For generations, athletes have been told some version of the same message when the pressure starts to mount: tough it out, keep your emotions in check, don't show weakness, find a way through.

That mindset has been woven into sport for decades, particularly in environments where mental toughness has often been equated with stoicism and silence. But as research and understanding around mental performance continue to evolve, so too does the way athletes can be supported.

Mount Royal University has long recognized the importance of the mental side of sport, and the addition of Brett Gardiner and Karissa Johnson as mental performance coaches builds on that existing commitment. Their work with MRU athletes focuses on developing the mental skills that accompany high-performance sport, not simply addressing problems when they arise.

For Gardiner, that distinction is one of the most important parts of the job.

“Nothing has to be broken for us to try and optimize the mental side of our game,” Gardiner says. “I think that part's really cool because it starts to remove some of that stigma, it’s about cultivating that safe environment with each athlete so we can actually learn about the authentic individual, not just who they are as an athlete, but who they are as a person, because, the majority of the time, it's our experiences as a person that drive who we are as an athlete.”

Johnson sees it in much the same way.

“I definitely think of it as skill building and developing tools,” she says. “Every sport is demanding, and we kind of assume that athletes should be able to deal with these pressures naturally. But if they're never taught practical tools and skills to do that, we can't expect them to.”

Their work is not meant to be an emergency service reserved for athletes in crisis. Instead, both Gardiner and Johnson describe mental performance as another part of training where athletes can develop mental skills alongside their physical skills.

Gardiner and Johnson arrived at mental performance through very different experiences.

Gardiner spent 14 years as a high school teacher, where he found himself drawn to the relationship side of education. He enjoyed helping people, understanding their experiences and finding ways to support them beyond academics.

With that being said, sport has always been part of his life.

Growing up in Alberta, Gardiner was a hockey goaltender with the same dream shared by countless young players: playing in the NHL. He played AAA hockey and had opportunities to try out in the AJHL, but his playing career eventually took him in another direction.

Today, Gardiner remains involved in high-level performance through his career as a rodeo announcer. A 14-time Canadian Pro Rodeo Announcer of the Year, he has performed in front of thousands of people at events such as the Calgary Stampede and the Canadian Finals Rodeo.

Those experiences gave him a firsthand understanding of pressure. There were times when performing at that level did not come easy. Gardiner sought help from a mental health and performance perspective and discovered that the tools he learned affected more than his work behind a microphone.

“They helped me become a better performer,” he says. “They also helped me in my personal life.”

That experience eventually led him to wonder how he could support others in the same way.

He pursued a master's degree in counselling psychology, became a registered psychologist and continued his education in sport and performance psychology. He is now nearing completion of his doctorate in the field.

The result is a career that brings together the different worlds that shaped him: education, psychology and performance. A combination that also shapes the countless number of student athletes that have walked the halls of MRU.

That connection to performance continues to influence the way Gardiner works with athletes.

He knows what it feels like to stand in a high-pressure environment. He also knows what it feels like to search for tools that can help when preparation alone is not enough.

Johnson's path began with her own experience as an athlete.

Raised in a small Saskatchewan community, she played a wide variety of sports growing up before softball became her primary sport.

Eventually, she was recruited to play for a more competitive team. The opportunity meant commuting two hours each way, multiple times a week, to play with new coaches and new teammates at a higher level.

The pressure she felt, however, was not coming from the people around her. It was coming from herself.

“They recruited me because they saw my skill, nothing needed to change,” Johnson says. “But in my brain, I just created this story and these pressures about who I needed to be.”

That experience became a defining moment. Competitive sport, she says, can be both demanding and isolating. Athletes often feel as though they are supposed to have everything figured out, and that admitting otherwise is somehow a sign of weakness.

Johnson rejects that idea.

“We're not born into this world being taught how to cope with the pressures of high-performance sport,” she says. “It's a weird world and I hope that I can be a resource for athletes so that they don't have to feel quite alone in that competitive sport journey.”

One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding mental performance, both coaches say, is that athletes only seek it when they are struggling. Gardiner believes that mindset has begun to change, but there is still work to do. When mental performance becomes part of a team's regular routine, athletes are exposed to the same concepts and language regardless of where they are in their own development. At MRU, that means group sessions with teams, collaboration with coaching staffs and individual meetings for athletes who want more personalized support.

“Everybody gets to hear the same message,” Gardiner says. “Everybody gets to learn the same language, regardless of where you are in your own individual mental performance journey.”

He believes that approach can help remove some of the stigma that still surrounds seeking support.

“It allows us to be more proactive, to get ahead of it and to not always be reactionary when people are maybe really struggling,” Gardiner says. “We start early. We build a foundation.”

That foundation, however, does not look the same for every athlete.

Gardiner says one of the most important parts of his job is learning who each athlete is as a person. Every player arrives with different experiences, different motivations and different relationships with their sport.

“We have to be curious and we have to be really effective in asking good questions,” he says. “We're all motivated by something different.”

Johnson takes a similar approach. When she meets with an athlete, she does not expect every recommendation to fit. Instead, she presents different ideas and encourages athletes to identify the ones that make sense for them.

“Let's make it yours, Johnson says “it's fun to explore and get creative to make coping skills suit each individual athlete.” 

That individualized approach becomes especially important at the university level.

Student-athletes are balancing far more than competition. They are pursuing degrees, managing relationships, often living away from home for the first time and figuring out who they are as young adults.

Johnson says that reality makes university athletes a particularly interesting group to work with.

“A lot of these sport-related challenges are influenced by how their study habits are,” she says. “It just reinforces this idea that you are a complex human being. You're not just an athlete, you're also pursuing a degree, and you're also merging into adulthood.”

Gardiner sees the same opportunity.

He says working with student-athletes allows coaches and support staff to have an impact during an important stage of their lives. The work extends beyond helping athletes compete.

That perspective also influences how he thinks about athletic identity. For many athletes, sport becomes one of the largest parts of who they are. It can shape friendships, confidence, how they define success and sometimes even how they define themselves. But eventually, every athlete has to navigate life outside of competition. Gardiner believes mental performance can help athletes understand that identity without feeling like they need to abandon it.

“It’s about being able to move in it and move out of it in a healthy way,” he says.

An athlete needs to be able to lock in during a game. But they also need to be able to shift their focus to an exam, a relationship or a friend. The goal is not to make sport less important, it is to help athletes understand that sport is one important part of who they are, not the entirety of their identity.

Perhaps no topic reveals the changing philosophy around mental performance more than the idea of mental toughness. Johnson is particularly passionate about the language.

“I'm like, mental toughness doesn't exist,” she says.

Her point is not that athletes cannot perform through adversity. Her concern is with the way the phrase has traditionally been understood. In many sports, mental toughness has become synonymous with being stoic, hiding emotions and never admitting when something feels difficult.

Johnson believes that definition creates unrealistic expectations.

“You’re not a robot,” she says. “You’re going to have feelings. Mental toughness is being able to stay focused even when you have big feelings coming up. But why don’t we just talk about focus then?”

Johnson’s graduate work has explored the relationship between self-compassion and mental toughness, and she says there are inconsistencies between how the concept is described in research and how it is commonly understood in sport.

Rather than teaching athletes to suppress their emotions, Johnson prefers to frame mental performance around focus and courage.

“Courage comes out in moments of fear, not moments when things are all right,” Johnson says. “I think changing the language we use when we’re talking to athletes really matters because there is still this culture that tells athletes they need to be mentally tough. But really, that culture has been built on such an outdated system.”

Gardiner approaches the concept differently, but his definition arrives at a similar place.

For him, mental toughness means giving the best you have in whatever circumstances you find yourself.

“Wherever I am with whatever I have,” Gardiner says.

It means showing up prepared and focused whether the game is at home or on the road, early in the morning or late at night. It also means being a good teammate.

“I gave it everything I had with everything I had,” Gardiner says. “I was focused. I was ready. I was prepared. I was a good teammate.”

Neither coach describes mental strength as pretending pressure does not exist. Instead, they describe the ability to understand what is happening internally and still choose how to respond.

Gardiner and Johnson bring different experiences to MRU Athletics.

Gardiner's background spans education, psychology, hockey and high-level performance. Johnson's work has been shaped by her own athletic experiences and her graduate research into women in sport. Their perspectives are not identical, and they do not define every concept in exactly the same way. But the purpose behind their work is remarkably similar.

Both believe athletes deserve practical tools to manage the pressures that come with competing at a high level, both believe those conversations should happen before athletes reach a crisis, and both believe the work should extend beyond whatever happens on the scoreboard.

For Johnson, it comes down to remembering who athletes are beneath the jersey.

“Let's start treating athletes like the humans they are,” she says.

For Gardiner, it means helping athletes become more than simply better competitors.

Wins will always matter. Championships will always matter.

But if the goal of mental performance is to develop the whole person, Gardiner says, then the most lasting success may be measured long after an athlete has played their final game.

“It’s not always about creating national championship teams,” he says. “It’s about creating world championship type human beings.”