sports psychology article

The Olympic Games of 2004 have been and gone and, thankfully, fears about the host city of Athens not being prepared proved unjustified. As ever, some performers rose to the occasion and delivered in terms of world records, Olympic records and personal bests, while others wilted under the gigantic pressure that accompanies this most prestigious and high-profile international sporting event.

As the dust settles and British athletes reflect on their performances and, in some cases, set goals that may lead them to Beijing in four years’ time, it is right and proper that those responsible for preparing them for the Games reflect on their own contributions to our successes and failures.

Before the opening ceremony, I watched the coach of the GB swimming team confidently asserting that they were probably the best prepared swimming team ever. A bold statement indeed: but with the squad boasting a world champion and – on paper at least – a number of serious medal contenders, there seemed every reason to be optimistic.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t so convinced when I saw TV footage of the squad half-heartedly responding to the coach’s attempts at motivational chanting. Sorry, but it is naïve to imagine that such exhibitions constitute satisfactory psychological preparation.

At the conclusion of the swimming events, GB performance director Bill Sweetenham was quick to defend the team’s performances, pointing out that they were represented in 14 finals, a considerable improvement on the last Olympics in Sydney. However, with only two bronze medals to show for the team’s efforts, this could hardly be judged a successful meet.

Halfway through the swimming events, BBC commentator and former Olympian Adrian Moorhouse echoed my thoughts exactly. For a team supposedly so well prepared, why were the performances falling so far short of expectations? Had we, as observers, expected too much? Of course we have to accept that, as a nation, we will have peaks and troughs in terms of emerging talent. Potential Olympic champions are not mass-produced and there are limits to what coaching can achieve. Nevertheless, when comparing the team’s Olympic performances with its members’ past successes, a serious discrepancy was evident.

To me, this suggests that we should have worried less about whether Athens would be ready for the opening events and more about the preparation of our own competitors. Adrian Moorhouse pointed out that being prepared for such a major event involves many components, including technical, physical and mental readiness. And he was dismayed at the number of British swimmers who reported problems with focus and concentration.

Why Marshall pulled out

I, like Moorhouse, was amazed when medal prospect Melanie Marshall withdrew from her second event because she felt exhausted. When you compare this athlete’s swimming schedule with those of other, much busier Olympic swimmers, including Michael Phelps, Ian Thorpe and Inge de Bruin, you have to wonder how these swimmers were able to perform so consistently well with such heavy workloads.

Two possible explanations occur to me: either the fatigue was physical, caused by overtraining, or psychological, caused by competitive stress. As a sport psychologist who paid close attention to post-race interviews, I have to conclude that at least some of our swimmers were not mentally ready for the pressures of Olympic competition.

Let’s take the issue of concentration and focus first: mental preparation should be an integral part of a swimmer’s training, and techniques for obtaining an optimal focus, and refocusing following distractions, can be learned.

If this was the best-prepared swim team ever, why was this aspect of training apparently neglected? I am sure our athletes did work on their psychological skills in preparation for competition, but it appears that there is still much work to do and it is important to target areas for improvement.

In summing up the team’s performances at the Olympics, Bill Sweetenham admitted to the BBC that a certain degree of ‘Olympic phobia’ existed within the squad. He singled out mental toughness as a key area for improvement before the Beijing Games and has made a number of recommendations for how this might be achieved. This might sound obvious – churlish even – but shouldn’t developing the mental skills of our swimmers have been a cornerstone of their preparation for Athens? There appears to be an element here of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Of course I am only an observer who was not present at the training sessions of these performers, but I have worked as a sport and exercise psychologist for more than seven years and coached various sports for much longer. Having worked with international-level performers in some sports, I continue to be amazed at the imbalance between time spent on physical and mental training.

Almost everyone involved in sport will admit that getting your mindset right before competition and maintaining mental control during your event(s) is an essential aspect of successful performance. The profile of sport and exercise psychology has risen hugely over the last few years, with enhanced coach education and a heavy media focus. Unfortunately, though, there is still a residual reluctance on the part of some performance directors, coaches and athletes to make a full commitment to mental preparation.

The problem is not so much convincing people that psychological skills training is important, but persuading them to commit resources to it in a systematic fashion so that it becomes culturally integrated – ie the norm.

My previous articles in PP have focused on many aspects of mental training and preparation, but I have always stressed the need to practise rather than look for a quick fix.

I still have performers who call me for advice and a consultation when they are experiencing a slump in performance and this is to be expected. Often we will work together to identify the problem, plan an intervention strategy and implement changes in the athlete’s training schedule.

However, when performances start to improve there is a tendency for some athletes to believe that the problem has been solved. There then follows a ‘quiet period’ when such athletes believe they now have the skills to cope by themselves. This can last a few weeks or even months, but there comes a time when, following another slump, the telephone rings once again and a new quick fix is sought.

In some cases, athletes have continued with their psychological skills training during the intervening period, but no planning or adaptation of this programme is possible if the psychologist is excluded from the proceedings. This is frustrating and obviously not conducive to achieving consistent high performances. And in my view it is time for a cultural change in planning training schedules.

I read Craig Sharp’s critique of what sport science has done for us in a recent issue of Peak Performance (PP 200, July 2004) and could not help but agree with his assertion that not nearly enough research is being conducted. Knowledge gained from scientific research should be the lifeblood of performance enhancement, but that research also has to be applied in a consistent and systematic fashion.

Sport psychology still has a long way to go, and we have much to learn, but when we have attained knowledge about techniques and strategies that can help our athletes to perform better, it is disappointing when it appears not to have been practically applied.

The performance results of British swimmers, apparently entering the Olympic pool without focusing skills, has put paid to any suggestions that they were the best prepared team ever. Now is the time to evaluate that experience and learn the necessary lessons so that in four years’ time our swimmers are properly prepared for the distractions and pressures that are part and parcel of the Olympic Games.

Lee Crust