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Seven guides. Seven questions every sport parent eventually asks.

If MVP in the Stands is the philosophy, the Companion Series is what it looks like on Tuesday after

practice.

Each guide addresses a specific question parents carry:

What do I say? — The Car Ride Home

What do I communicate? — Handle With Care

How do I evaluate what’s happening? — Red Flags vs Growth Edges

How do I decide? — Commitment vs Quitting

What is my role? — The Triangle

Who belongs around us? — Building Your Village

What does the coach wish I understood? — What Coaches Wish Parents Knew

This bundle is for you if...

• You want practical tools for the real moments — not just the inspiring ones.

• You’re in the middle of a hard season and need something you can use today.

• You want to give a sport parent in your life the most useful gift they’ve ever received.

• You’re a coach or director who wants families in your program to have a shared language.

What’s inside:

• All seven MVP Companion Guides in one download

• Complete toolkits in each guide — organized by situation, not topic

• Where to Go Next in every guide so you always know what to read next

• International safeguarding contacts for five countries

• A consistent philosophy running through all seven — one voice, one framework, endless application

Read them all in a weekend. Return to individual guides whenever a specific moment arrives.

Drawn from thirty years of coaching, parenting, and watching what sport parenting actually requires.

Perfect for:

✓ Sport parents who want the complete toolkit

✓ Clubs wanting to give every family a shared resource at season start

✓ Coaches wanting to understand what the families in their program are navigating

✓ Anyone buying a gift for a sport parent who is working hard to get this right

Written by Camille Martens OLY

Olympian • Commonwealth Games Champion • 29-year club owner • National Coach Developer •

Former President of Gymnastics BC

MVP in the Stands — the complete guide for sport parents — available at nextpeakliving.com

MVP Professional Series — resources for clubs and organizations — available at nextpeakliving.com

The car ride home matters more than you think.

Not the training session. Not the competition. Not the score or the placement or what the coach said

at the end.

The car ride home.

It is the first thing your child experiences after the intensity of what just happened. Their inner critic

is already speaking — and it is rarely kind. What happens in those first minutes sets the tone for

everything that follows. Not just that evening. Over time, those car rides become the environment

your child associates with sport. With effort. With you.

This guide is for you if...

• Your child often shuts down or cries on the way home from training.

• You replay conversations all evening wondering what you should have said.

• You want your child to love sport for years — not just survive this season.

• You believe the relationship matters more than the result.

Inside you’ll find:

• Why saying nothing is often the most powerful move

• What not to say — ever — and why those words teach the wrong lesson

• A complete toolkit of questions organized by what your child needs: connection, reflection, growth,

looking ahead, or silence

• The conversation to have before the season begins

• The research behind the six words athletes most want to hear

• One thing to try this week

Read it in under 30 minutes. Use it for years.

Simple. Practical. Earned from thirty years on both sides of the car ride.

Perfect for:

✓ New sport parents

✓ Experienced parents wanting a reset

✓ Clubs looking for a resource to share with every family at the season opener

✓ Anyone who has ever driven home in silence wishing they’d said something different

Written by Camille Martens OLY

Olympian • Commonwealth Games Champion • 29-year club owner • National Coach Developer •

Former President of Gymnastics BC

Also in the MVP Companion Series: Handle With Care • Red Flags vs Growth Edges • Commitment vs

Quitting • The Triangle • Building Your Village • What Coaches Wish Parents Knew

MVP in the Stands — the complete guide for sport parents — available at nextpeakliving.com

Three words. One bridge. Everything changes.

Some days your child doesn’t need a coach.

They need you to know — before they walk through the door, before anyone asks anything of them —

that today is different.

Handle With Care is a three-word signal you send to your child’s coach before training begins. No

details. No long explanation. Just three words that say: today my child is carrying something. Please

know it before they arrive.

That is the whole system. The simplicity is the point.

This guide is for you if...

• You’ve watched your child walk into training on a hard day and wished their coach could see what

you see.

• You don’t know how to share what you know without oversharing.

• You want your child’s coach to know — without making your child feel exposed.

• You’ve ever driven away from drop-off thinking: they shouldn’t be training today.

Inside you’ll find:

• What Handle With Care is and exactly how it works

• The gap between what you know and what the coach can see — and why it costs your child

• What the coach does when they receive it (and what they don’t do)

• The difference between hard days and the days this system is actually for

• How to introduce it to your child before the season begins

• How to introduce it to a club that doesn’t have it yet

• A complete toolkit for parents, coaches, and club directors

Read it in under 45 minutes. Use it the moment it’s needed.

In twenty-nine years of coaching, this is one of the most powerful tools a program can offer a family.

Not because it’s complicated. Because it isn’t.

Perfect for:

✓ Parents of athletes in any sport or performing art

✓ Coaches who want a protocol for receiving this kind of information

✓ Club directors looking to formalize how families communicate on hard days

✓ Anyone who has ever wished there was an easier way to say: today is different

Written by Camille Martens OLY

Olympian • Commonwealth Games Champion • 29-year club owner • National Coach Developer •

Former President of Gymnastics BC

Also in the MVP Companion Series: The Car Ride Home (free) • Red Flags vs Growth Edges •

Commitment vs Quitting • The Triangle • Building Your Village • What Coaches Wish Parents Knew

MVP in the Stands — the complete guide for sport parents — available at nextpeakliving.com

Something happened. Or has been happening.

Maybe your child came home quieter than usual. Maybe they told you something their coach said that didn’t feel right. Maybe they’ve been reluctant for weeks. Maybe they said they don’t want to go back.

And now you are carrying a question you don’t entirely know how to answer.

Is this something I need to act on? Or is this something my child needs to move through?

This guide is for you if...

• You’re not sure whether what you’re observing is normal hardship or something that deserves

closer attention.

• Your child is struggling and you can’t tell if the environment is the problem or the growth is.

• You’ve been explaining something away for longer than feels right.

• You want a clear framework — not anxiety, not dismissal — for thinking about what you’re seeing.

Inside you’ll find:

• What a growth edge actually is — from the inside and the outside — with specific, recognizable

examples

• What a red flag actually is — six named patterns with real descriptions (not abstractions)

• A visual summary: Growth Edge vs Grey Zone vs Red Flag at a glance

• Six grey zone situations that don’t land cleanly on either side — the cases parents actually face

• A complete toolkit: questions for your child, questions for yourself, questions for the coach

• When and how to escalate, including international safeguarding contacts for five countries

• The decision to leave — and how to do it with integrity

Read it when something feels off. Return to it when you need to think more clearly.

Drawn from thirty years inside high-performance coaching environments — and from the honest

acknowledgment that even well-intentioned systems can cause harm.

Perfect for:

✓ Parents who are worried but not sure if the worry is accurate

✓ Parents who have been explaining something away

✓ Clubs wanting to give families a framework for raising concerns

✓ Anyone who has ever googled ‘is this normal’ at midnight

Written by Camille Martens OLY

Olympian • Commonwealth Games Champion • 29-year club owner • National Coach Developer • Former President of Gymnastics BC

Also in the MVP Companion Series: The Car Ride Home (free) • Handle With Care • Commitment vs

Quitting • The Triangle • Building Your Village • What Coaches Wish Parents Knew

MVP in the Stands — the complete guide for sport parents — available at nextpeakliving.com

Your child has told you they want to quit.

Maybe once. Maybe three times this week. Maybe they haven’t said the word yet but you can feel it coming.

And now you’re holding a question that has no clean answer. Because you know two things

simultaneously, and they’re pulling in opposite directions.

You know that quitting can be the right choice. And you also know that quitting can be the wrong

choice — that the moment just before a breakthrough often feels exactly like the moment to leave.

The difficulty is knowing which truth belongs to this moment.

This guide is for you if...

• Your child has said they want to quit and you don’t know whether to hold the line or open the door.

• You’re not sure if you’re holding on for your child’s sake or your own.

• You want to teach commitment — but not at the cost of your child’s wellbeing.

• You need a framework for a conversation that feels impossible to get right.

Inside you’ll find:

• What commitment actually is — and the two misconceptions that make it harder to talk about

• What it builds in a young person that nothing else can

• What honouring an ending looks like — and why leaving well is a life skill

• Six real situations in the territory in between, each with honest guidance

• The hardest question a parent needs to ask themselves — before deciding anything

• A complete toolkit: questions for your child, questions for yourself, the coach conversation, and a

question for both of you together

Read it before the conversation. Return to it when you’re not sure.

Built from thousands of conversations about when to stay and when to go — on both sides of the

equation.

Perfect for:

✓ Parents in the middle of this conversation right now

✓ Parents who want to prepare before the question arrives

✓ Coaches wanting to understand what families are navigating

✓ Anyone trying to teach a young person that difficulty is not always a reason to leave

Written by Camille Martens OLY

Olympian • Commonwealth Games Champion • 29-year club owner • National Coach Developer •

Former President of Gymnastics BC

Also in the MVP Companion Series: The Car Ride Home (free) • Handle With Care • Red Flags vs

Growth Edges • The Triangle • Building Your Village • What Coaches Wish Parents Knew

MVP in the Stands — the complete guide for sport parents — available at nextpeakliving.com

You’ve probably heard the triangle before.

Athlete. Coach. Parent. Three roles. Three distinct functions. When each person stays in their lane,

the system works. When roles blur, something in the development of the young athlete quietly breaks

down.

You understood it when you heard it. It made sense. You nodded.

And then the season started.

This guide is for you if...

• You understand the triangle in theory but keep drifting from your role in practice.

• You find yourself coaching in the car, analyzing on the sideline, or managing the relationship

between your child and their coach.

• You want to know what the triangle asks of you specifically at each stage of the season.

• You’ve drifted and want to know how to find your way back.

Inside you’ll find:

• What each role is actually responsible for — emotionally, not just functionally

• A visual diagram of the triangle: three circles, one sentence each, designed to be posted

• Pre-season: how the habits of the triangle are set in the first weeks — and how to get them right

• Early season: the coaching car ride, the anxious email, the comparison conversation — and what to

do instead

• Competition season: what your face communicates, the 24-hour rule, the 6 words that matter most

• End of season: the inventory conversation, the acknowledgment, your own honest accounting

• What to do when you’ve drifted — without overcorrecting or announcing it to everyone

Read it at the start of every season. Use it all year.

Refined across twenty-nine seasons of watching what happens when the triangle holds — and what

happens when it doesn’t.

Perfect for:

✓ Parents who want to support without interfering

✓ Parents who know they’ve been drifting and want to reset

✓ Clubs wanting a resource to use at the season-opener parent meeting

✓ Coaches who want parents to understand their role without a difficult conversation

Written by Camille Martens OLY

Olympian • Commonwealth Games Champion • 29-year club owner • National Coach Developer •

Former President of Gymnastics BC

Also in the MVP Companion Series: The Car Ride Home (free) • Handle With Care • Red Flags vs

Growth Edges • Commitment vs Quitting • Building Your Village • What Coaches Wish Parents Knew

MVP in the Stands — the complete guide for sport parents — available at nextpeakliving.com

No one tells you this at registration.

You fill in the forms, pay the fees, buy the equipment, and arrive at the first session carrying a quiet

belief that has never been examined: that your job is to be everything your child needs in this

experience.

This belief is not selfishness. It is love doing what love does.

And it is, quietly, one of the most exhausting and counterproductive beliefs a sport parent can carry.

You were never supposed to be everything for your child. You were supposed to be the person who

helped them build a world.

This guide is for you if...

• You feel like you’re doing this alone and it’s wearing you down.

• You feel something complicated when your child becomes close to their coach.

• You’re not sure who else is supposed to be in your child’s corner — or yours.

• You want to build a support system but don’t know where to start.

Inside you’ll find:

• The five relationships that belong in an athlete’s village — and what each one offers that no one else

can

• Why closeness between your child and their coach is the system working — not a threat to you

• A dedicated section on grandparents: the most underestimated relationship in an athlete’s world

• The parent’s own village: the loneliness that doesn’t get named, and what to do about it

• What the parent group is — and what it isn’t

• How to build the village consciously and what to do when the wrong people are in it

• A complete toolkit: questions for your child, your own honest village inventory, small actions to

start this week

Read it early. Build the village before you need it.

No athlete becomes themselves alone. Neither does a parent.

Perfect for:

✓ Parents who are doing too much alone

✓ Parents navigating a complicated feeling about how close their child is to their coach

✓ Clubs wanting to support healthier family ecosystems around their athletes

✓ Grandparents who want to understand their role — and how much it matters

Written by Camille Martens OLY

Olympian • Commonwealth Games Champion • 29-year club owner • National Coach Developer •

Former President of Gymnastics BC

Also in the MVP Companion Series: The Car Ride Home (free) • Handle With Care • Red Flags vs

Growth Edges • Commitment vs Quitting • The Triangle • What Coaches Wish Parents Knew

MVP in the Stands — the complete guide for sport parents — available at nextpeakliving.com

Have you ever wondered what your child’s coach actually thinks?

About you. About your child. About the relationship between all three of you.

This guide was written by a coach. One who spent twenty-nine years inside the coaching relationship

— watching what happens between coaches and families across hundreds of seasons. It is honest. It is

generous. And it will change how you see the person on the other side of the triangle.

This guide is for you if...

• You’ve ever wondered why your child’s coach made a decision you didn’t understand.

• You want a better relationship with your child’s coach but don’t know how to build it.

• You’ve had a difficult conversation with a coach and aren’t sure what went wrong.

• You want to be the kind of sport parent that coaches are grateful to work with.

Inside you’ll find:

• The invisible hours: what coaches carry between sessions that parents almost never see

• The ten-to-a-thousand problem: why every coaching decision is more complex than it looks from

the outside

• The sacrifice that goes unacknowledged — and why naming it changes everything

• The pond metaphor: why coaches see your child’s development in ways parents genuinely cannot

• What coaches say to each other about the parent relationship — honestly

• What coaches wish they could say directly to parents

• The structural dynamics that make this relationship hard without making anyone the villain

• A complete toolkit: how to build the partnership before anything goes wrong

Read it. Then share it with a parent you think could use it.

Written from inside the coaching relationship — with honesty about what coaches carry, what they

wish for, and what makes the difference between a partnership and an ongoing friction.

Perfect for:

✓ Parents who want to understand their child’s coach more deeply

✓ Parents recovering from a difficult coach relationship

✓ Coaches who want parents to understand what they experience — without having to say it

themselves

✓ Clubs wanting to reduce coach-parent friction before it becomes a problem

Written by Camille Martens OLY

Olympian • Commonwealth Games Champion • 29-year club owner • National Coach Developer •

Former President of Gymnastics BC

Also in the MVP Companion Series: The Car Ride Home (free) • Handle With Care • Red Flags vs

Growth Edges • Commitment vs Quitting • The Triangle • Building Your Village

MVP in the Stands — the complete guide for sport parents — available at nextpeakliving.com