will be speaking at the University of Florida, Nov. 15th with their academic and athletic faculty about, “Optimizing Health and Performance for Collegiate Students and Athletes.”

SZ: Dr. Lagos thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to share how you utilize biofeedback with athletic performance.

*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
*The article may also be read @ Examiner

Bay Area Breeze Women's Soccer

The Bay Area Breeze is a women’s soccer team that originally played in the Women’s Premier Soccer League and joined the W-League in January of 2013. The USL W-League is a North American women’s developmental organization. The W-League is unique in that it is an open league, giving college players the opportunity to play alongside established international players while maintaining their collegiate eligibility.  Vicki Linton was hired as Head Coach of the Bay Area Breeze in April. Prior to taking the head coach position Linton, who is from Australia, coached the Melbourne Victory in the Australian W-League, ran a National Training Centre program, and  was the U17 Australian Women’s National Team Head Coach. 

SZ: What is your soccer playing background? 

VL: I started off playing when I was six years old in Australia. All the kids around me one day were signing up for soccer and I went home to my mom and asked if I could sign up to play soccer. All my friends on the street happened to be boys. I didn’t realize that when I went to sign up I was the only girl in the whole club and the whole league.

I went from there and played from six years old with the boys until I was in the U13’s and then came across into girls teams. I continued to play and played for an Australian team at the World University Games in 1993. I actually came across to play at the University of Massachusetts in 1995 for one year. It was through an academic exchange  

program. I wished I could have stayed longer but I had to return home to graduate. 

SZ: You came over through an academic program and were able to play for the University of Massachusetts? What a great opportunity.

VL: I was a walk on. My intention was to find an academic program where I could also play soccer but obviously it was luck really or fortune that allowed me to play. I just knocked on the coaches door a couple of days after arriving at the University. I arrived in January, so I was lucky to have the Spring semester to actually work through eligibility and whether the coach was interested in me. 

SZ: In your youth when you learned soccer through playing on the boy’s soccer clubs did you feel that helped you learn assertiveness? Or did your skills sort of roll forward at it’s own pace? 

VL: At the time obviously you don’t know any different. It’s just what it is. Looking back now at my playing days, and as a coach today seeing other players come from that type of environment I think it certainly does help. There are a lot of girls who grew up in those sorts of environments. You’ve got to have certain characteristics and ability to be able to enjoy those environments. 

It probably made me a better player and it’s actually a shame that at twelve years old you get kind of pushed across to the girls. But from six to ten years old it really doesn’t matter. Girls and boys play together at young ages now. For myself it was a good experience, it gave me an opportunity to play because at the time there were no girl specific teams where I lived.

SZ: What shifted you into coaching? Was it related to injury, age, opportunity or all the above?

VL: All of that actually. I was twenty-four, not professional at the time and playing on our National Women’s Soccer League in Australia. At the same time I was involved in a coaching accreditation program and coaching a junior elite training program when the injury occurred and I couldn’t continue playing. After the injury my professional path went straight into coaching. More coaching, I love coaching, and went from there. 

SZ: What are some new challenges/adjustments/duties for you in the role as a professional league head coach?

VL: The Bay Area Breeze is a professional team in a pro/am league. 

SZ: The W-League has two tiers one is a pro/am feeder program and the other is professional?

VL: The W-League itself is a pro/am league. The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), has eight teams and only professional players. The W-League is a separate league, has twenty-something teams across the country and has been around for twenty-five plus years. 

SZ: So the NWSL has only eight teams and are professional players. Are players in the W-League paid to participate?

VL: The Bay Area Breeze is the only professional team in the league so we are allowed to pay our players. Other teams in our league aren’t professional but teams can provide for their players.

SZ: So what are the new challenges/adjustments/duties for you in this role?

VL: It’s not dissimilar to the coaching duties in the W-League in Australia that I was doing. From an administrative stand point it’s different. Instead of working for a federation sporting body, where the focus is on doing all sorts of things, I work for a privately owned club. Everyone in our organization is fully focused on this one team and getting us out there to perform. I’m really enjoying working in an environment with like minded people that are focused on helping the Bay Area Breeze be the best it can be.  It’s quite different working for an owner rather than a federation. It’s a more intimate involvement. It’s a great opportunity. The Bay Area Breeze is a young club in its third year. It has great potential and I’m finding enjoyment in coming in to help guide that vision, giving it substance and direction.

SZ: The team played a twelve game schedule between the months of May-July. Player’s need to have other jobs to sustain their income. Some player’s balance their professional careers playing in Europe. How far in advance do player’s begin arriving in the Bay Area and begin practicing as a team prior to the W-League schedule beginning?

VL: We have a real mix of player’s with us. They are on a six month contract and live basically on what we provide for them. However that’s six months out of twelve months of the year. For example in the other six months some players may do coaching, or personal training or other sorts of things. During the season, so they maintain those jobs during the off season some players work. Players graduating from college arrive at a different time than players who are already living here in the area. 

The W-League is really interesting in that some player’s arrive in March and others in May after graduation. This also limits our preparation. The league basically caters to the college players. It’s played in the summer months, and the schedule is completed by July 31st. Because we are professional we don’t have freshmen, sophomores, or juniors but they play on other teams. 

SZ: So all the players on the Bay Area Breeze are out of college?

VL: They may not be full time professional players but they are supporting their ability to play soccer and that’s what the Bay Area Breeze is wanting to provide. 

SZ: With the twelve game schedule and players participating in different leagues abroad, are there team building skills you utilize to bring the team together mentally and physically?

VL: This is my first season coaching the Breeze. This season was a little different and not an ideal environment. I arrived for the job mid-April six weeks before the league started. We didn’t have our squad until the final week before the first game of the season so it was a challenge in regards to doing those sorts of things. We didn’t have lot of prep time. I’m a full time coach so now I have this off season to prepare, organize and put some things in place for next year. 

In regards to the challenges and differences from my environment in Australia to here is that the players bring with them different skill sets, mind sets, training from all the different colleges and/or clubs that they were playing in. In Australia it’s quite different in that through our system, certainly as a national team coach, the players all across Australia have gone through similar training so when they get onto a national team there’s a certain expectation of what they know, mentally, physically and how they will play. 

So that’s a real interesting question for the Bay Area Breeze in the W-League. There are certain things that you can do in regards to bringing them together through team building. I brought them together through physical training which is a team builder and also we had sessions where people came in and did certain things. Those were great opportunities for team building and setting the culture. Other things which helped with team chemistry and bonding was all the players lived together in one apartment complex. I also started a leadership group which is part of how I was able to implement certain things within the team. The leadership group did a lot of things socially and that actually works pretty well. 

SZ: Mental skills training is a large part of any top tier sport. What types of mental skill routines do player’s engage in pre-game and during games? I assume each player has her own routines. As a coach do you provide this training for players?

VL: There were one or two players that I had individual chats with around goal setting before the season. Then a couple of other players highlighted that this was something they thought they needed to focus on. So I tried to work with those players a bit. We didn’t do this as a whole group. I’ll be honest in Australia it’s something we actually have time to do because I was with them all year round and it was part of the program. But with the time frame you have in the W-League it’s very difficult. I found it very interesting that the player’s came in with different sorts of mind sets and routines. Although different for each player, they all have routines.

A simple example is music in the change room. As a coach the interesting part of this is what type of music, who wants it loud, who wants it lower even though music is often part of a routine. It took the players a little bit of time to feel comfortable with what I was asking them to do pre-game and feeling comfortable around each other to do their own thing to prepare. 

SZ: The team creatively has made itself visible in the community through soccer tournaments, school visits, youth league jamborees and a fun “Soccer Walking in San Francisco” video. What are some upcoming events that the public may be interested in keeping an eye out for?

VL: We hosted a viewing party for the U.S. Women’s National Team game against Mexico and we are looking to do another one on October 20th when the U.S. National Team plays Australia. The last event we met at Kezar Pub which is a venue just across from where we play at Kezar Stadium but the venue is to be announced, check our website for more information.

We are also holding some youth clinics during Winter break and Spring break. Player’s who are living in the bay area make public appearances at soccer clubs, or training days and people interested in this can contact the Bay Area Breeze office. We have ongoing announcements of Bay Area Breeze activities through our website, Facebook, and Twitter. 

SZ: Will the leagues schedule be the same next year or will there be additional games?

VL: The league schedule is fairly set in the months of May-June. The game schedule comes out in December. We are looking to have some Spring games.

SZ: Do you have any favorite stories, quotes or tips that inspire you as a soccer coach?

VL: I was quite impacted the one year that I played at U. Mass by my soccer coach, Jim Rudy. I was coaching the Boston Renegades in the W-League in 2004 and came back to Massachusetts for an alumni game for the first time. I only played for Jim Rudy for one year, but to see him with the generations of players that still have such affection and admiration for him, and we could all play together because we’d been coached by him was really great. And as a coach that encouraged me. I coach a lot of youth players and then you see them move on and play at higher levels that’s always encouraging as a coach. I feel fortunate to not only coach good players but good people and it’s a privilege to be part of that journey and story. 

SZ: It’s a nice reward for your efforts and providing a vehicle for these players to come through your system for a certain period of time and know that you’ve helped them to reach the next level.

VL: They will get there anyways but that’s why it’s a privilege. I think that’s what’s fun about youth coaching they generally soak it all in and you see them grow up. That’s fun too.

SZ: Vicki thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule for this interview.

*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro

*This article can also be read @ examiner.

*Photography: John Hefti

Emilio Sanchez-Vicario, The Spanish Way

Spaniard, Emilio Sanchez-Vicario is a former ATP professional tennis player. Over his playing career he won fifty men’s doubles tournaments, including three Grand Slam doubles titles, and attained a world ranking of number one in men’s doubles. On the ATP tour he reached a singles ranking of number seven in the world and competed for the Spanish Davis Cup from the mid-1980’s to the mid 1990’s. After retiring from professional play he captained the Spanish Davis Cup team for three years and in 2008, under his guidance, Spain won the Davis Cup championship. Sanchez-Vicario’s post playing coaching accolades include coaching his sister Arantxa, the winner of multiple Grand Slam’s and number one player on the WTA in 1995. In 1998, he and his long time doubles partner, Sergio Casal, opened the Sanchez-Casal Tennis Academy in Barcelona Spain, where such players as Andy Murray, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Grigor Dimitrov, and Daniela Hantuchova have trained. The Sanchez-Casals academy has recently opened a new branch in Naples, Florida bringing it’s unique training system based on the Spanish method of understanding tennis to the U.S.

SZ: What age did you begin playing tennis? Did you play other sports growing up?

ES: My father was an engineer and worked in the city of Pamplona. We belonged to a multi-sport club there and I played soccer and swam competitively. When I was eight years old we moved to Barcelona and my parents tried to find a similar type club. They found a club that was going to have many sports but at the time only had ten tennis courts. The owner of the club left with the money from the members and the club was left with ten tennis courts.

SZ:That’s one way to stay focused on your sport. How long did you continue in the other sports you were playing?

ES: I played soccer and swam competitively until I was twelve. Most of the competitions were on the weekends so there were scheduling problems.

SZ: What did tennis training look like when you began to play seriously?

ES: Training was a way of life, and I had to learn how to love it. Tennis is a repetition sport and needs lots of dedication which was difficult at a very young age to understand. I played more frequently after quitting swimming competitively because I had more time. But the biggest change came when I was fourteen and stopped attending normal school to go and train at the Spanish Federation. The Federation maybe takes fifteen people and I was one of the good players for my age. But I struggled when I was fifteen because I was not growing. I couldn’t compete with the guys my age because they were much bigger and they were better. Then at age sixteen I grew and I started to do well.

SZ: How many hours of practice a day were you training and number of tournaments were you playing when you began to focus on tennis as a primary sport?

ES: During the week I trained at the Federation and played tournaments at the national level on school holidays. I didn’t start traveling until around sixteen years old. At  eighteen I stopped school and began to travel and play a lot.

SZ: How did your mental toughness develop to take you to the heights you achieved as a player?

ES: Actually my mental toughness developed when I began to win. I couldn’t think about a career in tennis until I was sixteen years old. Before that time I couldn’t compete with guys 20cm taller. I was losing all the time and not mentally tough. The only thing that helped me become mentally tough was when I became good. When I grew I started to beat everyone. That developed my confidence and helped me become mentally tough. Winning makes you believe. When I began to win my career changed completely and I felt very fresh. All the previous loses didn’t affect me. It’s like I had erased a data disc. When you grow into a man you start over and that gave me lots of strength.

SZ: What kept you playing when you were losing? A lot of kids just drop out when they are not doing well.

ES: Probably my background and the effort that my family gave for us to be able to play.  I had a drive to do something, I had a dream. It was also a good time in Spanish sports. My coach at the time also gave me lots of tips on the mental aspects to make me believe in myself.

SZ: You coached your sister Arantxa to the number one ranking on the WTA. There are many distractions along the way in professional tennis. Were there things you did or talked about with Arantxa to help her with her mental toughness?

ES: Arantxa was the national women’s champion of Spain when she was thirteen years old. So at thirteen she was the number one player in the country. She had the drive from scratch. At sixteen she was the first female tour player to reach the semi-finals at Roland Garros. At seventeen she won the tournament. Players like Arantxa are born with mental toughness. The thing with tennis is that it’s such a long career there are let downs and the player begins to struggle. She was in a let down stage in her career when I began to coach her. Her WTA ranking had slid from number two or three to almost twenty. After so many years at the top competing with Steffi Graf and Monica Seles, Arantxa began to lose. Changing someone that’s been a winner and suddenly forgot how to win is a difficult task for a coach. You have to help the player find the drive and discipline again to work hard and do well. But she was so determined and talented that after many months she began winning again. The most difficult part of the process for me was changing hats from being the coach who needed to push her to the limit and when I needed to act as her brother. I admired her a lot in making the effort to make it back when she had accomplished so much in her career. When a player like Arantxa is winning and then for some reason, either your opponents improve or someone new comes along and challenges you, and you lose belief in yourself that’s when coaches and psychologists have to find ways to help a player. The experience made me grow a lot as a person. I also found that there are differences between the men’s circuit and women’s circuit that I wasn’t aware of before. The physical and mental stresses are similar, but emotion in women’s tennis is a roller coaster and much more difficult to control.

SZ: I don’t think people realize the challenges for players week after week on tour. There are different time zones, different countries, different surfaces, the time of day you are scheduled to play, weather, different hotels, pressures of maintaining a winning season demands consistency, remaining healthy, not injuring oneself, there is a large host of challenges each week.

ES  Nadal recently won the Rogers Cup in Montreal on a Sunday and was very happy. But by Tuesday of the next week he is playing again. At the end of a tournament a player starts all over again. All the effort is put forth again and it’s very, very tough because everyone is trying to win. There are a lot of factors that have impact on players.

SZ: It’s important for players to have a strong support team around them.

ES: On tour now the top five guys are traveling with five or six support people. They have a physiologist, a mental coach, a playing coach, a nutritionist, managers and lawyers. There are a lot of things the guys are going through to play their best.

SZ: What were the biggest challenges for you in making the transition from ATP player to coach?

ES: The biggest challenge is that when you are a player you only think about yourself. You have to believe you are the best. When you switch to being a coach you are teaching someone else. The most difficult is passing from thinking about yourself to thinking only about your students needs. To do your job and support your player you have to do this. Once you do this it’s easier to do your job. Your goals change. That and figuring out how you are going to talk to the player and make the player believe in the changes you are trying to help him/her with. With Arantxa it was helping her develop an all court game, not only counter punching but being more aggressive in matches.

SZ: During your playing career you won three Grand Slam doubles titles and fifteen singles titles. Did you experience nervousness before or during big matches?

ES: If you want to be a big player you will be nervous. At the moment you are not nervous before a match it means you don’t care and if you don’t care normally that match is going to go in the wrong direction. But it’s a good nervousness. The line you keep with positive emotions and negative emotions are very thin. You can pass from one side to the other very fast. But the big players are capable of controlling those nerves, that why they are better players.

The ideal scenario is to know you are going to be nervous but also know you are going to compete and to compete is what you are looking for. During an interview at the French Open after Nadal won, a reporter asked him how he did it since he had an injury? How was it that he cared so much about winning? Nadal said that, “People who think I like to win are wrong. What I like is the challenge to be ready to compete and when I compete well I win.”

Another thing is everyone who plays for something is nervous. But good players are the one’s who control their emotions. They remember how to play in important points so they do their best. It’s a learning process handling those situations.

SZ: Are you focusing on where you are going to serve or do you go through mental routines prior to beginning a point?

ES: I always tried to focus on what I was doing well. Tennis is about the physical need to do what you do well in the important moments. 

SZ: During close or important matches what did you say to yourself or focus on prior to beginning your serve or returning serve?

ES: I decided in my mind the next drill. I decided where to serve or return, gave options to my opponent by where I hit the ball, then knew the different options of his response. I worked on starting from the baseline and finalizing at the net. Building the point was the goal.

SZ: You are president of the Sanchez-Casals academy in Barcelona, Spain and the new site in Naples, Florida. You’ve mentioned many times that the road to success is a long developmental process. What are your markers that a young player (13/14 yrs. old), is on track developmentally to make inroads to a higher level?

EM: Every stage of development is different. At age thirteen and fourteen a player is still in a phase of fundamentals and beginning to know themselves. At this age we focus on basics, on making the player understand the areas of the court and build a system to become an all round player. Not thinking about winning, just being competitive. Skill development is key for later success. The best is to build a very strong base for later.

SZ: What do you say to parents that are anxious that their child isn’t improving fast enough?

ES: Career development can be between twelve to fifteen years or longer. Today to win you really need to be a mature player. The successful male players today mature around 23/24 years of age. When I was playing we were getting there around 18/19 years of age. Parents with no patience end up becoming the child’s rival. The child has chosen a difficult career and some parents don’t understand. There are few spots available on the tour, maybe a rotation of five players per year. So if you look at all the schools, academies, federations and probably only five players will make it, parents may think it’s easy but it’s a very difficult process and incredibly tough. It’s a huge success for a player to make it on tour.

SZ: When a player is living at the academy and playing many hours each day what does the academy do to keep the game fresh, interesting, fun, motivational for young players in training so they avoid burn-out?

ES: Training can be the most boring thing that exists but it’s also addictive. You do well, you want more. Because of my training experiences we try to do lots of rotations and don’t play more than thirty minutes with the same opponent. We mix in a lot of drills and have fun. Tennis is a game of repetition and unfortunately there is not a shorter road. Players have to play many hours to do well so we do that and try to keep it fun. When the coaches give 100% to the players the player’s tend to do the same and that’s very rewarding. You asked me before why when I was losing a lot I didn’t quit? I had the drive to continue but I was also lucky enough to have a coach at the time who followed me. I had a coach who when I lost could explain why I lost. When there is an explanation for why I lost then I could have a goal to improve on that. I didn’t lose faith. One of the problems I see in the U.S. is that there is a lot of private coaching but not so many competition coaches to help the player understand what happened when they lose.

SZ: Are there any players from the academy we should keep an eye on as an up and coming player?

EM:  Sixteen year old Ana Paul Neffa from Paraguay.

SZ: You’re traveling an interesting athletic professional path. Do you have any favorite quotes, tips or stories that guide your professional life as a player/coach?

ES: Rafa’s statement after winning at Roland Garros, “I don’t like to win. I like being competitive.” Also what I learn as a coach in life is that apart from technique and tactics you have to create the ideal state of competition. You achieve that by finding your best energy in the physical, mental, emotional and inner self. With that you can play any tennis match or any other type of match. Everyday you play lots of matches with family, friends, work and and finding that energy in all those matches allows you to be a winner in life.

SZ: Emilio it’s been a great pleasure chatting with you. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule for this interview.

*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
*This article can also be read @ examiner.com
*Photo of Emilio universalsports.es

Catching up with Leigh Steinberg

Leigh Steinberg has spent over four decades immersed in his passion for athlete representation and being an agent of change. His client roster has included a multitude of premier athletes and “Hall of Famers” spanning over multiple professional sports, including Steve Young, Troy Aikman, Warren Moon, Ben Roethlisberger, Erick Karros, Dusty Baker, Lennox Lewis and Oscar De la Hoya. He has pioneered the convergence of the sports and entertainment industries and is credited as the real life inspiration for the lead character from the film “Jerry Maguire.” During his forty plus years in the industry he represented the #1 pick in the NFL draft a record setting eight times and has negotiated well over three billion dollars in contract deals for his clients. 

SZ: In the early stages of your career representing players you had a unique perspective. In your representation of athletes you encouraged that every contract negotiated for the player include clauses that required the athlete to give back to their hometown, high school, university, national charities or foundations. What in your background inspired you to ask the athlete to step up as a role model for social responsibility?

LS: My father had two core values. One was to treasure relationships especially family. The second was to try to make a positive difference in the world and to help people who couldn’t help themselves. The corollary to that was that when there was a problem in the world that needed fixing that was especially disturbing, that looking for “they” or “them” to solve it was not the right answer. My father used to say, “The they is you son.”

When I was at U.C. Berkeley in the late 60’s the same philosophy was reinforced so I was hard wired to believe that I had a duty to try and effectuate positive change in the world which I thought I was going to do through politics. But then the fortuitous circumstances of Steve Bartkowski asking me to represent him occurred. I remember leaving Berkeley to sign his first contract with the Atlanta Falcons, which was the largest rookie contract in NFL history at the time.  When we arrived at the Atlanta airport the night prior there were huge search lights flashing in the sky and a crowd was pressed up against a police line. The first thing we heard was, “We interrupt the Johnny Carson show to bring this special news bulletin. Steve Bartkowski and his attorney Leigh Steinberg just arrived at the Atlanta airport. We switch you live for an in depth interview.” 

I looked at Bart and it was really then that I saw the tremendous idol worship and veneration that athletes were held in for communities across the country. The athlete was equivalent to a movie star or celebrity and I saw them an an avenue to trigger behavior change, trigger imitative behavior and good values. If they could emphasize a sense of self respect, nurture family in being a part of a community where people cared for each other they could permeate the perceptual screen that young people erect against authority figures. Young people don’t particularly want to listen to their parents, teachers or authority figures but an athlete because of their celebrity and elevated profile can get through and make an impact. So I asked of each athlete I represented to retrace their roots and go back to the high school community that had helped shape them and set up a scholarship fund, at the high school or do something with their church or set up a program with boys and girls clubs. Something to root them back in. 

SZ: Was there buy in for the idea from the athletes? Did they get it?

LS: I learned how to try and profile those athletes that might be most open to this approach. It took me about a year to realize that this was not a universal aspiration (laughing). Player’s like Troy Aikman and Erick Karros, endowed a scholarship fund at UCLA, as did Steve Young at BYU, as a way to reintegrate into that alumni community. 

I also challenged the athletes I represented to find some cause in their life that they would like to try and tackle. We then set up foundations in the city that the athlete was playing in that had on its advisory boards leading business figures, political figures, and community leaders as resources to be able to deliver a fund raising program around their particular cause. Rolf Benirschke, a place kicker for the San Diego, Chargers participated in one of the first programs, “Kicks for Critters”.  For every field goal he kicked he donated money to a fund for endangered species at the San Diego Zoo. He then challenged people in the community to match at their own level. There was a poster of him kicking a field goal off the flipper of a sea lion one year and the next year off the hoof of a baby elephant. Those posters proliferated around the city. In addition if we had the head of Southland Corporation (7-Eleven stores), or a bank president on the athlete’s advisory board the posters would appear in all those locations. “Kicks for Critters” spun off an ancillary program called, “Cans for Critters,” where school children collected aluminum cans and donated the money. Those programs generated millions of dollars that actually led to the saving of endangered species and raised community awareness. 

These type of programs were the genesis for hundreds of later programs you’ve seen that attach an athletes performance on the field with a matching program with a business or the public. Another example, Warrick Dunn, who was a  running back for Tampa Bay and the Atlanta Falcons. His program, “Homes for the Holidays” enabled single mothers to buy the first home they ever owned by making the down payment and having Home Depot outfit it. These programs allowed the athlete to discover other talents and abilities that they had that would lead them to satisfying second careers and to defeat the concept of self absorption. It also allowed players to network through-out the community which could ease the transition into a second career. 

The second aspect of it is role modeling. When I had Lennox Lewis, the heavy weight boxing champion do a public service announcement that said, “Real men don’t hit women.” It could do more to influence rebellious adolescent attitudes towards domestic violence then a hundred authority figures could. 

SZ: In 1998 you along with Michael D’Orso wrote the outstanding book, “Winning With Integrity.” How has the role of representing athletes shifted since that time? What are the aspects of the rules of negotiation that remain the same?

LS: My motivation for writing that book was to refute the concept of situational ethics. That somehow it was acceptable to have one set of morals and standards at home and another in the work place. That being a good parent or a good neighbor or a good friend and then going out in the work place and using social Darwinian tactics because after all it’s just business and the ends justify the means. This behavior creates a type of soul death for the person using those tactics and disastrous consequences for society. I was hoping to show, by writing the book, that there are effective methods where people can be successful in their business and their own lives without resorting to unethical tactics. 

The field of sports agentry has dramatically changed partly because of the economics. When I started out in 1976 each team in the NFL shared the national television contract and made two million dollars per team per season. This year those teams will make one hundred and seventy million dollars. The two expansion franchises that came into the league in 1976, Tampa Bay and Seattle had a purchase price of sixteen and a half million dollars. A year ago the Cleveland Browns, not perhaps the most successful franchise in the NFL sold for a billion dollars. The economics are on a different planet. The NFL has taken over as America’s passion and behind that is college football. Even baseball where the owners used to complain about losing money has basically quadrupled it’s gross receipts in the last ten years. 

So money has changed dramatically but the principles of win/win negotiating haven’t, because they revolve around the fundamentals of human psychology. I used to tell my kids when they were growing up that the one course I wanted them to master was psychology. They could pick up math, language and a whole series of skills but if they could understand what actually motivates people to act the way they act and be able to understand that and influence it, that would take them through every situation in life.  The key is to be able to put yourself into the heart and mind of another human being. Understand their value system and see the world as they see it. Only then can you construct a mutually satisfactory conclusion to any set of negotiations. 

SZ: Are players more focused on the end result of what they want financially?

LS: What player’s want when they hit veteran status is to be paid what similarly situated peers are being paid. The money is so colossal that it’s not as if they were evaluating the difference between ten and twelve million dollars. They aren’t thinking how the money will allow them to fix the roof on their house, buy a winnebago, or take an extra vacation the way that most people do. They are far past that economically. What motivates them is the comparison between their performance and another players and being equally or better compensated. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is attention span. Young people growing up in the world of big screen high definition surround sound television and a computer screen that allows them to you-tube, e-mail, text, play video games and have the illusion that they can control every millisecond of stimulus is subversive to attention span. It is necessary to compress information to a younger generation into much tighter bites.

SZ: You mean when you are talking to athletes trying to explain ideas?

LS: Yes, so if you are asking me about differences of this generation of athletes one of them is attention span.

SZ: I notice that a lot as well. (laughing).

LS: The point is that you may have five minutes of focus instead of twenty. 

SZ: In “Winning With Integrity” there is a wonderful segment on “facing your fear” in negotiating. Where did you learn the psychology of “facing your fear” in negotiations?

LS: Fear is the most paralyzing of all emotions and steals from people the ability to exercise free will and to achieve their objectives. When we are young if you are a male we fear being hit or beaten up in a fight. Once you are in a fight and you realize the worst thing is temporary pain and some bumps and bruises it takes the fear away because fear tends to be apprehension and anxiety about a result that can alter one’s approach. 

I was on a trip to Mexico when I was young and I got very ill. We were at the Aztec pyramids and I happen to be fascinated by Egyptology and the anthropology of the Aztecs and I wanted to climb that pyramid, but I felt very, very sick. What I said to myself was that I would forget whatever the pain was of that day but I would always remember the view from the pyramids. I went ahead and climbed the pyramid. So first of all there’s the whole concept of actually playing out and facing fear and anxiety and realizing that in most cases the anxiety is worse than the actual result. 

SZ: To engage in the process versus focusing on the fear.

LZ: Right. The second thing is that in many, many situations people don’t have leverage. They don’t have a choice. In every athletic negotiation unless a player is in free agency the rules restrict him so he has no alternative. For example a draftee in any sport is sitting at their college campus living on scholarship. If they are trying to sign a contract for x millions of dollars rather than x minus 25%, x minus 25% is a fortune compared to what they are making. The alternative if they don’t sign with a team that drafts them is to go back to their college campus. If Steve Bartkowski didn’t sign with the Falcons was he going to go back to Cal Berkeley and work in the Lawrence radiation lab and develop a new theory of super conductivity? Or is he going to play cello for the Philharmonic? Whatever the drafting team is offering the players is eons better than his choice. Which really is no choice but to sit out. So under that premise it would be impossible to do anything other than take the best last offer from a team or the first offer and sign it. 

It takes compartmentalizing that threat, that fear, that reality and changing the conversation from the players ultimate fear and weakness to what the teams needs are are, what they do without that player, and what the players market value is. Unless someone is able to make that flip from the fact that perhaps they don’t have another job, perhaps there’s not a single other house that’s in their price range that will meet their needs, whatever it is, the inability to put that fear on hold and reality on hold will distort and paralyze someone in negotiation.  

SZ: Do you believe that there are parallels between an athlete facing his/her fear in negotiations and the athlete facing  his/her fear of playing up to their potential in their sport?

LS: Absolutely. Let’s take another situation. The most valuable position in sports right now is a franchise quarterback. What defines a franchise quarterback? It’s a player you can build a team around. But ultimately it’s a player who can elevate his level of play in critical, adverse situations to lead his team to victory. For example let’s say in a game a quarterback has thrown three interceptions. He’s having an off day. He’s put his team in harms way. The crowd is booing him mercilessly. The team is down by a score but there really isn’t enough time to comeback. They are undermanned, every adverse situation you can think of is happening. So is that quarterback able to block out all the negativity,  the reality that he’s on the edge of the apocalypse and attain a quiet mind and elevate his level of play? The key is that faced with multiple negative stimuli and discouragement can someone perform by blotting those things out and focus on the moment at hand? 

SZ: You were an early advocate and one of the first to shed light light on the concussion issues in professional sports, calling it a “ticking time bomb” and an “undiagnosed health epidemic.” How were you so far ahead of the curve regarding this issue?

LS: In the 90’s some weekends I was representing half the starting quarterback in the NFL. Players like Warren Moon, Steve Young, Troy Aikman, Drew Bledsoe and Mark Brunell. When they would get concussions I would often go with them to doctor’s and ask the question, “How many is too many?” What’s the number of concussions that might lead to long term consequences?

SZ: How did you know that though?

LS: Intuitively. There was a game in 1989 when Troy Aikman was a rookie in Arizona, where he got hit and was lying on his back for what seemed like an eternity. I don’t think that one needs training as a neurologist that being knocked unconscious probably wasn’t therapeutic for brain function. Yet, my alarm was raised more by the fact that experts couldn’t answer basic questions. How many is too many? What are the long term consequences? They had no answers. I started to hold concussion seminars back in the early 90’s and got the leading neurologists from across the country to come and make presentations. We approached it from the stand point of prevention. Could we alter the playing surface? Get rid of astro turf? Find better helmets? Change the rules so there’s no blocking and tackling with the head? Could we get better diagnosis like having a neurologist on the side line? Could there be a regiment of standardized diagnosis and then sit out periods? 

I wanted to make sure that at least my clients got to hear this. We had the athletes attend the conferences and issued a white paper but not much changed. Then in 2006 we held a conference with the Sports Concussion Institute in Los Angeles and by then we had the studies from neurologists like, Dr. Julian Bailes, Dr. Kevin Guskiewicz, and Dr. Robert Contu where they were able to say that three was the magic number. It appeared to be a turning point in that an athlete with three or more concussions had an exponentially higher rate of alzheimer's, ALS, dementia, pre-mature senility, elevated rates of depression and a new syndrome called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (ECT).  That’s when I made those statements about an “undiagnosed health epidemic.” I then gathered all the press I could and from the New York Times, to the Washington Post, and every major regular news and sports outlet to make sure that they all broadcasted it.

SZ: These doctors had been collecting data.

LS: The doctors already had studies that showed these results. After that the NFL convened their first doctor’s conference and the Berlin Wall started to fall. They issued a whistle blowers edict asking players to report on other players that they thought had concussions and eventually adopted baseline testing. The program which was the first objectified way to measure cognitive function and how cognitive function had been degraded, tracked cognitive function. The players were given a test when they began playing and a test after receiving a concussion which pushed things forward to create changes. The problem is that the size, strength and speed of athletes, training techniques and nutrition have out run any protective developments. The basic physics have changed. The players have bigger, faster bodies. A 320 pound offensive tackle can run a 4.640 at the combine, no one conceptualized this could happen. 

SZ: More mass hitting objects at high speeds.

LS: Yes, it’s just physics. We’ve now learned that every single time that an offensive lineman hits a defensive lineman on a football play it creates a low level concussive event. No-one is knocked out. It’s not charted. It’s a very, very minor degree of brain impact but it is a brain impact injury. When you think about it, it could well be possible that offensive linemen who play in that position if they played in high school and college and a long pro career by the completion of their career have taken 10,000 sub-concussive hits. None of which were diagnosed. The aggregate of those hits potentially cause many more problems than the three diagnosed concussions I mentioned before. 

This is not just an NFL problem it’s a college and high school football problem. It’s a AYSO soccer, field hockey, ice hockey, lacrosse etc. problem. Anywhere that there is collision in sports. It’s especially devastating to an adolescent brain which is still in development. Adolescents take three times as long to recover and those kids are having to go to school with concussions. 

SZ: You would think tennis and golf participation would be on the upswing.

LS: Well I think this poses a threat to sports like football.  I am pleased that there are starting to be the first developments in helmets that actually could make a difference, and there’s a series of research scientists and doctors racing to find a new pharmaceutical solution that could heal the brain post concussion. But without that you will have mother’s telling their kids they can play any sport but not football. There are liability issues coming out of the college and professional player law suits that are currently in discovery. 

SZ: Are you saying there is a medication coming out that a player would ingest?

LS: Not yet. But there is a race going on to see who can deliver something like that.

SZ: Your career as a sports agent has been extraordinary. Presently you have been writing columns for several on-line sports mediums including, Forbes Magazine, and The Huffington Post what will you be doing professionally going forward? 

LS: When I was eight years old I edited my first neighborhood newspaper. I’ve written all my life. I had taken this time to write an autobiography that will be published by St. Martin’s Press in January of 2014. I have a second book coming out on advice for parenting youth athletes, trying to change the culture and talk about the values for doing that. But I’ve always written and we are just about to relaunch within the next month a new platform where we will do representation in major sports including, football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis, martial arts and that will power a marketing arm that can market teams, leagues, coaches, and high profile individuals. 

There will be a studio, which the way our business is moving, can consult with or own part or produce sport theme projects in motion pictures. Similar to what I did as a consultant for the movies, “Jerry McGuire” and “Any Given Sunday” and “For the Love of the Game.” Our studio business will include dramatically scripted new internet projects, aps, video games and other ways to enjoy sports. We will offer health and safety products that can be introduced through sports. Lastly, we will be part of the“The Sporting Green Alliance,” which is where aggregated, sustainable technology in wind, solar, recycling, field resurfacing, and recyclable water technologies are being introduced to stadiums and practice fields at the high school, collegiate and professional levels. It offers a platform for millions of fans that come to a game to see how to incorporate those practices into their own homes and businesses. 

SZ: Are there any upcoming events that you are hosting or speaking at that you would like to mention?

LS: I speak about once a week. We haven’t done this yet but we are about to launch a new foundation called, “Athletes Speak.” Warren Moon and Earl Campbell are the first two board members and the leading experts on the advisory board, so stay tuned.

SZ: You’ve traveled an incredible professional path. In many ways you developed the role of sports agent that has transformed the profession. Do you have any quotes, tips or stories that have guided your career path?

LS: There’s a very famous Teddy Roosevelt quote that I used to have up in my office which has sort of been, my father used to have it, it’s sort of a guide post. The net/net of it is, get out there and get involved and give it your best effort. Don’t allow fear and doubts and critics stop you from acting.

“It’s not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Teddy Roosevelt.

SZ: Anything you would like to add?

LS: Just that when things get tough I think perspective is critical. There is no excuse other than to keep striving and trying to be of service to people. What’s left at the end is the quality of relationships, being a good parent, a good spouse, a good friend and what you did to make a positive difference in the world. That’s it. The rest is ephemeral and it fades like sand castles on the beach.

SZ: Leigh thank you for taking a generous amount of time out of your day for this interview. 

*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro

*This interview may also be read @ examiner.com