Plan B - Athletes supporting Athletes

“Starting over” sounds tough and inspiring, but for most athletes it quietly poisons confidence. We get honest about why that phrase can feel like your years of work got wiped to zero, especially during a career transition like a new team, new league, or new country. Then we introduce a simple mental performance framework Coach B has been building in doctoral research: recursive familiarity, the i...

We talk about why chasing constant happiness sets athletes up to feel broken on perfectly normal days. We connect authenticity, social media comparison, and sports culture to a practical mindset shift: “okay” is a valid place to live while you keep training.  • Oliver Tree as a reminder that truth beats performance  • the expectation of happiness as an impossible standard  • the hedonic treadmill...

This Podcast is your Podcast, text us if you're an Athlete with a story to share... The only podcast that is all about Athletes Supporting Athletes! Support the show To see more pictures, footage and out takes, bloopers and more follow us @PlanB.By Coach B on Instagram and or contact Coach B directly at www.coachbperformance.com to be part of the show. *Athletes must be 18 years or older or in...

If your sport vanished tomorrow, would you still know exactly who you are? That question sounds dramatic until you’ve lived it through an injury, a lost roster spot, or the quiet whiplash of an offseason when training finally stops. We talk honestly about the moment sport isn’t there to hold your routine together and why that can feel like losing a piece of your body, not just a hobby. We unpack a...

He was written off early: school felt like a fight, his grades cratered, and trouble found him before football ever did. Then one coach took a chance and everything shifted. Coach Ryan Jensen joins us to tell the full story, from getting humbled in junior college football to earning Division I offers and making history as a founding player at Old Dominion. If you’re a high school athlete weighing...

A BMX gate drops and everything you’ve trained for shows up in 40 seconds or less. That’s why I brought the Priest Family Racing crew onto the Plan B Podcast: Lisa and David plus sisters Savannah and Alexa, a Montana family living the real day to day of youth BMX racing while also chasing big goals in ski racing. We talk about what a normal race weekend actually feels like, from warmups and motos...

The moment you step on campus, the story can change. Your recruiter might be gone. The training plan you expected might never show up. The team culture you pictured might not exist in your event group yet. Coach B sits down with Syracuse D1 track athlete Hailey Schumann to tell the unfiltered version of that first-year reality and how to survive it without losing yourself as a runner or a person....

Six minutes can feel like a full day when it is just you, an opponent, and a referee on the mat. We bring on high school wrestler Jayden Wanalista, a rising name in a sport that deserves more attention, to talk about what wrestling really demands: commitment, composure, and the ability to perform while your brain is trying to talk you out of it. Along the way, we also get the story behind his sign...

This Podcast is your Podcast, text us if you're an Athlete with a story to share... The only podcast that is all about Athletes Supporting Athletes! Support the show To see more pictures, footage and out takes, bloopers and more follow us @PlanB.By Coach B on Instagram and or contact Coach B directly at www.coachbperformance.com to be part of the show. *Athletes must be 18 years or older or in...

The fastest way to understand where women’s jiu-jitsu is headed is to listen to someone living it. We sit down with Adriana Gutovska, a rising competitor and coach, to talk about the real world of Brazilian jiu-jitsu for women: how you get started, what makes a gym feel safe, and what it takes to keep showing up when the sport is still heavily male dominated. We get practical fast. Adriana shares...

Silence can look like discipline, toughness, and focus. It can also be a warning sign we are trained to ignore. “Silent Soldiers” is my clearest message yet about male athlete mental health, why so many young men learn to bury distress, and what happens when sport rewards performance but punishes honesty.  I walk through the latest NCAA athlete death data shared in a 2024 British Journal of Sports...

The water polo season ends, the noise fades, and that’s when a lot of athletes finally feel what they’ve been carrying. Coach B sits down with Jasper Dale, fresh off his final season as a D1 men’s water polo player at UC Irvine, to talk about what high-performance coaching looks like from the inside and what changes when you step onto the deck as a coach yourself. We get into Jasper’s full path, f...

What if half your roster processes the game in a completely different way—and that’s not a problem to fix, but an edge to unlock? Coach B sits down with psychologist and coach Dr. “Coach Carey” Heller to rethink how we talk to athletes so they actually hear us, remember it, and execute when the game gets loud. We dig into the real meaning of neurodivergent in sport—ADHD, autism, dyslexia—and why i...

A lot of us fall in love with sports from the couch, not the court. Anya did exactly that—and then turned her love of watching games into real-world impact that lifted entire teams. We sit down with this Cornell freshman to unpack how she co-founded a 16-person media group in high school to spotlight undercovered athletes, ran pro-quality media days, and later stepped into strategy roles shaping D...

Athletes the mind body connection is real don't ignore it ! This week we dig into how pre-game scrolling hijacks motivation, dulls focus, and undercuts team connection. Using Neuroscientist  TJ Power’s DOSE model as a guide, from his book The Dose Effect, we share practical swaps that protect brain chemistry so your mind matches your body on game day. • why dopamine drives effort and focus •...

The final whistle doesn’t have to mean game over. Former D1 soccer player Case Montanile joins us to unpack how injuries pushed him to step away from the game he loved and redirect that same competitive drive into commercial real estate. What emerges isn’t a sob story—it’s a playbook for turning athletic grit into career momentum, without losing your love for sport or yourself. We walk through the...

Ten seconds can hold a season’s worth of pressure. Nick, a senior 100, 200, and 4x100 sprinter, walks us through how he turns that pressure into speed by starting months early, lifting with purpose, and translating gym gains into cleaner mechanics on the track. We dig into the shift from “just showing up” to training with intention, and how simple choices—sleep, warmups, and daily core finishers—u...

We cut through the noise on trans youth in sport by examining real participation numbers, performance gaps after puberty, and the mental health stakes of belonging. We challenge glossy campaigns, map the current legal landscape, and offer a concrete idea to expand opportunity without sacrificing fairness. • mission of athletes supporting athletes and signal versus noise • critique of the ACLU More...

A coach’s origin story doesn’t always start with a medal. Coach Monica begins with love for the water, isolation in adolescence, and a brutal race that sent her out of the sport—only to return years later with a philosophy built on belonging, clarity, and second chances. We talk candidly about what it feels like to be the slowest in the fastest heat, why perspective arrives late, and how that mome...

What if the best season starts when you finally stop forcing it? That’s the turning point Maddie shares as we trace her path from a three-year-old flipping off couches to a UCLA D1 Gymnast and now a senior balancing bars and degree in applied mathematics! WOW!  Maddie almost walked away after Level 10, burned out by self-promotion and a chaotic recruiting landscape—then found her rhythm, got into...

Welcome to Season 2 - A season opener should feel like a spark—and Olav brings the fire. He’s a NorCal senior, a multi‑sport athlete, and a defensive end who finished his last season with an ACL and meniscus tear. What follows is a candid, unfiltered look at ambition meeting adversity: the moment a late‑game decision spiraled into surgery, and how he rebuilt his plan around smarter recovery, coach...

Deception is not a flaw in sport; its one of the main features that make elite sport so enjoyable to watch and so difficult to master but it is also the reason why it attracts individuals who exhibit and produce this type of behavior for the sake of producing the necessary results to win. So does that mean that being a "Snake" in sport is wrong? No not exactly but it does mean that for a...

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) as of March 2025 More than 720 000 people  will die due to suicide every year . Suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15–29-year-olds.  Suicide Prevention, as difficult as it is, must be a conversation we have to continue to have. Let's not stay silent. Have conversations like this. Lean into others. You are loved. People do care. O...

As high school athletes we never want our sporting days to end. The enjoyment of the game, being part of a team, our love of the sport, it is still there when we graduate, it doesn’t fade overnight...well what if you were to learn that it doesn't have to end. What if you were to learn that you can keep being part of a team, keep contributing, keep being part of the action.  This week we meet...

In this week's episode we have some wisdom for youth athletes from one of our younger podcast guests. Tyla, a throwing champion from Texas, is a Junior in high school and a two time competitor at the World Junior Olympics. Born in the USA Tyla's parents come from Trinidad and Jamaica and both had athletic careers before immigrating to the states. Tyla proudly informs me she is West India...