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32 Sports32 SPORTSBridging the gap between professional athletes and youth sports

32 Sports × Wilcox Wellness

TRAIN YOUR MIND.
ELEVATE YOUR GAME.

FOUR QUARTERS / THE MENTAL EDGE

You've trained your body. You've developed your skills. You've put in the work.

NOW IT'S TIME TO TRAIN YOUR MIND.

Discover the mental edge you need to take your game to the next level. Develop elite habits, build championship confidence, strengthen your focus, and learn to handle pressure and adversity like the pros.

Great athletes don't just train differently. They think differently.

TRAIN LIKE AN ATHLETE. THINK LIKE A PRO.

Your next level starts with your mindset. THIS IS YOUR START.

GET YOUR MENTAL EDGE My profilesThe communityExamine the research ↓
32 Sports athletes and a coach together at a USA Football Talent ID Camp
THE PERSON BEHIND THE JERSEYSupport belongs
in every athlete’s corner.

THE PROGRAM, BY THE NUMBERS

From Four Quarters
Weeks of guided learning
4
Live weekly webinars
4
Hours per week
1–2
Baseline assessment
DAY 1

Two journeys. A shared purpose.

They know the pressure.
They care about the person.

Reading a play, responding under pressure, trusting your preparation: Mario and Matt know what competition demands. Together, they bring that understanding to conversations athletes can carry into everyday life.

THE CLINICAL PERSPECTIVE

Mario WilcoxLMSW · Founder, Wilcox Wellness

From Division I linebacker to a career helping people find their footing.

Mario’s journey into therapy is rooted in lived experience. His public bio describes growing up in the child welfare system and learning how much emotional support matters. That perspective informs his work as a licensed therapist and mental-health advocate.

Through Wilcox Wellness, he offers individual therapy, organizational workshops, and mindset education. His work emphasizes self-awareness, navigating trauma, and practical emotional skills. His football background adds firsthand understanding of the expectations athletes face.

Meet Mario at Wilcox Wellness

THE ATHLETE & ADVOCATE

Matt LawrenceFormer NFL player · Founder, 32 Sports

An NFL platform. A purpose that reaches far beyond football.

Matt’s path through the Baltimore Ravens and professional football became a platform for service. After a career-changing concussion, he stayed connected to Baltimore’s young people and built on a family example of helping others.

Through 32 Sports and school outreach, he connects athletic experience with conversations about resilience, belonging, and asking for help. In mental-health assemblies with For All Seasons, his message to students centered on facing challenges with support from their community.

The mission: bridge the gap between professional athletes and youth.

Davos, Switzerland

A global conversation.
A personal mission.

Matt and Mario’s work together in Davos brought their shared concern about mental-health disparities into conversations during World Economic Forum week. The question behind that advocacy also matters at home: who gets support, and who is left to manage alone?

Four Quarters brings that mission back to the athlete. Mario’s therapeutic perspective and Matt’s philanthropic work meet in a commitment to making emotional skills part of athlete development.

Be the person you needed
when you were younger.

The scientific rationale

Mental health and athletic performance
belong in the same conversation.

Four Quarters approaches athlete development through stress regulation, recovery, attentional control, and sustained behavior change. The funding proposition is to translate research on these mechanisms into accessible practice within a trusted sports community—and evaluate that translation rigorously.

2026 IOC CONSENSUS

Performance does not establish psychological health.

The International Olympic Committee’s updated consensus recognizes that mental-health symptoms and disorders can affect performance and can arise within the sporting environment. Its recommendations address the athlete and the conditions in which they train, with validated assessment and access to appropriate care.[1]

Implication for Four Quarters: individual coping skills should sit alongside supportive coaching and referral pathways. A wellness curriculum cannot take the place of diagnosis or treatment.

HARVARD / MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL

Sport can be a setting for support.

In an analysis of 10,411 children from the ABCD study, Kunitoki and colleagues linked team-sport participation with fewer behavioral and emotional difficulties. The weighted association was −1.05 Child Behavior Checklist points (95% CI −1.54 to −0.56).[2]

This was observational, not a randomized sport intervention. Selection and residual confounding remain possible. It supports studying sport as a delivery setting; it does not prove that sport—or Four Quarters—prevents psychiatric disorders.

Evidence standard

The studies below evaluate related methods in specific populations. They have not evaluated Four Quarters as a combined program. University affiliations identify the researchers’ work; they do not imply institutional partnership or endorsement. Our applications are explicitly identified as program-design interpretations.

The Four Quarters framework

A mental skill set.
One quarter at a time.

The program combines four weeks of learning with live webinars, between-session guidance, and a starting assessment.

01

QUARTER 1

Regulate

Find your reset.

Recognize your stress signals and practice breathwork and grounding for the moments when the game speeds up.

Before the whistle. After a mistake.

Examine Quarter 1 evidence ↓
02

QUARTER 2

Recover

Make room to rebuild.

Explore sleep habits, post-game reflection, and ways to work through setbacks without making a result your identity.

A tough game is one part of your story.

Examine Quarter 2 evidence ↓
03

QUARTER 3

Focus

Trust your next play.

Practice attention cues, constructive self-talk, and a pre-competition routine that supports confidence.

Bring your attention back to what you can control.

Examine Quarter 3 evidence ↓
04

QUARTER 4

Perform

Take it beyond the game.

Combine the tools into a personal routine for sport, school, relationships, and life after competition.

Build habits you can keep using.

Examine Quarter 4 evidence ↓

Four Quarters teaches mental-performance and wellness skills. It is separate from individual clinical therapy.

Mechanisms. Methods. Measurable outcomes.

The evidence behind
each quarter.

Read the finding, examine the study design, and see how it informs the curriculum. Each quarter pairs scholarly evidence with a verified academic quotation.

Quarter 01 / Regulate

Stress physiology & cognitive appraisal

Regulation involves both physiological arousal and the interpretation of a demanding situation. The curriculum links noticing bodily signals with a practiced response and a more adaptive appraisal of pressure.

STANFORD · RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL

Brief respiratory practice can influence mood and arousal.

Balban and colleagues randomized 108 participants to daily five-minute breathing practices or mindfulness meditation for one month. Breathwork, particularly exhalation-focused cyclic sighing, produced greater improvement in positive affect and reduction in respiratory rate than meditation.[3]

Interpretation: this supports a brief, repeatable regulation practice. It was not a trial in youth athletes, and it did not establish better game performance or treatment of a clinical disorder.

NATURE · SIX RANDOMIZED EXPERIMENTS

How young people interpret stress can change their response.

Yeager and colleagues tested a roughly 30-minute intervention combining growth and stress mindsets in secondary and post-secondary students. Across six experiments, they reported changes in stress-related beliefs and, in particular studies, physiological responses, well-being, or academic outcomes. Benefits varied by prior mindset and context.[4]

Transfer limit: these were educational settings. Reappraisal of manageable challenge must not become a reason to normalize unsafe training, mistreatment, or overwhelming distress.

Application to Four Quarters

Pair stress-signal recognition with a rehearsed reset and a discussion of challenge versus threat. The testable hypothesis is improved use of regulation skills under pressure—not the elimination of stress.

From the research community

“Controlled breathwork seems to be a straightforward way to do the opposite: lower physiologic arousal and regulate your mood.”

David Spiegel, MDStanford Professor in Medicine · 2023 interview[5]

Quarter 02 / Recover

Sleep, affective functioning & recovery

Recovery creates conditions for learning, emotional regulation, and repeated performance. Its value should be assessed through well-being and daily functioning as well as athletic tasks.

STANFORD · EXPLORATORY ATHLETE STUDY

Sleep extension connects recovery with performance measures.

Mah and colleagues followed 11 male collegiate basketball players through a baseline period and five to seven weeks of sleep extension. Sprint times, practice shooting accuracy, reaction time, and measures of mood improved.[6]

Interpretation: a small, uncontrolled before-and-after study offers a useful signal, not a definitive causal estimate. Practice effects and other time-varying factors cannot be ruled out; results do not establish an expected gain for girls’ flag football.

PSYCHOLOGICAL BULLETIN · EXPERIMENTAL META-ANALYSIS

Sleep loss has measurable emotional consequences.

Palmer and colleagues synthesized 154 studies involving 5,717 participants. Experimental sleep loss reduced positive affect and increased anxiety symptoms; findings for depressive symptoms varied with the form of sleep loss.[7]

Transfer limit: participants ranged from ages 7 to 79. This broad evidence base supports protecting sleep opportunity, but is not a direct test of a four-week athlete curriculum or of every recovery technique.

Application to Four Quarters

Make recovery planning observable: a consistent wind-down opportunity, reflection after competition, and recognition of persistent sleep difficulty. Evaluate changes in sleep patterns and emotional functioning separately from competitive results.

From the research community

“sleep is an important factor in peak athletic performance”

Cheri MahStanford sleep researcher · discussing her 2011 study[8]

Quarter 03 / Focus

Attentional control & task-specific self-talk

Confidence is more useful when it is attached to a practiced skill. This quarter emphasizes directing attention, selecting relevant cues, and recovering from distraction rather than relying on generic positive thinking.

SPORT-SPECIFIC META-ANALYSIS

Structured self-talk can support task performance.

Hatzigeorgiadis and colleagues combined 32 studies and 62 effect sizes, finding an average standardized effect of 0.48 for self-talk interventions. Effects varied with task characteristics; trained self-talk and instructional cues for fine-motor tasks were particularly relevant.[9]

Interpretation: 0.48 is a standardized effect size, not a 48% improvement. Motor-task findings do not establish treatment effects for anxiety or depression, nor guarantee transfer to open-play competition.

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI · ACTIVE-COMPARISON TRIAL

Engagement matters—and null findings matter too.

Rooks, Jha, and colleagues studied 100 Division I football players in four weeks of mindfulness or relaxation training. Overall between-group differences were not significant. Greater mindfulness engagement predicted better preservation of attention; engagement in either program was associated with some emotional benefits.[10]

Transfer limit: practice engagement was not randomly assigned. Those associations cannot establish that more practice alone caused the benefit. They do justify measuring participation quality alongside attendance.

Application to Four Quarters

Develop task-relevant cue words and rehearse attentional resets within familiar sport situations. Assess whether athletes can demonstrate and use the skill, while recording practice frequency and the demands of the training period.

From the research community

“How you prepare really matters and how you think about yourself in the situation matters too”

Sian Leah Beilock, PhDCognitive scientist · Dartmouth address, 2023[11]

Quarter 04 / Perform

Implementation intentions & durable behavior change

The final quarter addresses the intention–behavior gap: knowing a strategy does not ensure that an athlete will use it. Context, cues, reinforcement, and re-entry after a missed practice all deserve attention.

GOAL-ATTAINMENT META-ANALYSIS

Specific plans can strengthen follow-through.

Gollwitzer and Sheeran reviewed 94 independent tests of implementation intentions—plans that connect a situation with a specific action. The pooled effect on goal attainment was d = 0.65.[12]

Transfer limit: the review spans varied goals and populations. Its average effect is not an estimate of athlete mental-health improvement or a prediction of Four Quarters’ results.

PENN / WHARTON · NATURE FIELD EXPERIMENT

Short-term participation and persistence are different outcomes.

Milkman and colleagues compared 54 four-week digital programs among 61,293 fitness-chain members. During the intervention, 45% of programs increased weekly visits by 9–27%; only 8% produced statistically significant, measurable changes afterward.[13]

Interpretation: adult gym attendance is not youth mental health. The useful design lesson is to test continuation after support ends, rather than assuming a successful four-week course creates lasting habits.

Application to Four Quarters

Turn each athlete’s skills into a context-specific plan, including how to restart after a missed day. A proposed follow-up at 8–12 weeks would test retention and use beyond the course; it is not a claim of existing long-term results.

From the research community

“It suggests how important it is to avoid having a series of missteps when you’re pursuing a goal.”

Katy Milkman, PhDJames G. Dinan Professor, Wharton · 2022 interview[14]

The case for philanthropic investment

Fund access. Strengthen delivery.
Build accountable evidence.

The opportunity is to connect clinical perspective and credible athlete mentorship with structured learning in a community that already gathers around sport. Four Quarters’ distinctive proposition is the integration of those assets. Whether that combination improves outcomes, for whom, and at what cost are questions a responsible funding partnership can help answer.

01

Equitable access

Proposed support for subsidized places, team-based access, and participation accommodations. Track who enrolls, who completes, and which practical barriers remain.

02

Quality of delivery

Support facilitator preparation, a documented curriculum, supervised delivery, and checks that intended skills are actually taught and practiced.

03

Continuity of support

Resource follow-up and clearly defined routes to qualified mental-health care. Athlete mentorship and wellness education serve different functions from clinical treatment.

04

Independent evaluation

Fund an evaluator, an agreed analysis plan, and transparent reporting of benefits, null findings, attrition, and cost. These are proposed funding priorities, not completed program outcomes.

A proposed evaluation framework

Agree on the primary outcome and age-appropriate validated measures before enrollment. Collect baseline, end-of-course, and 8–12-week follow-up data. Keep feasibility, skill acquisition, well-being, and sport performance analytically distinct.

What funding should make possible to assess
DomainProposed measuresDecision it informs
Reach & equityEnrollment denominator, subsidized places, completion, and reasons for withdrawal; subgroup analysis only where sample size and privacy permit.Who the program reaches and who needs a different delivery model.
Delivery & skill useSession attendance, practice frequency, facilitator fidelity, and demonstrations of regulation and attentional skills.Whether the intended learning experience was delivered and used.
Well-being & recoveryValidated, age-appropriate stress or well-being scales, sleep indicators, and access to further support.Whether participants improve, remain unchanged, or need additional care.
Persistence & valueFollow-up skill use, missing follow-up data, delivery cost per participant and per completer.Whether benefits persist and whether expansion is operationally sustainable.

For credible attribution: where feasible, randomize teams or use a prespecified comparison group, account for clustering, and report effect sizes with confidence intervals. Pre/post improvement alone cannot separate program effects from maturation, season timing, selection, or regression to the mean.

This is a proposed evaluation design. Consent and assent, confidential reporting, clinician-led escalation, and independent ethical review where applicable should be built into any study. Individual mental-health data should not become a selection or playing-time criterion.

What the evidence supports today

A research-informed rationale for the four components and a testable case for their integration. No independently evaluated Four Quarters outcome dataset is presented here. Claims of clinical efficacy, prevented injuries, college offer gains, financial returns, or long-term impact require program-specific evidence.

Your next quarter starts here

Bring your whole self
to the game.

See the complete curriculum and current enrollment details on the Four Quarters website.

Create your private profile →Visit the Four Quarters program ↗

Read the original work

Research & academic sources.

Ten scholarly publications and four university-published quotation sources. Reviewed September 27, 2026. This is a focused evidence brief, not an exhaustive systematic review. Publication dates, populations, and study designs are retained so readers can assess relevance.

  1. Consensus statement

    Reardon, C. L., et al. (2026). Mental health in elite athletes: International Olympic Committee consensus statement (2026). British Journal of Sports Medicine, 60, 1083–1130.

  2. Observational study · Harvard Medical School / Massachusetts General Hospital

    Kunitoki, K., et al. (2023). Youth Team Sports Participation Associates With Reduced Dimensional Psychopathology Through Interaction With Biological Risk Factors. Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science, 3, 875–883.

  3. Randomized controlled trial · Stanford

    Balban, M. Y., et al. (2023). Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine, 4, 100895.

  4. Six randomized experiments · UT Austin and collaborators

    Yeager, D. S., et al. (2022). A synergistic mindsets intervention protects adolescents from stress. Nature, 607, 512–520.

  5. Quotation source · university reporting

    Spiegel, D., interviewed by Stanford Medicine. (2023). Expert commentary on controlled breathing. Stanford Medicine, February 9.

  6. Exploratory before-and-after study · Stanford

    Mah, C. D., Mah, K. E., Kezirian, E. J., & Dement, W. C. (2011). The effects of sleep extension on the athletic performance of collegiate basketball players. Sleep, 34, 943–950.

  7. Preregistered systematic review and meta-analysis

    Palmer, C. A., et al. (2024). Sleep loss and emotion: A systematic review and meta-analysis of over 50 years of experimental research. Psychological Bulletin, 150, 440–463.

  8. Quotation source · university reporting

    Mah, C. D., interviewed by Stanford Medicine. (2011). Expert commentary on sleep and athletic performance. Stanford Medicine, June 30.

  9. Sport-specific meta-analysis · University of Thessaly

    Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Zourbanos, N., Galanis, E., & Theodorakis, Y. (2011). Self-Talk and Sports Performance: A Meta-Analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 348–356.

  10. Active-comparison trial · University of Miami

    Rooks, J. D., Morrison, A. B., Goolsarran, M., Rogers, S. L., & Jha, A. P. (2017). “We Are Talking About Practice”: the Influence of Mindfulness vs. Relaxation Training on Athletes’ Attention and Well-Being over High-Demand Intervals. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, 1, 141–153.

  11. Quotation source · university reporting

    Beilock, S. L., quoted by Dartmouth. (2023). Remarks on preparation and performance under stress. Dartmouth, May 25.

  12. Meta-analysis of goal-directed behavior

    Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-analysis of Effects and Processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119.

  13. Large randomized field experiment · Penn / Wharton and collaborators

    Milkman, K. L., et al. (2021). Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioural science. Nature, 600, 478–483.

  14. Quotation source · university reporting

    Milkman, K. L., interviewed by Penn Today. (2022). Expert commentary on maintaining exercise habits. University of Pennsylvania, January 7.

Return to the evidence ↑
Program details & story sources

Program information reviewed September 27, 2026. Program figures describe the course structure, not clinical outcomes. Dates and enrollment details are maintained on the program website.

32 Sports supplied the shared Davos story and Mario’s Division I football background.