Following on from the Prologue we shared, welcome to the first of perhaps many regular instalments reflecting on the week’s coaching and updating on the Prepared Athlete Training and Health project.

The idea for this new offering came following a conversation about the project with an excellent fellow named Gus, who I recently met during a weekend stay just north of Pemberton BC. During our conversation I shared that I had yet to figure out the marketing and promotion aspect that comes with launching a new venture.

I have major reservations and general disquiet with the concept of self-promotion. Presently I am de facto ‘the brand’, so marketing and promotion necessarily involves advertising myself and what I do. If I have a ‘personal brand’ (and even typing those words made me wince), it is more about integrity and substance over style rather than social media hype.

All of which makes me leery of hashtags, and when I contemplated how to raise the profile of the fledgling new venture the prospect of competing for eye balls with the legion of Instagram ‘coaches’ did not seem an appealing or particularly worthy proposition. What is however necessary is to make people aware of the existence of Prepared Athlete Training and Health, and this requires exposure. Herein lies the quandary.

In response to these reservations Gus shared his wisdom on the topic, and his opinion that I should rather find opportunities to share the story and provide a regular (perhaps weekly) look behind the scenes that is authentic. Gus’s suggestion struck a chord with me, and led to this offering.

THE WEEK THAT WAS…

This week’s coaching featured the full spectrum of Prepared ATH clientele, across each of the three streams (Develop, Prepare, Return).

10 year-old soccer goalkeeper Lucas, and multi-sport athlete Sophie who just started grade 10 this week, strongly represented the ‘Develop’ stream. Lucas enjoyed a session split between track and on turf, with a mixture of challenges as we continue to build the pillars of movement dexterity in different directions, planes, and axes of motion. As I worked out pretty early on, having a soccer ball involved whatever the activity has miraculous effects on engaging attention (I have found this to be true of team sports players, largely irrespective of age!). This week I also participated in many of the drills alongside Lucas, and this helped him dial in even further.

Skipping over to the Return stream, our somewhat older recreational runner and cyclist Andrew was back in action this week. No longer enjoying the same physical benefits of youth, but still much the same exuberance, it remains a process for Andrew to explore the boundaries of his growing capabilities without succumbing to the urge to overdo it. This week we went back to fundamentals – interspersed with frequents bouts of backwards running between repetitions – and managed to progress drills to transition into running mechanics without any hamstring pain or restriction.

Finally, the poster girl for the Prepare stream, national development bobsled athlete Mackenzie continued her final preparations for the upcoming dry land assessments, which are employed for selection to the World Cup squad. With so much riding on three field tests (30m sprint, standing long jump, and forwards shot put throw for distance), a big part of the process in these final stages is managing the mental game. Being so close to the occasion, this presently encompasses the majority of Mackenzie’s waking time, most of which is off the track.

Anxiety is a natural and somewhat necessary part of being an elite athlete, and indeed for athletes who seek to excel at any level. By definition there is uncertainty in the outcome; but of course, if the outcome was certain, this would rob the endeavour of its meaning. Similarly, athletes care deeply about performing well, and the prospect of failing to do so causes anxiety. Once again, this is an integral part of striving to excel in the pursuit. If the outcome didn’t matter to us, and there was nothing on the line, there would be very little drive to pursue our chosen sporting endeavour.

So we have established and accepted that being anxious to perform and mindful of the stakes involved is part of striving to achieve in sport, and this in itself can be a source of reassurance to many athletes. We often have a perception that elite athletes are not affected by anxiety, and this is a fallacy. They have simply learned to manage what is an integral part of competing as an athlete.

Now we can put that aside, our task now switches to equipping ourselves with the tools to manage and even harness this nervous energy, so that it no longer distracts or detracts from performing. Most of these tools come into play away from the competition arena. It is not our emotions or feelings that are the problem; rather it is how we think about them, and then ruminate upon them, that causes the ongoing stress and anxiety. To reiterate, it is not what we feel, but our thoughts about what we feel that often leads to problems.

When we get into a negative head space there are typically some common cognitive distortions at play, in how we perceive and interpret how we are feeling, and appraise the situation as a whole. For instance, one such distortion is over-generalisation, whereby we latch onto one negative event, result, or piece of feedback, and make the giant leap to interpret this as defining who we are, or our future prospects. Sadly, our thoughts do not necessarily need to be rational in order to bias our thinking and influence our view of ourselves.

The path back from a negative space that doesn’t serve us therefore involves first delving into how we are feeling, then unpacking our thoughts on how we are feeling, and finally interrogating the often false logic behind what we are telling ourselves about ourselves and the situation at hand. Getting these feelings, thoughts, and ruminations on paper offers a first step to unpacking it from our head and out into daylight. When we then examine the steps of reasoning from the original feeling to our thoughts, to our ruminations, and our final appraisals, we generally find the house of cards we have built in our heads was built on distortions and spurious reasoning. In the light of day the whole edifice often collapses, allowing us to return to the task at hand.

I look forward to updating you on the journey next week…

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