🔥 Friday Fuel: The Work Every Athlete Must Do Off the Field

We want to start this week with a simple, genuine thank you.

Because this week we reached 500 subscribers on YouTube.

The wildest part is that every single step of it has been built by word of mouth, shared by people such as yourself.
You’ve watched, shared, sent episodes to teammates, forwarded clips to friends, and told other parents, “Hey, you should check this out.”
This community exists because you made it happen.

So thank you — truly.
The feedback from people who have subscribed and started watching in the past two weeks has been heartwarming and knowing that it’s all helping athletes, parents, coaches and individuals keeps us wanting to do more.

If there’s someone else in your world who might find these conversations helpful, we’d love you to keep passing them on the link.

📺️Youtube: @TheGameChangerYouthPerformance

Fittingly, this milestone arrived the same week we recorded one of our favourite conversations yet — a brand new episode with high performance coach Anna Veale founder of Fresh Coaching.

Honestly… it felt less like an interview and more like having a cuppa with a mate who just gets people.

On her website, Anna has this line:

That sentence sat between us the whole conversation. We kept coming back to it, poking at it, holding it up against kids on pathways, stressed-out parents, and coaches trying to do the right thing in a high-pressure world.

Our newsletter this week is us trying to bring you into that room with us.

“I spent years thinking I was thick.”

Anna didn’t start her story with a list of qualifications (though she has plenty: 20+ years in wellness, author of Only Human, life coach trainer, high performance coach, corporate work, athletes, marines, CEOs… the works).

She started with a belief.

As a kid in England, Anna decided she was “thick” — not clever like her mum or her brother. She failed maths and science, and from there, life kind of organised itself around that story. She didn’t push at school. University didn’t feel like it was “for her.” That belief just quietly ran the show.

Later, working in professional sport as a massage therapist, she’d introduce herself as “only a massage therapist.”
When she moved into coaching, she’d say she was “only a life coach.”

Even when teams asked her to speak to their players because she was so good with kids and understood sport so well, she’d say:

And then one day, on the sideline, a fellow football parent changed everything. He said:

That line gave her permission to stop hiding behind titles and own what she actually does: help people understand themselves so they can perform, enjoy life, and not lose their love of the game along the way.

That’s “human first” in action.

The U17 who “made it”… but at what cost?

In our conversation, Anna shared a moment that really made us think.

A young athlete she works with made it all the way to an U17 World Cup — an achievement everyone naturally celebrates. Social posts. Congratulations. Pride. A sense that all the sacrifice was “worth it.”

But Anna asked the question few people ask:

Because while that particular athlete achieved something incredible, Anna sees the broader trend up close:

• kids under huge pressure

• sport being professionalised earlier every year

• families feeling they need to “keep up”

• young athletes tying identity and self-worth to selection, squads, and outcomes

She sees the cost when a young player makes the team but still doesn’t feel enough.
And the cost when they don’t make it — and have no idea who they are without the sport.

That’s the heart of this conversation:
If performance is built on a shaky sense of self, no achievement ever feels safe.

What actually changes when you “learn to be human first”?

We asked Anna: What shifts in someone when they start doing this inner work — identity, beliefs, emotions, values?

Here’s what we see again and again — not just from Anna’s work, but from our chats with Erik Panzer, David Galbraith (DG), and other guests, plus what the research keeps shouting at us.

1. Identity: “I’m more than my last game.”

Instead of “I am a footballer” being the only identity, athletes start to see a fuller picture:

That broader identity doesn’t make them less driven — it makes them harder to break. There’s more of them left when the result goes against them, or when they’re injured, or when selection doesn’t fall their way.

2. Beliefs: “Maybe that story isn’t actually true.”

In the pod, Anna described an exceptional young player who had quietly built the belief “I’m not enough”.

Together, they wrote down:

• Every fear and limiting belief (“I’m not going to get selected”, “My dreams won’t come true”).

• Then, separately, everything her friends would say about her as a person: funny, intelligent, a baller, good teammate, can use both feet, hard worker.

When they compared the lists, the athlete could see in black and white that her “I’m not enough” story simply didn’t match reality.

Her football didn’t improve because of a magic drill. It improved because the person holding the ball changed the way she saw herself.

3. Emotions: “I still feel fear… but it doesn’t drive the bus.”

Anna, DG, Erik — they all talk about this in different ways:

• You don’t get rid of fear and doubt.

• You learn to hold them beside you while doing the thing anyway.

• You stop labelling feelings as “good” or “bad” and start asking, “What is this trying to protect? What matters here?”

DG often talks about turning anxiety into courage by deliberately stepping into situations that scare you and realising you survive them.

Fear doesn’t disappear — but it loses its power to dictate your life.

4. Values: “I know what matters when everything is loud.”

When you understand your values — connection, growth, courage, fun, family, integrity — they become a compass in the chaos.

Instead of chasing every shiny goal, you’re asking:

• “Does this fit who I want to be?”

• “Am I playing/working in a way that lines up with my values?”

That’s what gives you the steady kind of motivation, not the boom-and-bust “I feel good when I win / I’m a failure when I don’t.”

So… can you do this work on your own?

This is something we’ve wrestled with across our own pods, newsletters, and conversations with people like Anna, Erik, and DG:

What you absolutely can do yourself

From Anna’s book Only Human, her blog, and free resources, plus Erik’s and DG’s work, there’s a clear pattern: there’s a heap you can do on your own.

You can:

• Get curious about your own stories

  • Catch the “I’m not enough / I’m hopeless / I always mess this up” thoughts.

  • Ask Anna’s favourite questions:

    • Is it true?

    • Is it helpful?

• Reflect and journal

  • After training or games: What felt good? What felt heavy? What did I learn about myself, not just my skills?

• Do small, scary things on purpose

  • DG-style: take little courage reps — say what you think, volunteer first, try the riskier pass, have the awkward conversation.

• Clarify your values and identity

  • Write down who you are outside of your sport or job.

  • Name 3–5 values you want to bring to every environment.

• Listen, read, learn

  • Podcasts (like ours with Anna, Erik, DG and more here)

  • Books.

  • Articles and blogs that give language to what you’re feeling.

All of this can move the needle, especially if you’re honest and willing to sit in some discomfort.

Where coaches and mentors make a massive difference

Here’s the other side — and Anna says this pretty bluntly in her blog “Every Player Needs a Coach”: our brains are wired with negativity bias and unchallenged beliefs, and that makes it really hard to see ourselves clearly.

From her article and what we see in Erik and DG’s work too, coaches and mentors help because they:

• See the blind spots you can’t

  • They spot the patterns in how you talk about yourself.

  • They challenge the “I’m just…” and “I always…” stories you don’t even realise you’re repeating.

• Won’t let you stay small

  • A good coach won’t let you sit in rumination and self-pity.

  • They nudge (or shove) you back towards what matters to you.

• Create safety + stretch at the same time

  • They give you a place to be completely honest.

  • And then they stretch you — with questions, challenges, and experiments you’d never set yourself.

• Hold you accountable to the boring stuff

  • Sleep, food, movement, boundaries — the basic foundations Anna talks about that make mental work actually possible.

Erik describes his work as helping young people with mental & emotional challenges and building confidence & identity so they can thrive in sport and life.

DG, despite believing that ultimately people are capable of finding their own solutions, has spent decades walking alongside athletes and teams as they do that, from Olympic champions to the All Black Sevens.

And Anna? Her whole business is built on helping people understand their minds, reconnect to what matters, and bring out the best in themselves and others - seeing the pure potential in people and helping them show them the light so they can see it themselves.

So our honest answer to “can you do this alone?” is:

Bringing it back to you (and your kids)

If you take nothing else from our chat with Anna, take this:

• Your kid is a human long before they’re an athlete.

• You are a human long before you’re a parent on the sideline.

• Coaches are humans before they’re clipboard-holders.

When we focus there first — identity, beliefs, emotions, values — results don’t become less important. They just stop being the only thing that tells us who we are.

And funnily enough, that’s when performance usually takes off.

If you want more of Anna’s work you can find her here:

🏃‍♀️ Athlete Sheet

Here is your “Be Human First” athlete sheet (like your other takeaway sheets) that pulls out key points for younger athletes.

⭐ FREE Fan Q&A With All White Jesse Randall — Please Help Us Spread the Word!

We are incredibly excited to share that our next LIVE Fan Call & Q&A will feature Jesse Randall — All White & Auckland FC footballer, joining us on Sunday, 25 January at 7:00pm NZDT.

Jesse didn’t take the normal academy pathway to the top - join to see how he actually made it by forging his own path.

This is a completely FREE event for all students, families, and schools across Aotearoa — and an amazing chance for young players to hear directly from someone walking the pathway they dream of.

👉 Please share this event with your school, club, team, or parent groups.
Even forwarding it to one friend or coach makes a huge difference.

📣 Event Details (easy to copy + share)

LIVE FAN CALL & Q&A — Jesse Randall (All White & Auckland FC)
📅 Sunday, 25 January
🕖 7:00pm NZDT
💻 Live on Zoom + YouTube
🎟 Free for all families, athletes & schools

📝 Register here:
https://shorturl.at/sbI1r

📺 Watch live on YouTube:
https://shorturl.at/WH14L

Thank you to everyone who has already shared — your support helps us keep these events free and available to ALL young athletes across NZ.
Let’s pack it out and give Jesse the warmest possible crowd! 💙⚽🔥

Finally, if something resonates from these newsletters, you disagree, want to get in touch to connect with one of the experts we talk with, or just want to message about how we can be better… please do. We read everything and respond to everyone who gets in contact. Just hit reply.

Have a great week,

B & Ben
The Game Changer x FYA Team
💙⚽🏆

FYA - Fueling Youth Athletes
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