Meet Glo, the Coaching App for Athletes That Helps Manage Mental Gymnastics

Brandon Wynn — the most decorated gymnast on the rings in US history — founded Glo, a mental training platform for youth athletes to help them increase performance during competition, improve mental wellbeing, and improve their overall quality of life after their sports career ends.

The Challenge

There’s been a long-running misconception that high-level athletes don’t struggle with mental wellness obstacles. The generalization is that if you’re a good athlete at any age, your whole life must be good.

The truth is that athletics amplifies stress, it doesn’t eliminate it. The anxiety connected with high-level performance, if not properly managed, can permeate into the rest of the athlete’s life.

Traditional coaching principles, which haven’t changed much over the years, don’t help the situation. Coaches often employ scarcity tactics or punishment to get an athlete to perform. Improve your score or you’re off the team. Make the shot or you’re back on the bench.

These coaching tactics can get an athlete to perform in the moment but never create long-term success. These tactics also create a deep well of anxiety by attaching one’s personal worth to their value on the field. What if I don’t win? What if I don’t score well? What if I get cut from the team? These questions of self worth and identity then bleed into normal life once the competition is over, building and compounding over the years.

When athletes struggle with the anxiety of performance, they are often stigmatized, made to feel that they aren’t strong enough to win. As a result, they push the feelings to the side, which has two negative effects. The first is a lack of basic mental healthcare for athletes, whose problems have been minimized and marginalized. The second is a lack of mental performance coaching that is targeted at elite athletic performance.

Think of it this way. We all know that elite athletics has a significant mental component. If a young athlete wishes to become an Olympian, they might need to up their mental game as much as the physical. But to get professional mental performance guidance in order to perform better means admitting you have a challenge, which athletes are trained to deny. It’s a Catch-22. Plus, there simply aren’t enough good mental performance coaches trained in this area.

Athletes are lacking targeted support from mental performance professionals who understand what it’s like to compete at a high level. Now, a new startup is taking on the challenge in order to help young athletes thrive in the face of everyday anxiety and then master the stress of elite performance.

Origin Story

After being recruited to Ohio State University, Brandon Wynn had a successful career in gymnastics on Team USA for eight years. He won a world championship medal, is the most decorated gymnast on the rings in US history, and has since been inducted into the Ohio State University Hall of Fame.

As a professional in the high-pressure world of elite gymnastics, Wynn knew mental training was the number one variable to optimize his performance and increase his overall quality of life. Still, he wasn’t sure where to seek this type of coaching and was shocked by the fact that it was nearly impossible to find coaching he could trust.

Throughout his career, especially before crucial competitions, Wynn says he, along with his teammates, would need to find their own make-shift strategies to deal with the heat of the competition.

“It’s always a moving target and a constant battle to find the right mindset, for today, this moment, to compliment the version of who you are today,” says Wynn. “All the mental positioning strategies we would use were not things we were taught but strategies born from necessity. With everything we had on the line, to be left up to a young athlete’s best guess at the right mental strategy seemed ridiculous.”

“Without a consistent mental strategy and tools to help you deal with the heat of competition, there will always be a frantic energy behind everything you do, and something as physically taxing as a three-hour-long competition drains your resources. The right mental strategy is absolutely make or break.”

Wynn knew from experience that there was a gap in the market, an urgent need for mental performance coaching that understood the individual. He realized that mental performance training didn’t need to be mystical or detached but could be highly-personalized, data-driven, and woven into the fabric of an individual’s training. The result, if done right, would be a better experience for trainee and coach and result in more consistent results on and off the field.

That seed of an idea became what is now Glo.

Under the Hood

Glo creates a union between an athlete’s high demand for mental performance coaching and certified, industry-leading mental performance coaches while ensuring quality through one portal, brand, and company.

The platform helps youth athletes develop skills to handle high-pressure situations, which not only dramatically helps an athlete win, but improves their emotional intelligence, helping them handle difficult situations later in life.

Athletes learn that focusing on having a high level of mental fitness isn’t for athletes “with a problem.” Instead, it is for athletes who want to utilize every opportunity possible to win and “enjoy the ride to the top.”

When athletes join the platform, they undergo an assessment with one of Glo’s mental performance coaches. The pair will identify the overall goals, skills the user already possesses, and where they are lacking. The coach will create a mental training plan and choose the tools to advance the athlete’s skills to reach their goals.

An example of an exercise provided to build mental resilience is breathwork, accounting for one’s inhale, holding at the top, and exhaling. Such an exercise slows down one’s heart rate, reduces the rate at which the athlete burns energy, and allows for increased focus.

Coaches provide tips on implementing breathwork during competition, making custom recommendations for the athlete’s individual needs.

There’s also an element of cognitive behavioral therapy for athletes who wish to enhance their top performance for competition. Coaches provide a deeper understanding of how an athlete’s life experiences, such as with school or their relationships, affect their athletic performance.

All interaction with the Glo platform is digital. The training plan is implemented through digital sessions, and the curriculum is based on Glo’s in-house learnings via coaching athletes with years of experience as the top mental performance coaches.

Once a coach identifies the proper resources necessary for the athlete, a resource library is also available.

A significant component of the platform is improving accessibility through text messaging. A coach and athlete can form a bond and provide and receive support regularly between sessions.

When an athlete seeks to better perform in their sport, improve their mental wellness, and obtain the skills to do so, they can then handle different life events and inevitable anxieties, allowing them to flourish in all future circumstances.

Glo’s focus is on ensuring athletes know that proactive mental training is just as essential as physical training and aims to help athletes handle any situation effectively and thoughtfully for the greatest possible outcome.

Why We’re Proud to Invest

One reason we’re excited to back Glo is that it’s a mental health platform by athletes, for athletes. Thanks to his years competing at the Olympic level, founder Brandon Wynn understands the mental strain of elite performance better than just about anyone. He’s utilizing that experience to pilot Glo with a budding group of high level youth athletes, where it’s tracking the success of athletic goals reached by athletes. This isn’t a tool in search of a customer. This is a founder who intimately understands a problem, is embedded with the challenge, and is solving that problem one person at a time, from the ground up.

We’re also proud to back Wynn and the Glo team because they’re opening up access to care in a unique way. When we think about stigmatized groups, we don’t immediately think about athletes, but a detrimental culture of coaching has created an environment where athletes are more hesitant to get the mental healthcare they need. Attacking that problem is a new way to help youth handle stress and anxiety, and we need every tool available to address this crisis.

Because it’s not just about winning the match or scoring a perfect 10 — although Glo is dedicated to helping athletes improve. At the end of the day, this is about preparing athletes for the rest of their lives, so that they’re resilient human beings and have the mental skills to be healthy adults once their sports careers are over. Helping a generation of athletes better cope with life’s challenges and identify and control anxiety levels will improve emotional intelligence, benefiting all situations athletes face, whether relationship-based, work-related, or elsewhere.

“We don’t want this to be just another platform and marketplace. We want Glo to be a platform that finally figures out and demystifies the process of mental training to increase one’s performance and quality of life. I want this for my life, and I want this for every athlete’s life,” Wynn states.

Let’s all welcome Brandon Wynn and the rest of the Glo team to the StartUp Health family.

Learn more and connect with the Glo team.

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Meet Glo, the Coaching App for Athletes That Helps Manage Mental Gymnastics was originally published in StartUp Health on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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