Maddie Mastro: The Mental Game

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. I'm literally strapping a piece of wood to my feet and riding it down a mountain right now. Like it's not that deep. It's just snowboarding. If this is what you want to do, we got you. I don't think it like really clicked in my head of doing it for a career until I was on a podium. I do snowboard half-fives. You have a bowl and you cut it in half. One side to the other side, like airing out and doing tricks. Higher, higher, higher until I got to 22 feet. And I was like, oh my God, that actually is really tall. I was getting in this place where there was a lot of mental stuff going into it. It was kind of like a final blowout where there was like a pretty big incident that like, this is not okay. This is affecting my snowboarding now. My coach should never be the reason my days are getting ruined. Like, you're scared of that? No, you're not. just like go do it. It's fine. I didn't even like realize that was like happening. You don't have to suffer to achieve your goals. Hello, Lemon Drops. Welcome back to another episode. I'm so excited. You guys know how much I love to interview athletes and specifically Olympians. They are just a different breed of human. The type of discipline and heart that these professional athletes have to have is so special. And it's something that I love just hearing about and learning. And on today's episode, we have Maddie Mastro on. She is an Olympic snowboarder, X Games medalist, and one of the most influential women in half pipe snowboarding today. Maddie made her Olympic debut at just 17 years old and quickly became known for her fearless style and technical progression, including becoming the first woman to land a double crippler in competition. She's been open about navigating major issues, intense pressures, and the mental side of committing big tricks. In this conversation, Maddie shares how her mindset around success has changed, the mantra that's guided her through it all, her experience with therapy and sports psychology, and how leaving a toxic coaching relationship completely transformed her relationship with snowboarding and with herself. This conversation is so great and just in time for the Winter Olympics where you can see Maddie competing this week. So I hope you guys enjoy this episode. Maddie, welcome to The Squeeze. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. I'm so excited. I love having athletes on the podcast because I just love hearing your guys' mentality and I always feel like every time we have one on there's just so much wisdom and oh gosh oh gosh i don't know if i've got wisdom no you do you do um so we start each episode off with this jar it's a little game called citrus got real if you want to pull one of those little like pieces of paper out of there and read it with the little one over here okay what is your guilty pleasure tv show guilty pleasure uh the summer i turned pretty i feel like was my guilty pleasure tv show this last it wasn't even summer i feel like but i guess it was over the summer yeah we're rent to we're rent to be friends i'm so obsessed with that so obsessed and now i'm just like patiently i don't know if I'm like happy or sad that we're getting like a movie. It could be either really good or just like not the same as the show. Yeah. Go either way there. Yeah. Like I feel like it might leave me wanting more. Like I feel content where the show left off. Same. The first couple episodes took me a minute and then I've like rewatched it many times now. Yeah. I've been thinking of doing a rewatch recently. I'm like, I feel like I need to rewatch and get some Conrad in my life. Yeah. Well, I restarted season one not that long ago. After season three, I went back and watched. And I forgot where the characters all started. Obviously, I know. But little sayings or- Yeah, all of it. The little details. Yeah. And I feel like it helped me because so much time went by before season three from season two. I feel like it made me realize why certain characters- Piece it all together more. Yeah, connect with it. certain things so good um well let's dive in uh we were just talking you're from southern california how did snowboarding start well i grew up actually in a small town outside of la called rightwood okay um there's a small mountain called mountain high that's about five minutes down the road from there okay um and i just that was like our backyard so it was just what you kind of did on the weekends in the winter yeah or like in the free time that we had it was just a part of our family in a way of being outside of being outdoors. And it just so happened that happened to be on a mountain in my backyard. So I got pretty lucky with that. It's so funny because I feel like when you're from California, like it's, you either are completely like engulfed in like mountain snowboarding, snow activities or not at all. Like I never ever did any form of snow activity. Like I just never, I mean, being from here, it's not like, it's not a far drive, but it's not a close drive no there's definitely like a colt falling in the sense of like everyone's got like driving around in southern california with their like mammoth bumper stickers and like you just know there's like this group of people that are so for snowboarding and skiing yeah and then the other half that are like grew up here and never ever like went skiing or snowboarding in their life it's one or the other for sure so it was just like fun for you growing up when did it like shift that you were actually like um work and sport i don't think it like really clicked in my head until i was like on a podium like of unlike a professional contest of like doing it for like a career yeah um i so that was probably not till i was like which sounds funny but like 16 or 15, 15 or 16. Yeah. That's when it like kind of clicked that like this could be my career or more so like this is my career that I'm living in right now. It definitely took some time because I felt like I got kind of lucky with how I like grew up of like I had a very normal life of like I went to high school. I like continued playing soccer and doing other things. So it wasn't until I was like fully thrown in or like in it that I, it clicked that this was like my, this could be my career if I wanted it to be. Yeah. So what does life look like after you're like, okay, maybe I do like really start to pursue this, take it more seriously. Do like, what are next steps in that? Yeah. Um, that's a good question. I was a lot of like, I think like sacrifice is a word. but like of no longer playing other sports, not going to public or like in-person high school anymore, like going homeschooled and then like traveling most of the year, doing school or like around the clock to try to get as much done as you can. So you can snowboard whenever you want and kind of going like full 100% all into that when you're 15, 16, 17, like it looks a lot like that. And then when you're older, it's pretty similar of like, you're traveling a lot. You're, you're gone most of the year. You don't have much time at home with family or friends, but it's definitely worth it. I say these things are like sacrifices, but like, it's kind of weird to label them as sacrifices. Cause what I get in return is like yeah so awesome yeah no for sure were your parents like game for you to pursue it or what was their like take on it they were they definitely were full supportive of like if this is what you want to do we got you but at the end of the day we like really don't care what you do as long as you're happy with your decision of that so they were really supportive in that sense but they they weren't like they didn't have any hesitations or anything like that yeah which was super nice Yeah, that's awesome. Can you explain to our listeners a little bit about what you do and specifically the half pipe, like what it is? Because I thought I, I don't really know. That's okay. So I do snowboard half pipe. That's what I compete in. We call it like a discipline. And snowboard half pipe is literally if you take a bowl, I guess. You have a bowl and you cut it in half. That's what a half pipe looks like. Just like a U-shaped, large mounds of snow. It's 22 feet tall. um so it's really tall and we go from one side to the other side like airing out and doing tricks and then we get in a competition we get like scored and graded on those runs against everyone yeah um and so i do that competitively year-round um i that's probably like i don't know if that was a confusing answer or if that made any sense no i did okay okay i mean obviously like i've seen your videos and I've seen you compete, but it, I, it's just, it's just so crazy that that, that, that tall, like it's tall. Yeah. They did like, I recently did like some type of media and they like brought out a huge, like long stick and they're like having me raise it up and they're like higher, higher, higher until I got to 22 feet. And I was like, Oh my God, that actually is really tall. Like you don't really quite grasp it from like TV at all of like, it's actually really tall. Yeah. How did you decide that that was what you wanted to like specialize in? No, I mean, I don't really know. I, I grew up and like, so half pipes, you have to have a lot of snow to build. Okay. So like in Southern California, it can be quite hard to build those because we don't have like large quantities of snow a lot. Um, so I didn't like grow up at my small little mountain yeah riding half pipe they had a half pipe at mammoth which was like a six hour drive away okay and i grew up going to that on like the weekends and like for holidays so i feel like it was kind of like one of those things of like you want what you can't have yeah and like it was this like special thing that i wanted to do because i didn't have it but it doesn't really make i don't really know why i chose it but i love i love riding half pipe and i love that i did choose it and I'm very happy that I did. But I don't know like when I was 15, 14, 13, what really was like the deciding factor. It was just like you want what you can't have kind of vibe. Yeah. That's interesting. Lately, my life has felt like a constant juggling act between work, social plans, travel, trying to move my body and still show up for myself. There are so many days where my own health ends up taking a back seat. 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So here's our challenge. Try Just Thrive Probiotic for 90 days risk-free. Visit justthrivehealth.com and save 20% with promo code SQUEEZE. See the difference yourself or get a full product refund, no questions asked. Take the 90-day Just Thrive probiotic challenge today at justthrivehealth.com slash squeeze. Be the best you with Just Thrive. On the note of it being so tall, you've talked about how you say to yourself, it's not that serious, it's just snowboarding. Where did that come from? It started, I don't know when it started, maybe a year or so ago, two years ago. I think it started because I was getting in this place where there was a lot of mental stuff going into it. And it was becoming this like really serious thing when snowboarding for me is like genuinely not that serious. And sometimes like life is not that serious. Like it's not that deep. I feel like it kind of stemmed from that thing of like it's not that deep. Like I'm literally strapping a piece of wood to my feet and riding it down a mountain right now. Like it's not that serious. It's not that deep. I'm going to be happy afterwards. I have like a good life otherwise. So like it's not that serious. And it just kind of helped calm me down in the moment when it feels like there's these like huge, huge things in front of me that are like life or death when they're really they're really not. it's like it's just snowboarding yeah what does training look like for you uh training is you're like where do I start yeah I'm like what kind of training um because where do you where do you spend most of your time because you probably you probably have to be in snow to train so it's a lot of traveling okay um we travel a lot to find the snow and then so that's a good question I'm like where do i start we so we travel from like location to location finding snow finding a good half pipe to train and compete in so but our days when we're actually training are very much like consistent with each other of like we go up to the mountain eight or nine o'clock and we ride and we take laps through the half pipe until i don't know anywhere from one to three o'clock in the afternoon come home go to the gym PT dinner yeah bed and so like that looks the same everywhere we go but we travel um pretty consistently throughout the year to do that yeah um this is like such a random question but I'm like literally thinking like logistically like you can't just practice like you have to physically correct me if I'm wrong you have to physically be doing the half pipe to like practice a trick that you're doing yeah so it's a lot of like repetition yeah of like all the things that like you see us doing in a contest we've done it a lot yeah in training somewhere yeah is it scary like trying a new trick for sure yeah I'm not I don't think none of us are immune to like being scared I don't think I mean maybe there's there's probably some like action sports athletes that are immune to fear yeah but i am not one of those people it's definitely scary yeah how how do you get yourself to fully commit to doing your tricks because i'm sure if you like even hesitate just like yeah there's like such like a small margin yeah it's a lot of self-talk like of like mentally yeah self-talking and like making sure that like internal narrative is like the right one for the situation of like trying these really scary tricks so a lot of self-talk happens and then like I feel like there's always that like one that haunts you where you like didn't really commit and it like didn't go well because you didn't commit so like I'm like I don't want to do that again so I'm gonna commit yeah from now on and do it right um but a lot of like internal dialogue for me is what helps me yeah get that going it's so cool I'm just I literally could never I would be way like so scared that's fair I also don't like height like you enjoy heights yeah it doesn't really they don't really go together yeah like you have to kind of not be scared of heights no it's so it's so cool but um you've talked about how people often see the medals and the cool tricks but not really the pressures that come from competing in it um what are those pressures and how have you like learned to manage those over the years yeah there's like just like on a human level of like your own pressures that I feel like every human experiences of like wanting to be successful wanting to like achieve their goals yeah and like those like very somewhat basic pressures of like I feel like everyone can relate to those ones I feel like everyone can relate to all of these pressures. Maybe, hopefully, we'll see. To the exterior pressures of my, maybe there's, I feel like, a fan base that I have that I want to, I don't want to disappoint them. Or I have sponsors that are investing in me and my performance. And if I don't perform, I feel like I'm letting them down. um so there's all those external pressures that like are there yeah managing them is hard i don't know if i've like it's something i like consistently work on yeah i don't know if i've cracked the code um i go to i have sports psych and therapy uh to help me crack that code but they're like ever evolving and changing. So we're still working on it. Yeah. I love that. Um, when did therapy start for you? I started, um, therapy about two years ago. Okay. Give or take. I've talked to a sports psych for about a year leading up to that, um, consistently. And then, well, now I do sports psych and therapy okay together what do they what's the differences for those um the difference is a sports psych is a little more like in tuned with like the sport yeah and the like tricks and like this the actual like like fear of like the trick of like or what's going on like the mental roadblocks like in my like day-to-day on hill training um and then the my therapist we tend to focus more on like my mental health yeah we're like sports like also mental health is very much involved in there but then therapy is just like an extra help of having another layer of like mental health health support yeah that's that's really cool to have someone that because we talk about how different like facets of mental health it's good to have someone that specializes in whatever it is but I think that's so cool like for the sports psych of it all having someone that can actually relate and like understand what you're thinking helps so much because I it definitely it's nice to have someone that like gets it in the sense of like what I'm doing every day with my sport yeah um and so it's good it like pairs really well with having a therapist as well do you feel like your outlook on the sport has changed since therapy and since doing this um good question has it changed i don't know if my outlook has changed or it's i mean yes even just like how you how you approach it or how you view it like day to day yeah i definitely i call it yeah it definitely has changed yeah my entire way that i like go about my day and my sport yeah I'm like why do I have to know it's changed completely yeah yeah I know I feel like sometimes if you don't actually like think about it like it's so it's like little increments at a time yeah your mindset is shifting and then you're like wait actually completely has yeah until you like take that moment and really like yeah everything actually is different from like three years ago 100 different um over the years how does how is your view of success changed maybe from when you were younger to now um I think well hmm I figured out what that's a great question I feel like when you're younger success for me was like completely different and I didn't quite grasp it yeah um or like you don't really like know what success is for you at all and it's ever changing for me and it becomes like a lot bigger and like borderline scarier when you're an adult I feel like because when you're a kid you don't like know what success is to some extent um and so my version of success is like ever-changing of like what's gonna make me happy at the end of the day yeah um yeah so I think like what my version of success would be is like what is gonna make me go home happy yeah at the end of the day now so it's like kind of like is similar to when you're a kid but it has a lot it's it's a lot bigger if that makes sense yeah um I'd love to hear about this if you're comfortable with sharing this next little bit but um a couple years back you shaved your head yeah this is an easy one I was like oh gosh what are we you're like what are you what skeleton are we dragging out but yeah you shave my head easy yeah um what you've talked about how the reason behind that was because you tied a lot of your identity to that to your hair was there something deeper to it or what like what what was going on um there was a lot of people like when I shaved my head were like I think they were like messaging my mom like is she okay or like people were like asking me like if I'm okay mentally yeah um if I was like having some type of breakdown which I was genuinely not having a breakdown I had thought about shaving my head for a long time for like four or five years And I had always like put it off because I did really put a lot of my like value and image and like my brand into my like I had really long blonde hair Yeah. And I just wanted to see what it was like to like not have that. Yeah. I like struggle with acne for a long time, too. and I always like pushed it off because it was like I'll shave my head when I like have clear skin or I'll shave my head when I'm like feeling confident confident in my body and all these different things and I was like one day I like woke up and I was like that's silly like I could have acne when I'm 45 yeah or like I could hopefully not the case but I could never be comfortable in my body ever and so then I'll never get to do this thing that I've wanted to do for so long because of these like really silly things. And so I just shaved it off and I highly recommend shaving your head. Everyone should shave their head. It's like, it sounds very extreme, but it's so, so good and so nice. Yeah. It's just like, I feel like it must feel like so liberating after for some, like, why is that? Like I'm, I'm sitting here thinking like I could literally never shave my head which is fair and I like thought the same thing a lot of times of like you know I don't think I could ever shave my head because I think it is like a really scary thing yeah but it almost became like my fears of like what would happen when I shaved my head is like I would feel like less feminine or um I was like a little worried about becoming misgendered or like being presenting more masculine and like had like some negative thoughts about that just in like a fear side but then once I did shave my head it was really actually nice to like just like embrace it of like and I felt like way more comfortable and confident in like my skin and myself of like who I was as a person um and then it was like okay if you're not feeling like extra feminine today like you get to like do your makeup or like put on some fun jewelry or like do something that like helps there so there are like really like I was scared to shave my head I was like and I thought that when I shaved my head that I was like for sure gonna like go to bed crying and like be like what did I do like why did I do this and I didn't cry once over like having a shaved head yeah I've cried harder at like bad haircuts with like actual hair and I've never I didn't cry over having a shaved head at all oh my gosh that's so funny um yeah I was gonna say did it shift the way you really saw yourself both as a person and an athlete uh yes I think it forced me to like be confident in my like self like as a person yeah it like forced me to like just be myself and be confident in that and not like have anything to like fall back on of just like everything's been quite literally shaved off like there's nothing to like hide behind there's no there's no like hair to hide behind or anything so like I just had to be like confident and comfortable in my person and being. 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Around that time, you've talked a little bit about it on social media about the toxic coaching relationship that you were in what made you finally realize that something not good was going on um I actually didn't really well there was like different layers and stages yeah of like a realization of like it wasn't good when I like really realized it wasn't good wasn't till like I had after like left the relationship pretty much like completely yeah um and then like some time afterwards when I like started to like unpack it and like it was still like lingering and like really started to like unpack it that's when I started therapy it's around that time that's when I like realized it wasn't um it wasn't good it was very very bad uh so it took some time and because I didn't fully grasp like what was happening when I was in it at all by any means. What finally gave you the strength to remove yourself from that? Because I think that's something that even though it sounds so like niche to like being an Olympic athlete with a trainer, like I feel like that relationship goes in, you know, in intimate ones and family ones and work, like it just is kind of a universal thing. How did you get the strength to do that because I imagine there's so much also pressure like I think the normal person myself included doesn't realize how much pressure I feel like we kind of see it like in tennis when I like we watch tennis and like they always panned to the coaches I'm like well what is he like coaching him like yeah there's so much depth to a coach in a sport even if the athlete is an Olympian they're like at the top of their sport there's so much pressure there um but how did you like get the strength to separate that um well the it was kind of like a final blowout where there was like a pretty big incident that like i was like no like this is not okay this is affecting my snowboarding now like this is you're like making you're ruining my day yeah um and i don't i don't want my days to be you shouldn't be my coach should never be the reason my days are getting ruined or like they should never be a reason like I go up to training and I I don't get what I want done is because like a coach is like doing some something unprofessional and is not being a coach and so that was kind of where I drew that was like the final day where I was like no like this is now affecting what I want and my snowboarding which is why we're here which sounds like kind of selfish but it was like yeah I'm here to snowboard I'm here to learn stuff I'm here to get better yeah you're my coach you're supposed to help me do that yeah um and you're not helping me do that right now so this is not this is not gonna work yeah um but I didn't realize like the gravity of like why it wasn't working until I'd already had like left yeah the situation and I like looked back on the relationship and I was like whoa that was that was crazy yeah I mean honestly that's like what it takes sometimes though is like you just know in your gut that something needs to change and you don't realize how toxic a relationship is or a work environment or whatever it may be until you're like completely out of it because that was me i i'm a nurse and i worked as a covid nurse and i didn't realize the extent of my ptsd that i was diagnosed with in all of these symptoms until i like actually removed myself from the environment yeah and i was like whoa like i am like actually not okay at all or it's like yeah when you like go into like a normal environment or like a contrasting environment or it doesn't even need to be contrasting just like you leave that environment and it's you're just in normal life and then you look back and you're like wow that was really not yeah okay or right and so I totally relate to that bit for sure yeah do you feel like your love for the sport was kind of dying oh fully with when you were in that environment I think my like I like say it of like who um I think my like love for the sport was dying and then like also I think I just really didn't like myself as like a person as a human in that relationship I just was like molding and conforming and being what I thought this person wanted me to be yeah um and so I I think it was like hard to like do something that you love yeah when you like don't like the person you are yeah and you also don't like the sport you're doing or the people you're doing it with. Um, but you don't even like, I didn't even like realize that was like happening because I say like my desire to like achieve my goals was so huge that I was like, I will do anything to get there. And it was like, if I'm going to suffer for five years and this like toxic coaching relationship, then if that's what it takes, that's like what it takes then I guess to like achieve my goals, which like you don't have to suffer to achieve your goals. I love that. That's, that needs to be heard loud and clear is obviously have to work hard, but if, if it's not a good environment and it's not healthy and you are suffering, like that's not, yeah, the work is so much harder than you don't have to make the work harder than it needs to be. Yeah. I'm sure now, like looking back on it, like I feel like you seem like you have like a breath of fresh air now like definitely there was like it came in like waves of like different like working through all the like yeah trauma that came with it um but even like when you're working through the like trauma and like then when you get past it i feel like the like underlying narrative is like i'm so happy i'm not there anymore yeah or like i'm so happy for this growth. And I feel like that is like a version of like breathing fresh air. Yeah. I love that. This sport seems very mentally taxing and the training and everything, the travel What is your support system look like So we travel I travel on like team USA So I have all my teammates and then on like my like for like more of like my you have your teammates but then i have like a pt that i travel with her name's t2 um she's someone that i would like very highly put in like the top tier of support she's like one of my favorite people on this earth who's a huge part of my snowboarding my boyfriend also snowboards and competes and does the same yeah the whole everything exactly the same um so he's a huge part of my support system and then I travel with my dog everywhere which is super fun um so she's part of my support system and then my new my new coaches are a huge part of my support system as well I love that we are all about dogs being a part of our support systems here because it's very true yeah uh that's really cool that your boyfriend does the same thing yeah so i'm sure like there's a lot of because a lot of the time like when i was in the hospital like my husband couldn't really like he could empathize with me but he could not like he doesn't get it at all yeah so that must be nice no it's super nice and i think like in snowboarding or like everyone's like or in any space a lot of people are like no I want someone that is like something completely different or has like absolutely no clue about our world uh but after like having a boyfriend who is in my world and gets my world it makes my life like yeah I don't I couldn't do it any other way yeah because I feel like he there's like a level of understanding of like obviously what you do is so time consuming and there's a level of like no you have to you have to keep up with this crazy schedule in order to excel no that's like the nice bit of like we both have like this understanding of like where snowboarding like stands in our life and how you have to like prioritize that and like yeah the things that like you have to sacrifice and it's not like any type of like it's not because I don't love you but it's like because snowboarding this is my job this is what I love to do and so we're okay with like having time apart and like traveling a lot and so he gets it it makes like all that stuff a lot easier yeah um how now how do you keep your love for the sport alive and not like feel burnt out because I'm sure at some point I mean I could be wrong but I don't know if there's like a level of like monotony that comes with it it's like I'm yeah like I'm doing this again like same routine how do you like keep that spark alive um that's something that I've I that's a good question how do I keep that spark alive it's something that I've like struggled with yeah um and I have gotten like we call it like burnout out yeah I have gotten burnt out before and something I struggle doing I have a really hard time I'm like that type of person where I say I have like two years it's like stop sit lay on the couch do absolutely nothing or like go go go go go so like when I say I'm going to do something like we're going like we're doing it yeah um so it's hard for me with snowboarding to like slow down and not like overdo it and do too much yeah so it's something I've been working on taking breaks is really hard. I think the people in my life are like getting better at forcing me to take a break. Yeah. Um, cause I'm not really good at like taking a break, but taking a break, having time off, going home, um, more is not always better. Uh, it's a learning process for me. Yeah. But those are some of the things I'm trying to do to help with my, with that, with burnout in general. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very thankful for my husband because I'm like the same. Like when I commit to something i'm like a thousand percent in like i will be like working until like i would i would be on my laptop like working or doing things like all day my husband's like it's 9 30 p.m like you need time to yeah close it down we're gonna watch it we're gonna watch a show we're gonna watch a movie and you're gonna turn your brain off yeah yeah you're right yeah turn the brain off that's like it's impossible to do when you're like on that 1000 commit program of like this is what we're doing yeah um what does rest look like for you rest good question i think rest is hard rest i feel like as an athlete is like a hard thing yeah in general so like rest is hard that's a good question uh to me rest would be like not doing like anything yeah like rotting on the couch yeah like taking a day off and like completely taking the day off of like don't go to the gym don't like go exercise don't do cardio like just like take the day off and do like like rot on the couch or do things that are completely completely different from your sport in any way shape or form yeah um yeah but it's hard to do that but that would be what I would call rest. Yeah. What are some of your biggest mental health tools, self-care tools that you love? Um, therapy. I'm like, I feel like I'm, should be like a spokesperson for therapy. Cause like someone's like telling me their problems. I'm like, have you thought about therapy? Like therapy has changed my life. Um, so therapy is a huge one i think there's like can be maybe even like as an athlete i feel like in snowboarding in particular not a lot of people like go to therapy which is fascinating to me after i've gone to therapy now yeah because i think everyone can benefit from it um so therapy is a big one what was the question again just like self-care oh self-care that's things you do yeah therapy um taking like a good shower like nothing beats that of like taking a good shower putting on like a clean comfy outfit yeah um watching your favorite show like doing something where you can like turn your brain off and it's not overwhelming in your head anymore you can just like relax yeah uh and sleeping yeah there's another one oh yeah i love yeah i love sleep i love sleep why do you think a lot of people in the snowboarding sport don't do therapy I don't um I think there's like I think in snowboarding there's like this mentality of like kind of like tough it out yeah of like it's all good it'll buff like we'll be fine yeah like you're scared of that no you're not just like go do it it's fine yeah um or like it like kind of like tough it out mentality yeah you're like kind of culture of like being tough and like uh so I think that's why yeah um it's also like I don't think there's a large conversation or like dialogue around like mental health and therapy and like different forms of like how to help your mental health um so I think there's just like not enough conversation around it as well yeah how did you get into it was did you do the sports psychology first yeah okay I did sports psych first um and she was helping me through my like trauma with my coach yeah and I think there were like kind of going on like almost a year of like working through this trauma of like me sitting down in sports psych sessions and like crying about it and like figuring out what the heck was going on where like one day she looked at me and she's like I think you need more help and that I can't provide for you in this circumstance yeah so I think you should look into getting a therapist um like I'll help you look into getting a therapist so she was actually my sports psych was the one who was like kind of pushed me towards that and encouraged me because she was like I can't provide the care you are needing for this situation um and super I'm super grateful that she was like able to do that as like a, like a professional to be able to like, yeah, like, Hey, you need more help than I can provide. That's awesome. Were you apprehensive to going into therapy or? No, I was instantly like, okay. Yeah. Like I need help. I need some, or I need like some type of extra support. Um, cause this is, uh, really affecting me. Yeah. Um, on the note of what you were saying of toughness, I agree. There's definitely like such, I see it in my friend. I have a lot of friends that are Olympic athletes in whatever regard, but, um, and friends with a lot of professional athletes too. And I see it a lot in that because obviously like you have to be so mentally tough to be at that level. But even just in, you know, me average normal life, like there's still such a stigma around like tough it out and what therapy is. And that's been like the biggest thing I've learned is like it's actually not a form of weakness. I feel it's really preparing yourself for when shit hits the fan and when life does get rough, you have those tools and you have someone that you can confide in no matter what. Like obviously I can confide in my husband and my family, whatever it is, But there's just something about having a person that you can go to and just say something and, you know, they're not going to like judge you or just you can say something and they're like, you don't believe that. And I'm like, yeah, no, you're right. Yeah. They're they're able to like help you really break down and like figure out what that thought means. And if it's like if it's true or not. Yeah. Yeah. No, I feel the same of like having this like toolbox that you can pull from or like. Yeah. I think one way that helped me kind of spin it in my head of like, I want to be successful in my snowboarding. I want to like achieve my goals. And I do all these other things. Yeah. Like I go to the gym. I work out five days a week. I do sports psych. I travel all over the world and train for hours and hours and hours. I like can't stop thinking about snowboarding. like why would i neglect this like other part of it of like what i think is like the biggest part of like the mental side of it so why wouldn't i try to like make that better yeah so i can succeed more for snowboarding um and so like that's like kind of how i started out with like sports psych and things like that and it like kept evolving of like yeah why wouldn't i like get a bigger, better like toolbox filled with tools. Yeah. And that encompasses like mental health and a therapist and a sports psych. And this like, I'm like building this whole team of people that can help support when you need it or even when you don't need it. Yeah. That was one of the biggest things I've honestly taken from this podcast was we had Lindsey Vaughn on. She was our like second guest years ago now. Um, and that was like one of the biggest takeaways I've had from anyone in life is she obviously has dealt with a lot of injury and she was like why aren't we treating our mental health the same as an injury like you do all of these things of PT and you do this and that to help heal like why aren't we doing that for our brains like it's literally the same thing very yeah it's the same thing when she said that I was like that literally makes sense why aren't we doing that yeah makes complete sense yeah I really like that actually that makes total sense. Last question I have for you is what are you most proud of yourself for? I'm most proud of myself for, I guess like it sounds like kind of simple, but just like where I'm at today. I think I don't, I share a fair bit amount on social media, but I don't like share all of it in its entirety or like yeah I share like tidbits here and there um and so I don't know like it's hard but like not everyone has seen like the whole thing of like what goes into it and what goes on so I'm proud that I'm where I'm at and I've gotten through what I have and I'm better for it yeah I love it yeah well great I'm so excited to watch you I feel like I'm about to enter this Olympics like with a fresh set of eyes because I have learned a lot today good about snow and sport and all of the things but I'm so excited for you and this is so lovely yeah this was so much fun thank you Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.