I grew up without religion. Despite that, there are some turns of phrase that transcend religion and just become part of the culture.
“Idle minds are the devil’s workshop” does not derive from actual scripture, but nevertheless permeated through to me.
While, again, I am not religious, the older I get the less dogmatic I become in my atheism. In my youth, I more or less thought organized religion was all bad. Now I have learned to admire the collection of wisdom and philosophical thought that religions contain.
The idea of occupying your mind is one that has proponents and detractors around the world. Many people believe that inactivity causes depression, rather than the other way around. For years we were told it was important for children to be appropriately “stimulated” and then that they were over stimulated.
In my work, I have found one use case for occupying the mind. In the sport of swimming, we get a lot of thinkers. Perhaps there is something about the sensory deprivation, the repetitive nature of the sport, but you’re certainly not starved for moments where you can be entirely within your own head.
Swimming historically has also tracked with academic achievement. Athletes that can manage to will themselves through grueling, repetitive training also seem to be the ones that can show the “critical thinking skills” necessary to rise above their academic peers.
I have seen so many times where athletes and coaches begin to believe that those active thinking skills are a competitive weakness. They can be, but what I’m about to argue is that they don’t HAVE to be.
Directed Horsepower
One of the most spectacular athletes I ever coached was a guy by the name of Nico van Duijn. I’ve found myself reflecting on him a lot recently. Nico came to swim at Georgia Tech from a club swimming program in Zurich, Switzerland.
From the moment he arrived, there were several ways in which Nico distinguished himself. He was an excellent swimmer, at that time Switzerland’s fastest 100 butterflyer. He was also extremely disciplined. He kept a journal of his sleep and recovery. He logged workouts. Without any prompting from me as a coach, he took time to reflect on what he was doing.
Such was Nico’s leadership by example that he was voted captain of the team for his SOPHOMORE year. Let that sink in. An athlete from a foreign country came into an established team hierarchy and within one year everyone was pretty much in unanimous agreement that he should be their leader.
Nico, I believe, ended up graduating with a 3.97 GPA (no small accomplishment at Georgia Tech, where many students say they “got out” instead of graduated) in Electrical Engineering.
He was also, for an elite swimmer, relatively short. His underwater dolphin kick lagged way behind his competitors, probably owing to something he had absolutely no control over: he had size 9 feet, small even for his height.
Nico arrived on campus for the 2011-2012 season, meaning it was an Olympic year. His goal was to make the 2012 Swiss Olympic team, which he would have to drop considerable time from his existing record to do.
Of all the swimmers i have ever coached, he stands above in terms of the following statement. He did EVERYTHING I asked him to do. Even when he was frustrated (as he often was, pushing himself to the limit) he did not wallow in frustration.
At the end of that season, as one does in an Olympic year, we held a long course time trial. Finally, time to turn to the Olympics. I believe Nico’s record at the time was 53.8 (try not to scream when you think about how far the Swiss record has progressed since, especially thanks to Noe Ponti.)
In order to make the team I think he had to be about 52.8. He swam his 100 fly time trial and as I recall the time was 54.65. As a coach I braced for the worst. Nico came back, and he was disappointed no doubt, but once again there was no wallowing.
His coach back in Switzerland had set me up for success, and it’s a story I often tell when I’m visiting a team and making a speech. Dirk Reinecke was (and is) the coach of Limmat Sharks in Zurich. Dirk had given Nico a system for analyzing his performance on any given day. It was a simple 1-100 scale.
The idea was that there was no 1:1 comparison between performances, which swimmers often fall victim too. We tend to think of the time on the clock as absolute. Instead, Nico had been prompted to compare how he had done given the circumstances on the day.
What this meant in practicality was that a 54.65, while objectively a slower performance, was not a panic moment for him. He believed that he had done the work to do better but hadn’t performed well on the day.
This meant that when he returned, he doubled down on the work he had been doing. Although he ultimately failed to make the Olympics, he ended up going to the US Open that summer and absolutely shattering his own record in 53.0, and swimming a 52.4 the following summer.
I often wonder whether things would have gone different if such a thoughtful swimmer had not had direction on where to put his thoughts. So often we unconsciously decide to let the mental side of the sport go uncoached and unwittingly assume that things will work itself out.
Teach them What to do
Athletes need technical guidance on where to put there energy. If they are thinking about things that are not productive for them- then you as a coach must teach them how to think differently.
One of the things that I love about Positive Psychology is that it has so many systems for directing thinking so that you can allow positivity and hope to take up space and crowd out your natural pessimism. Like anything else, it takes practice and consistency.