Developing Young Leaders: Stress-We Need it To Grow

November 4, 2024

Developing Young Leaders: Stress-We Need it To Grow

How we view stress can be the difference in it HELPING us grow or HURTING us grow.

Over the past few weeks in our Long-Term Athletic Development (LTAD) program, we’ve been focusing on labeling your level of stress and understanding the different zones we all go through which we’ve defined as:
The Comfort Zone
The Growth Zone
The Fear Zone

As the world has changed, it’s easy to put a label on stress as something bad—something to avoid at all costs. While it’s true that stress can accumulate and lead to us feeling overwhelmed, make us want to avoid doing certain things, and can be down right debilitating… but we must also consider stress as a key ingredient for growth.

Last week, we used one of our Prototype Performance and Recovery tools with the LTAD team to replicate how this shows up in everyday life. The group experienced their first cold plunge, which can be quite a stressful exercise. The buildup before entering the cold water and the initial shock is synonymous with how we overthink or project something may be worse than it actually is.

However, as you sit in the cold, you battle not just the physical discomfort but also the mental challenges that arise. I was impressed to see all the kids participate, with some reaching the five-minute mark with a full dunk—shoutout to Aiden, Carter, and George! 

This experience was analogous to how we can pull ourselves out of the Fear Zone and into the Growth Zone. We’ve been discussing how quickly we can transition from fear to growth as a significant factor in building resilience.

The kids shared some real-life examples of being in the “Fear Zone”:

Making a mistake in a soccer game: “Once I make one mistake, I just think about not wanting to make another, and I end up not wanting the ball again.”


Taking a big test: “I study, but once I get started, I start second-guessing myself. I get in my head and can't focus.”


These examples highlight the importance of identifying where we stand on our stress meter. If we are merely flipping between fear and comfort, we miss opportunities for growth from the stress we encounter. One thing we are working on is recognizing when we face stress and seeing it as an opportunity for development. This understanding was reinforced during the cold plunge, as it provided a fun way for the kids to see this concept in real time.

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve hosted two high school girls’ soccer teams, Westborough and Hopkinton, for performance and recovery sessions as they head into the state cup playoffs. This was a great opportunity for team bonding, but we also emphasized that recovery is much more than just resting when muscles are sore—it’s a trainable skill. Proactive recovery involves baking in habits that help you bounce back as quickly as possible.

Waiting until you’re sore to add recovery to your training can be detrimental; the same applies to the mental side of life. If you wait until you’re overwhelmed or overly stressed to focus on recovery, it may be too late. You might not have built the resilience necessary to bounce back swiftly. I believe true resilience isn’t about preventing hard things from happening; it’s about how quickly you can process challenges and recover from them. Stress serves as the stimulus for growth, and recovery is where that growth occurs. Those who can recover faster will experience growth more quickly and won’t get knocked out of the game.

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