Seven Days, Hundreds Of Decisions, One Outcome | Episode 415

Seven Days, Hundreds Of Decisions, One Outcome | Episode 415

The smallest detail can tilt a season. From a mispacked jersey to a delayed plane, we unpack how the seven days before a big game become a mental marathon—where film study, logistics, and sleep habits matter as much as play design. We take you inside the layered strategy that starts the moment an opponent is named: position coaches dissect tendencies, coordinators narrow the call sheet, and players drill the few plays that really move the needle. That focus lowers cognitive load and builds trust when the clock and crowd are loud.

Beyond the playbook, we shine a light on the hidden engines of performance: nutrition that stays consistent all week, strength and mobility routines that keep bodies predictable, and walkthroughs that tighten timing without draining energy. Then we tackle the quiet saboteurs—travel plans that slip, hotels booked in the wrong city, gear color conflicts, and media windows that steal recovery time. Pressure magnifies those slips in playoffs, so we lean into checklists, role clarity, and pre-mortems to catch small errors before they become late nights and foggy minds.

We also map this playbook to everyday life. Feeling great two days out is not a reason to sprint; it is a cue to bank energy for the moment that matters. We share simple tools—contingency planning, simplified decision rules, light and sleep alignment, brief mindfulness—to keep doubt from taking root. Resilience is not magic; it is redundancy and honesty applied to human limits. When the game shrinks to one or two decisive plays, preparation, communication, and calm execution make the difference.

If this resonated, tap follow, share it with a friend who thrives under pressure, and leave a quick review so more listeners can find the show. Your support helps us celebrate all voices and keep these conversations growing.

Chapter Markers

0:00 Welcome And Topic Setup

2:39 Scouting Opponents And Film Study

6:01 Crafting The Game Plan And Practice

7:46 Nutrition And Training Rhythm

8:45 Logistics That Make Or Break

12:08 Communication Failures And Jersey Mishaps

15:18 Travel And Hotel Variables

19:38 Pressure, Playoffs, And Mental Strain

26:10 Personal Strategy And Energy Management

33:10 Doubt, Delays, And Sleep Disruption

38:45 Redundancy, Adaptability, And Resilience

41:45 Gratitude And Listener Callouts

#DecisionMaking #StrategicChoices #OutcomeAnalysis #LeadershipInsights #CriticalThinking #WeekOfDecisions #EffectiveLeadership #PersonalDevelopment #MindfulChoices #ReflectivePractice #justiceforsurvivors #VoicesforVoices #VoicesforVoicesPodcast #JustinAlanHayes #JustinHayes #help3billion #TikTok #Instagram #truth #Jesusaire #VoiceForChange #HealingTogether #VoicesForVoices415

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Topic Setup
• 2:39 Scouting Opponents And Film Study
• 6:01 Crafting The Game Plan And Practice
• 7:46 Nutrition And Training Rhythm
• 8:45 Logistics That Make Or Break
• 12:08 Communication Failures And Jersey Mishaps
• 15:18 Travel And Hotel Variables
• 19:38 Pressure, Playoffs, And Mental Strain
• 26:10 Personal Strategy And Energy Management
• 33:10 Doubt, Delays, And Sleep Disruption
• 38:45 Redundancy, Adaptability, And Resilience
• 41:45 Gratitude And Listener Callouts

Transcript

Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: 0:02

Hey everyone, it's Justin here with Voices for Voices. Thank you so much for joining us on this show. Uh, thank you for being with us from the beginning. Uh, or thank you for being with us for your very first show. Uh, we're grateful that you're here with us today, and we hope to have you back on a future episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. Uh, we're we're grateful for our listeners, our viewers, and we're going to uh look at um a topic today that uh really came up uh with all the uh here in the United States, we have the American football um and uh as far as professional, and then we have the American football, like college, university as well. And uh we're just gonna talk about you know the mental mental side of uh preparing for a game, a match, uh, and the strategy that goes into that preparation for that game, that upcoming game, that upcoming match, because if we don't do it right, then all the uh all the hard work up until now is and could be for not. Uh so we'll we'll get into what I mean by that. So let's get it rolling. Okay. So hypothetically speaking, let's say we have a game or a match uh in seven days, and we just learned the team that we're gonna be playing today. So let's say on this show, we just found out a matter of seconds ago who we were gonna be playing in seven days, and so there's a myriad of things we have to look at everything from uh uh I don't want to use the wrong word, janitorial services or uh, you know, keeping keeping the showers and the the bathrooms clean, all the way up to uh, you know, maybe the president or general manager, manager, uh head coach of of a particular team, and everywhere in between. So on seven days we have a game, a match coming up. So one of the aspects we're gonna look at is we're gonna look at as far as strategy goes, uh, we're gonna look at the other the other team that we're gonna be playing against. And so that would mean we would be watching uh their previous games, previous matches, what types of plays that they run, who are the main uh the main people on on this team that we we want to try our best to defend against. And so that's one area, and so each position, usually there's you know a position coach, and so again, I'm in American football, you could have a wide receivers coach, and you could have a quarterback coach, and so within the team, each position has their own coach for the most part, and that's where there's gonna be that review of the team they're upcoming and we playing, and who they're gonna be guarding or playing defense or offense against uh these uh these members of the opposing uh team. And so that's one aspect, and so there's that strategy of okay, well, we've played them before, we haven't played them before this year, uh, but I played against them maybe two years ago, and so maybe there's some film that we can look at and and and see how we performed, and and so that's just one aspect. Okay, we're gonna we're gonna look at that strategy of who we're playing against, and then we're gonna have a strategy of okay, what's our game plan gonna be? And you know, that's where the coaches come in, and for again, for hypothetical's sake, let's say your team or uh has a hundred different plays that they that can run or that we can run, but maybe like thirty or thirty-five really stand out as difference makers against this team. And so that's where when we would be getting onto the practice field, those would be what we would be practicing because maybe there was uh maybe we had success in the past against them. Uh maybe the other team hasn't seen a particular formation. Uh a lot of different things could come into play. So there's a there's that practice, okay. So let's say that's two of the seven days. Remember the game or the match is on games is on day seven. Okay, so that's two days. So there's five days left until the game or match. Okay. Then we look at nutrition, but nutrition I would think would be an all-year-round constant as far as making sure the food that each of the players in each of the positions are intaking into their body is going to help them maximize their energy and peak performance for the for the game or match. So that's that's kind of like the third third thing. And then there's probably another day of practice. So that'd be four things. So while that's all going on, as far as the team, on like the front end, uh, you know, there's gonna probably be media interviews uh that are gonna take place, but on the back end, as I mentioned, I talk about you know, the person that cleans the showers and the bathrooms and uh the uniforms. Maybe we have seven different uniform options. So we have to find out what combination of jersey, pants, helmet, all those we need to know that so that the uh the locker room attendant or manager's assistant knows what clothes, but what clothes the to take uh to to the game uh to wear during the game. Not only that, but if we're on day four, there's gonna be a travel day in there, so that's five, and so we're on five and games on game on day seven, so we're probably gonna have one more uh yes, we travel, we get there, and then we're going to practice uh probably like a like they call it a walk through or walking through different plays at the hotel or motel or uh and you know, without pads, without helmets, and and that just to get familiar again and um and so there's gonna be practice clothes uh that are gonna need to be packed as well, and especially if you're playing your game or your match on a a neutral site, meaning it's not my home team field or yours, it is a neutral site, so it it could be halfway distance-wise from where our team is and your team is, uh in any event. So there's all these things that are kind of going on at the same time, right? With we look at usually just the the team, how they're how they're playing, uh, where they're playing at, are their tickets available? Uh, are there any key players that are are gonna be uh not available, meaning they might be injured. Uh so this is all strategy, and it goes all the way down the line. Because let's say, let's say, for example, the person that's in charge of bringing and packing and making sure everything's clean and bringing the right helmets, the right jerseys, or right pants, and uh shoes, and and all that. Let's say that they bring the wrong jersey, uh, and let's say that the the other team we're playing is gonna be wearing the color white, and our team was gonna be wearing the color red, but the person who is uh in charge of that aspect of our team, they end up packing our white jerseys, and and so it makes it make it really hard to tell the difference uh between our team and your team, or your team and our team, or another team, and that's just called communication, so somebody has to communicate that to the right people, and maybe all season long there has been no issues with that, everybody's known their assignment, but let's say the there's a slip-up. What happens? I don't know, I I I really don't know, especially if we're talking about the color white, yeah. There's different shades of white, just like there's different shades of uh of red, you know, there could be more of like a maroon uh red and and uh uh a pure red. Uh so there could be slight differences, but when you're playing, you know, you're you're looking to know who's on your team, and a lot of times those are split-second decisions, and they're sometimes out at the corner of our eyes, and all that plays a part of our mental health because all the way up until that game, game time, all that preparation from looking at film to uh practicing to the nutrition, to making sure everybody's at the airport at this at the right time, to having the right clothes being packed, having the having the plane. What if nobody nobody ordered the plane? Nobody uh the person that that uh books hard travel, what if they forgot? What what what happens if that happens? That there's a particular airline, even if there isn't a particular airline, if it's just a just a regular charter, charter plane, what if somebody forgets that? What happens? I'm sure it's happened before, I would think. I mean, nobody's perfect. So what would happen? That would throw a lot of things off schedule. I I wouldn't, I would uh I'd venture to say that that would throw a lot of things off schedule. What about the hotel? What if what if the rooms weren't booked? Um what if the rooms were booked in a different city? Maybe if we would have won our previous game or a previous match, maybe we would be playing in one city. And if we would have lost or the opposite, we could have been playing in a different city. Playing, not playing. I did mention playing before, like the actual you know, airplane. And so what if our again, our travel person, there's a mix-up with a plane, uh where it's not booked, and it it's it's hard to get a plane charter going to the location. That could be there could be some big consequences from that. Um and then the same thing for the hotel. So what if the hotel never got changed? Because maybe for almost the whole match or the whole game, it looked like our team was gonna either win or lose for most of the game, and and so we ended up canceling before the game was over the other city, the hotel rooms, and and and the this the second city. And when the game was over, the opposite happened, and there never was a rebooking of those rooms in that other city. So these things they were talking about, I've gone on for what 18 minutes or so uh about strategy, and a lot of them are just tedious things, they're not hard to do per se, if you've had the right training and and the right knowledge. However, it doesn't mean that mistakes can't be made. And mistakes can be made. We know that mistakes can't be made. We make them every single day. Nobody's perfect, and so I thought this was a good time where there are you know playoff matches, playoff games where any well any any of the games this could happen. But when you're getting to the end of the season with playoffs and championship games and matches, then everything, you know, it it is look looked under a a microscope, basically. It's every little every little thing gets looked at like oh I can't believe they did that why would they again why would they both why would both teams be wearing white jerseys uh with the same color letters and numbers uh and why why would a team have to stay in a hotel maybe an hour outside of the city and where the game is gonna a match is gonna be played all just to find out that you know the travel department again they forgot to they canceled the wrong city's hotel rooms and so by the time the game was over hotel rooms are getting snatched up a lot and and when that happens then you know when you're talking about coaches and families and and players and families and you know people in the front office like a president or a general manager and their families and uh it it can it can make a lot of headaches and that can really affect mental health because if I'm used to a certain way of planning for you know let's say those seven days before a game before the game is on that seventh day and if something's just off you know some people call it superstitious you know call it what you want or call it what you will but there's a lot of things that can take a one player off off their off their game and oftentimes it's a it's like one play or two or three plays out of the whole entire game or the whole entire match that actually settles the game if if if the teams are you know uh very very close in their uh I don't say competitiveness uh because all teams can be competitive uh but if they're close in and how well you know players from let's say player one through player 25 if you look at you know the stats statistics from the year and all the games and there's not a whole lot of difference you know they they stack up really close and and so it it the game the match a lot of times does come down to um one or two plays and and that's even without uh a hotel that's booked two or three times the distance from where the other team is is staying uh that both teams are wearing the same exact color jerseys with the and the same exact numbers and letters uh and all the things we talk about like a plane plane could we talked about well maybe the plane forgot forgot to order it and forgot to book the plane uh but what if we we did everything like we usually did that we booked the plane and and everything was set up how it was supposed to be but maybe where the plane was coming from the airplane where it was coming from maybe there was some uh some nasty weather and and so the team ended up leaving on that that airplane two three four maybe five hours later uh and so they arrived that much that amount of time uh after the opposing team so we talked here for about 25 minutes on this show about strategy how important from you know the person that cleans the showers and the bathrooms the toilets all the way up to uh you know the the management and and the players and the travel department and the uniform uh department and uh the uh I left out the weightlifting you know the uh the agility and the workout staff you know they're gonna be there that whole week as well making sure each player is on track and on point with their workout program uh just like they have been all year long so we want to make sure that everything is being communicated to everybody everybody that uh is associated with uh with the team and any any one of these uh could again could go not say go awry but it could just not work out as expected and while I think our bodies are we're we're used to having things not being because we know nobody's perfect so we know nothing's gonna be perfect but once we get outside of a little bit of a comfort zone of like okay this this is all right but if we get outside of that then that's where things go oh why we got here five hours late and then maybe I start thinking about the plays and go I what about the plays that if there was you know a uh malfunction uh in one area maybe hopefully we weren't in game planning planning uh planning uh to play a different team than who we actually are playing so that could be a mix up and you have all these different positions so all the positions have to be on that same that same level so when the playbooks come out for for that particular game uh and all the different position coaches uh that it all lines up with the specific team that they're they're gonna be playing uh and as I go through this episode uh I remind myself how easy any one of these areas could negatively impact potentially the game which if you're attending the game or if you're watching on on the the television we may never find any of that that information out and so I think it's always good just to think about you can never strategize too much you can never plan too much uh if you have something that is very important or let's say you have five things you need to do on a particular day and let's say that's in three days I'm feeling great on that first day and I think oh well I can watch a movie or two or I can expend a lot of the energy that I may need on that third day because maybe I'm recovering from something I'm recovering from an injury I don't know I'm just recovering and and again I know that in three days there's there's a lot of things that that I I really need to I need to be prepped and ready for and so while I'm feeling good on day one what's more important feeling good on day one or good on day three we want to feel good on all the days so I'll I'll just throw that out there but again if we're coming back from some type of injury something that's kind of taking us off of our you know a regular path then we might may want to strategize and say okay well yeah I could do this on this on day one I'm feeling good enough but I need to be ready for that third day and then day two comes and let's say we we strategize and said okay day one we're feeling real good but we're we're we're gonna just take it easy we need to be we need to be ready on day three and then maybe on day two we're feeling even a little bit better than from day one and we think oh wow I'm feeling great I'm feeling much better on day two but tomorrow's the day that I really need to be feeling as best as possible I realize nobody's perfect I'm giving generalities here and so then on day two I go well I took I took the first day off so the second day I could do a little bit why not and like oh I'll be I'll still be good for day three I'll still be good for day three because I took that for you know that that that first day I took that off and and I just did a little bit on day two and then lo and behold day three stuff curveballs come left and right and and we don't get anything done on that day three that we've been planning on we've been pushed behind for a little bit and so that can really negatively impact a person's mental health like hey I screwed up I shouldn't have did this I should and it's hard not to feel like that but we do because we're humans we're we're trying to do the best we can whenever we can and so that's I guess the parallels I'm um I was that I'm drawing with speaking about the teams and the upcoming hypothetical game hypothetical match and this other situation where the strategy comes into play and just because we feel feel good now we need the we need to be really we we need to feel we need that to be for that day three because we already know there's gonna be things coming in all different directions on that third day and this is this has nothing to do with any anything anybody not nothing specific this is just a way of thinking how our minds can play tricks on ourselves you know our mind could say Justin you're feeling good don't worry about you know tomorrow or you know the third day you're gonna have plenty of energy you're gonna you're gonna be good just like the team is gonna be like I'm feeling good about this I show up to the airport and the plane's nowhere to be seen and uh again I mean may maybe a five hour delay and then that delays uh you know a short practice which could delay a a team meal which could cause the team to uh stay up a little bit later and not get as much rest as uh as they usually do and so all these are interconnected as with us as human beings no matter where we are we're no matter where we are at in the world it doesn't matter does not matter where we're at in the world because we're human beings and it can impact us and the mental health the mind game doesn't take a whole lot to yeah take our mind off just a little bit just a little bit of doubt creeps in there I mean even when there's very little doubt that creeps in there things can turn out differently not the not what we're not what we won and not what we're expecting and we could maybe lose the game or lose the match even though we felt great even though everything lined up but when you start putting a little teeny bit of doubt in there whether it's for a game or a match or whether it's for uh an email conversation a telephone conversation uh a little bit of doubt oh man so we hope this this episode is we got deep into strategy and just this just to share and to show how important it is uh you know the bigger the game the bigger the match the bigger the bigger the thing the bigger the project uh the the higher the stakes are uh which which means that we want to you know double triple quadruple check uh so we hopefully don't find ourselves in a position of oh no I can't get us a team charter playing because I don't know for some reason or I I got us a hotel that's two hours away from where we're playing because I I picked the other city because the game and the match for most of it looked like it was going in one direction and not the other so mistakes happen and that's why we just have to be as adaptable as humanly possible and just just remember we're all human nobody's perfect uh we we can strategize as much as possible but there's still gonna be things that there are gonna be the very be variables that are are gonna come in and they're going to uh cause us to have to adapt in maybe a little bit of a different way than we thought we were gonna have to so just do the best you can with the the best information and uh you know prepare not for the best scenario always prepare for a variety of scenarios and usually usually coaches and the managers and and that they'll they'll do that uh that that that that's part of that their preparation but again they're human as well so just again do the best you can just like anything as a human being do the best you can uh and have some fun while you're at it okay well thank you so much if you can give us a big subscribe give us thumbs up like follow share if you can reach out to 25, 50 or 100 of your uh your your your closest friends confidants let them know about the voices for voices tv show and podcast uh we're we're only behind the Joe Rogan experience and the Dan Bongino show uh we are popular and there's no reason we can't reach over 300 countries and 3,000 cities uh we're sitting at over a hundred countries and over a thousand cities so no reason we can't reach uh at least three hundred countries and territories and three thousand cities because we made it this far and we want to say thank you thank you thank you we love you and we will see you on another episode of the show so until next time let's celebrate all of our voices and let's be a voice for us ourselves and somebody else in need take care we love you.