We built something. Will you break it for us?
Two prototypes, an honest ask, and why we’re not waiting
For months we’ve been talking about a problem more than solving it.
Elite sport psychology reaches almost none of the athletes who need it.
The techniques pros and Olympians use to handle pressure and come back from injury sit behind scheduled appointments, waitlists, and price tags most families and clubs can’t touch. Most competitive kids never get near a sport psychologist. The whole model was never built to reach them.
So we stopped talking and built two things.
What we made
The first two “Ready in 20” interventions. Short, guided sessions an athlete works through in 10 to 15 minutes, each built around one moment they’re actually facing.
Pressure Reframe is for the athlete whose heart is pounding before a big game, whose head is full of “what if I mess up.” It walks through three moves. Notice the thoughts without judging them. Reframe what they mean—pressure means this matters, nerves are energy you can use. Then choose to compete anyway. The idea it’s built around is that courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s competing despite it.
Reinjury Fear Reframe is for the athlete who’s been cleared but still hears “what if I get hurt again” every time they plant, cut, or make contact. It opens with what’s happening in the brain. Your threat system got hypersensitive after the injury, and most athletes—somewhere between 60 and 80%—feel this on the way back. From there it separates protective fear from limiting fear, weighs the catastrophic thought against real evidence like clearance and passed strength tests, and builds a personal reframe paired with a physical anchor for game day.
Neither is a lecture. You move through it, you answer, it responds to you.
Why now, before it’s finished
Because the research says short works. Our approach draws on Single-Session Intervention science, guided by the work led by Dr. Jessica Schleider at Northwestern’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health. A meta-analysis of 50 randomized trials with more than 10,000 young people found that brief, targeted interventions produced small but meaningful benefits across a range of outcomes.
The model is evidence-supported. What we haven’t proven is our version of it—in sport, for competitive athletes, in these exact moments. We can’t figure that out in a doc. We only learn it from real athletes going through it.
To be clear about what this is: Ready in 20 doesn’t replace a coach or a sport psychologist. It’s a first layer, for the moments between sessions and for the athletes who’d otherwise get nothing. When someone needs more, part of what we’re building is knowing when to point them toward a real person.
The ask
Go through one. Or both. Then tell me the truth.
Where did it feel real? Where did it feel like a robot wrote it? Where did you get bored, roll your eyes, or think “that’s not how it actually feels”? That last one is the most useful thing you can give us.
Athlete, parent, coach, or someone who just cares about this—all of you are useful. It takes about 15 minutes. Reply here, or send it to a young athlete and ask what they thought.
We’d rather hear it’s broken now than pretend it isn’t later.