How to Finally Win Your Inner Negative Mental Battle and Become Stronger and Faster: Dr Jacob Cooper

Many runners face constant negative mental battle when the run
starts to get hard.  If you are frequently struggling with
negative thoughts, there is a way to win the mental battle.


Dr. Jacob Cooper has the answers.


Jacob breaks down exactly what you need to do and exactly when
you need to do it, to convert your self-talk that’s telling you
to quit, to an ally that lets the real you triumph. So if you
want to perform better at running, or really at anything in life
that's challenging, keep listening and be ready to apply Dr
Cooper's techniques, and finally win the negative mental battle
when running hard.


Jacob is a clinical sport psychologist who serves as the director
of sport psychology at Appalachian State University in Western
North Carolina. A former college athlete himself, he has worked
with professional and amateur athletes, Olympians, and
Paralympians.  He has an extensive background in mental
health and how it ties to performance.  Jacob has developed
a style of working with athletes that focuses on them
holistically, with the goal of performance optimization in the
pursuit of excellence. 


Jacob Cooper Ph.D. - Full Bio


Dr. Cooper is a clinical sport psychologist who serves as the
director of sport psychology at Appalachian State University in
addition to his own private practice serving professional and
amateur athletes. He is a member of the United States Olympic
& Paralympic athlete mental health registry, which consists
of a selected group of specialized sports psychologists who are
thoroughly vetted by the USOPC and then made available to current
U.S. Olympians & Paralympians.


As a former collegiate offensive lineman turned amateur
triathlete and runner (Hello Clydesdale Division!), Jacob has
worked with athletes at the Olympic, Professional, and Division-1
level over the course of his career. As a sport psychologist, Dr.
Cooper brings an extensive background in mental health and
performance enhancement. To this end, he has developed a style of
working with athletes that focuses on them holistically, across
the spectrum of future-oriented performance optimization, current
personal barriers/stressors, as well as more significant mental
health issues that can inevitably show up in the pursuit of
excellence. 


As a doctoral student at Boston University, he completed clinical
practicums within a variety of settings, including the U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Federal Bureau of
Prisons system (BOP) along with multiple D1 college sport
medicine teams as a performance consultant. Additionally, he has
published scholarly articles and cultivated a unique approach to
working with athletes and teams that integrates the latest
research, evidence-based strategies, and technology to help them
reach their goals. 


In addition to high performance populations, he has a unique
background and training in the areas of rural mental health,
trauma recovery, serving low help-seeking populations, and
military psychology. He has provided performance optimization for
military personnel prior to their deployments as well as
counseling for veterans transitioning back to civilian life
throughout Western North Carolina, Indiana, and Boston. 


Dr. Jacob Cooper- Ph.D. Clinical Sport Psychologist. 


Director of Sport Psychology Services at Appalachian State
University


Licensed Clinical Psychologist & Health Service Provider
(HSP)


U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Sport Psychology Registry Member


 


Education Background:


B.A.- (Psychology) Taylor University (Indiana)- 4 year
scholarship athlete & team captain (Football)


Dual Masters Degree- Ball State University (Indiana)


M.S.- Sport and Performance Psychology


M.A.- Clinical Psychology


PhD- Counseling Psychology (Sport and Performance Track)- Boston
University


Matched Clinical Residency - Charles George Veterans Hospital -
Asheville North Carolina. 







Questions Jacob is asked: 


 


3:59 I first found out about you from an Instagram post that the
folks at ZAP posted. You were working with the elites at ZAP
helping them build some mental strength. Can you tell me a little
bit about how you worked with them?


 


5:03 How do elite and regular runners find motivation and purpose
when a lot of races have been taken off the board?


 


6:19 Maybe this pandemic is a silver lining or maybe it’s a gift
because we can look at our running in a different way because
we’re all going to get slower as we age and performance is a huge
part of why we do it, at least for some people, but once you take
those PRs and the clock away, why do we run? That’s got to be the
most important thing, right?


 


7:28 We always talk about, “I want to get mentally tough,”
because clearly it’s not just our bodies. We can train our bodies
to do certain things but if the brain is not onboard, the train’s
not going to get all the way to the station. So how do we train
our brain to be mentally tougher when things get hard?


 


8:30 I’m going to use myself as an example. When I’m running
really hard or trying for a specific goal, I have the devil and
the angel on my shoulder. I have the voice saying, “Go, go, go.
You can do this.” And then I have a very, very sweet devil
saying, “Everybody still loves you no matter what you run. You
can slow down. This is really hard.” So I’m fighting these two
opposing things that are 100% me and I really want to tell the
devil to shut up and I really want to keep moving hard. How do I
do that?


 


11:30 So the feelings come and we’re supposed to say, “Oh hello,
feeling,” and let it go on its way. Is that what we’re supposed
to be doing when we’re trying to run that 400 meter repeat really
hard?


 


12:43 Can you give us a few examples of mental tools that we can
use? What’s in the toolbox?


 


14:37 What is radical acceptance in your RISE model?


 


16:32 What does the I in RISE mean?


 


23:50 What does the S in RISE mean?


 


25:23 Do you have any hints for people who don’t know what their
optimal performance cues are?


 


26:18 When I’m running well in a race or in a group setting, I
definitely lock on the dude in front of me. I’m laser focused on
him and I pretend that I have a rope attached to him and I
pretend that he’s pulling me. And I just link up to him like a
train like I am not letting this person go. It works for me.


 


27:13 What does the E in RISE stand for?


 


29:06 Let’s talk about the difference between psychology of teams
and the psychology of athletes that are in an individual sport.
Can you address that a little bit? Or is it the same just on a
different level? Are we all talking to ourselves like we would
talk to a bunch of people?


 


31:58 What about teams of runners? What about groups of runners
where they’re obviously not always running the same races but
they train together? They are in a team environment where they
eat, sleep, and work out together and it’s been proven that we
work differently in a group setting. Can you talk about that?


 


33:31 Especially with the pandemic, we’re seeing more and more
runners find support, find a tribe, find a group of people online
that they haven’t been able to find before, and a lot of people
are finding it incredibly helpful. Especially runners are
typically Type A, loner, data nerds (or maybe I'm just speaking
for myself!), but a group setting isn’t typically comfortable for
people who love to spend hours alone running, so any advice for
that lone runner who maybe shies away from a group?


 


35:48 You help athletes work on their mental health issues. And
we think about elite runners especially as just having these
super tough brains that are as tough as their bodies and they are
able to do amazing things that the regular people can’t do. So we
think that they are just some kind of machine when it comes to
their minds but I suspect that you find some mental health
issues. Can you talk a little bit about that?


 


39:36 People who drive themselves so hard to be excellent,
they’re a specific breed of people and you look at them and you
wonder if they did have some trauma. Why in the world are they
pushing themselves to these extreme limits? Do you find that that
is really the case that people that are just absolutely at the
top of their game are more likely to have had some kind of trauma
in their past?


 


41:58 One thing I really wanted to talk to you about is the whole
concept of balance. When we are striving for something, whether
it's athletics, a career, parenting, sacrifice is inevitable and
balance is simply not possible (or desired).  How can we
reach our goals without letting everything else fall apart?


 


45:21 What is next for you and what questions in sports
psychology are you looking to get answered in the future?


 


Questions I ask everyone:


 


48:54 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started
running, what advice would you give?


 


50:04 What is the greatest gift running has given you?


 


51:33 Where can listeners connect with you?


 
Quotes by Jacob:

 


“That ‘why’ is such a valuable thing and it’s very easy in
athletics to sometimes lose touch with that.”


 


“I think that it’s helpful to have multiple fuel sources because
there’s costs to them all.”


 


“Your attention is a muscle. It’s like a spotlight that allows
you to shift to what matters most right now. I call these optimal
performance cues or OPCs.”


 


“Anywhere that there’s pressure and stress, we’re all capable of
that impacting us and manifesting in the form of some level of
mental distress whether it’s just some symptoms of anxiety,
depression, eating disorders, trauma, or it’s like a full blown
chronic disorder and something like that.”


 


“There’s going to be times and seasons of life that feel
unbalanced. But I believe that in every season of life it is
possible and worthwhile to live in a way that reflects our
values.”






Take a Listen on Your Next Run


 


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Mentioned in this podcast:

ZAP Endurance


Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community 


RunnersConnect Facebook page


RunnersConnect Focus Classes


email Coach Claire


 


Follow Jacob on:


dr.coopercc@gmail.com


Instagram


Running with Heart






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