Mental Training Lab

Pete Kadushin, PhD

Master your mental game with the Mental Training Lab, hosted by Pete Kadushin. With 15 years of coaching experience and a PhD in performance psychology, Pete digs deep each episode to provide practical tools and expert insights so you can perform your best when it matters most. Enhance your focus, harness stress, and overcome challenges whether you’re an athlete, leader, or high-performer. Subscribe to learn how to elevate your game in work, play, and life.

  1. Inside the Mind of a Tour de France Rider: Brent Bookwalter on Pain, Performance, and the Mental Game

    -5 ч

    Inside the Mind of a Tour de France Rider: Brent Bookwalter on Pain, Performance, and the Mental Game

    Brent spent years competing at the highest levels of cycling, including the Tour de France, the Olympics, and World Championships. Since retiring from professional cycling, Brent has completed graduate training in mental performance and now works as a coach, helping athletes and high performers translate lived experience into tools for growth, resilience, and well-being. This conversation is a case study in how mental skills actually show up in the real world. Brent and Pete explore how concepts like self-determination theory, mindfulness, acceptance, a relationship with pain, motivation, and identity played out across his cycling career. And how formal mental performance training helped him better understand what he had been doing intuitively for years. You’ll also learn about the human side of elite endurance sport: the loneliness, suffering, identity pressure, career transitions, and emotional demands that exist behind the glamour of the Tour de France. Whether you’re an athlete, coach, parent, business leader, or performer in any domain, Brent’s story offers a practical and deeply human look at how mental training can raise the ceiling of performance while supporting the person doing the performing. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Learn more about The Mental Training Lab Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.

    1 ч. 2 мин.
  2. Psilocybin, Performance, and Deep Healing: Adam O'Neil on Going Beyond Mental Skills

    9 июн.

    Psilocybin, Performance, and Deep Healing: Adam O'Neil on Going Beyond Mental Skills

    **This conversation is all about psilocybin-assisted therapy, but it is not medical advice. Psilocybin is not appropriate for everyone, laws vary by location, and anyone interested in this work should seek support only from qualified professionals in legal, regulated settings.** In this episode of The Mental Training Lab, I sit down with Adam O'Neil, a Boulder-based licensed psychologist and clinical psilocybin facilitator working at the intersection of mental health, performance psychology, and natural medicine. Adam brings a rare combination of rigor and heart to this conversation. We talk about the importance of comprehensive psychological assessment, the structure of psilocybin-assisted therapy, and why preparation, facilitation, and integration matter just as much as the journey itself. We also explore how plant medicine, when approached responsibly, can help people encounter deeper layers of identity, trauma, shame, avoidance, and pressure that traditional mental skills training may not fully reach. You’ll learn about the role of acceptance, surrender, ancestral wisdom, and cultural humility in this work. And why athletes and high performers may be drawn to deeper healing beyond optimization. Whether or not psilocybin is part of your path, this conversation offers a powerful reminder that performance is not separate from wholeness, and that sometimes the next level of growth requires us to stop fixing ourselves and start meeting ourselves more honestly. Learn more about Adam’s work and The Clearing healing center here: www.theclearingboulder.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Learn more about The Mental Training Lab Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.

    1 ч. 9 мин.
  3. You Can't Outcoach Your Nervous System

    26 мая

    You Can't Outcoach Your Nervous System

    Your nervous system is the foundation of everything else. It shapes the way you perceive reality, and everything flows from there: what you think, how you decide, what comes out of your mouth, and what your people feel when you walk in the room. You can have the right words, the right plan, and the right tools. But if your state is communicating panic, pressure, or disconnection, that's what lands first and colors everything after it. In this solocast, I dig into why state regulation isn't a sidebar to great coaching and leadership. It's the throughline. I share a story from my own work with a basketball team that illustrates exactly what happens when leaders skip this piece, and what becomes possible when they don't. We get into interoceptive awareness, the science of why calm is contagious, and three practical ways to start building a more regulated nervous system on purpose. Being calm, stoic, or serene isn't the end goal. It's about knowing where you are, being responsible for your experience, shifting when you need to, and creating the conditions for the people around you to access their best when it matters most. Learn more about working with me one-on-one and my new coaching course at drkcoaching.com. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Learn more about The Mental Training Lab Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.

    26 мин.
  4. Beyond the Grind: Lodro Rinzler on Meditation, Worthiness, and the “I’m Not Enough” Trap

    12 мая

    Beyond the Grind: Lodro Rinzler on Meditation, Worthiness, and the “I’m Not Enough” Trap

    In this episode of The Mental Training Lab, I sit down with Buddhist teacher, meditation teacher, and author Lodro Rinzler to explore a concept that has powerful implications for athletes, leaders, and high performers: basic goodness. So many of us operate from the quiet assumption that we’re not enough. Not successful enough, disciplined enough, accomplished enough, or mentally tough enough. Lodro’s work and new book “You Are Good, You Are Enough” challenge that story at the root, offering the possibility that beneath the striving, self-doubt, anxiety, and the insatiable need to achieve, there is something fundamentally whole and worthy already present. Together, we unpack how meditation functions as mental training, why thoughts don’t mean you’re “bad” at meditating, and how loving-kindness can help us relate differently to ourselves and others. We also explore the tension between achievement and worth and why so many high performers keep chasing external validation only to discover it doesn’t deliver the peace they hoped for. If you’ve ever felt fueled by the belief that you’re not enough, or if you coach athletes and performers who live inside that story, this conversation offers a grounded, practical, and deeply human way to begin relating differently to your own mind. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Learn more about The Mental Training Lab Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.

    1 ч. 1 мин.
  5. From Formula 1 to the Boardroom: Building Trust and High-Performance Teams with Peter Hodgkinson

    14 апр.

    From Formula 1 to the Boardroom: Building Trust and High-Performance Teams with Peter Hodgkinson

    What does it really take to build trust and psychological safety in teams under pressure? In this episode of The Mental Training Lab, I sit down with Peter Hodgkinson, high-performance consultant and the former Head of Build at Mercedes F1. Peter has spent decades in elite motorsport, including Formula 1, Le Mans, and the America’s Cup. He shares how environments with razor-thin margins and constant pressure shaped his philosophy on intent-based leadership, consistency, and human performance. Peter's experience connects directly to what many people are navigating every day: burnout from grinding in “second gear,” leading teams through high-stakes moments, and trying to align values with actual behavior, not just words on a wall. You’ll learn practical frameworks like Peter’s three-part model of trust (reliability, capability, relationship) and the importance of psychological safety in performance. Plus, get insight into how organizations like Mercedes made culture real by tying behavior, instead of just outcomes, to performance reviews and incentives. If you’re a leader, coach, or performer looking to build stronger teams, reduce burnout, and lead more effectively under pressure, this conversation offers both clear models and immediately actionable insights you can start applying today. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Learn more about The Mental Training Lab Connect with Pete on Instagram | LinkedIn | Website Subscribe to the podcast on Apple | Spotify This show is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co.

    1 ч. 5 мин.

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Master your mental game with the Mental Training Lab, hosted by Pete Kadushin. With 15 years of coaching experience and a PhD in performance psychology, Pete digs deep each episode to provide practical tools and expert insights so you can perform your best when it matters most. Enhance your focus, harness stress, and overcome challenges whether you’re an athlete, leader, or high-performer. Subscribe to learn how to elevate your game in work, play, and life.

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