The Mind Mastered: Secrets of Excellence with Dawn Grant Podcast
Season 1 Episode 23
In this conversation, Dawn Grant interviews Dr. Allison Brager, exploring her journey as an athlete, educator, and neuroscientist. They discuss the importance of mental aspects in sports, the evolution of pole vaulting, and the significance of humility and teamwork in achieving excellence. Allison shares her experiences in CrossFit and the military, emphasizing the value of community and the role of neuroscience in enhancing performance. The discussion culminates in valuable advice for listeners on pursuing excellence in their own lives.
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Podcast Transcript:
Dawn Grant (01:13)
Hey there everybody, welcome to Mind Master, the secrets of excellence. This is Dawn Grant, your host, and I'm excited to have here with me today, Allison Breger, who has an awesome resume and some cool things that she's doing and a lot of parallels to ⁓ what I'm teaching and doing as well. I think that it's gonna be really interesting to see the similarities and also ⁓
how she's applying that in probably a much deeper way. But Allison, thank you for being here.
Allison (01:49)
Well, thank you so much.
Dawn Grant (01:50)
So tell me if you could give me and the audience just a quick synopsis and then we're gonna dive in deeper. So what are some of your accomplishments and who are you and what do you bring to the table?
Allison (02:06)
Yeah, so ⁓ it's funny, my own students, I recently had them complete a purpose paper ⁓ in terms of what their purpose is in life. And so I, in this stage have identified as a educator, a coach, and a mentor ⁓ having been on the other side for so long. I was a college athlete, tried to make ⁓ the 2008 Olympic team in track and field.
⁓ wasn't successful, but then found the sport of CrossFit. ⁓ as I was getting my PhD in neuroscience, ended up competing in the CrossFit games and, ⁓ continuing on with, my education in neuroscience, spent a little bit of time, ⁓ teaching and doing research with neuroscience at a medical school, ⁓ before realizing I wanted a greater call to service. And so I ended up.
commissioning in the military as a neuroscientist. That's not really well known that the military has scientists as part of daily military operations, but it also makes sense just because of, ⁓ if you think about a lot of new technology that's available to the public, most of that novel technology starts with military use ⁓ before it is transitioned for ⁓ helping, right, ⁓
Dawn Grant (03:34)
Nice.
Allison (03:34)
public in some capacity. So that's, you know, I guess my life in a nutshell, 41 years on earth. I just turned 41 last week. So thank you.
Dawn Grant (03:41)
I'm ⁓
happy birthday.
Yeah, that's a good little synopsis. So ⁓ let's go back a little bit. I'm curious, like where did you grow up and were you interested in sport from a really young age? And what was it that pulled you towards that?
Allison (04:06)
Yeah, so I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, which is actually really well known for sports. There's actually an ESPN documentary about ⁓ my hometown. It's called Youngstown Boys featuring ⁓ Jim Tressel, who was a renowned football coach at Ohio State and one of his star players ⁓ who was his star player until he got caught up with like gang and drugs and other things, ⁓ which actually is kind of
reminiscent of where I grew up. So I grew up ⁓ in Youngstown, which at the time when I was in high school, we were the most dangerous city in the country. Per capita, we had more murders than any other US city. So higher than Compton, higher than Camden, New Jersey, ⁓ higher than any classic place you think is a dangerous place. ⁓ And so there was always this sentiment growing up where I did that your ticket out of town was to be good at sports.
Dawn Grant (04:47)
don't know.
Right.
Allison (05:04)
That was sort of instilled in the community from a very early age. ⁓ With success, like Bernie Kozar went to my high school. That to me is actually my greatest accomplishment is I share the same hall of fame as Bernie Kozar. We've made that inducted into our high school's hall of fame, obviously at the Times. ⁓ I had a great uncle who was a linebacker for the New York Giants.
Dawn Grant (05:20)
come on now.
Right.
Allison (05:32)
I have a distant cousin who played, who's a quarterback for the New England Patriots. ⁓ So, and I didn't even think about it at the time, but everyone on my mom's side of the family was a college athlete, largely division one athletes. ⁓ But that is something that I realize now in hindsight, that's not rare, that's not common in most families that. Yeah. And so that being said, like,
Dawn Grant (05:54)
right, I would say not, no.
Allison (06:01)
I wanted to be a professional athlete when I grew up. And if not that, I think like every other kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. ⁓
Dawn Grant (06:09)
Every other kid wants that either.
Allison (06:11)
I don't know. I have like achieved the one in terms of being a professional athlete in my life. ⁓ I didn't mention this in the intro. I'm still trying to be an astronaut. I've gone through a selection twice. I was a semi-finalist in 2020. So it could still happen someday. yeah, I guess these goals I had growing up are still in the forefront, even though
⁓ You know, I have smaller goals.
Dawn Grant (06:42)
Yes,
these are great goals. And talk about striving towards excellence. Like, my gosh, there's so much that you probably have in your mind that you can share related to some of the secrets of what's kept you going and such. So at a young age, you just knew because of where you were growing up and the experiences there.
that you wanted to be a professional athlete or functioning as an athlete at a high level. So what sport did you choose early on?
Allison (07:18)
So I was, ⁓ I think like every girl in the eighties and nineties, I did dance and gymnastics to start. And that's what I did all the way throughout high school. We used to dance on like cruise ships in the summer. So I had like interesting experiences for that. So I used to pay for my dance and gymnastics lessons by ⁓ coaching like the young girls. That was like a really nice sort of like work study program. My...
the owner of our dance and gymnastics studio created, ⁓ because Youngstown was just a very impoverished city. Like the equivalent of middle-class in Youngstown is like poverty elsewhere in the U.S. So, ⁓ you know, I was able to like go on all these trips ⁓ growing up. We danced in New York City. We used to dance on cruises. used to compete around mostly the state of Ohio with gymnastics. We used to have nationals every year down in ⁓
Dawn Grant (07:49)
Yeah.
Allison (08:15)
Disney World at the Wide World of Sports. So that was my sport. And then when I was in high school, ⁓ like I did track and field in middle school, mostly gymnastics events, right? Hurdles, long jump, high jump, which I wasn't very good at, ⁓ but I tried anyway, because I wasn't tall. And then when I was a junior in high school, girls were finally allowed to pole vault in Ohio. So, right, you talk about...
Dawn Grant (08:18)
Yeah.
Allison (08:45)
sexism and restrictions in terms of sports females can participate in, females really weren't allowed to pole vault until 2002, at least in the state of Ohio. So a lot of the girls that I grew up doing gymnastics with and myself ended up being the first pole vaulters in Ohio, the first state champions ⁓ in the sport. And then most of us gave up gymnastics to compete and pole vault in college.
Dawn Grant (08:58)
Wow, yeah.
Wow.
Allison (09:14)
So that's
what I did in college. I was a pole vaulter and then I was a hip tathlete. So right, 400 meter hurdles, all seven events of the hip pathelon, which are all very much harnessing the strengths of being a gymnast.
Dawn Grant (09:29)
Yeah, for sure. I find pole vaulting very fascinating. I mean, I really do. And I've never even come close to even considering trying it. So I don't even know what goes into it other than watching it. Looks pretty spectacular. ⁓
Allison (09:46)
Well, you
just search it's just like any other gymnastics event, you just like you learn the foundation and I coach pole vault now that is something I've done. I still compete as a master's athlete, but I also give back and coach and it's like you spend months drilling the fundamentals just like you do in gymnastics before you include the more advanced skills. Not every coach does that, but you're also increasing the risk for injury and stuff if you're not doing that.
Dawn Grant (09:56)
huh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Allison (10:16)
And so it takes like years for kids to have a breakthrough. It's one of those sports like gymnastics. You spend years working on something and then one day you have a breakthrough where you'll go and this happens to nearly everyone, like boy or girl. Like a girl will go from like six feet to nine feet overnight and a boy will go from like seven feet to 11 feet overnight. Just because this one day they finally put all the fundamentals together.
Dawn Grant (10:36)
Wow.
Yeah.
Allison (10:46)
to make it work.
Dawn Grant (10:47)
That's fascinating. I had no idea of that L-stat and how it could happen that quickly and overnight. Tell me if I'm wrong, but does that have something to do with not being so conscious about it and having had enough repetition that it then becomes more intuitive?
Allison (11:04)
Yeah, for sure. It's certainly muscle memory. it's one of those things like right now I'm lucky if I get to pole vault like seven, eight times a year, just because of right being an adult and having a career and schedule. But I've taken in my adult life like a four year break from pole vaulting just because right during COVID it's not like I had access to a facility. And it's like riding a bike like you never forget the timing your step count.
Dawn Grant (11:27)
Mm. Right? ⁓
Allison (11:34)
⁓ and often a lot of times, like when, ⁓ right in gymnastics, know Simone Biles talks about it, the twisties, like the same thing can happen in pole vault too, where you, like, if I have an athlete who keeps running through, ⁓ because their timing is off and like, they don't want to injure themselves. That's the best thing you can do is get them away from pole vault for like as much as a month, right? Just like reset the mo the muscle motor pattern.
Dawn Grant (11:59)
Mm-hmm.
Allison (12:03)
and then let them return a month later. And most of the times, like the twisties or the equivalent of them is gone ⁓ because of muscle memory.
Dawn Grant (12:15)
Interesting, very interesting. ⁓ So you start pole vaulting, you do that in college, and when do you set your sights on the Olympics?
Allison (12:27)
So I had, ⁓ so at the time I graduated college, like pole vault was still very new, even as an Olympic sport. So the first time pole vault was contested in the Olympics was in 2000. And the first Olympic pole vaulter, Stacey Dragila, like she was the first ever American to compete in the sport of women's pole vault. ⁓ So I had a coach at the time.
where he wasn't a good technical coach, but he made me a powerful athlete. He was a world champion and former world record holder in the triple jump, went to a few Olympics. But he was like the jumps coach for all of the jump athletes at Brown University. So it was just one of those things where through the technique work that I had developed from who I learned pole vault from,
⁓ back home in Ohio who happened to be the best pole vault coach in the country and still is the best pole vault coach in the country. I thought to myself, well, I already know I'm going back to Kent state to get a PhD, ⁓ in neuroscience. Like, why don't I. Right. Try to do both. I learned in hindsight that was stupid at the same time. And so I went back to Kent state.
to get my PhD in neuroscience and then right down the street was where Coach Dennis Mitchell, the coach of University of Akron was, and try to see what could happen. Because I graduated college in 2007, so the trials would have been spring of 2008. And I had a sense of the timeline because my...
former high school teammate, she's never made an Olympics, but she has competed in four Olympic trials in shot put and hammer. And I think discus. ⁓ and so I had a sense of the timeline from her in terms of like what the sweet spots were for competing and like, at what point do you, do your marks need to be good enough to consider like entering the trials and stuff? ⁓
Dawn Grant (14:37)
Right.
Allison (14:39)
But I would say like right in those first few months of realizing like, well, even though I've gotten better in college and now I am working with one of the best technical pole vault coaches in the world, it's probably just with my schoolwork ⁓ and the rigor of this program not feasible. So, ⁓ you know, I didn't end up even qualifying for the trials and then ⁓ continued on with my PhD.
Dawn Grant (15:03)
Gotcha. And ⁓ what pulls you towards neuroscience?
Allison (15:09)
It's really the muscle memory stuff we talked about. Like being a gymnast, mean, you know, I had a few life death experiences where I've almost like fallen on my neck, you know, been paralyzed ⁓ quite a few times in gymnastics. Even in pole vault too, there's two particular occasions where I came down in the box. And then one time I was like dangling 12 feet in the air above the box before coming down like back on the runway.
Dawn Grant (15:20)
Hmm.
goodness
Allison (15:38)
⁓ and so I always knew there was a mental aspect of sport, and in a way that you don't consciously, right? When you're flipping upside down and twisting and doing multiple rotations, you're not thinking clearly. You're just reacting to the environment and how you feel. And, ⁓ like time moves very slowly in your head, even though it's moving very quickly on the ground. And so I was always just fascinated by.
⁓ the mental aspects of high risk sports. And so that's really what drew me into neuroscience.
Dawn Grant (16:12)
Very interesting. ⁓ Do you come across very many athletes, even as a coach, ⁓ who don't believe in the mental game?
Allison (16:26)
yeah, it's, you know, not to discriminate by sex, girls definitely having coached both girls and boys, girls definitely believe more in the mental game than boys do. I think at the elite level, they all do, but certainly high school boys, they're not, they're not thinking with their head. They're just living off of pure testosterone. ⁓
Dawn Grant (16:40)
Yeah, yeah.
Allison (16:52)
And you know, I'd have to regulate that. So when I was in graduate school, I was a high school coach. And you know, I'd have to tell my boys like all the time, right? This girl would come around who they're trying to impress or, you know, say their girlfriend came to practice and all of a sudden now like they want to get on a larger pole, which means they have to grip up higher. They have to run faster. They have to...
fix their timing and like all these situations for increased risk of injury, including serious injury. And I'd have to like talk them down and be like, no, you are not doing this just so you can impress this person. That has been my personal, I mean, and I will say being in the army too, it's the same things. you know, having worked with like the tip of the spear operators, like, yeah, say 1000 % believe in
Dawn Grant (17:29)
Right?
Yeah.
Allison (17:45)
⁓ the powers of visualization and mental rehearsal ⁓ and positive self-talk and all those things. ⁓ But in the more conventional military, it's mostly the women that are embracing it more than the guys. ⁓ And usually the guys will get there, but they have to learn a hard lesson first sometimes.
Dawn Grant (18:08)
You know, I could see that. I've worked with LPGA, PGA Tour pros and ⁓ basketball professional boxers. But ⁓ what took over was shotgun sport shooting. As far as it just got around like wildfire, you know, they just start talking about it faster and it grew faster and it's mostly men. But I've been working with them. ⁓
And one of the only in the industry, like there's basically three of us that are pretty well known for it in this industry. ⁓ And I've been working with them for, well, since 2009. And I'm still coming across not believing in it, ⁓ skepticism. And I could put on a lecture and they're sitting in the back of the room with their arms crossed, sitting back, you know, you can just sense it.
But what I found very fascinating was a few months ago, I was hired to go to Montana for an all ladies trap shooting event, an annual trap shooting event. And there's about 50 of them that paid to be a part of my lecture workshop. And at the very beginning, I did what I do all the time. And I always say, how many of you believe in the mental game? Show me your hands, you know?
And that was the first time that every single human in that room enthusiastically raised their hand and was like nodding and smiling and hungry for information. And I had just never experienced that before. Because I've worked mostly with men, whether it was the PGA tour or the sporting or the boxing, you know, it's been mostly men. And at first I wondered if it wasn't because it was trap shooting, because in trap you have to get 25 straight.
repeatedly and then you will likely go into a shoot off basically and again you have to get 25 straight. You can't miss if you're gonna win. And so obviously they know from that that there's more to it than mechanics. Because if you're gonna beat that other person who's also capable of getting 25 then you've gotta have that mental edge. But I thought it was really cool and it felt good, right?
Allison (20:28)
Yeah.
Dawn Grant (20:29)
Finally, I didn't have to sit there and try to convince them. They were there and ready and that was really neat for me.
Allison (20:36)
Yeah, no, I totally believe it. mean, not to do like battle of the sexes with research and stuff too much, but isn't there research to show too that like women are better at things that are like fine motor skills such as marksmanship ⁓ than men? Because I know that's true at least in the aviation community. Like when you look at like female performance on say, ⁓
controlling an aircraft in a simulated situation. The women far outperform the men because of just their ability ⁓ to have greater hand dexterity, fine motor skills, as well as like hand-eye coordination.
Dawn Grant (21:06)
Yeah.
Yes, yes, and that ability to seemingly juggle more than one thing at a time. What fascinating, taking that back to shotgun sports shooting, competitive shooting, men still win a majority of the events, even though there are women there. And what I find really interesting, because you think about something like CrossFit, and there's clearly activities or sports where a male,
body could dominate, right? ⁓ But in shotgun sport shooting, they're all, the guns are basically the same, they're going the same amount of time, they're shooting the same exact targets. There is literally nothing that would make a man's physical body be more likely to win over a lady's.
And there's a lot of, I usually have a different podcast where I talk about clay shooting and that's one of the questions I typically ask the men or the women. And it's a big question mark as to why these women, other than unconscious programming, why aren't they winning more often?
Allison (22:28)
Yeah, I wonder if it's like an endurance piece too, because I don't know how long these competitions are, but like, we know women have greater aerobic capacity and endurance than men because of, ⁓ you don't see that though, until you hit like the 50, 100 mile ⁓ ultra running races or ultra cycling races, but maybe like.
Dawn Grant (22:47)
Right.
Allison (22:53)
The trap shooting competition is just short enough where it's going to favor like the power of the stamina and those like athletic attributes of it. don't know, I don't do trap shooting. I mean, obviously I do marksmanship here and there. I haven't gotten trapped recently. I feel like I need to.
Dawn Grant (22:59)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is fun in a different way. Sporting clays is the one that I'm most involved in, which is basically, they say like golf with a shotgun. You're going station to station. Yeah, so right now, all right, so you said that you were looking at going to the Olympics, you were doing the pole vaulting, you were also coaching.
you're going to school for your neuroscience, what happens next in your life?
Allison (23:38)
So I knew I had to do, ⁓ since I wanted to do clinical research after getting my PhD, I went on to get a, it's called a like, I did a fellowship essentially. So I did a fellowship at a medical school ⁓ where essentially I was a full-time researcher and teaching like a class in undergraduate neuroscience at Morehouse College. I was at Morehouse School of Medicine and would teach, you know.
the neuroanatomy say to first year med students, but it was pretty much like 100 % dedicated research as part of building the toolkit in my career as neuroscientist. But I think at the time I wasn't ready to give up this idea that I wanted to be a professional athlete, even though I had failed once trying to do two things at once. ⁓ So then I was still continuing to do two things at once and I found CrossFit.
Dawn Grant (24:13)
guys.
Allison (24:33)
my last year of graduate school. One is because I kept getting kicked out of the recreational center at Kent State University where I got my PhD for like trying to do Olympic lifts and then like plyometric things and stuff. And then I had a friend who was, he was my pole vault teammate at Brown who found CrossFit and he's like, Alison, you really enjoy this. And so,
Dawn Grant (24:59)
Yeah.
Allison (25:01)
Back then, in order to go and compete at the CrossFit Games, it was very different than today. ⁓ Today, right, those athletes train seven to eight hours. That's their full-time job. A lot of them are homeschooled because it provides them more opportunities to train. Back then, the sport as it was coming and it's up and coming in its infancy was mostly like people like me who were former college athletes looking to fill their...
competitive void. ⁓ So I started competing in CrossFit and I was able to go to the games on two occasions. ⁓ The second occasion was a little difficult because I actually was the alternate. So I went to the CrossFit games but I did not compete all weekend. ⁓ And it really like, it hurt because the events that I sometimes
Dawn Grant (25:32)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Allison (25:57)
Or at least back then, you didn't know a lot of times what the events were. You do now. But back then there was mystery around it. And I, we would have done even better as a team, I think, if I was on the event floor because they had swimming and they had just basically the things that cater to my strengths. I believe I would have been the better teammate, but at the end of the day, there's also a lot of lessons you learn from being the alternate and sitting on the bench.
Dawn Grant (26:01)
So, okay.
Right.
Allison (26:26)
and so, yeah, that was, you know, I didn't want to give up that dream of trying to be a professional athlete.
Dawn Grant (26:27)
What would you say?
What would you say are some of those lessons?
Allison (26:36)
Well, I think first off, it gives you humility. in that up until that point in the year, like our team, we had been together for years on end. Like we had competed in the first CrossFit games together. And then the year after that, we all continue to train and compete together, even though we all decided to compete individually that year. And so there was a lot of momentum.
built up around us being the core team this second year of competing at the games. And then we did happen to find, and she was great. Like she was a great teammate. Like a person from the outside ⁓ who came in, was talented, like worked well with the team. you know, like coach at the end of the day decided like, this is the person who was going to play. ⁓ And I'm sure there's many parallels to that.
in sport, I'm sure that's how like NFL players feel, right? When the new drafts come in to the fold for the upcoming regular season and like the spot that they've always had is all of a sudden no longer their spot, it's being replaced by the rookie draftee. And so it does, does humble you, right? It makes you realize that, you know, nothing is given and everything is earned. ⁓
Dawn Grant (27:47)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Allison (27:58)
And so that made me reflect like, well, maybe I should have, you know, been more connected with my teammates. Like maybe I should have focused more on this skillset instead of avoiding the things I was bad at, which was mostly like strength stuff. I have a great metabolic engine because of gymnastics, but I get crushed by the barbell because of.
Dawn Grant (28:07)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Allison (28:25)
also being a gymnast, right? I'm good at handling my body weight and whipping it around, but when you add weight to my body weight, ⁓ my muscles don't handle that as well. ⁓ So I think that's really what it did is it helped me self-evaluate like, well, maybe I shouldn't avoid my weaknesses anymore and I should spend like a dedicated time being on the strength program because I could always get back my metabolic conditioning, but you can't.
Dawn Grant (28:33)
Yeah.
I gotcha.
Allison (28:53)
It's very difficult to build that strength. And so I would say that was the greatest lesson I learned. And plus two, think just it helped me be a better teammate, ⁓ right? Just connecting with my teammates more and realizing at the end of the day, like, sure, competing in sport is great, but ⁓ at the end of the day, these relationships I have with people last a lifetime. And as an example, like my teammate, Joey, he's staying with me tomorrow night as he's halfway. ⁓
Dawn Grant (28:56)
Alright.
Yes.
Allison (29:22)
to his Thanksgiving destination. And like, I haven't seen Joey in like 10 years, but ⁓ we're able to like pick back up where we started and form these lifelong friendships that never go away.
Dawn Grant (29:27)
Right.
Nice.
for sure. You mentioned humility or being humbled a few times. In your experience as an athlete, as a coach of athletes and an observation of athletes, ⁓ what would you say you see related to humility or being humble versus arrogant and ego driven and how that affects performance?
Allison (30:02)
So I think I am very lucky because of the sport that I coach. So I coach gymnastics and I coach pole vault. ⁓ Those sports, really, it is an extreme rarity that you find someone who is arrogant because if you think about both of those sports, particularly pole vault, you always end on a miss.
Whether it's practice or competition at the end of the day, you fail at the end of the day. Like that's when your competition is over because you don't miss the next bar, even if the bar before was your personal best. ⁓ and so I, I don't feel like I have to worry about it as much with them. ⁓ but in situations where I have had athletes or even students, like as you can imagine working with
medical students ⁓ who, ⁓ you know, you can easily pick out who's going to be a surgeon just through their personality. ⁓ You know, you just, the only way they'll learn is through actual failure. And so in those cases, like I always try to give them problem sets that were like difficult to solve ⁓ to hope that
Dawn Grant (31:04)
right.
Allison (31:25)
you know, they'd have some sort of self-awareness and not have cognitive dissonance and realize like, I should, you know, not think that my hands are like created by God.
Dawn Grant (31:36)
I'm following you. I've learned so much working with elite athletes related to ego. at first it was very challenging because, and one of the greatest challenges was, you know, they would hire me, they'd fly me out, I'd be there, but then they didn't want to be seen with me, right? And that was...
challenging because you know they wanted that secret weapon and they want anybody to know and they surely didn't want anybody to know that they're working with somebody on the mental side of things. ⁓ So that was one thing that was really hard for me at first. Another was if they actually won, ⁓ again giving credit to everything else and not ever publicly saying that they had a mental trainer, mental ⁓ game that they worked on.
I worked with Vijay Singh and I helped him win the whole FedEx Cup championship after like a year and a half of struggling. ⁓ we did mental training and hypnosis. So one of things he had asked me for, he'd already given me permission to say this and that's the only reason I can say it, but he ⁓ had said he wanted to be the best putter in the world. And at that time,
Allison (32:31)
Thank you.
Dawn Grant (32:51)
he had been struggling with his putting, like it was well documented. ⁓ so, you know, I worked with him over several days and then I made him his own hypnosis audio and in there was a ton of suggestions on mindset and confidence and belief and blah, blah. But ⁓ repetitively the phrase, you're the best putter in the world. And he went out for the first playoff series event.
He won on his putting in the third playoff hole. And when they interviewed him and asked him how he would explain that turnaround, he said, well, I'm the best putter in the world, you know, without even flinching. And it was hilarious, but he went and he played the second event of that four week series and broke a course record on his putting, but by then was right back at King of the World.
Allison (33:33)
Yeah.
Dawn Grant (33:47)
Right, so he's already right back at believing he had it all and ⁓ didn't have any follow through, didn't want me at the events, didn't want to admit to it, and then he fell off the wagon. ⁓ So I've seen it firsthand and it's actually now one of the things I teach is how to have humility and be humble about it. to me, I think it takes people further, no matter what.
they're wanting to have peak performance in.
Allison (34:17)
yeah.
Dawn Grant (34:17)
versus riding the wave briefly and then crashing. And I think Tiger Woods, in my opinion, is another example of that. Because that ego can just get fed and fed and fed, and next thing you know, it's like out of control. It's thinking they're all high and mighty and can do whatever they want, and then they crash and burn.
Allison (34:36)
Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. You know, I've spent a lot of my career working with
like the best special operators in the world. And that is like the number one quality of them is they all, they just think they're like a good old boy. Like they are America's true heroes and they have done incredible things and continue to, but at the end of the day, they always just want to learn whether it's a new skill or talent or hobby, like personally or professionally. And that's something in my students now I try to instill. ⁓
it's going to be a steep learning curve for them. But I think the ones who will develop humility, those are going to be the same ones who will end up in the special operations community. I think there are a lot of parallels between that and humility. Because that is also something too, without saying too much about ⁓ assessment and selection, but that it is something that a lot of the...
the folks who do that look for is they want people who learn from their mistakes and realize, ⁓ there is somebody else better than me. So I better get back to work and chase that.
Dawn Grant (35:44)
I'm actually glad to hear that because I would have just assumed without applying everything I just said, I would have assumed that the more elite in the military would have been the ego ones. Yeah.
Allison (35:57)
Nope, not at all.
is the, what do you call it? Denning-Kruger effect, like to an extreme. With certain organizations I've worked with that are like average, I would even argue below average, like continually have like failed missions. They think they are the best and they don't even know how to spell humility.
Dawn Grant (36:03)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right, right.
Allison (36:24)
But it's certainly, at least in the world I've seen, I think the Denning-Kruger effect is very real. ⁓ People at the top, like, realize ⁓ they got there through hard work, but there's still more work to do.
Dawn Grant (36:30)
Yes.
Love it. I had interviewed somebody for my podcast recently and he likes to do like very extreme endurance challenges in a way to raise awareness of different causes and such. you know, whether it's swimming the English channel or, you know, rowing for three days straight, you know, just different things. And a lot of what he's done over the years has been solo.
But what he said that he's realized is the team experience for him is so much more rewarding and so much more impactful and powerful. And I kind of heard you say that a little bit. And then that makes me think of being part of an elite, of elite performers in the military. it's a knowing that you're a part of a team and that you play a part and it's not a matter of
It's all about me, right? And I'm the one.
So much can be taken from that and similar to what you said, you learned being on the sidelines as the alternate at the CrossFit Games.
Allison (37:50)
Yeah, no, couldn't, I could not agree with you enough. you know, I think that's another thing it taught me too, is like CrossFit is a very, well, all the sports I played were individual sports, right? Like sure, there's a team element to CrossFit, but at the end of today, at least how the events are structured, it's really a sum of your parts. like there might be some workouts where you work collectively at it on a team, especially back then when there were six athletes, ⁓ competing at once instead of four.
Like you would do, right? You would push, for example, like this thousand pound sled down a football field, like, and as a team of six, or if you've ever seen the CrossFit games where they had the long extended wooden log, ⁓ like similar to what the Navy seal candidates have to go through through buds. Like, sure, that requires team communication, but at the end of the day, like CrossFit is very much an individual sport. And if you get four superstars together,
Dawn Grant (38:33)
Yeah.
Allison (38:48)
you're probably going to win the CrossFit Games as a team because you have four superstars. ⁓ But I think that's what it made me appreciate more. It's like, ⁓ I've just been so selfish focusing on like me getting to this point, me competing in the CrossFit Games again, like me, me, me when at the end of the day, like the thing I've enjoyed most about competing, just like being a gymnast and a college athlete is like the team experience. And honestly, I think that's why I decided to make a career.
Dawn Grant (39:13)
Right.
Allison (39:17)
shift away from traditional academic research into the military is because like, I love being on a team, like eating with a team, right, training with a team, working as a team, like I'm very much a team sport minded person, ⁓ even though I've played individual sports most of my life.
Dawn Grant (39:27)
Mm.
That's very interesting. ⁓ There was a book called Stealing Fire that I read several years ago and it's related to that zone, that flow state, which is again another thing that I train people in experiencing. But what I loved about that book is like each chapter was different. So you've got the zone or the flow state for maybe artists, right? And then you've got them for theater performers and you've got it for ⁓ athletes, but it...
brought it into the military and how important it is to, as a group, to be in that flow state. Which, again, was another thing I hadn't thought of. I always think of that individual being able to be in the flow or the zone and the time flies by, everything slows down, you have this great intuitive performance and all that awesome stuff. But the flow for a group.
Allison (40:18)
Mm-hmm.
Dawn Grant (40:38)
What would you say you've seen related to that?
Allison (40:42)
Well, would say, ⁓ well, and CrossFit, like a moment that came to mind to me is, ⁓ so the first time at the, and actually this is like documented on ESPN, I actually showed my students it a few months ago when we were talking about like choking and like, you start overthinking a movement, right? Golf is a great example with the yips. Isn't that what they call it? The yips in golf?
Dawn Grant (41:09)
Yeah. Yes.
Yeah, and it's flinching and shooting. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Allison (41:12)
Yeah. Yeah. Flinching and shooting. so,
⁓ during the 2013 CrossFit Games, that was when they first introduced this sectioned log to mimic, right? ⁓ what the Buds seal candidates do. And, ⁓ we were doing great because we weren't thinking, like, we had never touched this thing before because they wouldn't even let you practice with it before we actually touched it for the first time in competition. And so we're doing this thing.
Dawn Grant (41:38)
⁓
Allison (41:42)
And we were in first place, like the first round, and we went between the first and the third round from like first to almost dead last. And it wasn't for lack of fitness. It was because like halfway through the second round, we started overthinking it. Like we got snapped out of our immediate flow state when we didn't know what to expect.
Dawn Grant (41:59)
Yes.
Allison (42:05)
And like you clearly see on ESPN, like my teammate fall and then it was like Dom knows we all fall. Like you see me hit the back of my head on the log as it's falling. And just like, was just catastrophe. And we could not recover from it. Like it got worse the second round and then the third round. By that point, we were pretty much just shouting at each other.
Dawn Grant (42:16)
heck.
You're
right.
Allison (42:29)
You know, and I'm sure the same thing happens in military operation too. Like my roles, ⁓ right. I have been deployed before with the military, but very much behind the scenes, not right in an active combat zone. I was mostly there collecting research, but right. Being a bystander when I do see like high precision military training, ⁓ right. In the special operations community and stuff. Like those guys are just reacting, right. They're.
Dawn Grant (42:55)
Right.
Yeah.
Allison (42:59)
It's all
muscle memory at that point, like slow is smooth, smooth is fast. They're not thinking, they're just going with what's reacting to what's out there in their environment. And I think similar to like what we experienced, I'm sure it's the same thing when there's a communication breakdown and there's a conflict and you know it because they're right, shouting back at each other. Like they're not working with each other, they're talking to each other.
Dawn Grant (43:27)
Right, right.
Allison (43:28)
and serve
with each other.
Dawn Grant (43:30)
Right. There's a lot of parallels and all these different things that we're talking about here. And I think we could probably say then there's a secret to success. And that is, ⁓ well, we talked about humility being one of them, but also being a, what would be a good team player, right? And if what you just said can be carried over into it, like a board meeting even, you know, can't be talking at each other.
It's being able to participate in that and having humility and listening, not just hearing it, like actually listening to what's being said and then coming back with maybe another statement, but that dance and...
and stealing fire when it talked about some elite forces and going in on a mission, they had to be in this dance where it wasn't just that one person in the flow, it was the whole group of them and an understanding. ⁓ again, I just find that really fascinating. ⁓ I find it interesting and fascinating individually and then I find it even more fascinating when it's a group. It's almost like those birds.
I don't remember the name of them, but they dance and they make those patterns.
Allison (44:41)
⁓ I am a...
Dawn Grant (44:43)
Yeah, I don't know what they're called. That's what's coming to my mind.
Allison (44:46)
kind of thing.
Yeah, mean, because, I mean, everyone has a different role on the team, right? Even in right military operations, sure it is like at the end of the day, it's a CC objective, but everyone has a distinct role that they're trained as an expert in order to seize the objective. Like they're not all shooting or firing at the same target. You have someone pulling cover. You have someone doing Intel. You have someone doing the shooting. So
Dawn Grant (45:16)
Right. Yeah.
Allison (45:19)
I'm sure there's a flow state to that.
Dawn Grant (45:21)
many moons ago, I had dated a guy that was one of the instructors at one of the facilities where they train the elite. And of course, he couldn't tell me any details of what was happening there. But I've watched documentaries and I just find it like being able to be underwater for these extended periods of time and holding their breath. And that to me,
Allison (45:44)
Mm-hmm.
Dawn Grant (45:48)
I mean, it's endurance, right? It's no different than an endurance athlete running for two days or something in the ability to manage their mind and their thoughts and keep themselves calm, being put into a confined space.
and like how long can you stay in this space? How long can you stay underwater? How long can you do these different things? ⁓ But for a little while, my son wanted to do something like that back when he was like middle school. And I was like, yeah, you know, I bought all these books for him, but mainly because I was super fascinated with it myself. Peak performance at its ultimate.
Allison (46:27)
Yeah.
Dawn Grant (46:27)
So I did see that on your list of what you're doing and that's some supporting research and development for special forces. Are you able to tell us anything about that?
Allison (46:39)
Yeah,
I mean, broadly, you know, like the stuff we present at conferences and stuff, it's all about like mitigating risks. So how do we prevent against injury? And the big focus now is on brain health. So realizing that even small firearms have a blast wave that's emitted from them. And so if you are firing, you know, thousands of rounds, which happens sometime in training during a day, then
and you're doing that day after end, like it is going to impact your brain because that blast wave, ⁓ right? The wave itself is traveling in through every cavity of your body, right? Your mouth, your nose, even the membrane that separates your eye. ⁓ And so that's a lot of what the research is really on is like, what are some sensors? What are some biomarkers ⁓ where we can...
Dawn Grant (47:18)
Yes.
Allison (47:34)
use that to predict like, are they at risk for like some sort of neurodegeneration or ⁓ if there's certain supplements, for example, like, right, we now know that things like creatine ⁓ are great supplements to take after you've had any sort of traumatic brain injury. ⁓ Because oftentimes what happens with traumatic brain injury is it
Dawn Grant (47:56)
Nice.
Allison (48:01)
causes a misfiring and a misuse of energy in the brain. So the brain is no longer like efficiently utilizing glucose and fats to function. things like creatine, which are way, way upstream of utilizing glucose and fats, ⁓ it sort of pre-feeds the cells with this opportunity for energy ⁓ through creatine supplementation in ways that it doesn't without that supplementation.
And so that's like, you know, at the end of the day, I think even in that community, they don't want to use drugs to help people in the short term and certainly not in the long term. right, safe, over the counter, effective supplements ⁓ are certainly like fair game. So I think that's a lot of what our research is, is like identifying a problem and then coming up with a solution for the problem.
Dawn Grant (48:56)
I love that and I had no idea, but I try to live that way myself, you know, with trying to go a more holistic route or try to figure out what the cause is versus always trying to treat the problem. And you just made me think of something. My husband is struggling with trigeminal neuralgia and, you know, it can be triggered when he's eating right down at the side of his, you know, this right side of his nose and near his lip and it travels up into, ⁓
or right around his temple and it will feel like it's on fire. But it's been flared up now for several months. ⁓ He's been a shotgun shooter forever, mean 30 years. there's different potential causes to what can cause us to get inflamed, but I just had never thought of the shotgun shooting like you just said.
Allison (49:51)
Yeah, and we actually, we had a guy come speak the other day. He has a product, ⁓ it's called ⁓ TacStim. So it's basically a, stimulates the vagus nerve. ⁓ So it's been used by a lot of the like shooting community, not just like military shooting, but I think professional shooting too, where it, ⁓ it rams down your sympathetic system very quickly. ⁓ So, and ⁓ so basically like after,
Dawn Grant (50:04)
Yeah.
Allison (50:21)
Clearing the house or doing some sort of range day, basically you take this, it's like two prongs, almost looks like a taser, and you stick it right on either side of your vagus nerve. And it stimulates it for up to four minutes. And if you do that several times, it will help ramp down ⁓ your sympathetic system into a parasympathetic state. And we've done it through other things too, like sensory deprivation. So I know there's just chair. ⁓
professional athletes have used it too to get in a flow state where basically you deprive yourself of vision, but then you augment your tactile sensory system combined with like auditory cues. ⁓ And so it almost feels like you're literally, you know, shooting up into outer space or if, I mean, I've never, you know, taken like.
plant-based medicine, but I imagine that's just what it feels like on plant-based medicine. ⁓ So that's what this chair is designed to do, is sort of redirect the sensory information into a different experience, which somehow in the process, like ramps down your nervous system from sympathetic to parasympathetic.
Dawn Grant (51:22)
Right.
Interesting.
That little device you mentioned, I'm pretty certain he has that because it looks just like what you described. But when he was using it, it was making it worse. So I think he was possibly using it in the wrong spot. But there's a...
Allison (51:44)
Yeah.
really?
Now that is true, they
all synapse in different places, right? They're all synapsing right here somewhere along the cervical column. So that is true.
Dawn Grant (51:54)
yeah.
Yeah,
yeah, there's a great world renowned neurologist in this town that we live in and he he's a chiropractor as well, but he's the one that had had him go home with that. He's really modern cutting edge kind of So ⁓ he needs to take another look at that it sounds like. Yeah, talking about the different sensory experiences, this is goofy example, but have you ever seen when
Allison (52:13)
Okay.
Dawn Grant (52:29)
Like they put a divider in front of somebody and they have like their left hand here and then a fake hand on the right. And then somebody else has maybe a hammer and they hit the fake hand. then that's what you're reminding. I mean in an odd way, that's what was coming to my mind. How you could trick the mind in different sensory type experiences. Very fascinating.
Allison (52:39)
Yep, I've seen that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's, I think there's, I've seen examples with that and like that, like,
Well, let's see, you see that with amputees, right? Like if they like rub a certain body part that say is adjacent to where it's encoded in the brain to where say like a limb used to be, then all of a sudden they will feel that sensation of like having that limb again.
Dawn Grant (53:14)
Yeah.
Yeah, really fascinating.
Allison (53:20)
Yeah,
and neuroscience, I mean, that's what I love about neurosciences. Like, the more you learn, the less you know, you know.
Dawn Grant (53:23)
Right.
For sure, for sure. So ⁓ on a daily basis, you're doing lab work and studying and research?
Allison (53:38)
Yeah, so I'm teaching now. So I teach at ⁓ West Point. So that's like my primary duty is teaching like psychology, neuroscience courses. ⁓ And then I still support the research that I was talking about in the ⁓ special operations community, ⁓ mostly from afar, right? Because as a
uniform scientists, like you're not just a scientist. You have to do all these other leadership roles and have other like military tasks. ⁓ but it's been, I think it's just been the nicest transition from doing academic research, which I found to be very self driven and very selfish. Like, sure, there are certain things from that, you know, community that develop and are responsible for major biomedical
and public health discoveries. But oftentimes the culture and the intent for doing that type of research is more like self-driven passion instead of like working together as a team. ⁓ I think, and you know, I think that's the biggest thing about doing research, especially for the government is I love it because we have...
Dawn Grant (54:46)
Mm-hmm.
Allison (54:56)
an intent and every single research project you work on has to meet that intent. And then you have just like sports, you have milestones you have to meet where you have to meet like certain objectives within a certain period of time and you have to stay on schedule and you have to find ways to stay on schedule even if the world is working against you too. ⁓ And so you end up bringing a lot of really interesting people from very diverse.
research backgrounds ⁓ and areas of expertise into the fold that you otherwise wouldn't work with. Oftentimes when we're doing stuff in the lab, I'm working directly with operators in the field who understand the field environment in ways that I will never understand because I've never been an infantryman in combat. And so that's what I really appreciate about it is you get all these perspectives at the table.
Dawn Grant (55:44)
Right.
Bye.
Allison (55:53)
to solve a problem instead of going about it at your own pace and through your own adventure.
Dawn Grant (56:01)
Right, right. Well, so summarize a few secrets of excellence. What would you give as some advice or wisdom that you'd pass on to folks?
Allison (56:16)
Well, I love your podcast title because that is ⁓ there is a well known CrossFit coach named Ben Bergeron who ⁓ has a book called Chasing Excellence. And I feel like that's just how I lived my life. ⁓ I think like if I remember correctly, that was also a motto of my public school I went to too. It was like something about excellence and the motto. can't remember it exactly. ⁓
Dawn Grant (56:38)
Nice.
Yeah.
Allison (56:44)
The thing we talked about before, I had a grad school mentor who said this and at first I thought he was being like inconsiderate and rude, but it's fail at your own pace. Right? This idea of like, that's how you develop humility is like, in order to achieve something, you have to fail 10,000 more times or more. ⁓ And so ⁓ that's, you know, I think any life advice is fail at your own pace.
Dawn Grant (56:53)
Mmm.
Allison (57:13)
And then the one that I sort of coined myself, I would say, is plan your career around your lifestyle and not your lifestyle around your career. I think that was the biggest lesson. That's been the biggest key to my success is, right, I've always been fascinated in sports and team and community. And so I've like have a career where
Dawn Grant (57:13)
Nice.
Mm.
Allison (57:40)
Like sports and community are at the forefront of what I do. Like science aside, it doesn't matter what it is I'm doing. I always have a team. I always have a community of like-minded people with similar values. And ⁓ we always do it around like some healthy competition, whether it's a mental competition or physical.
Dawn Grant (57:41)
Yeah.
Right, right, right, right, right. I love it. That's great. Great wisdom and insight there. I do want to let listeners know if they go to DawnGrant.com. I have a lot of online courses, Stress-Free Mindful Living and Athletes Mental Game, but also DawnGrant.com forward slash free and you can get some free goodies, whether it's at my Shotgun Club or for any of my mental training or my Mind Mastered app.
So, Miss Allison, can you please share any contact info or social media? What do you got for us?
Allison (58:36)
Yeah,
so ⁓ I am on social media, ⁓ Doc Jock, ZZZ, D-O-C-J-O-C-K-Z-Z-Z. My partner and I, we also have a consulting firm related to like solving human behavior problems, so right, a lot of interpersonal problems in the workplace. ⁓ It's called Cyprak. ⁓
So Cyprak Solutions and that's at the Cyprak on Instagram. ⁓ but yeah, those are the two places where you can, well, find me on my personal page and then our ⁓ consulting firm, you know, and some of the blog posts and stuff related to like human performance and human behavior.
Dawn Grant (59:29)
Beautiful! I love that. That sounds really cool. I look forward to poking around and seeing what you're doing there as well. ⁓
Allison (59:36)
Yep. I can't
take credit for any of it. It's all her idea. ⁓ I just try to be a big cheerleader. That's all.
Dawn Grant (59:42)
Well you're doing something. Okay,
okay got ya. Got ya. Alright perfect. Well thank you and if you're ever in the area, Amelia Shotgun Sports is my club. It's in Northeast Florida.
Allison (59:54)
Yeah, for sure.
Okay, ⁓ we, yeah, I mean, ⁓ is it like near Daytona and stuff?
Dawn Grant (1:00:07)
So Jacksonville, Florida is the very northeast tip of Florida and Yulee and Amelia Island are just above that. My shotgun club is in Yulee.
Allison (1:00:14)
you
Okay, I know exactly where that, well, maybe I, you know, I'll get your cell after this because I go to our annual Sleep Circadian Rhythm Conference every other year is at Amelia Island at the Omni. Yeah.
Dawn Grant (1:00:34)
my gosh, yes,
yes, for sure. That's cool, definitely. Would love to see you and I'll bring you shooting. Yeah, well thank you. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and insight and wisdom and we'll chat soon.
Allison (1:00:39)
Yeah.
Okay, sounds great. Awesome.
Of course.
All right, we'll see you. Thank you.
