Talking Development Gaps on The Grit & Growth Podcast.
Part One
I had the chance to sit down on the Grit & Growth podcast recently. In Part One, the crux of the conversation kept circling back to something I see every day in my work, but still doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. We are asking more of athletes than ever before, and at younger ages, at higher intensities, and with far more at stake. The systems around them have evolved in terms of skill development, strength and conditioning, and analytics. But the internal side of performance hasn’t kept pace.
That gap is starting to show. Sometimes it looks like inconsistency. Sometimes it shows up as injury cycles that don’t fully make sense. Sometimes it’s anxiety, loss of confidence, or a slow drift away from the game altogether.
What’s underneath all of that is often the same thing: a nervous system that’s overloaded, under-supported, and asked to perform anyway. We’ve gotten very good at training athletes to produce. We haven’t gotten nearly as good at helping them process.
That’s the conversation we get into here. What actually sits beneath performance, how mental blocks and physical breakdowns are often connected, and why regulation (not just preparation) determines whether someone can access what they’ve trained under pressure.
More importantly, this is about opening up a more honest dialogue around development. If we’re not willing to talk about what athletes are actually experiencing—the pressure, the identity strain, the accumulation of stress—then we’re going to keep mislabeling the outcomes and miss the real opportunity to support them in a way that actually translates.
Part Two
Part Two of the podcast features D1 pitcher Joshua Caravalho.
In Part One, we spent time on routines, professionalism, and what it actually means to prepare like a professional. Part Two continues that conversation but pushes it further into an area I care deeply about in my work: holistic readiness. Not just what you do in the gym or on the field, but how you live. Your sleep, your structure, your ability to show up consistently and reliably for the people around you. It is all part of performance, whether athletes want to acknowledge it or not.
We saw a real example of this play out with Royals rookie catcher Carter Jensen this week. He overslept and was scratched from his planned start. Salvador Perez stepped in at the last minute to catch, despite preparing to DH that day. For most fans, that might not register as a big deal given Perez’s experience and durability, but catching is one of the most physically demanding positions in sports. It requires preparation, both physically and mentally, and changing that plan on short notice is not insignificant. More importantly, situations like this are rarely about a single alarm clock failure.
Earlier this season, the Royals posted a video asking players how many alarms they use. Most said one. A couple said two. Jensen said he needs six to eight. That is not a time management strategy. When an athlete at that level cannot reliably wake up for a game, the issue is almost always deeper than discipline. It points to a breakdown somewhere in the system. Sleep quality, daily structure, diet, stress load, emotional regulation. Something is off, and it is showing up in a moment that the public gets to see.
To Jensen’s credit, he owned it. He said he let his teammates and coaches down and that it cannot happen again. That level of accountability matters, but accountability without investigation only addresses the surface.
This is where holistic readiness becomes real. Professionalism is not just how you carry yourself in the clubhouse or how hard you train when people are watching. It is how well your life supports your performance when nobody is paying attention. It is the invisible structure that allows you to access what you have already built. Most athletes are trained to raise their ceiling. Very few are taught how to raise and stabilize their floor. And when the floor is unstable, it shows up like this.
If you are an athlete or someone working closely with athletes, this is the work. Not just more effort, but better systems. Not just more alarms, but a deeper look at what is actually driving inconsistency. We get into this in Part Two below.
Huge thank you to the Grit & Growth team for having me.
Unlock Your Potential and Build Your Longevity
If you’re an athlete reading this, there’s an uncomfortable reality you’ve probably already felt.
You can be surrounded by coaches, trainers, and support staff, and still not feel like you have a place to go with what’s actually going on underneath your performance. The physical side is covered. The technical side is covered. But when it comes to the internal experience—pressure, anxiety, identity shifts, injury cycles, loss of feel, loss of confidence—it often lives in a gray area that doesn’t get addressed with the same clarity or consistency. In many environments, it doesn’t feel safe to bring it up at all.
That’s not an indictment of any one team or organization. It’s a reflection of where the system still hasn’t caught up.
Most performance models weren’t built to handle the full complexity of what athletes face today. The expectations have accelerated. The exposure has increased. The stakes have risen. But the internal support structures haven’t evolved at the same pace.
Athletes are left trying to manage more, with tools that don’t fully meet the moment.
At a certain point, you have to take ownership of that gap. Not in a way that isolates you, but in a way that expands your support system beyond what’s immediately available to you. The best athletes in the world don’t just rely on what’s provided. They build teams around them that allow them to think clearly, regulate under pressure, recover fully, and stay connected to themselves over the long arc of a career.
That’s where real performance and real longevity start to come together. This isn’t just about playing well when things are going right. It’s about having the internal architecture to stay steady when they aren’t. It’s about being able to access your preparation under pressure rather than losing it. It’s about understanding your body well enough to respond early rather than react late. And it’s about developing a relationship with your performance that doesn’t collapse every time something goes off track.
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If this resonates, reach out. I work with professional athletes and elite prospects who want to build a more complete foundation for performance—one that supports not just how they play, but how they sustain it.
Metta,
Drewsome.
