9: How to get kids to take this resilience stuff seriously with Brian Korinek
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How can you get kids who think this resilience stuff is silly or they are too tough for it to take it seriously? To answer that question we kickoff Season 2 of the Raising Resilient Kids Podcast with Master Resilience Trainer and Performance Expert Brian Korinek who teaches this stuff to the toughest people around - our soldiers in the US Military!
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Episode Transcript
Tom: [00:00:00] How can you get kids who think this resilience stuff is silly, or they're too tough for it, to take it seriously? To answer that question, we kick off season two with Master Resilience Trainer and Performance Expert, Brian Korinek, who teaches this stuff to the toughest people around our soldiers in the U S military.
Jeannie: Welcome to the Raising Resilient Kids podcast, where we provide parents, teachers, and coaches with ideas and strategies to help kids and teens build their resilience and achieve their potential in a healthy, fulfilling way.
Tom: Our question for this month is "How do I get a teenage boy to take this stuff seriously?" So this is a question that I get all the time cause, teenage boys just think they're too tough for this stuff, this stuff is silly. So, I thought of the perfect person To answer this question.
He is an old friend of both Jeannie and I's, Brian Korinek. He's actually a master resilience trainer, performance expert. And he works with [00:01:00] the toughest people around- the U S military. So Brian, welcome. We are so excited to have you. Yay.
if you could give us maybe, what are your thoughts on that? How do we get. Teenage boys to take this stuff seriously. This, this resilience this mental training.
So I thought of two things here.
One, parents, you model some of these skills. and when you're modeling these skills, label the skills. So for example, if you're in a tough conversation Maybe they got a D on their report card or they stayed out past curfew.
Brian: Difficult conversation, right? And so within eye contact with your youth, take a deliberate breath,
So then the, your child actually gets to see, Ooh, mom or dad was kind of worked up as they were approaching me for this conversation. Now they take this breath and they still might be heated. But maybe they're not livid at that point.
So one model, the [00:02:00] behaviors, after you've modeled the behaviors enough and plenty of time, sit down with your kid and do a skill together. I remember having conversations with mom and dad about me going to be the next United States men's soccer team goalkeeper,
and talking to me about, well, what, what would you be wearing? What was the gear that you got going on? What are some of the sounds that you hear in this stadium? So parents, not only are you modeling, but sit down and conduct some of these skills with your kid, right? This next one, I label it as a brain game hero.
Find somebody in your same sport, same activity, hobby that you look up to.
There's a likely chance that this elite performer meets with a mental coach or a sports psychologist.
Tom: , one of the programs that I've taught [00:03:00] working with student athletes, that's one of the homework things that I give them is, all right, I want your hero, go and research. And next week when we come back to class, I want you to tell me about their mental training process.
And I've yet to find a student who couldn't find at least something on that.
Brian: My old program director, and we'll give you a shout out here. Dr. Alison Pope Rodia. She's now at, , Holy Names University out in California. she first shared this tidbit with me when I was, uh, a wee young lad back at grad school, , elite performers out of the a hundred percent of time.
they dedicate to their performance. 80 percent of that time is physical. 20 percent of that preparation time is up here in quite possibly the strongest muscle that we have,
Tom: I'd love to hear more about, it sounds like the coolest job ever, a master resilience trainer, performance expert for the military. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
And then maybe, maybe just a couple techniques that you share with the soldiers [00:04:00] you work with.
Brian: One thing to realize all these sports psychology techniques and skills, they actually come from psychology. They do come from some counseling. They do come from social psychology, where the spin comes with sport is okay. We're talking about a particular performance,
and so this particular performance being soldiering. , so I do have a background in sports psychology from John F. Kennedy university, which allowed me to get the minimum qualifications for the job that I have right now. To be a master resilience trainer, performance experts, we have to have at least a master's in sports psychology or something really, really closely related in order to discuss those psychological techniques.
I was very fortunate that the last couple of weeks I was down in Fort Knox working at this event called [00:05:00] Cadet Summer Training, CST for short. What CST is, is a majority of the cadets present are rising junior to seniors. There are a couple of handful ones depending on MOS, Mission Operation Specialty.
They may be a sophomore rising up into junior level. I'm smiling because I love, I love quotes and I love movies. And so the first thing that I would share, is a flashback to a wonderful movie. City Slickers with Billy Crystal. And Billy Crystal is going to approach this cowboy who's sittin there smokin a cigarette. And they eventually get into a conversation of like, kinda, what's the meaning of life? And I believe the cowboy's name in the movie is Curly. And all Curly does while he's [00:06:00] smoking his cigarette, just raises one finger. And Billy Crystal's like, what are you talking about? Well, what Cowboy Curly was talking about is one thing. All of life, all of your performance can come down to one thing. So, with a majority of the cadets that I have, was able to have individual conversations on, I'd raise my finger, and they'd look at me just as Billy Crystal looked at Cowboy Curly. what's the one thing that's very important for your next performance? So for example, weapons qualification. So even before they pick up their weaponry, I'd ask them, well what's the one most important thing for you to prepare to pick that weapon up? Some would range from, managing my energy through a deliberate breath, or they would talk about what I call TNT thoughts, troublesome, nagging thoughts where they get us kind of blown up away from our performance and task at hand.
so I talked to them through, okay, [00:07:00] what are phrases that work for you?
Notice I'm not saying positive phrase here, right? This one individual cadet that I was having that conversation.
Uh, what are some of those TNTs, and at first he was saying you can't do this. Why are you trying to go be a commissioned officer?
Found out that he used to play, offensive line. And one of the things that he enjoyed to do as an offensive lineman were these things called pancake blocks.
Give a little extra push and you go make the next block.
And so that one thing that we worked on with this, we'll just call him a cadet ginger because he was a fellow ginger.
Cadet ginger was like, Ooh, I can do that. His shoulders suddenly just started to relax just again, just a little bit. And he's like, okay, next shot, next step. And so being able to just know what is that one thing [00:08:00] that is really important for the cadet ginger is for him to have the words that work for him. Big technique that I'm working on with people is being aware of their breath. in my brief to the cadet students a couple of weeks ago, I introduced the breath as a sacred thing
the first thing we do when we either pop out of Ma's belly or get pulled out from that C section, is we take an inhale in order to have that large scream and let everybody know, right? So it is the breath is the start of our life. It's also the last thing we do before we leave this earth is that final exhale
so a breath is a very, , spiritual performance
the simplest one being that. diaphragmatic breath, where inhale transition, exhale. There are [00:09:00] many, many other types of deliberate breathing strategies that work for different situations.
Tom: So I would assume, but maybe I'm wrong. You probably get some pushback from the soldiers you're, you're dealing with that. I see you laughing. So that probably means it's true. How, I mean, I would, I would have a lot of troubles handling that if they're pushing back.
What, you know, what do you usually do when that happens? What are some things you could, you know, to convince people who don't buy into this stuff, that it's worth their time.
Brian: Yeah, it's a wonderful question. It's a difficult situation to be in, right, because for the three of us to be at the positions where we are and to have done the things that we've done. We were already incorporating sports psychology into our lives, right? We didn't have the, acknowledgement or wherewithal of like the specific name for a skill,
so there's one way that I talk to people about that give me pushback is like, you're doing these skills already.
[00:10:00] I'm just helping you become more deliberate with what you're doing by giving you a name to a technique. A little bit of the process to that technique as well
so, first I tell them, you're already doing these skills. And if they don't believe me, I ask them questions like, well, what did you want to be when you were younger? Somebody that says an astronaut, right? Okay. Talk to me. What was your uniform like? They start describing it. Well, what was your spaceship going to be like?
Holy cow. It was going to have this. I was going to be able to go here. And I was like, okay, well, how fast would that spaceship be going? Oh, faster than the speed of light. And it's usually right around there. That question of like, what is the speed that you're going at in this imagery? Okay. That a soldier will put their hands down.
A lot of cadets as well. They'll put their hands down. Okay. Hippie man, you're teaching me some right things. You're teaching me some good things here. [00:11:00] Okay, cool. So one, just to, talk to them in a manner that they realize they're already doing these things,
Jeannie: This conversation has been so wonderful.
We've talked about how a certain level of stress is just inevitable in our lives. And a lot of times, stress is, it's a good thing if we want to achieve our potential. So what is something that causes or used to cause you a lot of stress and how do you work through it?
Okay.
Brian: so I am in the process of quitting cigarettes and being finished with those cigarettes. wonderfully evil things, right?
It's a very To me, it's a very mindfulness technique where I feel and notice the physical sensation that is telling me, Bri, go have a cigarette. I'm going to breathe all of those feelings, all of those thoughts of connected to the nicotine and connected to that cigarette just out of my body.
Right. And a real neat [00:12:00] thing with the, with the breathing. So I'll focus more in on my exhale because the exhale is connected to our nervous system that is controls, , rest and digest. And this is the second thing that has helped me with overcoming cigarettes. I am not a smoker. . I am a person who has a bad habit of smoking cigarettes.
Cause we are more than our thoughts and we are more than our behaviors.
Tom: Thank you so much for your time, Brian. We greatly appreciate that was just fantastic. And it's great to see you again. I'm excited to continue to keep in touch to hear all the great stuff you're doing.
Brian: Thank you for i'm very humbled and very excited that You thought to be able to include me on this on your wonderful podcasts.
Tom: Well, Jean, it was great to catch up with Brian. That's an incredible job he's got. What was your takeaway, your main takeaway from all he had to offer?
Jeannie: I mean, he had so much great stuff, but particularly that brain game [00:13:00] hero and the second he talked about it, I feel like particularly this being our first episode happening in September. We just came off the summer of the Olympics. I saw so much of the breathing exercises, the visualizations, mantras, that these athletes were doing and you saw it live on TV and then they would go and win gold medals. My favorite one was, , Steven Neterovich.
He was our pommel horse specialist for our men's gymnastics and before he went up to do pommel horse to try to win the bronze for the U.
S., the cameras caught him eyes closed and his head is back. And it literally looks like he's sleeping. Steven Neterovich. Was on Jimmy Fallon just a few days ago and he tells Jimmy Fallon.
Clip from Jimmy Fallon: I needed to calm down. So all I'm doing there is I'm tilting my head back and doing my breathing exercises and visualizing a lot, like a hundred times.
Jeannie: And when I heard him say that, I'm like, that is literally the things that we talk about every month. Like, and here's somebody who won the bronze. So cool.
Tom: That's awesome. Yeah, that was, that was quite a story. And, [00:14:00] I thought it was interesting how Brian said, you know, elite performers. 80 20, 80% of their time is spent on the physical and 20% is on the mental. So when you, you know, you mentioned that to the kids, they can kind of measure that themselves.
All right. How much time when I'm practicing is physical versus mental?
Jeannie: Totally. Another thing that, that Steven said in the interview with Jimmy Fallon was, for the Olympic game, pommel horse was last. So he's like, I did my warmup and then I had five hours
Tom: Ho,
Jeannie: my turn.
Um, And, I mean, talk about ways to, like, build up stress, five hours of just waiting for your time. So the fact that he had that 20 percent of, of those visualizations of those breathing exercises, he could go back to something that he had been practicing all along through his training. It was such a big part.
He wasn't able to go on the pommel horse and practice right before, but he could practice in his head and do his breathing exercises.
Tom: I, I liked how he talked a little bit about, you know, the exhale, how, how important the exhale is, how that's, attached to the, the, the [00:15:00] nervous system. I'll ask you a couple of questions
Is it better to breathe with your chest or your stomach? Which one should move out the farthest?
Jeannie: would say your stomach
Tom: Very good. Yeah. I think most people breathe with their chest, but Yep,
Jeannie: totally do. I just know that from singing,
Tom: Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Yep, very good, very good. What about nose or mouth?
Jeannie: Ooh. Okay, I'm gonna guess you breathe in through your nose, breathe out through your mouth.
Tom: Usually the nose is the best kind of focus. They usually recommend closing your mouth, especially when you're sleeping just breathing through your nose is the best. It's, it's
Jeannie: interesting. So, breathing in and out through your nose.
Tom: Correct.
Yeah.
Jeannie: Breathing exercises are these, this little tool that you can have in your back pocket you can use at any point in time before kids taking a test, before you go to a job interview, or before you go and win the bronze at the, at the Olympics.
Tom: Exactly.
Jeannie: I'm probably going to be the job interview, or you know, not, not the Olympics.
I'm not really an athlete, but um, [00:16:00] but just in case one day I am in the Olympics. I'll be
Tom: All right.
That was a , good episode number one
Jeannie: Great episode. Number one, looking so forward to next month and we will see you all then.