How Damar Hamlin is using his inspiring comeback to help kid athletes

How Damar Hamlin is using his inspiring comeback to support kid athletes.

Key points

• Under Armour intends to expand coach education resources working with the Positive Coaching Alliance and introduce a Mental Rest Day Pledge.
• More: NFL Week 8 picks straight up, against the spread: Bills or Ravens in Sunday banger?
• 2, 2023, is a Monday night where you remember where you were as a sports fan.
• According to a press release Under Armour shared with USA TODAY Sports ahead of its Oct.
• Another pillar of Protect This Mind is peer-to-peer backing, a connection he has most deeply felt with the Bills.

How Damar Hamlin is using his inspiring comeback to support kid athletes. Stephen Borelli USA TODAY. Damar Hamlin discussions mental health, overcoming adversity.

Damar Hamlin discussions concerning the importance of mental health and encouraging kids to develop their own backing networks in partnership with Under Armour.

Damar Hamlin is looking back to a time before you might remember him.

"I've been through a lot of tough things as a kid, " the Buffalo Bills safety notes. "The awareness of what I was experiencing was always at the forefront of who I am. I've always kind of built up the capacity to accord with things."

His father was incarcerated when Hamlin was a boy. He had to avoid the "knuckleheads, " as he calls them, the peers from his hometown of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. This person he felt would drag him down from his goals. He aligned himself with individuals in high school – Central Catholic in Pittsburgh – who wanted to go to college and be successful in life. He created it, despite more distress in college. When he obtained to the NFL, his life changed forever.

"Just going through my toughest moments of adversity, when I decided that I wanted to play again, it was not an easy journey, " notes Hamlin, 28. "It was not as easy as I thought it was going to be."

He spoke easily and thoughtfully during a video call, reflecting not only on his comeback just over three years ago from cardiac arrest on the field, but a perspective that has carried him long before it.

"I've always had a unique approach to how I dealt with the mental game of sports and my own self, " he notes, "outside of my adversity of having the entire world watching me go through something very traumatic and then having to navigate it from 0 to 100 all the way back in front of the entire world."

Hamlin was speaking from Under Armour's headquarters in Baltimore, where he talked to local students who play sports regarding managing their mental health. He is the athlete ambassador for the apparel company's Protect This Mind initiative. It seeks to support young athletes strengthen backing networks and build lifelong mental wellbeing skills.

Hamlin has developed them first hand through unimaginable trauma but additionally in knowing we don't have to feel alone as we go through it.

"I think the strongest athletes, or the strongest people, aren't because they're just more well equipped humans than the rest of the world, " Hamlin notes. "I think they are the strongest people because they have learned and they know that asking for help is an essential part of thriving in this world."

Hamlin spoke with USA TODAY Sports regarding how mental wellness and backing has supported uplift him throughout his life and how we can apply it to power our young athletes.

It's OK to strive for perfection, but we need to ease ourselves away from that standard.

During his interaction with the kids in Baltimore, Hamlin obtained a question from a basketball player concerning advice for high school students who feel pressure to be perfect.

"I love that you feel the pressure to be perfect, " he remarked. "I know it's not a good feeling, but that pressure is only going to keep making you chase greatness. It's only going to keep pushing you forward and keep bringing out the best version of yourself. So don't run from that pressure."

Instead, we need to learn to manage expectations when life changes. Hamlin always had lofty goals for himself, in and out of sports, set by the examples of his parents, Mario and Nina. Life was far from perfect, but he felt the backing of their close knit group.

"My mom and my dad (were) my entire support system, " he notes. "I lost my dad to incarceration for a lot of years, and my mom worked a lot. I obtained to see my parents just truly sacrifice for the things that they love. It became a sizeable piece of who I am and a driving motivator for me to be able to become who I am today."

He has spoken regarding losing friends growing up to violence and his father's prison sentence for selling drugs. He remembers "struggling with that mental battle of like if I'm doing enough, if what I'm doing is gonna obtain me where I want to go, just not knowing and not really having the answers or no one to tell me the answers. No one around me who has done what I've wanted to do in any kind of fashion."

His work with Protect This Mind provides youth athletes with wellness tools through a resource hub, including a Be There Certificate program created by Jack.org in partnership with the Born This Way Foundation.

According to a press release Under Armour shared with USA TODAY Sports ahead of its Oct. 29 release, 110, 000 individuals have completed the free online mental health course, with 94% reporting they feel better able to backing someone experiencing mental health challenges and 90% reporting they feel better equipped to take care of their own mental health.

In practice, a positive first step in taking control of your journey, Hamlin notes, is giving yourself some grace. For example, he informed the kids, he was highly recruited out of high school, but had three surgeries related to sports hernia matters his freshman year of college.

It takes time to get back to yourself, he informed the group of athletes. I know that might be tough since when you're in high school, you're truly on a limited clock as far as like eligibility and things like that, but you weren't out there just flowing like everybody else.

"Dealing with what I went through, " he continued, switching to his NFL career, "I knew it was going to take time for me to be the same player, and I still don't feel like I'm the same player that I was. But I just continue to show up every day with what I obtained." Lean on your teammates, and they can lean on you.

Jan. 2, 2023, is a Monday night where you remember where you were as a sports fan. Hamlin went into cardiac arrest on the field after making a tackle as the Bills played at the Cincinnati Bengals.

Bills medical staffers administered CPR to Hamlin, and documented the after morning his heartbeat was restored on the field. He was taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center while the game was suspended and afterwards postponed.

He methodically worked his way back, from speaking with his family to sending social media posts to visiting his team to returning to play the after season.

Hamlin notes he learned in college concerning the importance of camaraderie to build a team and how that brotherhood can carry you through life.

"So I was able to lean on my teammates, going through their own adversities to help get through my own."

There might be individuals in your locker room who need emotional backing, but are hesitant to ask. Be the one to take the initiative, which, Hamlin notes, might inspire someone else to come forward.

Sometimes asking for help can be looked at as a weakness, and it can be looked at as you put yourself out there, which may be frowned upon from some people who are more shy or things of that nature, he notes. But honestly, asking for support can be the difference in anything.

"Some people struggle with grades or, on the mental health side, people deal things that they might not want to speak on, but just asking for help you never know who else is experiencing what you're experiencing." It's OK to have anxiety. Here are ways to manage it.

Our world, and society, is full of expectations, even from young ages when we play sports. Hamlin feels them as a player.

"I do have anxiety before a game, " he informed one of the kids in the audience, "feeling like I gotta stand up to be that player or I gotta show that I gotta be this type of player, and show that I have to set example for everybody. That's a lot of stress."

We can pause and find relief and trust, Hamlin notes, in the preparation we have for games, but we can additionally learn our own mental safe spots to recharge in between.

Under Armour intends to expand coach education resources working with the Positive Coaching Alliance and introduce a Mental Rest Day Pledge. It encourages coaches to prioritize recovery for athletes and create time and space to care for their mental well-being.

On those days, Hamlin notes, he employed to do extra work to try and keep up with the veterans.

"You never fully arrive, but I do feel like I have a good grasp on who I am as a pro and what my job description is, " he notes. "So now my rest days (are about) doing things that make me feel like me, talking to my mother, talking to my father, getting involved with my little brother's life, staying family oriented and just getting some rest."

For now, how Damar Hamlin is using his inspiring comeback to help kid athletes remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.