The Pressure Lab

What does a professional soccer player actually eat to perform at the highest level, and how does that translate to a youth athlete eating lunch between classes and playing a game at 7 PM? In Episode #11 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with Marissa Gaab, Head of Nutrition for the Philadelphia Union and Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, to bridge the gap between elite sports nutrition...

What happens to a young athlete's mental health when the label the world gave them stops being true? In Episode #10 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with Philadelphia Union midfielder Ben Bender for one of the most honest conversations about athlete identity, injury, and resilience The Pressure Lab has produced. Ben Bender was the first overall selection in the 2022 MLS SuperDraft. He...

What does it actually take to build mental toughness in young athletes, and how does the psychology used at the Olympic level translate to a 15-year-old competing on a Saturday morning? In Episode 9 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with one of the most accomplished sports psychologists in the world to find out. Dr. Colleen Hacker has served as a member of the United States coaching sta...

What does it take to keep training when there is no game, no crowd, and no guarantee it will ever matter? In Episode 8 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with two Philadelphia soccer products who answered that question in real time, during one of the most disorienting periods in sports history, and came out the other side with something most athletes never build: an identity that does no...

What happens when the sport you love starts to feel like proof of who you are? Washington Spirit midfielder Maddie Elwell joins host Keith Wilford for a conversation about one of the most overlooked pressures in high-level sport: the slow erosion of identity when performance becomes the measure of your worth. Maddie played at Vanderbilt University and competed professionally in the NWSL. She knows...

What can a goldfish teach an athlete about mental fitness? Forget the mistake. Replay the good. It sounds simple. For most young athletes, it is one of the hardest skills to build. In Episode [#6] of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with Dr. Scott Glassman, licensed psychologist, author of A Happier You, and director of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at Philadelphia Col...

A mistake on the field can become a story online before the final whistle. For young athletes, social media means the scoreboard never really disappears. In Episode 5 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with Dr. Megan Walls, pediatric psychologist at Nemours Children's Hospital, to talk about what social media is doing to teen athletes and their mental health: their confidence, their iden...

For a goalkeeper, every mistake is in the spotlight. There is no hiding, no reset, and no one standing behind you. It is the most isolated position in soccer and the most unforgiving one mentally. In Episode 4 of The Pressure Lab, Keith Wilford sits down with Cate Cantu, ECNL national champion, U.S. U19 Youth National Team goalkeeper and Louisville signee, and Jillian Loyden, former U.S. Women's N...

Alan O'Mara knows what it feels like to reach the top, and then lose yourself on the way down. Keith Wilford sits down with Alan O'Mara, GAA footballer, founder of Real Talks, and author of "The Best Is Yet to Come," to explore what resilience actually looks like from the inside. At the height of his career, Alan was playing in front of hundreds of thousands of people. Six months later, he hit roc...

Carli Lloyd’s legendary career was built by learning how to lose. Carli and host Keith Wilford sit down to explore the mental work behind one of the most decorated players in the game. Carli looks back on getting cut from the U-21 National Team, questioning whether she wanted to keep playing, and rebuilding her confidence after setbacks. They get into the pressure she carried into the 2015 World C...

In this episode of The Pressure Lab, host Keith Wilford sits down with Philadelphia Union legend Sébastien Le Toux and sport psychologist Dr. Alec Baker for an honest conversation about what pressure really does to athletes. They get into where it starts, how comparison, coaches, parents, and social media can warp it, why vulnerability so often gets mistaken for weakness, and what actually helps w...