Brain in the Game | Sport Mind Coaching Podcast
Dave Diggle
Episode Fifteen – Athletes Need Balance – and why ON isn't always ON!
Hello and welcome back to Brain In The Game. Brain In The Game is a podcast specifically designed for athletes, coaches and parents, who are looking to do their sport just a little bit smarter. Brain In The Game is like a colonic to your sporting reality, and I'm your host Dave Diggle.
In this episode 15, “You Need Balance to be a Champion”, we're going to debunk some of those old beliefs around approaching your training and competition, and where you need better balance.
When is an athlete not an athlete? That's not the start to a bad joke – it's a question I ask often. Friends and support groups all turn around and say “An athlete's always an athlete, right?” Most have heard that old saying “you must eat, sleep, drink, and breathe your sport” in order to be the best at what you do. I probably uttered those words in yesteryear when I was coaching. It's a common belief the more you immerse yourself, the better you'll become. To a certain degree, it's very true; however, there need to be checks and balances put in place in order to efficiently manage the athlete.
We see this with athletes all the time. They're consumed with doing stuff – up early running, at the gym, on the track, doing research, stretches, yoga, pilates, etc. – constantly on the go until they fall into bed, still processing what was going on that day, until they wake up the next day to do the same routine. In their mind, it's a measure of productivity, dedication, or even worthiness of being a professional athlete. But do you really need to be consumed in doing to get the best results?
The reality is “no”. In fact, the constant doing is giving you less than being smart about it. You don't have to eat, drink, sleep your sport 24/7/365 in order to be the best at your sport. You just need to be smarter with it. What is needed is quality, not necessarily quantity. If you're on 24/7, several things will occur: first, you'll run out of steam, mentally, physically, and emotionally, leaving you vulnerable to physical injury or illness from the low immunity. A loss of clarity and decision-making capabilities, and a loss of direction. All you've done flows from one day into the next, and you become unable to identify what has worked, and what you've achieved. Then you snap.
We see it time and time again, athletes who go out and purge or go on a bender, and say “the pressure got to them”, or they made poor decisions, or “I needed somebody to help me, I didn't know how to stop”. We hear coaches talking about it, athletes coming out of rehab. Much of that is caused by the constant go-go-go and expectations the athlete puts on themselves.
Sure, there can be a number of factors in why an athlete makes poor decisions – just look at the poor state the Australian Rugby League is in at the moment – but the physicality of 100 mph is unsustainable. The mental fatigue from processing, sorting, problem-solving, and applying will eventually deplete your clarity in through and your effectiveness. The emotional weight of expectation will cause both emotionally-charged decision making, and emotional overwhelm; reducing the emotionally stable platform most athletes need to compete and perform. Losing both the objective and reward process – both so critical in building sustainability – can decrease productivity and processing, and lose the objectivity of the drive.
This is often when athletes become disenchanted with the sport, or force repetitive self-injury through poor self management and decision making. We see athletes saying “I don't know how it got to this stage – it was going well, then all of a sudden it became too much.” Another aspect is full-throttle approach, is effectiveness of performance. We often hear coaches say on competition day, “Time to step up and give it all your got”. I can hear it week after week, session after session, “Now is the time to step up.”
Step up to what, from where? If you're going full-throttle all the time and have managed thus far not to burn out, how do you go and give it more? You're already giving it 100%, from waking to sleep, and then some when processing during sleep. How do you differentiate between the 100% today, and 100% yesterday? That doesn't mean you give less yesterday so you can give more today; it's more about being efficient and effective, and the different mental states you're in.
Ask yourself, “When am I not an athlete?”, and what does that person like to do? To feel? What do you say to yourself? What are the core needs of that side of you? When you're not training or thinking about your sport, what do you like to do, and why? Do you like going to the movies, just hanging out in your socks and undies, watch TV and veg out, just sit and not process? And why is that important to you? What is the purpose in it? And how does that non-athlete differ from the training athlete? What does the athlete like to do, what are their core needs? When we understand the different between the athlete and the non-athlete, we can understand what the non-athlete gives us, and the purpose of the athlete. When you can differentiate between the two, ask what the core role of each phase is. What do you need to learn and perform as when you're an athlete? What don't you need to perform and what don't you need to process when you're not an athlete?
This will allow you to identify what the downtime does for you; how it recharges your emotional batteries and recalibrates you mentally. It gives you control over your processing of being a more efficient and in-control athlete. It also enables you to go “I know what one is, so I can step up and be the other”. It gives you the trigger, stepping stone, the role; and when you understand how that process and that balance is vital, it gives you the clarity of “What do I need to be the athlete, and what do I need to be the non-athlete?”
There's another phase here, what I call the “pure athlete”, the competitor. What role does the athlete offer as a student – the learner, the unpacker, the problem-solver and re-applier – that differs from the pure athlete? The role of the competitor is to perform. It's not about unpacking or problem-solving, but performing. Ask yourself those same questions. What does a pure athlete have, and how does it differ from the training athlete? What does that pure athlete like to do? What do you say to yourself as that pure athlete? What are the core needs of being a pure athlete? How do you define it, and how do you trigger the pure athlete? How do you action the “off” athlete so they can just recharge? When you're “on”, how do you engage that student mentality to get the right information out of your coach and specialists? Having a different mentality to learning, opposed to recharging, opposed to performing, enables you to understand the roles and to get the most out of each aspect of your performance, your personality, and your behaviour.
At competition, are you 100% focused on the objective? How do you trigger this aspect of you? We use both physical and suggestible triggers here at the Smart Mind Institute, so that when an athlete walks into a venue, they switch from non-athlete to athlete, maybe saying something like “focus”. The physicality of walking into the venue, and the word, enables the mind to switch from the vegged-out, relaxing mind to the switched-on athlete, there as the student, who needs to observe, process, and embed the information; who needs to ask the right questions and problem-solve, and get the performance ticking along the right way.
How does this differ for the pure athlete, who is already an athlete when they go to warm up, but needs to switch to the pure athlete to perform? We have more physical triggers: it could be when they're getting strapped, or putting their boots on, or putting their guards on, and they say something like “game on!” They have a different set of triggers to stimulate a different performance/neurological point of reference/mental state of mind. We use these physical and suggestible mental triggers to stimulate what we want and where we need to be.
If we need to step up from the cool, calm non-athlete to the athlete, we have those triggers and know how to sustain that for that shorter period of time – it's important not only to be able to step into that role, but to step out of it too. Thinking back to the start, being on 24/7/365 and how unsustainable that is, if we asked you to be really switched on, focused, and objective for just 2-3 hours, that's far more sustainable. We can focus more productively, process, unpack and repack, far more efficiently. It's about quality, not quantity.
On competition day, when we stretch from the athlete to the pure athlete, where nothing else matters than that one performance, we need to switch back to the student again, and learn how to make that event better the next time. This gives the athlete the control to navigate the different levels of intensity and pressure. It's just as important to have an exit trigger and an entry trigger, to make sure we know we get quality, and condensed learning and performance. It's important to be able to back off that intensity and go back into a standby mode, where we're recharging, processing, and relaxing, and just being “the person”, so we can create that sustainability.
This approach to managing athletes is vital and should be taught from the earliest stages, even from the junior athletes, who should be taught how to switch on to be an athlete, and then back again so they can be kids, relaxed. This will give them longevity in the sport, and the ability to manage themselves both mentally and emotionally so they don't burn out or end up hating their sport, or resenting those who supported or pushed them into the sport. This balance is the cornerstone of sustainability in producing champions. It's something we build into every one of our athletes. They know when they're the athlete, and the student, and how to process that and get the best out of it. And, they know how to step up to perform.
So ask yourself that same question – “When is an athlete not an athlete?” Until the next training session, train smart and enjoy the ride. I'm Dave Diggle, and I'm the Mind Coach.
Copyright 2012-2022 Dave Diggle
https://www.smartmind.com/
