Responding vs. Reacting: The Difference That Matters

Published August 17, 2025

Hello. Cross country has begun here in Colorado with races starting this week. I’m fired up to watch my daughter and her teammates race next Friday.

Just like coaches in Colorado, you no doubt have kids who have put in a great summer of training.

Now the questions in mid-August are...

“Will they be able to race to their fitness level this year?”

“Will they run their best 3-4 races in the last 3-4 meets of the year?”

Today, let’s talk about the mental part of racing and why it’s crucial that your athletes learn the mental skills necessary to race to their potential.

Here we go!

Responding Effectively

“Responding vs. reacting” was a key point in a conversation I had with one of the best coaches – at any level - in the country.

John O’Malley, the boy’s coach at Sandburg High School (IL), is the only person to have coached two Footlocker Champions.

On the track a young man would have to run under 4:10 in the 1,600m to crack the top 10 all-time list in his program. Wow!

When I asked him what “mental skills” means in his program - here’s what he said…

“Mental skills in our program are the idea of expanding your window or capacity of effective responses to challenging situations. So just expanding one’s zone to respond effectively.

We all have a zone of response and you’re trying to widen the zone where you’re more likely to have a better response. A response you’d be proud of and a response that you found was effective.

There’s a lot, obviously, that goes into expanding that zone and increasing the likelihood of that positive response.”

Over the next 58 minutes of the interview John shared with me what his team does to widen this zone.

I think it’s worth highlighting what coach O’Malley expects his athletes to do:

Expand their window or capacity of effective responses to challenging situations.

This is what coaches need to teach their athletes to do if the athletes are going to race to their potential.

Responding vs. Reacting

“You’re not really dying when you’re hurting in a long run. ‘I feel terrible’ are thoughts we try to eliminate.

We want to replace them with what we call effective problem solving. Going back to the regulation - the ability to regulate ourselves.

There’s a big difference between responding versus reacting.

And that’s what we talk about all the time - are you just reacting to that feeling and allowing it to control you? Do you have a response?

The easiest way to kind of get a good response is to preplan it - to know what it’s going to feel like.”

And then he reminded me of a crucial part of our sport that we all take for granted.

“We are in the most predictable sport.

In football they don’t know the play [the other team has] drawn up. Other athletes would love to be in our predictable situation.

I was talking to the baseball team last year and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah - in your sport, you can just try harder and you have a better outcome. That doesn’t work for us.’

I said, ‘Yes - isn’t that great.’

Even for a sprinter that doesn’t work as well. Trying harder in a 100m dash really doesn’t work.

We have this huge, awesome opportunity where we have a lot of control over the outcome of our race and it’s very predictable. We know it’s going to hurt at various points.

We know generally what it’s going to feel like. You may not know exactly what your competitors are going to do, but you have a ballpark.

Talk to yourself about that beforehand and then be ready for being adaptable. It may look like this, or maybe like this…

If you’re having a terrible day - and we all have ‘em - how are you getting ready to respond there?”

The Complete High School Runner

The segment with Coach O'Malley is just one of multiple interviews with elite high school coaches, professional athletes, and mental skills experts in the Mental Skills course.

Next week I'm launching the Complete High School Runner - and pound for pound, it's the best value of any education I offer. It builds on all the material from the Mental Skills course but adds crucial components that coaches have been asking for.

Here's what I originally thought would happen with the Mental Skills course: parents would buy this for their athletes. But what I discovered is that coaches are getting incredible results using this material with their teams.

Some programs watch these on short practice days - you can have your team run in the morning, then bring everyone into the classroom to watch a module together. For the shorter mental skills modules (8-12 minutes) and visualizations, coaches just bring speakers to practice and play them while kids are stretching or cooling down. It's become an amazing resource for team building and education.

And August is definitely the time to get this. You and I both know that when the first important race happens, there are going to be some kids who are fit, who put in a great summer, but all of a sudden things don't come together on race day. We both know that's more psychological than physiological.

Here's what's included:

Mental Skills

All the content coaches have been raving about, plus the three updated cross-country visualizations. I’ve had coaches tell me these visualizations are the most impactful part of the entire course.

Nutrition

A concise video covering everything from what a meal should look like the night before a race to the best hydration options (the list might surprise you). Plus handouts you can give directly to your athletes.

Recruiting

When the season’s over, bring your team into the classroom and cover the recruiting essentials. We’ll discuss how some aspects haven’t changed in 20 years, while other rules are evolving. Here’s something that might surprise you: there’s literally a college program for every athlete on your team if they’re willing to work hard as a college athlete.

Two Coaching Bonuses to Simplify Your Life:

• Cross-training workout progressions athletes can do anytime to supplement their training
• Return from injury progressions so athletes can safely get back to full training

If you were on the fence about getting the mental skills course last year, now you can get everything - mental skills, nutrition, and recruiting - in one complete package.

You get lifetime access to the course, and like all my courses, I update it when needed.

Plus, there's a 10-day money-back guarantee, making this a risk-free investment for you.

More details next week, including a payment plan that will keep this ridiculously affordable.

Let’s go!

Jay

PS - As we talked about in a recent email, touching on race pace work sooner rather than later is important.