aAs their hearts pound and their adrenaline pumps towards the starting line, even the best athletes in the world can be assailed by the nagging voice of self-doubt. But where competitors have traditionally been asked to silence negative thoughts, at this Olympics Team GB athletes are being encouraged to name their inner demons.
Naming the inner critic is one of a number of mental strategies deployed by the Great Britain team’s chief psychologist, Jess Thom, which he hopes will give his players an edge in Paris.
“We all have those self-blaming voices that may not be helpful on game day,” Tom says. “To remove the power of those imposter syndrome thoughts, I ask my players to name them.”
“Frank is my go-to guy,” she added. “I say, ‘Thanks, Frank, but not now.’ He just distributes the power. The athletes love Frank.”
This advice is emblematic of the progressive approach to performance psychology pioneered by Tom, who rejects the need to trade off sporting achievement for personal wellbeing.
Rather than encouraging athletes to ignore their nerves, Tom suggests that confidence is overrated. “One of the most important things to understand is that it’s normal to have unhelpful thoughts and feelings,” she said. “Even athletes sometimes lack confidence. They win gold medals at the Olympics despite feeling anxious or frustrated. Those thoughts and feelings don’t have to dictate what we do.”
Mindfulness may have replaced stubbornness, but achieving the necessary level of self-awareness still requires practice, discipline and grit, Tom said.
“That’s the general strategy: notice your emotions, accept them, and come back to the present moment,” she said. “It sounds so simple in words, but doing it in a high-pressure environment is amazing.”
Tom encourages athletes to think about how they act when they’re at their best. “If it takes a confident strut to the starting line, do it,” she says. “Act as if you were at your most confident, even if you don’t necessarily feel that confident in the moment.”
She points to Usain Bolt’s showmanship as a prime example: “He had his own way of keeping himself in the right frame of mind and looking very nonchalant, but underneath he knew exactly what he was doing,” she says. “He was a master of it.”
To address fears, athletes are asked to write a “what if” list, which serves as a contingency plan for worst-case scenarios. This typically includes difficulties like getting off to a bad start in a race or losing a set in tennis. Some athletes even extend the list to personal superstitions, like forgetting their lucky stuffed animal or not being able to find their family in a crowd. “We plan for every eventuality,” Tom says.
Elite sport hasn’t always been kind to its participants – recent scandals include abuse at British Gymnastics and bullying and racism in swimming – but Tom believes Olympic sport has turned around for the better. “In previous Olympic cycles you might have heard horror stories like Strictly, but that’s not the case anymore,” she says. “There’s a growing realisation that we can have both health and performance – you can have both and you need both.”
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There has also been a focus on managing the post-Olympic period, with “performance decompression” plans being put in place for athletes who can sometimes feel rudderless in the aftermath of the Games that for years gave them an unwavering sense of purpose.
“You’d think that medal winners wouldn’t suffer from the post-Olympic blues, but they do, sometimes even more so than those who come in fourth, which is probably the worst,” Tom says. “The mismatch between the expectations of winning a gold medal and the reality can lead to some really tough times.”
On the eve of the Olympics, Tom’s work is almost done. “The athletes are ready, they’re prepared, they know what to do,” she says. “I’m just a backup. A good Olympics is when I don’t have to do anything.”
“I’m always in awe of what these athletes do and what they do and what obstacles they face and succeed against,” she added. “They feel incredible pressure and their ability to defy what they may be feeling in the moment is extraordinary. I’m an expert on how to do it, but I could never do it as well as they do. They’re amazing at managing their minds.”
