Minnesota Quarterback Max Brosmer discusses mindset to overcoming injury with peak performance coach Seth Makowsky

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Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts has won each of his last five regular-season starts in which the Eagles have faced a double-digit deficit.

Houston’s C.J. Stroud has the third-most passing attempts (151) by a rookie without an interception to start his career.

Despite not taking a snap for Arizona in the preseason, the Cardinals’ Joshua Dobbs has completed nearly 71% of his passes in the last three games, with four touchdowns and zero picks.

Some play checkers. These guys play chess.

No one understands that better than Los Angeles-based performance coach Seth Makowsky, who has worked with all three quarterbacks at various points in their football careers, harnessing the game of chess to teach poise under pressure, quick decision making and how to avoid turning one mistake into a string of them.

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Michigan State volleyball is partnering with renowned mindset and peak performance coach Seth Makowsky in 2023, adding another wrinkle to the program's mental training regimen that also includes high-performance mentality training with Dr. Molly McQueary of Michigan State athletics. The Spartans are the first collegiate women's team in the country to partner with Makowsky and his program, Poison Pawn.

Seth Makowsky, volleyball, poison pawn, 2023

Seth Makowsky (pictured) speaks with the MSU volleyball team on July 10, 2023

Makowsky uses chess as a vehicle to help top performers throughout the world get better at what they do, with his client list including NFL quarterbacks, MVP caliber baseball players, Olympians, CEO's, NCAA champions and now Michigan State volleyball. Makowsky's training is geared towards transforming how athletes think and make decisions in real time, helping athletes become a player in their own game, not a piece in someone else's.

"As I was thinking of what our team needed, I wanted it to be something that didn't demand much from our bodies and instead focused on our minds," said head volleyball coach Leah Johnson. "I started researching and came across Poison Pawn. We invited everyone that participates in our program, including support staff, because we don't win alone. As the first collegiate women's team Seth has worked with, we are setting the standard."

But again, Stroud didn’t have the strongest start at the quarterback camp. And so he sought out his community resources — Elite 11 quarterback coach Jerrod Johnson and mindset strategist and chess player Seth Makowsky. The post-camp notes on the quarterback noted that Stroud was the “hungriest kid” there, according to The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman.

He spent “every waking hour” with either Johnson or Makowsky, figuring out how to train his craft or his mind. The process of reorganizing his thoughts, he said, turned him into a much more complete quarterback.

As a result, Stroud didn’t succumb to the temptation often felt in quarterback camps to always find the big play. He kept the ball off the ground and kept the completions coming. He reframed what a successful play was and committed to it, earning Elite 11 MVP honors along the way.

Stroud has become a methodical yet inventive quarterback. But more than that, he’s always been improving. He had trouble seeing the field with so many talented quarterbacks ahead of him at Ohio State and then struggled when he first earned the job.

There were times at UCLA when it looked as if Dorian Robinson-Thompson was playing chess for Chip Kelly and everyone else was playing checkers.

Because he was.

“Coach Kelly brought in a chess guru, and he is now my life coach, someone that I go to all the time for advice,” DTR said. “As we started to go through seasons together, he was learning football, I was learning chess.”

He was learning from a man named Seth Makowsky that playing chess could help him play quarterback, and checkmate defenses with his head and his legs and his arm.

“A thousand percent, in terms of having a better process and really a routine of making decisions, going through an exact process to get the right answer every time, to ultimately execute each play given,” DTR said.

He ended up executing enough plays to become a 6-1, 205-pound dual-threat quarterback expecting to have his name called during the NFL draft possibly as early as the third round.

Which means he has come a long way since his freshman 2018 season when chess helped him find himself…

Los Angeles Times: In Search of an edge UCLA Football brought in Seth Makowsky.

During spring practice in 2019, in search of an edge, UCLA football coach Chip Kelly brought in Seth Makowsky, a mind-set strategist, to work with the quarterbacks. Makowsky taught them about decision-making under pressure and how to apply chess-board strategies on the field. Other players were curious, and soon, he found himself helping the entire UCLA football team. In particular, Makowsky’s work with quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson, then a sophomore, contributed to one of the biggest success stories in recent college football history.

Stroud told Feldman that the week at The Opening changed his life. Without it, he might have never ended up at Ohio State or became a record-breaking quarterback, a Heisman Trophy candidate and a future NFL talent.

So the next time you hear the name Seth Makowsky, think of C.J. Stroud. You probably wouldn't have the same Buckeye memories without him.

“Will you train me after this?” Stroud asked Makowsky. Stroud met with Makowsky from 10 p.m. to midnight for a couple of nights. They worked on having a plan and a process, knowing what the threats are and what to attack. From that perspective, Makowsky was teaching Stroud to process how all of the pieces — and players — worked together in a complex environment, and seeing the entire board. Or the field.

Brooks said that it was “a mind-blowing” experience for a lot of these kids.

“For C.J., it allowed him to come to the line and have a check off process,” he said. “It gave him a way to organize his thoughts in the moment, without making it bigger than it is. And when it clicked, he was all in. He ignored all the white noise of the other kids laughing. You could just see that it unlocked him.” The mindset Makowsky showed them was: “Hey man, simple is better. Less is more. Don’t overthink it. See it. Be it. Let it go. You’ll always have an answer. You’ll never be surprised.”

Brooks was amazed as Stroud transformed. “His confidence was growing. The ball is not hitting the ground. He’s hitting the check downs. Everything. Every play finished with a completion. He didn’t try to do too much, which is hard for guys there. Can they be patient and disciplined enough to take what the defenses is giving you? That’s hard for a teenager. But he was so hot, we were blowing people out. (Opponents) hate seeing the ball completed. As soon as they come up, boom, he throws it over their head and hits them with the big play. Big dime balls down the boundary.

LOS ANGELES — Walk through UCLA’s Wasserman Football Center and you’ll find a chess board everywhere from the locker room to the quarterback room to a support staffer’s office. Seth Makowsky, a chess coach who now works with college and NFL quarterbacks, began working with the program a few years ago and has become a mentor to several players.

One of them, Dorian Thompson-Robinson, plays at least one game every day. The Bruins quarterback wears five motivational wristbands on his arms. One of them, from Makowsky, says: “Player, not a piece.”

“This is how I play football now,” Thompson-Robinson said. “Everybody has a different playing style. Everybody has a different way of seeing the game. Go out there and play your style. Don’t be a robot out there.”

Holmes graduated with his degree in less than three years from UCLA. He's got the skills and the confidence, having adopted chess as a hobby to help train his mind when Chip Kelly, his coach at UCLA, brought mindset coach Seth Makowsky to work with the team, specifically the quarterbacks.

Holmes became involved and fell in love with the mental intricacies of the game: chess and football.

"A lot of what I struggled with [in coverage], I did to myself, I should’ve been crafting at the top of the route more and working on the things I wasn’t efficient at," Holmes said. "When I got to the top of the route, I was guessing a lot, I wasn’t comfortable. Once this season came, I knew I had to be able to work the second phase in coverage. I could press, but what happens after that. I’m obsessed with improving, obsessed with figuring it out and that’s how it has to be at this level. There’s always an answer to the problem. It’s always about solving that problem, and being ready to solve the next problem."