That's a wrap on season 1 of the Kentucky Resilience Lab! Join Kaite as she highlights the incredible episodes from members of the lab, shares what this experience has meant to us, previews what is coming in season 2, and shares a little surprise! Thank you for all those who laughed with us, learned with us, and grew with us. We CANNOT wait to see you for season 2. 

In this week’s episode, Mikaela interviews Schuyler Bailar, a graduate of Harvard University and a former member of the Men’s Swimming and Diving team. He is also the first trans man to compete for a men’s Division I NCAA team. Schuyler and Mikaela discuss his transition and simultaneous adjustment to being a member of the men’s team, in addition to being a collegiate student-athlete. Schuyler mentions how it’s okay to not know exactly how to balance the competing demands in your life, and how mindset, along with reframing his goals, and prioritizing his happiness helped him find success in and out of the pool. If you want to connect with Schuyler or find out more about him, you can check out his website pinkmantaray.com (pinkmantaray.com/FAQs for answers to commonly asked questions and resources, and pinkmantaray.com/post to set up a free Video Chat Support Session with Schuyler). You can also find him Instagram at @pinkmantaray

In this episode, Kaite interviews Chelsea Kuzel, a Bodybuilding competitor in the Bikini Division, group fitness coach, and personal trainer. Chelsea breaks down how she prepares for competitions, how she maintains motivation and consistency, and even provides some personal notes and insights about her own journey in health and fitness.

Music is a gift that inspires us in many areas of our lives. Two of these areas are sport and exercise. Natalie discusses benefits of music for sport and exercise, based on insight from the textbook, Applying Music in Sport and Exercise, written by Dr. Costas Karageorghis. She also explains a few key tips for when and how to use music during sport and exercise. The episode concludes with a few personal examples of how music has benefited Natalie’s sport performance in the past.

By now, you’ve heard the expression, “practice makes perfect” countless times throughout your life, but how true is it really? Spoiler alert: Not even a little bit. Join Sam as she discusses the idea of perfection, the reality of making mistakes, and the effects of expecting perfection from yourself. In the spirit of trusting our preparation and accepting our mistakes, this episode has a special little twist to it. Tune in to find out what that special twist is!

Possessing a gratitude attitude has the power to boost your mental well-being and lead you on a more satisfying path of life. Natalie hopes to inspire a feeling of thankfulness within in you as she acknowledges the different types of gratitude, shares research on the benefits of gratitude, applies gratitude to sport, and provides suggestions for how to practice gratitude. She finishes the episode with a gratitude exercise in which she invites listeners to reflect on questions related to what they are thankful for.

A bad pass leads to a turnover, a missed shot and your team is still behind, the ball runs under your glove and the runner scores. Do you let this unfortunate event impact the rest of your game, or do you accept what happened, and shift your focus to the next play to give yourself the best chance of being successful at the next opportunity? In this podcast, Trevor and Myles talk about the concept of mindfulness. Along with giving examples of how to practice mindfulness, they speak about working to change your relationship to your thoughts and emotions, as well as how to reattach yourself to the present moment you’re in.

As athletes, we are conditioned to never accept anything but our best. We work tirelessly to improve incremental aspects of our craft with the hopes it is enough to beat out the competition. However, sometimes we become our biggest critics and we risk doing more harm than good. In those moments when you miss a shot you’ve made a million times, the coach moves you to second string, or you can’t seem to find your groove in practice, what are you saying to yourself? Is it kind? Caring? Compassionate? Not likely. This week, tune in with Sam and Kaite to understand the importance of Self-Talk, the impact it has on your game, and potential solutions to helping you leave your negative self-talk behind.

We’re all familiar with the term mental toughness, but what does it really mean? In this podcast, Kaite and Myles take the opportunity to give a clear explanation of mental toughness, mental endurance, and mental resilience. Additionally, they’ll offer strategies to help strengthen and maintain each of these aspects of mental performance. This discussion, along with some relevant examples, will help create a distinction between each term and encourage you to identify areas of your mental game that you can improve upon!

Sports do not exist in a bubble and as much as we would sometimes like to shut out the outside world and just focus on our game, when an athlete is personally affected by what’s going on in the world around them, that can be nearly impossible. With everything that has happened in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, and so many others, we thought it would be important to talk about how social justice relates to sports and impacts athletes. In this episode Mikaela sits down with two guests, Travis Scheadler and Ngozi Musa, to have a conversation about just that. Travis is a former University of Kentucky Sport and Exercise Psychology Master’s student and wrote his master’s thesis on social justice and athlete activism. He will be pursuing his PhD in Social Work at The Ohio State University in the fall and is interested in positive youth development and LGBTQ+ advocacy issues. Ngozi is a former Harvard University Women’s Track and Field team captain and 5-time Ivy League Champion. At Harvard she studied Sociology and African American studies, and has been an active advocate in this current social justice movement. She recently founded her own podcast and platform called ‘Aesthetics and Athletics’ that works to inspire and empower the athlete in every woman. Though we talk about social justice in the context of sports, much of what we discuss can be applied to any area of life. We hope you enjoy this week’s episode and continue to have conversations like these with those around you! If you want to connect with either Travis or Ngozi, you can find them at the accounts below: Travis: @ScheadlerTravis (Twitter) & @travy.6 (Instagram) Ngozi:@ngozimusa & @aesthetics_athletics (Instagram)