If the end of Winter Olympics left you wanting more, you’re in luck, because the 2014 Paralympics are about to get underway. Although the political situation in Ukraine has led the U.S. and Britain to cancel the participation of their official governmental representatives, the athletes will still compete and deserve our support. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing snowboarder Evan Strong, who is an avid yogi.
Professional athletes are, understandably, the best in the world at their chosen sport. But in order to reach that level of knowledge and expertise, they needed to practice from a young age. Ability and work ethic are two essential factors in success but there’s another factor that often gets overlooked, despite being such a crucial element of any success story – confidence. Without confidence, no amount of skill will get you to where you want to be. When you feel confident, you feel capable and able to play harder and better. But just as those athletes needed to improve their skills from a young age, they also needed to improve their confidence. This is something you can encourage in your children too, so that they can grow up to be experts in their field – and confident with it, too.
Don’t fear failure
Confidence is a simple battle between faith and fear, and a lack of confidence means you’re afraid to fail. But with failure comes wisdom – we all fail at some point or another, but with that we learn how to improve and get better. Even the very best athletes miss the vital shot or make mistakes on the track that cost them the race. But if you give up just because you’ve messed up one game, you could be missing out on succeeding at so many more. The only way to get better is to keep practicing, so you can’t give up just because of a few off days.
Focus on achieving your best
The goal is to win for every athlete stepping onto the court, track or field. But the desire to win can sometimes overshadow what the main goal should be – doing your best. It’s important to remember that you won’t win every game or achieve your personal best every time you perform, but that shouldn’t stop you giving it your all. Sometimes you will be beaten by someone who simply has a better skillset or who is simply better than you; maybe you just got unlucky that day. But instead of focusing on how many times you won or lost, focus more on giving it your all and doing your best every time. That way, you can take something positive from every game, regardless of the outcome.
Trust your teammates
You don’t need to be the sole carrier of your team; you need to have faith in them that they will do their best, just as you’ll do yours. Instead of focusing on how much you need to do to win the game, have confidence that you work so well as a team. It will help you to make each other better players, and will make it easier to have faith in yourself.
Start off easy
The easiest and most effective way to improve your confidence is to begin with something easy. If you know you can shoot every hoop when you’re just a few feet from the basket, do a few of these as a warm up. If will give your ego a boost to see yourself succeeding time after time, which will give you the confidence to take a few more risks and push yourself that little bit harder during the game. Even professional athletes do it – Tiger Woods begins every practice session by making 100 three-foot putts. You don’t need to put yourself in countless scenarios where you are challenged to the absolute max – that’s what competitions are for. When you’re practicing, it’s ok to start off by making things a little easier for yourself; then you can begin in a good frame of mind and build on your skills.
You may have heard that top athletes avoid sex before a big event, so as to keep their fitness and wellness levels to an absolute maximum, but is there any science to support this? How does your sexual health really affect other aspects of your wellbeing?
At the London 2012 Olympics, there was more than 150,000 condoms handed out to the 10,500 athletes, as London Mayor Boris Johnson noted he wanted the Olympics to “inspire a generation” not “create a generation”. However, even if the modern day Olympiads were getting down to it before race day, that’s not how it’s always been. Boxing legend Muhammad Ali supposedly practised abstinence in the six weeks leading up to a big fight, and the England football team was reportedly banned from sex during the 1998 World Cup. Then you have American Marty Liquori, the world’s top 5000-metre runner four decades ago, who was famous for says, ‘Sex makes you happy. Happy people don’t run a 3:47 mile.’ So does that mean Mo Farah could have edged a few seconds off his time? Not according to the evidence.
Ian Shrier, a professor in the department of family medicine at McGill University in Canada, comments, ‘When we test people in the lab, we are examining “tests of performance” but in competition, psychology very likely plays a much more important role. Those who claim it decreases performance usually say it is because it decreases focus or aggression or tension. There are no studies that have examined this.’
Martin Milton, an expert in psycho-therapeutic and counseling psychology at the University of Surrey, notes that the effect of sex really comes down to who you are, how often you’re having sex, for how long and in what way. ‘If it’s “up all night swinging from the rafters” type sex we’re talking about, then obviously the athlete is not going to be getting enough sleep or rest and their mind isn’t on the job,’ says Milton. ‘So that might well be more the issue than whether or not being involved in a short period of sex might be detrimental to someone’s performance.’
If you want a really powerful punch to your workouts, a vegan diet is out of the question, right? Surely you need something a little more substantial than nuts and berries to boost your strength and endurance. Not according to Brendan Brazier. This former Ironman triathlete and ultra-marathon champion changed to a vegan diet as a high school athlete hoping to turn professional, and he’s never looked back.
Brazier explained, ‘I knew I had to improve. I tried high carb, low carb, high protein, low protein, all sorts of different diets. Then I tried plant-based. It started with me just taking a daily blender drink of fats, plants, proteins.’ Since then, the 38-year-old Canadian has written three books on veganism, including Thrive Fitness: The Vegan-Based Training Program for Maximum Strength, Health, and Fitness, but he’s not the only athlete who has seen the wellbeing benefits of a vegan diet.
Tennis star Venus Williams became a vegan after being told she had Sjogren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease, whilst olympic skier Seba Johnson has been vegan from birth. Other sporting vegans include ice hockey player Mike Zigomanis, Baseball’s Prince Fielder and ultra-marathoner Scott Jurek, so why are the world’s fittest and fastest trading in their steaks for spinach?
According to the wellness experts, plant-based diets give you more energy, deeper sleep and better performance. Julieanna Hever, a personal trainer, registered dietician and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition, commented, ‘We see athletes recovering faster, maximizing training, and thereby improving performance.’ However, she added, ‘Unfortunately, there are not yet any clinical trials on vegan athletes.’
Yet registered dietician Sharon Palmer, author of The Plant-Powered Diet noted that some studies show antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, as found in spades in a plant-based diet, can help prevent and treat issues related to recovery. Palmer said, ‘It makes sense that anti-inflammatory compounds would help athletes avoid inflammation related to training, and the majority of anti-inflammatory compounds are found in plant foods.’ She warned that veganism can put you at risk for deficiency in protein, vitamins B12, D, and calcium, and you might need a supplement or to consult a dietician. ‘I see that people just wing it.’ Palmer said. ‘They decide that their bodies will just fill in for their gaps in their diets, which is not true.’
Fiona Oakes has been a vegan since she was six years old, and has just won the women’s title in the North Pole Marathon. This is an event in which runners compete in conditions as low as -30C, and a medical team is on standby for frostbite and marshals keep an eye out for polar bears. Fiona explains, ‘The consequences of running in these temperatures are a very technical and logistically finely balanced thing. There are nutritional problems – when do you eat, what do you eat – it needs to be a military operation.’ But how does a vegan get the nutrition they need to take care of their wellness when running?
According to sports nutritionist Jo Scott-Dalgleish, different disciplines can mean different dietary requirements. She comments, ‘I work with endurance athletes and they need carbs, it’s extremely important. It’s about getting a good balance of carbs, protein and fats. You need all three to support energy use, and carbs provide energy, and proteins and fats enable your muscles to recover afterwards, and you need a good selection of micronutrients and vitamins.’
However, Adharanand Finn, journalist, runner and author of Running with the Kenyans, argues that ‘diet is still an evolving science when it comes to sports nutrition.’ He notes, ‘the traditional view is that carbohydrates are key for endurance athletes and I certainly eat a fairly high carbohydrate diet,’ but there is also a misconception that vegetarian and vegan athletes may not get enough protein without eating meat, or meat and dairy products.
Finn says, ‘I’m actually vegetarian and so omit meat and fish from my diet. This has never caused me any problems and there are lots of examples of successful vegetarian sportspeople.’ He remarks that he spent months living with world-class distance runners in training camps in Kenya, and ‘In all that time they only served meat once. The diet in a Kenyan training camp is very simple.’
Finn details, ‘Most days breakfast is just tea and a slice of bread. Lunch is rice, and beans with potatoes, carrots etc. Occasionally they’ll have an avocado with it, too. Then supper is ugali (basically maize flour and water) and stewed kale. That’s it. The same virtually every day. The athletes like to stick to their traditional diet – it has done them so well up to now, why change it?’
Often developed from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, both players’ autopsy revealed that they had an enlarged heart condition, which is responsible for causing half of the sudden death cases involving athletes under the age of 35. When your heart becomes enlarged by hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, this means your heart muscle has thickened abnormally, which can cause heart rhythm disturbance and sudden death.
Richard Kerber, MD, from the University of Iowa, explained, ‘In a majority of cases, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is inherited and develops over time, typically in the late teenage years. Symptoms include black-out spells, unexplained dizziness, and chest pains that occur briefly during competition or training, but then disappear with rest.’ The reason why sudden death may occur in athletes is because their symptoms of enlarged heart may not be present, and so they cannot take preventative wellness measures.
Yet athletes are known to have enlarged hearts, as your body sometimes reacts in this way to cope with intense levels of exercise. Unlike hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, an enlarged heart is not a disease and can be found with a routine echocardiogram. Following the sudden death of marathon runner Ryan Shay, age 28, Dr Lori Mosca, director of preventive cardiology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, spoke in 2007 at a meeting of the American Heart Association.
Mosca explained, ‘so-called “athlete’s heart” thickens the heart muscle overall; hypertrophic cardiomyopathy creates thickening in one part of the heart and makes it harder to pump blood out to the body. One in 500 people have the disorder; some people have no symptoms. Sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish between these two conditions – one being benign and one being potentially lethal.’
Last year, a study from Johns Hopkins recommended that athletes have EKG and echocardiogram testing, instead of just EKG alone. However, even with intense screening, enlarged heart in athletes from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can go undetected. The researchers also pointed out that sports people also need to report symptoms of chest pain, dizziness, or shortness of breath, which often go unreported as they could be considered normal during intense training.
