Hey Hey Hey Reader!
I was trying to finish some writing the other day, and my brain completely bailed on me. I had notifications going off like popcorn, random sounds that I swear were not even from my devices, and a couple of interruptions that cut right through any chance of staying productive. It felt like I was trying to read a map while someone flipped the pages at full speed. After a few minutes of this circus, I closed my laptop, leaned back, and just let out one long, exaggerated groan. All I could think was, “OMG. Make it stop.”
It was funny at first. Then it hit me. My entire meltdown lasted maybe five minutes. Five minutes of noise, clutter, and unexpected disruptions, and my brain tapped out.
And it got me thinking...
If I can feel that overloaded from a handful of distractions, what does it feel like for the athletes whose minds work on a different rhythm altogether. The ones who walk into practice already carrying sensory fatigue from a whole day of school noise, social noise, emotional noise, and actual noise. The ones who need predictability to feel grounded. The ones who cannot filter out the things the rest of us barely notice.
We love to say things like “focus more” and “pay attention,” as if those are buttons athletes can press. But for many kids, focus is not an instant skill. It is a fragile state that depends heavily on the environment we create. If the gym is chaos, if instructions are unclear, if transitions are rushed, if expectations shift too quickly, we lose athletes before the drill even starts.
And that is not a flaw in them. It is something for us to understand.
I keep thinking about how often we misread shutdowns. We see an athlete go quiet, freeze, tune out, move slow, or drift mentally, and we label it lazy or unmotivated. But what if it is overload. What if the noise in their mind is so loud that our voice cannot get through. What if the effort they are putting into staying afloat is more work than we realize.
There is so much happening under the surface in youth sports. Neurodivergent athletes are processing different signals at different speeds, with different sensitivities, and in different patterns. The ball speed might not bother them, but the echo in the gym does. The drill might be easy, but the way it is explained might not land. The task might be simple, but the transition into it might be the real challenge.
This does not mean we lower standards. It means we create clarity. We slow down just enough to make the moment smoother. We check our tone. We give one instruction at a time. We build small pauses between tasks. We stop assuming that all athletes absorb information the same way.
The fix is rarely dramatic. Most of the time it is a shift you cannot see unless you are looking for it.
If you want to explore this topic more deeply, I talked about neurodivergent athletes on The Mental Cast in Episode 038 - Five Hundred Fifty-One. It is not a recap of this newsletter, just another angle and a more open conversation about how we as coaches can do a better job supporting every type of brain on our teams.
A few hours after my notification meltdown, I laughed at how ridiculous I must have looked. One little sound and I was ready to live off the grid. But it reminded me of something important. If five minutes of chaos can derail me, imagine what a full day feels like for a kid who navigates the world with more sensory sensitivity than I do.
So here is the call to action this week. Bring the volume down a little. Slow your transitions. Use clearer language. Give athletes a few more moments to process. One small act of calm can open the door to a much better practice.
And on a related note, if you have athletes who want to improve their daily habits and mental routines, I just released my new book, Athlete:365. It offers short daily mindset lessons with journal prompts designed to help athletes build focus, confidence, and resilience throughout the year. Nothing heavy, nothing clinical, just steady growth in small, consistent bites. You can take a look here: https://amzn.to/4i35nLq
And if all else fails this week, turn off a few notifications. Trust me, it helps.