Sport Psych

“Drop Your Garbage at the Door”

By Lisa Izzi

When I went to the University of Utah on scholarship, the gymnastics team had already won two National Championship titles. Unbelievable. It was my freshman year, and though I wanted to do really well, I was a little intimidated. On one hand I was thinking, “No way!” as if winning Nationals back-to-back was impossible to do. But on the other hand I was like “Hey—it’s do-able, and I want to win Nationals, too!”

The captains on our team, Megan and Linda, really pumped me up. They were only juniors (we had no seniors that year), and they said right to our faces, “We’ve won Nationals two years in a row and we’re going to keep on winning every year we’re on this team.” Bam. They told us. There was no fartin’ around, and our coach, Greg Marsden, was serious too. Each day the energy in the gym was keen and focused—girls tumbling, sweating, and knocking out routines one after another.

Lisa dances on floor at the NCAA National Championships.

The hard part was learning how to balance the drive to win without sabotaging yourself—you know, getting so intense you start fighting yourself. As I worked to perform my best—on vault, bars, beam, and floor—and tried to live up to this championship level, I was in every sense consumed. Every meal, I was aware of calories and food going in my body, twice a week I lifted weights in the weight room, most days I did extra running and conditioning in the fieldhouse, and I did this all on top of five-3 ½ hour practices a week with killer conditioning, like hundreds of crunches, push-ups, pull-ups, squat jumps, and sprints till some of us threw up.

The problem was I began to think I couldn’t fail.

If I failed—I was nothing.  

Then enter Dr. Henschen. Dr. Keith Henschen is a sports psychologist. We worked with him on a regular basis. Talk about smooth and comfortable. “Hensch,” as we sometimes called him, liked to joke around. He allowed us to look at ourselves in a more human perspective—that we made mistakes, goofed up, and got in our own way—hey that’s life. All you have to do is be aware of it; then when you acknowledge your mistakes and relax, that’s when you can make improvements.

What Dr. Henschen emphasized was how to approach practice and competition—clear all that perfectionist clutter from your mind. Don’t walk into practice with negative thoughts from the day before, or an injury that’s bothering you, or the fear of failing. It’s all mental garbage: Drop the garbage at the door!

Dr. Henschen taught us to close our eyes, breathe deep, see our own minds full of dirty garbage, and literally empty it out before we entered the gym. This enabled us to come in the gym with the perspective of a new day, new hope, and a new energy.

It’s pretty crazy but we won Nationals a 3rd consecutive time that year—1983. I finished 4th in the country in the All-Around, and 6th on balance beam, and beyond my dreams of the team’s success, I became an NCAA All-American. Unbelievable.

Mental training was truly the reason we won. It’s so easy to put too much pressure on ourselves because we think we have to be successful or perfect, or else we’re nothing. The key to success and managing problems is really allowing mistakes to be okay! Laugh at yourself, and with any built-up tension, learn how to let it go. You can do it. So from here on out, visualize your mental garbage, and just before practice or a game, make sure you ‘drop it at the door.’

Lisa meets with a local Brownie troop to talk about pursuing their dreams.

Lisa Izzi, formerly Lisa Mitzel, competed for the University of Utah from 1983-1986. The team ended up winning all four NCAA National Team titles while she was on the team, which made it six consecutive national championships. This has never been done before or since in Division I Women’s Gymnastics. While there’s no doubt the team’s mental approach was influenced by the entire coaching and training staff—Bill Sands, Tyler McComber, Ann Marie Jensen, Donna Cozzo, Chip Schaefer, Coach Varner, Steve Varechok, and Jeff Wilcox—Lisa especially credits Greg Marsden, Dr. Keith Henschen, and her teammates who so strongly believed in the dream of winning. It was a magical experience with many sacrifices, and it has forever taught Lisa how to win in life.