Building Resilient Athletes, Part 3: Creating Harmonious Passion with Psychologist Leona Brandwene

In the 2017 documentary, “Fittest On Earth: A Decade Of Fitness,” Games reporter and announcer Rory McKernan described being an athlete at the CrossFit Games as “basically a mental illness”. While it might seem hyperbolic and overstated to an outsider, those inside the sport of fitness know the sacrifice and dedication it takes to make it to the CrossFit Games. What once started as a backyard fitness competition in 2007 has now ballooned to a multi-million dollar seven-day event requiring most athletes to train full-time, year-round to even just qualify. This content is available exclusively to Members Become an member and start enjoying full access to all our community and sports content, and an ad-free experience. PROMO Exclusive content Ad-Free web/app experience Comments on articles Exclusive 15% WIT discount $1 per month for the first 4 months, $8 each month after Get Started for $1 Exclusive content Ad-Free web/app experience Comments on articles Exclusive private Facebook Group Regular coffee breaks hang outs Exclusive 15% WIT discount Get Started $5/month billed annually Already a member? Log In. But this brutal road toward the title of Fittest on Earth has not come without consequences. In the past year, we’ve seen numerous young athletes leave the sport well before their prime due to burnout and trouble handling the immense pressure of competing at such a high level. One big thing: As the sport of fitness continues to grow, we as a community must find a way to cultivate not just the physical, but also the mental capabilities of young athletes to give them the roadmap for a long successful career both in CrossFit and for whatever athletic pursuit comes beyond that. In my previous piece in the series, we discussed how coaches can help to create a safe and productive training environment focusing on athlete longevity and balance. This week, we’ll continue to discuss this topic, but from the perspective of Leona Brandwene, Associate Director of Education at the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Some details: In 2020, the NCAA Research Organization released data showing the estimated probability a high school student would compete in college athletics. For high school athletes looking to compete in Division 1 college athletics, the number is less than 2% in some sports and averages around 2.5% across all sports and genders. This means that for every 100 high school athletes, looking to play Division 1, only about two or three of them will actually make it. From that group, only a tiny sliver actually makes it to the pros and an even smaller sliver ever makes it to Michael Jordan or Lebron James levels of fame. The same concept applies for CrossFit. Out of the 323k participants in the 2023 Open, .025% of athletes qualified in the individual men’s or women’s division and .00002% of athletes actually stood on the podium. So the question then becomes, if the chances of you making it to elite levels in the sport of fitness are less than 1%, what happens to the remaining 99%? If the chances are so slim, why even do the sport at all? For Brandwene, the reason extends well beyond just “making it” to Division 1 athletics or the CrossFit Games. It’s about examining our why, and finding the joy in the sport. “I’m a big advocate of the joy of sport,” said Brandwene adding that it’s a philosophy that she uses in her personal life with her own child as well. “My job as a parent of Sophie, who races at the junior elite and (and now collegiate) level of triathlon is not to get her a scholarship or D1, but for her to have a lifelong love of the sport,” she continued. “I have told her from the beginning, that the day you decide to quit triathlon, we are fine with that decision,” Brandwene added. “My joy comes from the joy that she has in engaging in her sport,” she concluded. But in a world of fierce competition, collegiate scholarships, and social media comparisons, it can sometimes be difficult for both the athlete and the parents to tune the noise out and focus on what brings them happiness within the sport. Brandwene continued to explain that often she sees athletes, especially young ones, engaged in what appears to outsiders to be “passion” for their sport. To an untrained eye, it might appear as though they are dedicated, disciplined, and obsessed with results. What is “harmonious passion?”: In our culture of high achievers, this kind of passion is often viewed positively, but in certain circumstances, may be detrimental to the athlete. Brandwene continued to explain that “passion” is a messy bucket of both positive and negative concepts. Canadian psychologist, Robert Vallerand, has parsed that bucket into two types of passion: obsessive and harmonious. “Obsessive passion comes from athletes internalizing external pressures,” said Brandwene. “Obsessive passion occurs when their self-esteem and identity become tied up in their sport, and their passion controls them to the extent they feel compelled to accomplish,” she continued. “Harmonious passion is aligned with your intrinsic motivation. These athletes freely choose their sport because it’s a source of joy–something that makes all the other areas of your life even better,” Brandwene said. “We tend to say it’s good to be passionate about something, and that’s only a partial truth: it depends on what the source of passion is,” “We can help by being more nuanced in how we look at the concept of passion and making sure we are supporting kids in creating a harmonious relationship with their sport, instead of an obsessive one,” she concluded. Go deeper: “Harmonious passion” is a type of passion that is difficult to achieve. It’s a kind of love for the sport that comes purely from intrinsic motivation and allows you to bring joy into your life via your sport or activity. That becomes even more difficult to try to impress upon young athletes who have a hard time seeing the bigger picture and get dazzled by goals like making it to the CrossFit Games or competing in Division 1 athletics, and the social media attention that comes with it. “So much of life advice gets distilled into platitudes like ‘you need to have a passion,’” said Brandwene. “And none of those are bad by themselves, but they’re trying to distill a lot of nuance into a single word,” she added. So what can parents do to help move their child into a harmonious passion with their sport or sports? For Brandwene, the road to finding your passion starts at a young age with early diversification in sports. “Early specialization gives you no opportunity to refresh psychologically,” said Brandwene. “Kids just burn out and they stop competing by the time they get to the age of 20 because they just don’t want to do it anymore,” she continued. The concept of early specialization is an issue that has been pervasive in sports like gymnastics and ballet for years but has just recently started to make its way into CrossFit. Now, parents put their young children into CrossFit at an early age with the hopes that they might someday be the next Mat Fraser or Tia Clair Toomey. This idea though, is actually relatively outdated. In fact, according to Brandwene, “for most sports, there is no diminishment in how successful an athlete is if they diversify early,” “Diversification seems to inoculate kids against burnout,” she continued. “People naturally choose the activities they’re best at anyways, so step back and let them try a bunch of things and see where they persist,” Brandwene added. “Then your goal as a parent or coach is to say ‘How do I help them contribute to their well-being not just in the immediate term, but also in the long term?’,” Brandwene concluded. And it’s more than just diversification in sports, it’s also finding diversification and balance in their lives outside of sports. “Think about your life as though you’re sitting on a stool. The legs under the stool represent all the interests and assets that contribute to your well-being and identity, like sport, family, relationships, arts, intellectual interests, etc.” said Brandwene. “If you are sitting on your stool with many strong legs, and one gets kicked out (for instance, you get dumped by a significant other, or you lose at a competition), you have more legs that keep your stool from collapsing,” she continued. “If you only have one leg–like your sport–and it gets kicked out, as it inevitably will at times (you lose, you get injured, etc.) you don’t have anything left to lean on,” she concluded. Those legs on your stool become more important when met with hardship or adversity whether it’s within the sport or outside the sport. “I think even if parents don’t diversify sports with their kids, making sure their kids have diverse interests is important,” she said. “Everyone’s going to have that time where they’re out because of an injury and have to rehab something,” she continued. “You don’t want them to spiral into a depression at that point, because they have nothing else in their life,” “When the inevitable hardship comes and that leg gets kicked out temporarily, they have a lot of other legs holding them up,” she concluded. Beyond simply diversifying in sports, Brandwene also believes in helping young athletes start to understand what they can and can’t control. “In most sports, there is a bell curve of talent, but athletes at the elite level are concentrated at one end of the curve,” said Brandwene “At the super-elite level, variation between athletes is small, and performance differences can come down to luck,” she continued. Brandwene continued to explain how at any level of competition, it’s important to differentiate between what you can control, and what you can’t. “Every aspect of the sport is not controllable, so help kids to focus on the controllable and make peace with the things that aren’t controllable,” said Brandwene. “This is a crucial element of resilience, so young athletes learn how to take the pressure off of themselves when things occur that are outside their control,” she concluded. Even though young athletes might be able to control their performance on the floor, they can’t control the performances of those around them. Nor can they control a number of aspects of the actual event, especially in CrossFit where the individual events can vary greatly and play to certain athletes’ strengths. “Recognizing that you are not your sport is really important because if that is the only identity you have, losses will feel even more devastating, which only increases performance pressure,” said Brandwene. “So if your identity is whether you end up on the podium, and you toe the line with someone who just happens to put together the race or the competition of their life, that’s sport – you have no control over that,” “But if you prepare well and bring it all to that race or competition, you can still feel great about your performance regardless of the outcome,” she continued. The social media question: Another complicating factor in how athletes are able to find harmonious passion with their sport and start to disentangle it from their central identity has been the advent and growth of social media. Today, social media has become not just a normal part of our everyday lives, but also a tool that professional athletes, especially in the CrossFit space, utilize as a tool to fund their training and build their livelihoods. But while the financial benefits can certainly be lucrative, Brandwene acknowledges that social media can also be a major detriment to a young and developing athlete. “This is like a grand social experiment going on with social media, and right now the results we are seeing for adolescent girls especially are not great,” said Brandwene. “With social media, girls are forced to speculate all the time around what somebody else’s life is like from a small snippet of a much larger pie,” she continued. “They’re essentially comparing their lives to someone’s highlight reel,” she added, and tools such as the ‘like’ button are highly ambiguous: is that ‘like’ sincere, or sarcastic? That ambiguity creates a great deal of stress. So how can a young athlete or their parents help take back control of the impact social media has on them, especially when it comes to comparing themselves to others in sports? Brandwene suggests the best tool might be some self-reflection and awareness. “I would recommend just becoming aware of how much time you are using social media, and what the opportunity cost of that time investment is,” said Brandwene. “Few adolescents realize how much screen time they’re getting,” she continued. “Second is just to remind yourself that you’re looking at someone’s highlight reel,” she added. You might think of balancing your “media diet” in the same way you think about balancing your diet nutritionally. Balance your ‘diet’ of exposure to media,” she said. It might be an odd concept to think of your social media consumption as a form of diet, but for Brandwene, it’s no different than the careful time and care athletes take to monitor the physical foods they put in their bodies. “Just how you wouldn’t have a diet of candy and sugar and expect to perform your best. Don’t expect to have a media diet that is the equivalent of candy and sugar and expect your mind to perform at its best,” she said. But even with a balanced “diet” of social media consumption, Brandwene noted that the comparison bug can get to all of us sometimes. “Even with limited social media, you still get that automatic response from comparing yourself to someone who may just be in a different training phase than you are,” Brandwene said. “I think it’s really a matter of competing with yourself and competing against the game, rather than constantly comparing yourself to other people. The genetic lottery – does that person have more fast-twitch muscle? More slow-twitch? A naturally high VO2 max? – means that not all athletes are created equal, and that means constant comparison is unrealistic,” she continued, noting that while it is admirable to have goals of making it to elite levels in CrossFit or any other sport, it’s also important to be realistic with what you are able to achieve. The bottom line: For almost every athlete and the support systems that back them, the natural goal might be to focus on achievement. But it’s not achievement alone that will create a fulfilled and balanced relationship with the sport. Creating a resilient athlete with a true passion for the sport requires careful introspection and guidance from the parents, as well as the coaches and mentors who guide these athletes. It’s allowing athletes to develop a harmonious passion for their sport by finding joy and looking beyond the comparisons, especially on social media. “It’s a powerful thing to have a relationship with your sport, where your sport is not controlling you anymore, but you are making a joyful choice to participate,” said Brandwene as we concluded our interview. Her careful and succinct words echoed loudly in the chaotic shouts of the pressure to achieve and the 24/7 social media feeds of non-stop comparison. And they reflect something that will allow athletes to build their lives around sports for the long term. While pushing to burn out to become an elite level athlete might seemingly pay off in the short term, in the long term, the happier and more fulfilled individual will be the one who played their sport well into their twilight years and beyond, and found joy in passing down their own love of the sport to those around them.

Building Resilient Athletes, Part 3: Creating Harmonious Passion with Psychologist Leona Brandwene

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