Seattle Mariners Mental Skills Coach Makes Players Resilient

Stephanie Hale-Burkhart, Seattle Mariners Mental Skills Coach on mental skillsets, cold tubs, and the future of sports psychology.

Is there a team sport that puts individual players in incredibly stressful situations more than baseball? Throw a wild pitch or muff an easy fly at the worst possible moment and you're an eternal bum. Rise to the occasion, and legendary status awaits—at least until the next defining split second arrives. 

Take, for example, a game near the end of last season between the Seattle Mariners and the Oakland Athletics. Tied 1-1 in the bottom of the ninth inning with two out, Cal Raleigh of the Mariners steps up to pinch hit against A's reliever Domingo Acevedo, taking it to a full count. On the next pitch, the game could go either way, and the stakes couldn't be higher. 

This isn't just any game. It's a chance for the Mariners to break the longest playoff drought in Major League Baseball. That's why 44,754 fans at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park are on their feet when Acevedo throws a slider low and inside.

In a moment that will be forever remembered by Mariner fans, Raleigh clubs the ball into the right field stands, banging it off the windows of the stadium’s Hit It Here Cafe. The blast sends the Mariners to the playoffs for the first time in 21 years.

“It’s not really a pressure moment—we’re having fun,” Raleigh told The Associated Press after the game. “We’re playing baseball.”

One of the reasons Raleigh was able to relax and focus on the fun of the game and not get consumed by the insane pressure is that teams like the Mariners are investing heavily in helping athletes hone their mental skills alongside their athletic ones. Raleigh had already hit 25 home runs last season, so he had the physical tools to perform. Rising to that moment, he also had to control his stress.

This is where MLB professionals like Stephanie Hale-Burkhart, mental skills coach for the Seattle Mariners come into play. Sports and performance psychology address all kinds of situations to prepare players for a 162-game season loaded with pressure cooker-type situations through the dog days of summer to those late-season, ninth-inning rallies. 

Men’s Journal spoke to Hale-Burkhart about her work in sports psychology, what she and her colleagues are bringing to the Mariners, the benefits of cold tubs, and what’s next in this field. 

Men’s Journal: What led you to become a mental skills coach?

Stephanie Hale-Burkhart: I played soccer growing up, and it was in my athletic experience that I really started to understand that there's this whole mental component to it—always some point where I was in my head. It didn't matter how physically prepared I was, how much I'd practiced, how prepared I felt leading up to these moments. All this pressure would still creep in. So, at first, I was looking for something to help me in my own experience. How can I help get myself to a point where I can manage these moments a little bit better and essentially perform at the level I know I'm capable of?

Did your educational interests lead you in this direction too?

Finding a sports psych program in undergrad is super difficult—there aren't a lot out there. I was in a general psych program and my advisor at the time wanted to know what we were interested in. I had shared my interest in sports psych with her and she said, “Okay, when it comes to any projects, papers, presentations you have, I want you to do it through a sports lens. Do a deep dive into this, whatever you want to do.”

I ended up going to grad school at the University of Denver. My degree is in sport and performance psychology. I’m also a certified mental performance consultant. Once I graduated, I was actually fortunate enough to work down at IMG Academy, a prep boarding school and sports training facility in Florida.

What was it like working at IMG?

I got a lot of exposure to different sports and age groups, as well as opportunities to work with teams and groups at the academy. During my two years there, I was fortunate enough to work primarily with the girls lacrosse and baseball programs. At some point, I got a call from the farm director here at the time, Andy McKay. He asked me if I'd be interested in interviewing for a position they had available for a mental skills coach role. I ended up getting the job two years ago.

How was your first season with the Mariners?

That first year was a chance to get exposed to professional baseball and start to understand the manager’s philosophy. I spent a lot of time at the complex in Arizona working with our rehab groups and our rookie ball team. That was such a good experience for me and it was really helpful.

Now, I'll travel and work throughout our minor leagues a lot, and I've built relationships with more players and coaching staff. Last year, I was on the road about three weeks out of the month working with the different affiliates. We all tackle really all the teams from the big leagues down to the Dominican summer league.

Do you primarily work with players as a team, or more individually? 

It’s both. There’s going to be times where we address the team as a group. The coaches are great that way. They'll run a hitting meeting or a pitcher’s meeting and ask, “Hey Steph, you want five or 10 minutes in the front or back of this?”

A lot of work ends up being introduced in a group setting, but it probably becomes a lot more useful for them in the individual follow up—when we build out specific programs or applications for them personally. We have consistent touch points throughout the year. From a mindset standpoint, they're getting the support and learning the skillsets they're going to need.

Can you talk about breath work?

Breath is a beautiful thing in the sense that it can help us relax and slow down. A lot of being able to think about the right thing at the right time is more about learning how to think less or stop the thinking process. It's not usually about, like, adding more thoughts [laughs]. I think that's actually a misconception about what mental skills coaches do.

How do you coach something like that—thinking less?

Something we've utilized a lot with our players over the last year or two has been cold tubs. There's a ton of physiological benefits to utilizing the cold tubs, but a lot of what we do is helping them understand that when you get in, you're going to have this stress response where your body freaks out. You get tense, your heart rate's elevated, and the mind starts speeding up. So, your mind's going try to tell you to get out, right?

We've made a lot of parallels between that and what happens in the box when you're 0 for three in the game and you're about to step up for your fourth at-bat. It's uncomfortable and your body's going have this physical response. You're going to have this mental response that's just going to try to convince you to avoid it or get out of it. What we do with the cold tubs is have them utilize a lot of their breathing. We help teach them that they can control their stress response.

A lot of times with mental skills training they're initially expecting us to just be talking at them. Our approach is more aimed toward actually experiencing it—feeling what it's like to not have that control, and then getting yourself back to control.

What do you focus on between seasons?

A lot of our off-season work is geared towards helping guys start to build routines and understand certain skills that can help them. They have some separation from the game, so they can start to build these habits and gain a clear perspective of what they want to do and need to accomplish before next season. We'll provide them with different types of skills and strategies that can help them check in with where they are. Anywhere from doing breath work and cold showers to going for a walk in the morning and taking some time to journal.

Everything that we do is geared towards helping a player stay focused on the right thing at the right time. At the end of the day, whether you're pitching, hitting, or playing defense, focusing on the right thing will always better the chance of success. Every tool, skill, or strategy that we help players utilize ties back to that—helping them to gain an understanding of the ways that they can control their stress response during a game.

Off the field, what advice would you give anyone for handling stressful moments in life. Say, before a speech or a big job interview?

It almost always comes down to this: Can we manage our stress response and stay focused on what we're actually trying to do in the moment? Having a clear plan for that is always the first step. If you believe that you have the skillsets and have worked on the things that it'll take to actually go execute the task, then you're going to be good. You may be a bit nervous, but you have these techniques in your back pocket. In a job interview, for example, let's first slow down the exhale and get the heart rate under control—while also knowing that feeling nervous isn't necessarily a bad thing. 

What do you think is next for this type of training in pro sports? Is your field evolving? 

There's kind of two houses there. There's the mental health and clinical psychology side and then there's mental skills, which has the performance psych and on-field approach. That’s where we're trying to help our players. While these two sides are very related, and regulating stress falls into both buckets, they’re also different lanes. 

I think the future of it is an understanding that nothing happens independent of a mindset. Whether it's in the weight room, at home, or on the field, there's this mindset component that's always going to supplement whatever we're trying to get a player to do in any sport.

I think baseball is one of the sports that has really integrated this well, but it's catching on more in soccer, basketball, football, and other sports too. It's growing, and we want it to continue to expand. The more that we can help players and coaches understand this, the better we'll be able to help athletes reach their full potential.