Staying in the zone
Oliver Heer is a very strong advocate for mental coaching and has a great working relationship with German Professor Dr. Wolfgang Jenewein. His clients include a top female Slalom skier Katharina Liensberger of Austria and also with Norway's Aleksander Aamotd Kilde, top Downhill and Super G racer and renowned German big wave surfer Sebastian Steudtner as well as a top Spanish La Liga football coach Hansi Flick. He worked with Switzerland’s past America’s Cup winners Alinghi.
He explains, “When you work with a coach of a football team, you have different topics. We talk about how to motivate the players, how to make sure that they're collaborating and not conflicting with each other, so it's more about the team. When you work with individual athletes, it's pretty similar. But the topics are a bit different, the challenges are a bit different. So for Sebastian Steudtner, for example, it's the wave, it's the moment, it's the anxiety, it's that. And for Oliver, it's more of this long-term ‘staying in the zone. But still there are some similar concepts that I work with.”
Speaking of the preparation they have done together Jenewein explains, “We've built up routines, built up self-awareness, it's the number one thing we worked on. To be able to understand yourself, recognise yourself and reflect, I call it ‘stepping out’. Stepping out is a key component and then when he says, ‘hey, what's going on, why am I feeling so sad, why am I feeling depressed, why am I feeling this, why am I feeling that? Instead ask ‘how do I feel, before asking ‘why do I feel?’ ask ‘how do I feel? I’m feeling depressed, aha, interesting. Why? I’m feeling frustrated, why? This goes on and this is the stepping out, and a lot of people are not able to do that.’
‘One routine is that I teach him about ‘radical acceptance’, so no matter what happens, it is what it is, and get on an ‘embrace this shit.’
Dealing with high stress drama
He further explains, “The other thing we talk about is that he should understand that when something happens, like this horrible accident that he had (he was knocked almost flat in The Transat ndlr), you immediately get a lot of emotions, like frustration, anxiety, sadness, a lot of things, and then these emotions trigger his thoughts. Then he thinks negative, then he starts to think, ‘Oh my God, why am I here, why is this happening to me, oh my God, how do I get out of here, what a stupid thing to start’, and so on and so forth, so your emotions trigger your thoughts, and I try to give him this hint, ‘when your emotions trigger your thoughts, your thoughts can also trigger your emotions, it’s just the other way around.”
“It’s a cycle, so when you start thinking positive, if you have negative emotions, you start thinking, hey, what can I do now, and still I'm in this adversity, but I have opportunities still to do, I can embrace this shit, I can write history, I can create a legacy, and then you suddenly have better emotions and you get rid of the negative emotions, so this is another thing we worked on.”
Rituals
“Another thing that I teach is that I try to help him on setting up rituals, let's say, things where he can connect meaning to it. So is it might something from his wife, a little message from his mother or whatsoever, that he in his mind connects with meaning and with the thought that everything is okay. So that when he looks at it, it kind of symbolises that everything is okay, I'm on the right track, I have an environment that I'm familiar with, I'm not in the middle of the sea in a storm or whatsoever, no, I'm still connected to, say, this little teddy bear. And this teddy bear represents my family, my loved ones, and when I look at it, it's not only that I have this connection, but also when I look at it, I have a certain thought in my head, and I'm training this thought. So there are some things that you think, when you look at it, and you think everything will be okay, ‘I will be healthy’, ‘I will recover soon’, ‘I will be fit again’. So when we connect things with thoughts, and when we have this thing, then it just represents this positive thinking, this positive thought, it's another thing we do.’
Clearly on the Vendée Globe the ‘no outside assistance’ rule means the skippers are not allowed to talk to their mental coach during the race.
Holistic approach, self learning works too
Some skippers have developed their own mental routines and strategies like Briton Pip Hare, who smiles ‘I’ve always had to raise money for the programme myself and have never been able to allocate the resource to a mental coach, not when I am still going round the supermarket stocking up on the tea which is on special offer to take on my Vendée Globe!”
She says, “I recognise the times when I really struggle. I've developed an awareness of when things aren't going well for me. And then as a result, I put my own tools and techniques in place. I've naturally come to the same tools and techniques that other people have learnt through working with mental coaches and I think I'm happy with that. I don't think I realised how far I’d developed those tools and techniques until I did the Vendée Globe. And then, moving on to this last cycle, kind of investigating what other people were doing, and how I could improve my performance. I realised actually I'd managed to develop so much of this myself.”
“I do quite regularly when I feel like I'm being drawn into a negative space, or I feel disappointed, or like I'm underperforming is, I call it zooming out, I have a technique where I just take myself out of the now and zoom right out and I kind of look at my journey to where I am and I look at how much I've accomplished over time. And then it's almost like looking at a boat in the middle of the ocean and acknowledging the fact that I've sailed this boat that far, and it's just me on it, and I've made it that far. That makes me engage with how well I've done to now. The fact that I have had the strength and the ability to get myself to that position, both in geography and in time, and that resets the negative, or it stops a negative spiral, just by reminding myself that actually, I've got to here and been through much tougher times.
Music for mood changes
“Hare attests, “ I use music a lot, really a lot, I find that sometimes you just have to change just one tiny thing, just change, change the tone, change the pace, do something to stimulate your brain in another way. And I find, for me, music is definitely that thing for me. It has an incredible ability, I think, just to flip a switch in your head.
And beyond that I use a triage system if I feel like I'm overwhelmed by the volume of things that keep happening, or what to do next, then of use a really simple triage system. I basically categorise every, I list every single thing that could be done. I then categorise it into three sections, asking three questions. Am I safe? Am I going in the right direction? Am I going as fast as I can? Safety first, direction second, fast third. That really helps me in the day to day management and not feeling overwhelmed.”
