Chapter 4

Life in sport is tough. You can't escape this fact. There are multiple challenges you will face, some that will ultimately help you get better and others that could relate to a poor performance culture. Many unpleasant things go on in sport. The stories in the press about: “winning at all costs” cultures, doping, bullying and abusive cultures may even reflect your reality. You may even exist in such an environment, not recognising that it is flawed. Your perceptions will relate to how YOU are treated, how you appraise your experiences and by your interactions with others. It is quite possible for you to happily exist in a training environment and for someone else to be in the depths of despair on the same programme. You may think your programme is great and your training buddy may feel bullied and abused.

What I want you to do now is to reflect on your 'lot'. The following questions will allow you to explore whether your environment is working for you. If you 'paint a positive picture', then that's the best news ever. If the answers are more negative, you owe it to yourself to find solutions.

     - How much do you look forward to training?

     - How well do you understand what is expected of you as an athlete and why these things are expected?

     - Do you feel listened too?

     - What is your relationship with your coach like?

     - Do you feel that you can make decisions for yourself, guided by but not dictated to by others?

     - Are you fearful of any coaches or support staff, and if so tell me about how this influences your levels of stress and anxiety?

     - What are your relationships with training partners like? Do you think they are content and focussed during training?

     - What is injury prevalence in your group like?

     - Do you feel you can have a life outside sport?

     - Would you happily eat a double-scoop ice-cream in front of your coach?

     - If you could change 3 things about your environment, what would they be and why?

     - Would you recommend coming here to your friends and why?

Of course, there is considerable personal responsibility for your own performance. You cannot be the best without having a focused work ethic and sometimes your life will be uncomfortably hard. You can’t always assimilate with cultural norms of 'normal' people your age such as partying or drinking and may have to make a few sacrifices to do your sport. I’d suggest that if they feel too much like sacrifices, you are either considering the wrong career path or there is something in your environment that needs to be changed.

It is normal to sometimes feel sad, out of your depth or unable to cope. These feelings can help develop resilience and drive you to the next level. People will also sometimes tell you uncomfortable truths and see you in a way that you do not see yourself. This can hurt but trust me, if you get a normal job, these things won’t stop. However, I suggest that if there are too many negative responses to the questions I have asked previously and that you are having negative feelings most of the time, then the environment is sub-optimal for you. You may even need to seek help.

As a coach, I expect focus, discipline and work-ethic during training. If appropriate intensity or rest-intervals are not adhered too, you’ll start all over again. This sets clear expectations. Cleek formation, bad-mouthing, disrespecting others or poor equipment maintenance/treatment will not be tolerated. But chatter, laughter and group camaraderie are things to be positively encouraged when they don’t overly detract from training. I may even prolong rest intervals to facilitate social interaction. Not all athletes like such an approach, wanting to just crack on. Therefore, methods of coaching must be varied. Trust me, I’m not soft and will comfortably tell people when performance is not good enough. A coach shouldn’t need to ask you to put effort in or use coercion/sanction to get you to work though. If something isn’t good enough, you’ll know that yourself and don’t need a coach screeching at you that it was shit. I won't worry if you're lazy unless this affects others. You should always have free will on whether you work hard, attend training or not. I believe that being ‘athletically relaxed’ is conducive to high-performance. Occasionally, being fearful, dejected, feeling threatened or anxious can help performance. But when these feelings become normal, something is most definitely wrong.

The fact that Olympic or World-champions have succeeded in bullying and fearful cultures is not validation of such cultures. Many athletes have gone into these types of environments in the belief that they are 'what it takes to win' and come out broken. Only the 'very brave' speak out, usually after the event. Jess Varnish is one. Mary Cain is another. I could name more, but many of their names aren't in the public domain, so I won't. The reality is that the long-term consequences of success for some champions are generally not public knowledge. They sometimes question "was it worth it?". There are better ways of getting the best out of people. They always involve openness, honestly and integrity. Macho cultures promoting mental toughness, warrior efforts and any types of initiation ceremonies are wrong. My belief is that apparently fragile and sensitive eggs can grow into champion chickens if they are handled with care. Discipline, focus and work-ethic are much more important.

There are things that I believe are unacceptable in sporting environments. Many of these things are culturally normal in some sports and even perceived as desirable. To reiterate, I am no softy and am highly critical of the “everyone is a winner” discourse in much of education today. Life is tough and we should prepare people for this fact.

Shouting by any coaching or support staff typically reflects a lack of discipline, poor emotion regulation, and poor professionalism. It is usually an ineffective way to deliver coaching points and to raise issues. Of course, there are instances when shouting is fine such as delivering very basic instructions from a distance or urgent safety points. The reality is that people may lose their temper ‘once in a blue moon’ too, but if shouting is regularly employed, then it’s wrong.

There are instances when I need to tell people when their performance is not good enough. This can usually be done through asking a question i.e. tell me how you thought that went? I have been known to say “that is rubbish” or “pull your socks up”, but usually with a caveat of “what’s on your mind?”, “how can I help?”. Most top athletes have an innate ability to identify their own errors anyway, and there’s rarely a need to belittle anyone though personal criticism.

Training load = how much + how hard + how often

I prescribe training based on dose-response. This dose response tells us that:

     - Too much training = maladaption

     - Too little training = sub-optimal adaptation

     - Just right = performance keeps improving.

The optimal dose of training is highly dependent on individuals and their social circumstances. I am going to pick on swimming as an example because it’s an environment I know well and its a sport where clinicians I've spoken with are concerned. If a young swimmer is struggling to stay awake at school but suffers insomnia at night, then this is usually a marker of inappropriate training load. Evidence tells us that poor sleep during adolescence impacts on brain development and cognitive function. In discussions with clinicians, they’ve told me that there is high-prevalence of stress, anxiety and depression with performance swimmers in all age-groups. This is probably related to early-morning and late-evening sessions, with loads sometimes in excess of 40000m + land training for adolescent/teenage swimmers.

Such training practices are culturally embedded, with training times being dictated by pool availability rather than the welfare of swimmers. Making programmes economically viable means that coaches are usually unable to consider dose-response or focus on technique sufficiently. This is sub-optimal and can be harmful. Whilst many swimmers continue to improve in such environments, my belief is that this is more to do with normal maturation and growth than the training load and coaching.

Whilst fatigue is to be expected when training hard, if it unduly impacts on being able to function relatively normally or in doing things away from training, the definition in a consensus statement from the IOC suggests this may constitute physical abuse. Hard training impacts on the whole body, including the hormone regulating endocrine system. This system is fundamental to both driving training adaptations and emotion/mood regulation. If its normal for you to feel grumpy, lacking vigour or overly emotional, then this is a marker for over-training.

Telling athletes not to use their phone in bed and to get better sleep may be valid advice but it is a red herring. If you're in such an environment, in which being overly fatigued in training or in the rest of your life is the norm, then this suggests something is wrong. Compulsion to have to attend training, particularly if this affects selection criteria, is wrong. If you've got what it takes to win, then you'll put the work in that's needed, rest when your body and mind needs it, without anyone dictating that you must do it. If anyone says otherwise, send them to me!

As a coach, this is a tricky area to address, particularly in mass dependent and aesthetic sports. That's because having excess body fat can be detrimental to performance and being too thin is dangerous to health too. Getting the balance right is hard. Doing so takes deep knowledge surrounding risk factors surrounding developing eating disorders, appropriate nutritional strategies and careful thought on how comments will be perceived. Let’s get this straight though. No coach should be saying: your arse is fat; you need to lose ‘timber’ or that your body shape is wrong. Chrissie Wellinton and I wrote an article on Racing Weight, to highlight the dangers of getting it wrong.

Having worked with athletes who have had eating disorders, I recognise that even careful framing of highlighting ‘body’ issues can be perceived very differently to the intention. I believe any coach delivering messages in a personal manner should probably not be a coach. At the very least, it should ‘raise a red flag’, suggesting that they’re working beyond their level of competency. If you are on a programme that involves any type of body shaming or guilt over eating, then it is wrong….wrong…wrong. You need to take action.

Similarly, organisations such as World Athletics should consider what influence race-kit i.e. skimpy bra-tops and hot-pants (that’s what they are) for women have on the health and wellbeing of athletes. It doesn’t sit comfortably with me that such uniforms are normalised, particularly in very body image conscious sports. The reality is that if athletes look ‘hot’ on TV, then more people will watch. I can live with that, as long as there is choice and other uniforms are positively promoted for younger athletes. Have a think about these things.

Whilst acute injuries usually happen by accident, overuse injuries are a consequence of too high loading in terms of volume or intensity, poor technique, or a combination of each. Whilst rarely desirable, an overuse injury can be helpful in identifying training load errors. Injuries merit exploration by the coach, a physiotherapist/appropriate clinician, and the athlete. When pushing the boundaries of what is possible injuries are to be expected. However, they should never be viewed as normal or inevitable. Regular joint or stress-fracture type injuries suggest more underlying problems with a programme or nutrition. Particularly with stress-fractures, I would work directly with clinicians to identify cause, sometimes with advanced diagnostic tools. Normal training would not commence until we had a good idea of what had caused the injury in the first place i.e. loading, menstrual function, nutrition etc. Doing otherwise is wrong. Regular stress injuries are most certainly worrying.

It is sometimes difficult to be honest about an injury as you don’t want to seem weak, you want to keep training or when your place in a team or for a major competition is at stake. If you are scared to tell the coach or a member of support staff about an injury, then there is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. What that problem is, is dependent on what you are fearful of. Doing nothing is not an option if you want to succeed in the long term.

From my perspective, a physiotherapist or clinician should have the final say over whether you should train or compete. You will know what the pain is and how it is affecting you, but your biases will sometimes get in the way of making a good decision. Coaches may input into the clinical decision-making process but there should never be outside interference or pressure put on a clinician to encourage you to train or compete. Doing so is wrong.

There are instances where you may choose to compete when injured, but you must be made aware of the potential risks and consequences. Pharmacological interventions i.e. steroidal injections and anti-inflammatory drugs should be taken with extreme caution and under medical supervision. If you do not wish to compete or train, then this must be respected by those who support you. Compelling or putting undue pressure on you to do otherwise may constitute abuse. I have only once put pressure on an athlete to train through pain. However, I did so in consultation with a physiotherapist, in which we had clinically examined scan data to guide us. There were no discernible signs and symptoms of injury, only pain. In this case, consensus was that it was compartmental pain syndrome which presented minimal harms or risks.

A good coach should always be accountable for and be able to justify their actions. Ideally, they should always be willing to tell you why they are asking you to something and be open to listening to what you have to say. If they’re not willing to do so, what are they hiding? It may be an ego thing, but they may not in fact know the answer. There are good and bad ways to ask coaches questions. For example, in front of a large group may not be the best time, particularly if you think they’ve got something wrong. Quiet moments, maybe after the session, is probably best. But if you are fearful of asking questions, that is a marker of there being an issue.

Similarly, coaches and performance directors should be open to exploring your program with you and give you the answers you need. This doesn’t justify you or your family being pains-in-the-arse or expecting them to be at your every beck and call. This is unreasonable. It may mean accepting things you don't want to hear. But they should be willing to be relatively accommodating and open. Bear in mind, most people in sport work very hard, so use their time as if it was your own. Of course, if you have concerns about more serious underlying issues about your programme or treatment, seek answers and take independent advice when needed.

In most disputes between sports and athletes that I’ve been involved in, they’ve simply come down to poor communication. A few badly worded emails, failure to return calls or not providing honest evaluations of performance. What you can do to help is be nice, be clear and be reasonable in your expectations. You are important but you are not special.

I now want you to reflect and consider what I've written means to you and how they relate to your environment. If you believe there is a problem, how you deal with it is highly dependent on the situation. Reporting procedures usually exist but whether you feel safe using them or not is another matter. History tells us that reported concerns are not always treated seriously but we rarely hear stories of good practice either.. As yet, there is no wholly independent reporting body in the UK should you have serious concerns. This is a problem which means that it is often hard to be listened to, let alone have action taken.

But if there are abusive behaviours going on in your environment, your squad place and funding are secondary concerns. Even if you can still perform, the mental strain is likely to have longer lasting consequences. You must speak to someone you trust. Depending on the seriousness of your concerns, please feel free to contact me. I will always listen and help if I can. If you’re an elite athlete, the British Athlete Commission may be able to help too. If you keep quiet when things are bad, these bad things may happen to other people too.

I urge you to consider your own biases and those of your nearest-and-dearest too. Having worked for an NGB and knowing many people that still do, there is another side to the fence. It’s sometimes not a nice place to be. Some athletes and their loved ones having unrealistic expectations, feeling entitled to receive support. They believe that they and their opinions are more important than others, including those of experts. Of course, sometimes others are wrong, but it's unlikely that you'll convince them they are through aggressive and entitled communications. They can take up a disproportionate amount of staff time AND detract from NGB's being open to listening to and dealing other more serious complaints. They have a very difficult job. Remember, you are important but no more so than everyone else in the world. Don't let this put you off raising issues of concern, choose your battles very carefully and if you truly believe they are 'just', then don't be silenced. If in doubt, gimme a shout and I'll do my best to guide you.