How do Olympians Perform Under Extreme Pressure?

0:00Watch it early on the High Performance app. Available now, Roman Kemp, the broadcaster, opens up a powerful conversation on success and mental health.

0:13Hi there, welcome along to another episode of High Performance. This is one of our regular bite-sized conversations where we don't take up an hour of your time. I know some of you can't afford that, but we also want to give you some value from High Performance. And you are also central to these conversations. And usually, Damien and I, we sit down, we talk to the planet's highest performers, But in these episodes, we like to catch up with each other, talk about the things that have impacted us, the messages that we've received from you and the things that we're thinking about at the moment. Hi there, Damien.

0:41Hi, Jake. You all right? Really well, mate. Thanks very much. So look, today marks the start of the Olympic Games in Paris. And we've spoken to so many Olympians over the last few years since we started High Performance. And something that always sort of resonates with us is that we're asking people to perform to the very best of their ability for a minuscule amount of time with the world's eyes on them, having had to wait four years since they last got this opportunity. It is unique to the world of sport. It's certainly unique to the world of business, pretty unique to the world of high performance as well.

1:16So when we talk about this, what have you learned from the athletes that we've spoken to about how all of us can perform at our peak when it really matters? Well, I think that there's a word in that last sentence that you just used there, Jake, that gives us a really good insight into what we're going to watch over the next couple of weeks. There's different types of performance. If you think of what you just described there is peak performance is being able to show up on a certain day at a certain time and be your absolute best at what you can. And I think that's what we're going to observe. There's also high performance where that's more of a sustained process of delivering your best month after month.

1:55And then there's optimal performance, which is when you're having those really tough days, is you just turn up and do the best you can with what you've got. And I think it's important to understand those distinctions. I was lucky enough to recently go and spend some time with Tom Daly and the diving team down at the London Aquatic Centre. I interviewed the coach, Jane Figueroa, an amazing lady. And that's what struck me. I was watching them go up on the 10-metre diving board and go off, and I must have seen at least 30 different dives. and yet in total it's going to be about six seconds worth of work for them at the Paris Games that they're going to be judged on and their medals hopefully gold are going to be awarded for so just to see the effort the the work the commitment that goes in day after day after day to make sure they can deliver at that peak performance was really quite humbling so I want to talk about adam peaty um one of our greatest ever olympians um and i think that when it comes to visualization or or mental imaging we talk all the time about positive visualization positive mental thought positive mental images right adam came on high performance and told us that actually the magic that he's found is in visualizing stuff going wrong have a listen i was visualizing the race i was visualizing what i was doing but in the headphones it was like i was in the call room so there's almost like a white noise beforehand and it'll be like lane eight my guy lane one other guy lane two other guy and then it comes down to lane four Adam Peaty Great Britain I know this audio is real it was taken from the 2015 world championships and that helped me massively because one of the biggest things is like oh what's the crowd gonna be like what's what's gonna happen into 2016 in Rio when the I'm lane four and I'm Adam Peaty how do I expect what am I what I'm gonna feel trying to predict these things that are gonna happen and that was one thing which hugely has a huge impact on me because by the time I got there, I didn't have to worry about that.

3:57All I had to worry about was my technique and the race. And I think this is something that we can all do. I know that it's something that Michael Phelps employed as well in his incredible swimming career with the number of goals that he won, is that there's a chance that your goggles might come loose. There's a chance that the crowd might boo your name. There's a chance that you might slip as you're diving in off the board. and if you can be ready for any of those things when those things arrive they don't impact you in a negative way you know we talk often about failure being the price of ambition when it comes to failure or struggle or things going wrong if you expect it then you're much better equipped to accept it and i think that's a really nice place to start this conversation about success about glory about gold medals about being olympians is that actually dealing with the failure is a key element that so many of them have discovered yeah definitely I think like Adam Grant told us that you might get only get a C for your performance but you should aim to get an A for how you deal and respond to those setbacks and disasters Chrissie Wellington the five times Ironman champion told us that you have to race the imperfect race perfectly you have to be ready for all these setbacks, these disappointments, to be able to deal with them effectively.

5:13If you're anticipating things going perfectly, when things go wrong, whether that's the bus to the diving centre running late, whether it's one of your opponents walking in your lane and trying to get into your head, whether it's you fall off a bike like Chris Hoy did in the weeks before the Olympic Games and you injure yourself, you have to be ready to respond effectively. And that's a big lesson that anyone can apply in life things don't go perfectly but how you respond to them can determine your level of success and i think we're going to see lots of young athletes do precisely that over the next few weeks and then people are listening going yeah but how do i do that well that's exactly what dina rasha smith told us the best most recent example of that i have is the 2018 european championships in berlin i remember i did my semi-final in the 100 and my start was appalling I was like a snail like it was awful it was so embarrassing I'm being frank it was you can look back the semi-final start it was so sluggish it was like I was asleep and I was panicking and normally if that had been a diamond league John would have been like come on Dina what was that like come on we're trying to run a race here we're not going to the supermarket like ha ha ha ha you know and it would have been banter but um I was panicking because obviously like that was the focal point of my season and I understand that the way you set up your semi-final often dictates how the final goes so I was a bit like I was a bit nervous like that wasn't good enough that's not where I want to be and I came from the semi to the warm-up track ready to um prepare for my final and I was a bit like so John that start wasn't good he was like oh yeah it wasn't the best and then I said so what we're gonna do we're gonna practice blocks like we're gonna kind of get ready for the next race he was like no just gonna go you're gonna go out there next time and do your normal start and then he was like that's what I want you to do just go there normal start I don't want to talk about it again I was like okay he's like we're not doing blocks we're not doing free point we're just going to warm up relax chill you're going to go out there and do like what you normally do and we're going to call it a day I was like oh and then I went out there and I had the best start of my career and I won that's brilliant Damien because I think when something goes wrong we think oh no I've got to rewrite everything I know I've got to change the way I approach life I've got to rethink everything I've ever learned no what did Dino say there you just do the same thing again and trust yourself really really powerful well that message that dino asher smith said there which is about trusting the process is a theme that we've heard so often you know fernando alonso told us that he aims to race like a robot when he puts the visor down that he literally just goes on autopilot that again referencing the conversation i had with jane figueroa last week said she almost wants her divers to turn their brains off when they get to the top of the diving board and just trust the process of the thousands of hours that they've already done and that's what Dina is describing perfectly there that just go out and execute what you've done thousands of times and just trust yourself that you'll deliver when it matters and again I think that anyone listening to this that might be looking and inspired by the athletes and thinking how can I do it understand the process the small steps that you take every day to move yourself forward and then in the moments where the pressure's highest just focus on those small steps that's where it's more effective time after time you know what let me just play a clip damon because it's one of your my favorites he's not an olympian but he deserves respect on this podcast sam thomkins uh the former captain of the england rugby league team this is what he told us about finding those tiny things and making them perfect it's the one percent things that other people won't notice doing best in rugby terms people score amazing tries and come up with big tackles but there's a hundred things that the average spectator wouldn't see someone working when the ball's away working an extra three meters to cover a little bit of space in case the ball comes back these are what we call one percent efforts and it might be someone who doesn't get the accolades that they deserve and they you know they're a player that you need in a team, but the name's not in the paper.

9:20They're not getting a pair of fortune, but they do the 1 % as right. And that amongst the group was more valued. There you go. Sam Tompkins on the 1 % that make a difference. More than 1 % is the importance of mentality, Damien. We're going to talk about this in just a second, but first let's hear Kelly Holmes when we asked her to what extent was her success mental and to what extent was it physical? 20 % of talent because there's so many talented people and then 80 % of going through everything else to get there wow okay if I go on a track at olympic games you know 0.05 of a second separated the first four of us in that 800 meters we're all bloody good runners yeah yeah had I given up I wouldn't have been part of that for you know so actually there's that inner bit the belief and your ability to push and to trust yourself I mean what a brilliant message there that the difference between running fast and running fast under pressure is a skill that all of us can learn.

10:19And Kelly described that in a really powerful way. I think what she was describing there, and I remember reading her book on this, was that she set goals in three very distinct ways. One, she set outcome goals, which was to fulfill her sense of destiny, she said, when she wrote in her diary. The idea of going out there and performing at the very best that she could was all outcome goals keely hodginton recently told us that one of her outcome goals is to buy herself a porsche if and when she wins gold in paris so outcome goals are really good because that gets the emotional part of your brain engaged and switched on and it gives you a powerful incentive a guiding light to move towards it but then you need to break it down into performance goals and performance goals are things that you can measure stats facts and figures so kelly holmes understood that she had to run that 800 meters final in a certain time that that was going to be better than any other athlete on the planet so that allows us our rational part of our brain to break down and start to look at what it is we need to do how we can measure it and effectively and then the final bit that we've already covered is about process this is about the small steps that you take and this allows the hippocampus region of your brain the bit that works on on autopilot to just do what you practiced over and over again and to trust the process so if you think of some of these athletes that you'll watch on the days where they're exhausted where they don't want to train the body's aching it might be an outcome goal that gets them out of bed for keely hodgkins and it might be the promise of that push that gets her out there onto the track then the coaches will be looking at what the sort of time she should be doing uh in the sort of splits and the running distances that she's competing in and then when she's on the track in Paris she'll just be focusing on one or two small incremental goals that just allow her to get there so for any of us whatever we're doing in life we should have an outcome we should have a performance and we should have process goals and if you want to see that in action enjoy the next couple of weeks and see athletes doing precisely that brilliant of course none of this comes for free we've had a question from Joe saying, when is the right time to make sacrifices?

12:37And when I say nothing comes for free, it reminds me actually of our interview with the former NFL player Osiyu Minura. And Damian asked him about the fear he has for a brain injury after years of playing in the NFL. And his answer was, well, nothing comes for free. And I think when we talk about sacrifice, that's what I often think of Damian. You know, I think that what appears like a sacrifice today, actually in the future, just looks like an investment. And I think often it means you have to be brave. But I think that the spirit of sacrifice almost creates a trust within yourself that I think is really important.

13:12And I think if we want betterment, if we want improvement, if we want to achieve great things, I think sacrificing today is something that is so common, so prevalent with our athletes. No sacrifice, no victory. I've seen that quote before. I think it's not easy, but I think it's vital. I think you make a really important point there, Jake, about the significance of language. I remember asking a question to Joe Hart about the sacrifices he'd made to become England's number one goalkeeper, and he pulled me up short. He said, it wasn't a sacrifice, I wanted to do it. so he was focusing on what he gained rather than what he lost uh by going after these aspirations and i think that's a common trait of so many because if you're constantly looking over your shoulder feeling that i didn't go to those parties i didn't get to enjoy that night out it that starts to erode the level of commitment that you have where i was focusing on this is what i gain instead by taking this path that gives us a sense of commitment to go after our dreams and our ambitions.

14:12Brilliant. Damien, lovely to chat, lovely to converse. I love just doing this really, having a bit of a conversation between the two of us, which we don't get to do very often. No, I know. It's really good. I think sometimes just having that chance to put your foot on the ball and reflect on some of the wisdom that we've been lucky enough to absorb as sponges over the last five years is a real privilege. And then to share ideas with our listeners and our community is great fun. So thank you. And lucky is the word, very lucky to do this. And don't forget, we'd love you to get in touch with us. We want to start filling these conversations with messages from you.

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