The Mental Approach

Matt Cundill  0:01  
You may also like a show about the things you may also like things like the mental approach. Youth Sports ain't what it used to be. The days of kids organizing themselves and playing baseball or shooting in the park has been replaced with high level, five figure registration fees, travel teams that require mass commitments from players, coaches and parents. Is fairly exhausting, but you know what? Everyone is looking for an edge. That edge is the mental approach. Todd Arkell is the host of the mental approach to youth sports podcast, and today we're gonna find out why it has become such an important part of being a youth athlete. Todd himself, by the way, was an athlete back in the day. You

Todd Arkell  0:53  
know, I played all sports. My parents encouraged me to just be involved in anything in it. First I want to say, back then, I feel like parents just signed you up for something, dropped you off, and that was it. And today, people are way more involved in what I call the professionalism of youth sports. So that's that's kind of why I started my podcast. But remember, I played soccer, free play for baseball. We played baseball every day. Go to the park on your bikes, kind of like the sand lot, which maybe that's why that's one of my favorite movies in the and the movie poster hangs over my shoulder. Played hockey in the winter. In the summer, it was baseball. Soccer was never really good at basketball. Played volleyball in high school, football in high school, rugby. I think rugby was probably my best sport. Got to flirt around a little bit with playing a little bit for Ontario, but not much. Won a couple of provincial championships, so that that's probably my best sport. Got cut from baseball when I was 16 from the local team because I couldn't hit the curve ball anymore. But I enjoyed all sports, and I enjoyed playing, and went on to play, you know, slow pitch for a lot of years, I played soccer, and until I was 50, and then a knee injury took me out. So yeah, I think it's, you know, from an athletic career. I just enjoyed playing. And it wasn't about the pursuit of being, I don't know, some professional or whatever. I just enjoyed the competition.

Matt Cundill  2:14  
So it's funny, because your podcast is there and is really designed to help, you know, use sports. But if we had podcasting back in the 80s, we're not really talking about the mental approach to sandlot baseball or the the activities that we were playing. How did you sports become so organized?

Todd Arkell  2:30  
Oh, boy. I, you know, I remember my brother in law saying to me one day, this is, this is before my youngest started playing hockey. He goes, you know, whose business it is to have your kid playing hockey in the summer. And I kind of did the old cock the head. I go, No, he goes, the guy whose business it is to have your kid playing hockey in summer. And I think that that's probably part of it, really is that it's become such a big business. I was reading something today and just talking about, you know, hey, in America, we celebrate the prom queen over the the math expert or the jock over the the computer nerd and and that's, that's America. And I don't think we're to that extent here in Canada. But, you know, if you look at hockey, my wife and I have always said, if you invested as much in your kid, in tutoring, in math or STEM or whatever it is, as you did in your kids hockey for a lot of kids, Boy, wouldn't we have a very different culture, right? So I think there's a lot of money put into the sport, not always. And I think most parents would say they don't believe this, but I think there is this mild delusion that, why not my kid? Maybe my kid could be the mix Mitch Marner, or my kid could be the next, you know, Vince Carter, whatever it is, right? So I think there's that where people feel like that's a way, a way forward, and maybe that maybe the parents are living vicariously through their kids in a way too. I just think it's different, and that's that's why kind of this podcast came about was the fact that, you know, parents are spending so much money on kids lessons and skill sessions and everything else, but they're not, they're not realizing that there's issues from a mental health perspective that gets thrust onto these 10 to 12 year old kids playing Triple A hockey somewhere in Canada, right? Yeah,

Matt Cundill  4:22  
you're 1415, years old, and then you're off to be billeted in a place like Brandon Manitoba, and maybe you've got a little in with the Brandon wie kings, for instance, or something like that, and you're going off to remote places. And I don't know what most of us are supposed to be doing at 14 and 15, but I think you're supposed to be reporting to your local high school with your friends. But instead, there's this other sort of side opportunity. It's kind of like being a child star only in skates.

Todd Arkell  4:46  
Yeah. I mean, can pick on hockey because it's the most obvious one in this country that gets celebrated. But yeah, it's, it's a different world. And I think, funny enough, it's changing a little bit, not that people are less involved. Are less interested in trying to take that as a path, or push their kids to that path. But I think it's with the recent announcements of the NCAA allowing kids who play junior hockey to then go to division one hockey or play in the NCAA. I think that's really going to change kind of people's decisions on what they do and how they go about doing it, and then it creates way more paths. I've seen a lot of kids that that, personally I know that were drafted to the OHL but chose not to go committed to a university. This rule changed, and now they've signed to their respective OHL team to play at a higher level for a year, or maybe even two, before they go on to college. So I think it changes the path. And I think that maybe kids won't necessarily need to go to a junior route at 16 years old and live away from home and and kind of go through all the all the things that go along with that. I mean, I think there's great billet houses, but I also know having been a billet and having friends who went through that process and had billets, there's also the Dean youngbloods of billets as well out there. So there are situations that are maybe not the best, and I believe the kids don't always advocate for themselves either. They're like, I'm here to play hockey. I want to make it. And they don't want to speak up if something isn't the way it should be in a family setting, shall we call it?

Matt Cundill  6:25  
We're Canadian. I think we know what the hockey situation is like, but I know you've got ties to baseball. You've got a son who plays baseball. I've got a son who umpires. But in the States, I hear a lot of the term travel baseball. What is travel baseball? And how has this sort of changed the way it was when we grew up in the sand. Lot

Todd Arkell  6:44  
super different. I mean, even just playing like in Canada alone and the US. I mean, in the US, obviously, Little League World Series, one of the biggest, biggest events that you can you can imagine, there's Legion baseball, there's, I think, there's Babe Ruth League. There's, you know, a lot of what I would call house league to kind of all star baseball, but you're playing with your local friends, often friends from your neighborhood, or kids to go to school with very, very different it's very, very much the same here. There are some, we'll call it travel programs here in Canada as well. But it really is people creating these super teams, or all star teams, under the guise of well better development and best on best competition. But often what that means is parents traveling out of state every weekend for a tournament to play against, you know, the best 10 to 11 year olds in another state, and you know, there's a lot of debate as to whether that, you know, raises your ability or not you get. You see a lot in the US, there's a lot of lot of debate back and forth over that, does your kid really need to specialize in sport at a young age? And that's where I talk about, you know, the professionalism all of a sudden, you know, you've got four different uniforms, and every kid has a $500 bat, and we're going to these tournaments from, you know, from one town to another, sometimes even playing teams you might play in your own state. So that's always interesting, but I think again, it's just become a business opportunity. People saw a way to make money, right? And they're like, oh, like, people would like to do this. And you know what? When you first look at it, you go, Well, that seems fun. Go play a bunch of tournaments. And then next thing you know, it's a $30,000 a year commitment. And I don't know if that's necessarily worth it at he had a young age, yeah.

Matt Cundill  8:39  
And I don't know if I want to be explaining to my 14 year old or I wouldn't know how to explain to them. Oh, what's going to be your mental approach to this season, this week, this game? It feels young to have that sort of mental approach conversation with a 14 year old. Yeah, I don't

Todd Arkell  8:56  
disagree with that. I think what I'm trying to bring about is the opportunity for kids to learn things on their own. Hear from people that, hey, you know what? Breath work is important when you're playing a sport, you know, take a deep breath at the plate after you've just swung and missed it something, and just relax. And it's not, you know, I talk about, you know, did it from people I've mentioned, well, what about the Woo, wooness, or whatever? You know, because it does seem like we're going to meditate and we're going to this and we're going to that, and I think it's just creating healthy habits for kids, things like, Hey, you should journal. One of my guests, Travis Snyder, he has and I wish I had the book near me, but I have a copy. He created a journal for kids. And, you know, people said, oh, you should journal every day, write down your thoughts. And nobody really know, like, I don't even really know where to start if somebody told me to do that, because I don't typically do that. But he had, like, all these prompts with different questions, you know, what did you do good today? What did you want? What do you want to work on? And just things to help you kind of move things. And I think you. More about, not so much them, you know, making a plan for themselves mentally, but to kind of start to do different tasks that will help them make sense of a lot of the pressures that they're under, or, you know, those types of things, and maybe even a little bit more self discovery. Like, you know, I really don't like it when my mom yells at me when I strike out, and then being able to have those conversations with mom to say, hey, you know, it'd be good if you didn't yell from the stance. Yeah. So there's

Matt Cundill  10:29  
a lot that goes on at you. Sports. We already talked about 14 year olds maybe being away from home. We talked about travel baseball where, you know, there's gonna be kids on the road, they'll be on a bus, they're gonna be spending a lot of time with their teammates and themselves and inside sports. And we all know this, if we play the sports, we're not all Patrick mahomes, whereby we're going to be winning a lot of games. And that's, I mean, we strive for that, but it's not the success that everybody goes through. I've lost way, way, way more games than I've than I've won in my life, I experienced an Owen 16 soccer season. I've been through a whole lot of things, but one of the things I like about your show, and it's the mental approach, for those who are joining us for whatever reason, halfway through a podcast. It's not a radio show. But anyways, here we are, but one of the things I really like about the mental approach is that you deal with the things that teens are dealing with such as things like screen time, things like a little bit of failure, the journaling is a great idea. Listen, if you weren't playing sports, you'd still be encouraged to journal anyway, right? Yeah,

Todd Arkell  11:30  
I agree, and I think I look at it as tips and tricks. And I was having a I was out for dinner with some friends last night, celebrating a friend's birthday, a milestone birthday. And, you know, I started getting asked questions, so what about this? And what about that? And, oh, I know somebody that'd be a good guest on your show. And, and my comments always like, hey, I'll talk to anybody about anything, but there has to be a topic du jour, right? And I, you know, I think if you just sat around and talked about, you should meditate. You should do breath work. Every person can talk about that same thing, but it's really like, what are some different levels or different things to talk about? A recent episode I brought on a goalie coach and a 12 year old goalie, and had the goalie prepare questions to ask him. And it's that's incredibly niche when you really think about it, but I've had a lot of people go, that was kind of cool, right? And he, he did exercises with the kid, like some visualization stuff. And I thought, I thought it, you know, it was different, right? I mean, I'm looking for everyday stuff that kind of goes on. I've got an episode that will be coming up in probably a month and a month and a half, which was talking with a person who you know had eight different surgeries in their career, trying to make it in baseball through college baseball and and what was the what was your mentality, trying to overcome injuries? Right? Because that's obviously a big part of sport as well. And did it affect his mindset to try to keep moving on, or just kind of scrap it and throw in the towel, right? So I think, yeah, I mean, I'm trying to be, I just give some diversity, you know, diversity of guests, diversity of information, and, you know, because something's gonna trick with somebody, and maybe they go, that's something I'll use in my arsenal. You

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  13:23  
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Matt Cundill  13:38  
if you're a coach, I would recommend this podcast for your players just something to do in the interim, because, as a coach, you're really dealing with a team. You've got, you know, 20 players, just for example, that you're trying to manage, sort of as a group. But each episode that you do is a piece of advice that that goes out, and some might need to know a little bit more about how to recover from an injury. There's going to be some who are going to need to know the difference between a great episode you did, you know, defining the person versus the player, which is, you know, something that we can get caught up with at a young age. Because, I mean, not every team can afford a team psychologist, right? I think that's true. I feel but I feel like you could be the team psychologist.

Todd Arkell  14:20  
That's a tall task to take on, that's for sure. But I think the wealth of knowledge of the guests, and I've been incredibly fortunate because, I mean, this is, this is a topic that interests me and is exciting. And I've seen athletes at a bunch of different levels. As I mentioned, we used to build hockey players, and I'd see them come home and they'd be the coach loves me, well, the coach hates me, the coach and is such a roller coaster. And I'm thinking, wow, these kids are the most elite, like one of our ability played in the World Juniors for another country, not Canada. But, you know, they were elite, elite players, but from a mentality perspective, they were all over the map, and they didn't really get a lot of. Port that way. So I look at it as starting this off because of the passion around that and seeing that, hey, maybe there's a little bit of a need here for people to kind of find information on their own and then take it to wherever they want to go. But I've been so fortunate right when I started and I said, Okay, I'm gonna do a podcast, and I started messaging people that I wanted as guests, and I said, I have a podcast, which I didn't really have a podcast. I hadn't even recorded an episode, and yet people went, That's a great idea. I'm in. And so I really felt this, this weird wave of, you know, call it the universe or manifestation, whatever you want to say, of people going, I think that's a good idea I'm in. And so I've been so blessed with just incredible guests and more. And every guest that you go on to the next people are like, Oh, they go back and they look at your guest list, and now, you know, it's even more up leveling in certain areas, right? You're going, Okay, I think I've had three no's. And I think that's kind of unheard of when you go out to people and you start pitching your show, and this is what I want to do, incredibly fortunate for people to trust me to have a conversation with them for, you know, the 40 minutes to an hour that we that we do. So yeah, I hopefully, maybe I will be the team psychologists of case. But you know, vicariously through my guests, who have all the information.

Matt Cundill  16:21  
Ever wonder why somebody would say no to appearing on your show? I'll give

Todd Arkell  16:25  
you a good example. One person who did. He had said to me, originally, originally, he didn't say no, he just said, Oh, he wanted more information. And then, as I shared some stuff, he was concerned, because his approach was very different than most of the guests I had, so he had a different kind of way of doing that, as Tony abatini, and he's all about visual psychology, and he says there's only so much breath work and data, and he has this whole idea of taking things in from a visual perspective and using that to your advantage, for For your mental performance. So he was concerned that I wouldn't buy into his style. And so once I kind of realized what that was, I convinced him. I said, Hey, I'm open to everybody's opinion. Like, there's no one right answer, right? There's, there's all kinds of different ones. And that's like that show itself has been, I think, one of the most popular ones, of ones that I had, it was just, it was a very different approach, and I think that that that resonated with people, and some of it could be the fact that he has a strong following, but outside of that, why they'd say, No, I've had a couple people where they said, Oh, we're not doing pod we're not taking podcast requests. Now, for whatever reason, that's their thing. I've had one person, and I'm not going to out him, but he has not responded. And we're so aligned, so either he's not seeing my messages or he doesn't see the value, I don't know,

Matt Cundill  17:55  
doesn't see the value yet. Yes, correct? When somebody says no, I always say, well, I'll call back in six months and then end it

Todd Arkell  18:03  
right. And what was funny, though, was this one person who hasn't responded, and I'd love to have him as I think he's perfect for the show. And he just, you know, I follow him on social media, but then I'm talking to somebody the other day, and he tells me how his business is making custom batting gloves for this particular individual. And I was like, Oh, could you ask him to look up my name in his email box, right? And so there was a little so I don't know, maybe, maybe a little two degrees of separation will help help him become a future guest. How do you

Matt Cundill  18:37  
think the brand has developed since you started doing the podcast, you

Todd Arkell  18:41  
know what? At first, I was a little concerned it would be monotonous, like, okay, it's gonna be the same thing, you know, with from the guests of the same people. And maybe, maybe the first two or three episodes, it was very similar and, and so I found I had to alter, sort of my approach in just that, you know, creating topics and, you know, trying to zero on instead of being just very general with people and trying so a little bit more research on my part, a little bit more focus and kind of brainstorming and coming up with things just to keep it fresh for people. Because, you know, you don't want to have 50 episodes of everybody saying the same thing that that's that's no good. So I think that's probably the most unexpected. I like I said, though I feel so incredibly blessed on the fact that when I kind of even look back like somebody actually asked me last night again, I was saying, how many episodes have you released? And I said, Oh, I don't know. So I had to open my app, I go, Oh, 19. I've released 19. And I was like, wow, I've released 19 episodes. That's crazy. That didn't doesn't seem like it was that many. So I think just trying to keep things fresh has been and how to do that has been the most kind of different thing. And the graciousness of the. People in the sharing like the level of sharing has been really cool that that's been sort of unexpected, because you expect people to be a little bit guarded when you're interviewing them, and some of the guests plug a feature show. Clint hurdle, who, you know, used to manage baseball with the Colorado Rockies and the Pittsburgh Pirates. He's got a book out called herdalisms, and he was just like the most humble, open, generous with information, man, you know, like it's gonna be a good episode. So those are things that kind of still surprise me.

Matt Cundill  20:32  
What have you learned so far about your audience? Have you been getting any feedback? Or is there something about the audience that has surprised you, about maybe their makeup, or any, any sort of feedback you're getting. You know what?

Todd Arkell  20:42  
I get a lot of positive feedback, which is great, nobody's yelling at me yet and but so maybe I'm not doing something right, because, you know, you always have to have the haters if you're really going crazy. But I think, interestingly, I think demographic wise, and I, you know what, I try not to keep going in and dive into analytics to say who is my who's listening, or whatever. But, you know, it's nice to kind of just get an idea, but it's, it's, it's certainly a lot of parents. It skews a little bit older, and it skews in other countries, even more than Canada, which is interesting, right? So from that perspective, I'd like to try to attract more kids, and maybe some of that is to do with the guests, right? So, you know, future episodes coming up. I've got a senior picture from the University of Michigan, so he's a little bit more, you know, let's call it relatable to younger kids. I've got, you know, I've got a an Instagram, a kind of famous Instagram coach that a lot of kids would know and most parents wouldn't. So, you know, there's different things like that, where I think that that will maybe attract some of the younger kids, and then they'll go back and look at things, but there are younger kids listening, I can tell that, but it skews a little bit older. So it's me just thinking, like, I want to help the kids. So are the parents listening and sharing things with their kids? Are the kids more interested in listening to the short form clips that I put out, as opposed to a long form show? There's a variety of different things, so it is interesting to to kind of see, and on that note, I'll share, I interviewed a guy, Jason Ferber, who's known as coach, Coach Ferber, or ferb's, and he's got a really huge Instagram following. And, you know, I think our our reel on Instagram had it was ridiculous, like 30, 40,000 views. And I was like, Oh, that's nice. You know, that's a good for a small account. That's great, but nobody followed me. And I thought, Wow, what an echo chamber the internet seems to be. All these people like the video, or at least took the time to watch the video, but nobody thought that's interesting. I'll follow so I think it's understanding that that's great. You're just you're getting something out in the world. You don't expect to have all these people come to you as followers, and it's like, hopefully they got something out of that content, and maybe they'll come back again organically. I have no idea, but it's it certainly is interesting. I think you can get stuck in those numbers and freaking out, and I'm just trying to put out something good and watch it grow. And I think organically, that's the cool part. It's growing about 30% you know, quarter over quarter. So that's a good sign.

Matt Cundill  23:27  
Yeah, good. You got the right mental approach to doing podcasting, that's for sure. You know, I just checked the demographics, and yes, I think all those things you said are true. I think the parents I see a like a millennial parent, sort of being the core, you know, for your Spotify listenership, which just generally skews younger anyway, and there are some teens listening. But at the same time, I also think that that's the world we're in now. It's like people are going to consume the short clip and move on. That's there are some shows I don't download and listen to because I'm quite satisfied with the short clip, and I feel that's all I really need. And yeah, you know, the popular episodes are the popular episodes because the reaction you're seeing, so all that does check out, correct? The reason why

Todd Arkell  24:08  
the podcast is, you know, 40 to 60 minutes is because, personally, I don't have, you know, spitting Chiclets is a hugely popular podcast, and I'm not going to spend three hours to listen to their podcast, and I consume their short form videos, and I find that that's good enough for me. And I'm like, just what you said, right? So, and I'm not somebody if it's if I look at a podcast and I see that it's really long, I'm like, Ooh, I don't like, I kind of want to consume it in one sitting, or maybe two, you know, a commute here and a commute back, and I'm going to listen to the whole thing. Okay, that makes sense. And that's me. I don't think that's everybody. My wife will listen to a three hour podcast over the course of a couple of three days. That's her. That's her thing, and she has no problem with that. And I think everybody's different. So you got to come up with different ways to deliver different pieces to kind of reach the audience. Well,

Matt Cundill  25:00  
congratulations on the show and its success. So far, we know there's going to be great things in 2025 for this one, for anybody who's taking any form of youth sports, whether it's an individual sport like squash or badminton, even if it's baseball or hockey, which is a team sport, if you're playing football, all this stuff applies. You're very, very agnostic when it comes to the sports, and that's what I really love about the shelf. Well,

Todd Arkell  25:21  
thanks, Matt. I appreciate it. And I had somebody last night tell me, I've got an Olympic wrestling coach I go send me his email. You know, anything different, right? Something different to kind of give different people their their due, for sure. Thanks for doing this. My pleasure. Thank you,

Matt Cundill  25:37  
my thanks to Todd Arkell for joining me. He can be reached through his website, the mental approach.com all the connection points are on our episode page at You may also like.net this episode was produced by Evan stermanski and edited by Aiden glassy, and it's built with Love by everyone at the sound off media company. You