Why You Can’t Switch Off Under Pressure (And How Elite Performers Fix It) | David Sammel

0:00 My phone lit up with a WhatsApp message from another player basically saying Dave can't switch off heads in a mess. You know, heads totally going, you know what if I freeze tomorrow? Now here's what I want you to think about. Obviously I wasn't there. I wasn't in the lobby, I wasn't going to be courtside the next day. I wasn't even on the same continent and I was just a voice note in the dark on a phone for that player. Now he was lucky I was still awake and I could send back a message.

0:34 Hi, I want to talk to you about the day. I realized that I could be everywhere and it happened one night. A night that genuinely shifted something in me. And this has been a gradual shift. But this was one of those moments where something clicked and it really stuck with me. It was close to midnight and I'm not even going to tell you what time zone I was in because honestly, after so many years on the tour, they all kind of blurred into one. But Sam, the players with had a big match the next day.

1:04 And I was just chilling and reading a book, winding down from the day, getting ready for the next day. And my phone lit up with a WhatsApp message from another player basically saying Dave can't switch off heads in a mess. You know, heads totally going. You know, what if I freeze tomorrow? Now, here's what I want you to think about. Obviously, I wasn't there. I wasn't in the lobby. I wasn't going to be courtside the next day. I wasn't even on the same continent. And I was just a voice note in the dark on a phone for that player.

1:35 Now, he was lucky I was still awake and I could send back a message, a small framework, nothing elaborate, simple stuff that I knew would calm him down and give him some clarity so he could sleep and hopefully do well. And the next day, he did win. And you know, people might say great coaching Dave, but that night I remember sitting there and thinking, wouldn't it be great if there was a different way of doing this where players could have 24/7 access to help? That would be something really different, a game changer.

2:11 Basically, coaches can't be everywhere and available anytime of the day. And I was thinking for 35 years I've been building building mental frameworks, my book locker room power, you know, the great story of the positive and negative wolves, you know, now proven to be scientifically very, very accurate and helpful. You know, unshakable the difference between belief and confidence. The four step reset. Yeah. And mindset. College, something I built during COVID, which is a comprehensive art of competing and life standards course, you know, acceptance and curiosity under pressure.

2:48 All this experience documented. These aren't things I just read in a book. These come out of the debris of lost matches, match debriefs, you know, out of the brutality of the sport in hotel corridors where A is in conversation with you when they're falling apart and thinking that it's not worth going on. The thinking is real and I know that this stuff works because I have the proof. The thing that was keeping me up at night was knowing that the moment that a player or leader or an executive actually needs help, it's almost never the moment when you're scheduled to talk with them.

3:28 It's usually 5 minutes before the warm up when the nerves start to jangle and you know, in in the car after a result that just absolutely guts a player. It's on the practice court. You know, it's 7:00 AM when you know not a ball's landing in the court and the doubt really starts to creep in. You know, it's it's 6:00 AM before a board presentation and the inner critic is just like going into OverDrive. Basically. It's in the spike, the actual spike when the pressure is hitting. And here's what I know, not theoretically about high performance.

4:04 You know, it's really about what you know. It's about what you can remember in the moment that you need it. And then having the discipline to apply the tools that, you know, work when the pressure is on top. Performers don't think differently. They just manage themselves so much better. And most of the people I work with, and this includes myself, we're not short on knowledge or ability. We're basically short on recall under pressure. Our own thinking, you know, goes into that overthinking place exactly when we needed to kind of calm down and go quiet the most.

4:41 And I started seeing a bottleneck clearly, which is I'm basically one brain with finite hours and a demand that keeps growing for this kind of feedback and work. And of course, this was a new problem for me because when I was running academies and responsible for a number of players and coaches, you know, I would think a lot about this that wouldn't it be great if players and coaches could just have a clone of myself and make it easy for them to reach me when they whenever they needed help, you know, or lift up and something that they didn't have to wait around for, you know, the next session or catch me between courts or send a WhatsApp message and hope that I can reply, you know, in time before a match.

5:28 So this thinking has always been there. I just didn't have an answer for it other than encouraging players to keep notes for their own use and to refer to them when they were in crisis. That's until October last year when something landed. I was reading about AI technology and, you know, got to a place where I felt I knew the actual capability and realized for first time that building my own ring fenced version of ChatGPT was possible. Not a generic chat bot that I didn't want. Not some tool that pulls answers from the Internet and wraps them in, you know, fancy sports language.

6:11 Something built entirely from the inside out, from my frameworks, my language, my 35 years of field experience, a digital brain that answers the way I speak and the way I would answer. I was lucky enough to meet Robert, a tech Wiz, and we started building it. And what we've created, I'm calling the SAML method. It's my thinking, all of my thinking, Structured, inaccessible, easy way and available at the exact moment when somebody needs it, not next Tuesday at 3:00, not after bad week when I've maybe finally got some time to speak with a player in the spike.

6:53 And I also want to be clear what this is not. It's not motivational quotes. It's not generic sports psychology and basic content. It's not safe, sanitized advice that's never been anywhere near a lot of room, you know, or place of genuine pressure. You need to know what it's like to have a player work walk on to center core. These are frameworks that have worked at the highest levels, tested on tour in the biggest stadiums. And it's now accessible in a ChatGPT form that meets you where you actually are.

7:29 For years, players have said to me, Dave, I just wish you could have been there at that tournament or which you could travel to this tournament with me, essentially be in my pocket for matches. And I used to laugh for though at this, you know, laugh it off is impossible because it was. But of course, last October I realized that it was now possible and we built it. The SAML method goes live Nets next after a couple of months of successful beta testing. And the feedback's been great. And I know it's a winner and a game changer.

7:59 And here's what I want you to take away right now. Whether you get involved or not, understand that if your performance regularly drops under pressure, and I mean anyone think to this, it can happen to, it's really because you're incapable. It's never really a talent problem. It's usually a confidence problem at its root in the moment. And this usually happens because we forget what we already know. And that unlike talent, unlike genetics, unlike your draw in a torment, that is a solvable problem.

8:34 So I've solved that. Click the link in the show notes and learn more about how to access the Samuel method and and really, really excited also to bring you in an amazing guest next week. I'm so excited for Hamish Kerr, who's the current world and Olympic high jump champion from New Zealand and bring you his thoughts on what it took to become the best and what still drives him to this day. This is not a podcast you're going to want to miss, So please tune in next week. And thanks for listening to me as always.

9:09 I realize everybody's time is valuable and I do not take that for granted. So if you like this podcast, please share it and please like it and do all the things that you can do to help and understand that. I really do appreciate, you know, having you take the time to watch or listen to this and see you next week with Hamish Kerr. For watching Locker Room Power with David Samuel, if you enjoyed the episode, hit subscribe and leave a comment on your favorite platform. See you in the next one.