Chris Shambrook on sport psychology and working with the GB Rowing Team

Ep 9. The more I talk to elite rowers and coxes, the more I understand the importance that sport psychology plays in creating the best performances both on and off the river. That's why I was so delighted when expert in sport psychology, Chris Shambrook, agreed to come on the podcast. We had a fascinating chat, covering:

• Chris's path into sport psychology
• His experiences of working with the GB Rowing Squad
• Whether rowers have unique psychological needs compared with other sports
• How to deal with a personality clash between athletes or between coach and athlete
• The psychology of the Olympic cycle
• Developing a challenge mindset instead of a threat mindset
• Learning to observe your thoughts and emotions
• Chris's work with Planet K2 

Chris went on to answer listeners' questions about the following:

• Mind over body on the erg
• Coping with the fear of the erg test - the gold-silver-bronze approach
• Not finishing an erg test
• The connection with mindful meditation and using your fear of failure
• Imposter syndrome and perfectionism
• Helping adult learn-to-rowers
• Dealing with the ageing process as an athlete
• Supporting young rowers with varying growth rates
• What resources are available if you don't have a sports psychologist to hand
• How to cope with the uncertainties of the pandemic as an athlete

The books Chris refers to in the interview are as follows:
Chris's own book, The Mental Game Plan, which can be found here.

The Positive Power of Negative Thinking by Julie Norem

Learnings from Five Olympic Games by Frances Houghton

Mind Games by Annie Vernon

The Long Win by Cath Bishop

The blog posts on the Adidas site Chris talks about are here:
https://www.gameplan-a.com/2020/09/how-to-stay-on-track-when-the-finish-line-is-out-of-sight/

https://www.gameplan-a.com/2020/04/when-goalposts-shift-adapting-to-the-changing-world-around-us/

https://www.gameplan-a.com/2021/01/2021-an-unmissable-opportunity-to-live-the-new/

Other resources referred to by Chris :

The British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences

British Psychological Society

Performance Room  including covid self-care resources https://www.theperformanceroom.co.uk/category/cov

Believe Perform

Chris's business, Planet 2K

This week I released a fun, behind the scenes video to Patreon subscribers. To get perks like this plus early access to episode, click on "support the show"!

Transcript

Patricia Carswell: 0:08

This is Girl on the River, the Podcast. Whole crew, come forward to row. Hello, and welcome back to Girl on the River, the Podcast, for episode nine. Thank you so much for continuing to tune in and support the podcast. And to my new listeners, an especially warm welcome. I hope you enjoy it and I hope you'll come back for more. Now talking to the various rowers, and coxes I've had the privilege to interview so far, one thing that has really stood out has been the importance in our sport of mental strength, adaptability, and resilience. And sports psychology is going from strength to strength. We're understanding more and more about how powerful the mind can be, and the different ways of harnessing that power. And that's why I was so delighted when my guest today agreed to come on to talk about this fascinating subject. Chris Shambrook has been a sports psychologist since the 1990s and he's worked with sports people from many different disciplines, as well as people in the corporate field. He also worked with the GB Rowing Team during five Olympic cycles, helping some of our greatest ever rowers across the line. Well, Chris, welcome to the podcast.

Chris Shambrook: 1:28

Great to be here. Thanks very much for the invitation - really looking forward to the conversation.

Patricia Carswell: 1:32

Well, it's particularly interesting, just now, because having recently interviewed Frances Houghton, who also went through five Olympic cycles, it will be very interesting to see the view from outside the boat. So tell me how you came to be working with the GB Rowing Team and what your sort of career path to there was?

Chris Shambrook: 1:54

Yeah, yeah, I would say... Yeah, that goes back quite a long way now so we'll have to see how good my memory is..., so um, so I did a Sports Science degree. Then I did my PhD in sports psychology. And while doing that PhD, I sort of also wrote a book called The Mental Game Plan with my PhD supervisor, Dr Steve Bull. And as I was coming towards the end of my PhD and writing the book - that was around 95, 96 - Brian Miller was the person who was the sports psychologist with the British Rowing Team. Brian, after Atlanta, decided to move on and do other things. So the the role became available. And after three interviews, everyone else had dropped out - I was left as the only candidate standing ... is one side of the story - or they decided to take a punt on a young practitioner who was showing signs of kind of, you know, being someone who could sort of add value and sort of have some energy to, to take over the role from Brian, who was a much more senior figure at that time as well. Brian had done a huge amount of work in sports psychology in the UK for many years. So yeah, so you know, I applied after Brian left. I had various interviews where I remember Sir David Tanner, Jurgen, Mike Spracklen, I think Richard Hamilton might have been the athlete rep as well as possibly Cath Bishop casting their eye over me in various sort of interview panels in Hammersmith. So after the three interviews, I was fortunate enough to get offered a 40 a day year contract with them, and up to a 60 day a year contract after that, as well. So that was 1997. It was the point that I got the role and from the Sport Science degree to PhD to lecturing as I was, but then I had that kind of role alongside my lecturing job at University of Brighton and then I moved to Chelternham and Gloucester College of Higher Education as it was - now University of Gloucestershire. So I was kind of doing a bit of both before I then kind of went all out of education and all into the consultancy role.

Patricia Carswell: 3:43

So what was your brief? Was it to make more successful athletes? Or was it to support the athletes with that sort of psychological side of the sport? Or are the two kind of so interconnected that that doesn't make sense?

Chris Shambrook: 4:00

They are interconnected. There was very much a brief of being able to support the athletes who were probably most likely to be on the path of success, so given there was limited time, there was a sort of a focus on a little more, almost a means tested approach here, with who the people who are kind of, you know, will benefit from the upgrade the most. But as you go on, and you look at an international squad, and you think about the spread across the board, you start to question whether that you know, you should be trying to differentiate based upon who's most likely to win because actually, you want everyone to have the best chance of winning, but the brief was, support the psychological side of performance, look to bring in some ways of developing psychological skills that would be relevant for both training and for competition, predominantly focused on supporting squads as a whole. But then obviously, you're starting to look for coaches and athletes who actually won- are on a path to success but also are open to working with you as well. So it was very much a case of you know, go in and sort of, you know, find the opportunity to start doing good work providing people with some psychological development alongside the great physical and technical and everything else development that they get as well. And, you know, and as I started in 1997, just as lottery funding started to come in, there was more and more high quality support across the board coming in as well. So that helped, ultimately, because the athletes were getting used to having a great support team behind them. So I could then very specifically say, hey, my part is to help you with your mind and your thinking. And you've got all these other great practitioners with nutrition, your physiotherapy, the physiology, the biomechanics, and everything else that went with it. So it was, you know, getting there, give them some confidence that they... that the mind can be trained and developed as effectively as the other elements that we're working on.

Patricia Carswell: 5:48

So with 60 days a year, presumably, that didn't give you an awful lot of time for a kind of really structured approach, how, what were the nuts and bolts of how you worked with them?

Chris Shambrook: 6:00

Yeah, so I guess, in a way, because it was time limited, I did have to have a degree of focus and structure. So I could sort of, you know, be regular, regularly at training centres, or sort of ultimately Caversham when everything moved there. Regularly at some training camps, and then regularly at competitions. So there was, there was a bit of a mix between camps, training and competition. Competition would typically have been one World Cup regatta and the World Championships or the Olympics. And then the training piece was just making sure that there was enough sort of opportunity to interact across the different squads. And I guess over time, I probably spent much more time with the women's squad than I did that the squad as a whole. So there was much more sort of focus with supporting the women's squad, although there were pockets of support with the lightweight men and the heavyweight men, but in a different form over time, as well. So that allowed me to kind of focus the 60 days in terms of across the calendar of performance in competition, training and competition. And then within that, you've obviously got the winter period of sort of individual squads developing. And then we get into selection sort of round about, you know, March April time selection, and then you're starting to work with crews, and coaches. So there's very... there was, there was structure within the rhythm of the kind of the annual plan of rowing. And then within the four year Olympic cycle, where you're also trying to bring in, what's the stuff that's going to be most helpful and most pertinent in year one, year two, year three, year four, from an Olympic perspective, as well, so, so structured, definitely, but also just ongoing opportunity to try and be useful within the 60 days, as well as providing some consistency of approach. So I'd pick things that I thought would be useful to be consistently introducing and getting people focusing on so I was sort of trying to create something of a curriculum for the coaches and athletes to put in place, but always being ready to react and respond when there was stuff that I could support with where people wanted, you know, help, but equally, where people were on the front foot, and they were wanting to develop, rather than just fix stuff as well being ready to react and respond to as well. And fortunately, you know, the whole rowing team, you know, incredibly bright, brilliant people, you've actually got to work hard to earn the right to have their respect that you've, you've got something worthwhile saying as well. So they're always really sort of great to work with intellectually, and that... but that was always part of the structure as well, I guess, you know, what's the nature of the audience? How open are they? What's the kind of stuff that's going to be helpful for them, given they're bloody bright people anyway, so it's always a fascinating group to work with,

Patricia Carswell: 8:39

Were they always receptive to the kind of thing you were doing?

Chris Shambrook: 8:43

So across, you know, I worked in different sports as well, within sort of cricket and football and quite a lot of other sports too, over the years, and it's just... there are degrees of receptivity and and all the commercial work I've done, there's degrees of receptivity. So you know, it wasn't ever that you weren't getting everyone chomping at the bit, you had definitely some people who were very open and sort of wanting to explore the psychological side, some people were pretty close to it, and say, with the coaches, you know, some coaches really open and wanting me to be involved. Some coaches sort of very much seeing it as their gig, you know, they are the psychologist on the ground, which they definitely are on a day to day basis anyway. So I you know, for me, it's understanding and in the latter years, you know, just starting to understand, what's the psychology of people when it comes to wanting to work with psychology? You've actually got to do the marketing to, you know, to to your consumer, for the reticent people, what's the kind of approach for them, for the people who were all brought in? How do you work with them for the people who can take it or leave it? What's the approach for them and so it's, you know, much more about psychology of marketing and selling service and then ... you know, and then getting to do the work with them as well.

Patricia Carswell: 9:55

Did you see a change in attitude over the time that you were there?

Chris Shambrook: 9:59

I think my attitude certainly changed in terms of confidence and sense of, you know, needing to be more forthright and needing to have something much more specific to offer. Rowing is a fantastic world, which is full of measurement, and full of objective data. So I needed to get much more clear about how do I try and show similar levels of confidence in something that's subjective. But I've tried, I've got to try and communicate in a way which is, you know, clearly able to be consumed by the athletes in a way that they're used to, you know, they love their heart rate data, they love the ergo data, they love the sort of biomechanics data, they can see the progression, I've got to try and do the stuff which is similar psychologically, which isn't, which isn't as straightforward. So my attitudes and openness towards different ways of doing things was what changed over time and constantly, you know, through each four year cycle, you're thinking about how can you get the message across better, and certainly, from the athlete point of view, some athletes when they needed you, were very grateful for the support. And that opened up a little bit of a door. And I've never really liked the kind of remedial approach to performance psychology, because it's about enhancing rather than fixing, but sometimes when you got the opportunity to support people, it was a good way of helping attitudes change. And certainly with different coaches in leading the way there was, you know, good, different ways of, of working as well, my, my most enjoyable conversation very early on was with Mike Spracklen. And I said, Mike, you know, I'm your psychologist, what you want to do? And he said, Well, Chris, you're the expert, what do you think you should be? Fine, that's great. So he was sort of given me permission, but sort of saying, you know, but I need you to lead rather than, you know, just sycophantically want to support me, which was, you know, Mike at his best and was really good.

Patricia Carswell: 11:44

Do you think rowers have specific needs when it comes to sport psychology? Because obviously, having worked with different sports, you may well have seen a difference between them.

Chris Shambrook: 11:55

Yes, so that, you know, there is, I think, with the volume of training relative to the sort of frequency of competition, particularly at the elite level, you know, I think the psychology of training and maintaining drive and motivation and quality and being able to sort of go through the inevitable sort of, you know, points of inertia and progress that happen. I think there's the endurance sport and training side of it brings, you know, a particular psychological requirement simply to be... sustain the game and keep getting ready to compete. And, and I do think there is a uniqueness around the collaborative component. You know, rowing is the most synchronised performance environment going, I understand why the single sculler is going to do their own thing, because they don't have to worry about all of that other tricky stuff about the harmony side of it. But actually, that synchronisation and the complete interdependence is very different from other sports. And so I do think that the need to be able to put your dreams in the hands of other people, but also have the confidence to have other people's dreams in your hand and reciprocate that, you know, there's something very critical about that, and from from a personality perspective, that comes easier to some people than others. And so there's, the environment does require, I think, an appreciation of those psychological demands, but from the personality point of view, you've got as much variety within the rowing squad as any other walk of life. So it's kind of helping people find their way into an environment that does exaggerate these kind of psychological characteristics.

Patricia Carswell: 13:27

Do you sometimes get a crew that just is never going to work together?

Chris Shambrook: 13:32

What I've seen is that working with the coaches and with each other, there is always a desire to keep making the most of the dynamic, both in the physical dynamic and how they move. And you know, and you know, I've always, never really understood the dark art of coaching and how by moving a couple of people and changing their seats, the boat, you know, gels in a different way, sort of, you know, from a technical perspective, I think what I've seen is that there are some crews where their sort of personalities don't fit quite as easily. So it's always a bit more of a struggle. But there's always that feedback of being in the boat and getting that sense of well, actually, we're still being able to make progress on that stuff. And so I think, I think crews always work, I think some crews do a really great job of minimising the interference that's present to produce a performance whereas other crews, they just gel, and they click, and they kind of have, they got that harmony physically and psychologically and technically from the outset, and it's a case of let's see how good we can make it. And they're just different challenges. But the level that we're talking about, you know, even the crews where they didn't necessarily gel personality-wise straightaway, there was always that very professional approach to, you know, solving the problem of making this particular boat and this crew move the shell as fast as possible.

Patricia Carswell: 14:50

And how do you deal with it? How do you deal with a major personality clash if that... you know, whether that's between two of the athletes or an athlete and a coach.

Chris Shambrook: 14:58

So we we did a lot work around kind of, you know, understanding self and understanding personality and being able to understand similarities and differences between personality. So sort of really trying to get to the point where it's not necessarily a massive clash. What it is, is an appreciation that we do start with some pretty fundamental differences in terms of how we see the world, perhaps how we think the boat would be, should be moved, how we should go, like, you know, there's, so as long as people are getting that sense of, we're coming from different places, but we want to get to the same end points, you can mitigate against some of that kind of negative conflict that can take place. But I think one of the challenges is that actually quite requires quite a lot of talking and understanding. And in a training programme that is so volume heavy and tiring, this desire left to do some of this kind of conversational stuff that might make a difference down the line as well. So it's, it's always looking at how do you find the time and create the level of priority for the non boat moving activities that are ultimately going to move the boat as well? So yeah, I, I haven't seen too many major personality conflicts, but they certainly, you know, massive differences of opinion and sort of, you know, this, these people who rub each other up the wrong way...

Patricia Carswell: 16:25

And rowers tend to be fairly strong minded individuals.

Chris Shambrook: 16:28

I think that's, I think that's a fair categorization. Yeah, the clarity of thinking, you know, that that's a strength that we talk about - the paradoxes of high performance psychology, where there is that need to have absolute confidence in self, but where you can balance that with humility and respect of others, then you start to get a really special blend, you know, you've got highly competitive, highly successful people who have had a lot of their beliefs reinforced so that the seesaw is tipped towards the belief in self, more than it is naturally the humility side of it. But as long as you can start getting that sense of humility, through the sense of devotion to the, to the, to the collective effort, then you you've got an opportunity to temper some of that strength of character. And I think, again, the the the the best athletes, were typically the ones who appreciated the importance of having that conviction and having clarity of what they bring, but also having the respect and wanting to make space for other people to brings the same sort of forcefulness of belief in themselves as well. So, you know, that's, that's a lot of that comes with experience as well, I think.

Patricia Carswell: 17:36

How do you deal with that sort of conundrum that you were talking about, where you've got sort of four years leading up to six minutes, because that must be, I can't imagine what that's like. You know, for most club rowers, we do a few regatta, a year, you know, a handful of heads, and we have maybe one or two and a landmark events, but the year is punctuated by constant metrics and evaluations and winning and losing and all the rest of it.

Chris Shambrook: 18:06

Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, I think, I think, ultimately, it's really important to appreciate one, the importance of those ultimate six minutes to how those athletes see themselves, you know, the whole concept of athletic identity and sort of, you know, identity foreclosure, and you become your results and your results are you, and you know, there's a real danger in that. But there's also a real need to step into that space to kind of, you know, pursue the dream in the first place. So, you know, from a mental health perspective, there's a lot of irrational choices and perhaps unsustainable choices that athletes make, and where you've got a high pressure environment where the scrutiny is there all the time, and you're feeling pressured. And you've got that, you know, that it's appreciating the importance of maintaining perspective and looking after yourself through the lens of self compassion throughout. So I think that that whole context is, is a challenge over the last couple of Olympic cycles in terms of dealing with the six minutes, you know, working from that backwards, the whole concept of a challenge mindset became particularly important. So when you can enter into a situation of high pressure and high demand and you maintain a really high sense of control, you have a really concrete confidence and belief that you've earned the right and you've got what it takes to thrive in that environment. And you've got a mindset of curiosity, where you really want to find out some some stuff about yourself in those six minutes. Then actually, physiologically, you know, heart rate's still high, but actually, the cardiovascular system opens up and delivers a great deal more efficiently for you, because you're going in full control, full of confidence and desire to learn. What do I want to find out from this Olympic final that I've spent a long time investing in to see what I can do in it? And typically, that can't just be about the result. You know, if it's will I win gold? That that's not the kind of curiosity we're after. It's about how well can I bring my best self -how well can I step into the challenges that I face, how well can I manage the conditions? How well can I deal with the other people around me in an Olympic final? That kind of stuff is really powerful. So if we reverse engineer that we can start thinking about what do we do through the whole cycle to keep building that sense of what do I want to find out about me? What am I going to do that builds the most compelling confidence and belief in who I am? And what I've got to offer? And how practiced can I be, staying focused on the stuff that I'm most in control of, and helps me have that sense of, I'm going to happen to this event, rather than this event's gonna happen to me, because the flip side of the challenge mindset is the threat mindset, where you're feeling you're focused on things you're not in control of. And the confidence is more fragile, and perhaps more sort of outcome oriented and linked. And you're not, you haven't got a mindset of curiosity, you've got a mindset of demand, that I must And when you've got the threat mindset, again, heart rate goes win this medal. up, the cardiovascular system starts to actually constrict in it and you are, psychologically and physiologically in a place that is not optimal. You've got to overcome that internal inertia before you can actually start getting the most out of yourself. So that whole kind of reverse engineering of how can through your training, you know, you get - Yeah, I'm skilful at controlling the stuff that I'm in control and skilful at building a compelling confidence that will stand me in good stead, whatever the situation, and I'm really skilful at remembering what I want to learn on my terms, rather than needing to prove myself to a particular set of standards or other people. And that's not easy to do in a high performance environment where there's scrutiny and visibility and competition all around. But we try and temper that with with those characteristics.

Patricia Carswell: 21:37

What do the greatest fears tend to be in the immediate run up to one of those big races?

Chris Shambrook: 21:46

Honestly, I don't know. Because I tend to start to talk to people about what's the greatest thing that you're looking forward to finding out and you know, what, what is it you're getting, but you know, there's definitely there's definitely a lot of people in that environment... and you know, it's fear of failure, it's fear of it, not of not being good enough. It's, you know, it's th...e I talk a lot about outcome hijack in the work that I do. It's that outcome hijack where you're thinking, right, my head's at the finish line, I want to know that I've got the medal, that I've invested all this in. And as soon as I start getting outcome hijack and thinking ahead, you know, I must get that result, I must get that middle, our heads in the future, our bodies in the present. So the fear is, you know, perhaps I haven't prepared enough, perhaps that perhaps, you know, if only I had a bit more time, are we going to gel in the right way? How will we respond under pressure, you start asking lots of questions that don't necessarily lead you to feeling in control and fully confident. So I think I think the biggest the biggest fears are, that are of the unknown in the future. And you know, you're not having a, you know, the finish to the story that you wanted. And and for some people that is about their own journey and letting themselves down. And for others, they are more driven by being perceived as successful through the eyes of others. So it's perhaps some of the fear about, you know, how are others going to think and feel about me if this doesn't go to plan, etc, as well. So no, and a lot of that comes back to, you know, a really important part here around just helping people get to the point of self acceptance, to kind of know, you know, I am driven by a desire to please other people. So how am I going to make that work for me, rather than it being becoming some kind of, you know, Achilles heel at last minute, or, you know, I am driven by a huge desire to fulfil a personal ambition, but what does that mean, in terms of me maintaining balance and perspective, and, and, you know, doing it in a way that is sustainable and keeps me in good health, you know, so there's, there's a lot there in terms of, you know, trying to create balance, rather than I... 'm as passionate about creating reasons to engage rather than as well as understanding fears that you want to avoid as a pretty powerful driver. So if you've got them, we might as well work out how we can sort of turn them around and use them appropriately for you, rather than try and get rid of them.

Patricia Carswell: 23:55

Did you subscribe to the Chimp Paradox idea of kind of releasing the chimp and letting it kind of run run riot and then putting it back in its box once it's exhausted itself?

Chris Shambrook: 24:06

So I think the whole piece around understanding your inner conversations is particularly important. But I also think there's a an opportunity as well to kind of, you know, accept some of those primal responses, but then be able to kind of go, right, when I feel that how do I want to respond to it? What do I want to use that as a stimulus to, when I feel this fear that's going to remind me to do this. So so you know, there's a lot of really useful, foundational principles with stuff like the chimp paradox, but I, particularly again, given the intelligence of the rowers that I worked with, I was far more interested in them being able to become self aware to then use what they feel, whether that's a positive or a negative feeling to kind of reprogram,Well, what do I want to do with it? I know I'm always gonna think x at this point, that's my reminder and my cue to then follow it with this thought. There's a whole bunch of stuff in sports psychology about thought stopping, which I really don't like. Because you're going to have the thought, welcome the thought, and what do you want to think next? What's the thought that you choose to build on it given that you're a sentient being who has started this venture under your own volition, and you're trying to get somewhere. So this intrusive thought is now something that you use to go great, that's a really useful reminder for me to now do X, Y, and Z or take steps one, two or three in my thinking. So we start to embrace the chimp and work with it rather than let it run amok. And then you know, so it's kind of it all it is, is a particular way of thinking that we can respond to, it's a bit less planned, but we can be ready for it when it does happen. That's the kind of approach I typically take to help people kind of free themselves up enjoy their personality. I've got a great book on the shelf called the Positive Power of Negative Thinking, which, which is one of the most useful ones I've used over the years as well to get people to celebrate their defensive pessimism. You are a fantastic worrior, let's make sure that your worry leads you to great responses after it rather than try and stopping them being a worrier, which for me is one of the things like the chimp paradox would go down, we have to get rid of those negative thoughts. Well, that's a that's a false conclusion. You don't, you have to understand why they're there, and where they come from, and then what you want to be able to do with it when they when they do inevitably crop up, because that's part of who you are. And what makes you tick.

Patricia Carswell: 26:31

Do you think there is a ...do you think there's a set of psychological attributes that the top athletes all have in common?

Chris Shambrook: 26:40

There's certainly a set of psychological attributes that certainly during the last Olympiad, that I worked in, in the build up to Rio, I told them are particularly important for them. And you know, that the kind of winning mind model that I introduced was very much around one, sort of, you know, have it having great emotional, and thought control. So do I recognise the thoughts and emotions that most helpfully primed me to perform at my best, and I talk about those very much in a non judgmental way. So negative thoughts and emotions can have positive output from them. So as well as you know, positive thoughts and emotions might lead to complacency. So we've still got to do something with them. So that kind of great emotional sort of emotion and thought control to be able to use the thoughts and feelings that are most helpful for you when you want them and when you need them. There's a really nice concept of right now thinking, the ability to focus in the moment on the right thing. You know, that's a control piece. But you know, so once you've got emotional and thought control, if you can focus right now, what's the correct thing, and what's the immediate thing, that's a great skill to have, if you've managed to build a really robust confidence, so your belief in yourself isn't necessarily amazingly high, but the belief that you do have is incredibly hard to compromise, that becomes a great foundation of assurance for you to be able to know that I'm going to think right now, you know, because I've got the confidence to be able to sort of draw on the right thoughts and I understand who I am and how I am and from a strength perspective, that means I think the right thing and apply it, The 100% mentality, I talk a huge lot about, which is, you know, on any given day, you might be seven out of 1, ready, compared to your full level of readiness, or eight out of 10, or four out of 10, your job is to get... if it's an eight, eight out of 10 day to make it an eight out of eight, do not worry that I wish I was 10 out of 10. Because as soon as you're able to get 100% out of the version of yourself that you are on that day, based upon the robust confidence in place, you'll again, think about the right thing, and you'll enjoy finding out how well you can perform when it's an eight out of eight day. And if you do happen to get the timing right, and on the morning of Olympic final you're feeling 10 out of 10 ready, you know, you're going to get 100% out of that 10. And that's a really exciting place to be in. So those first four things for me are particularly useful attributes to be developing.

Patricia Carswell: 29:04

And how did you go about developing those just practically speaking, do you kind of get people practising in some way? Or

Chris Shambrook: 29:11

Yeah, so you know, emotion and thought control, you know, reflect back on your best days training and competition wise and start sort of, you know, noticing what were the thoughts and emotions that were preceding it? What what were thoughts and emotions immediately beforehand? How did you think and feel during so we start tuning into, you know, some cause and effect, you know, anyone always be an exact sort of, you know, match, but we start to tune into those things. So we then sort of start thinking about, okay, well, I, I recognise that, you know, I felt nervous but confident in equal measure. So in the build up to an event, how do I kind of in you know, how do I sort of bring some of that about? So I asked myself some tough questions that I then choose to respond to, by sort of go into my strengths that you know, I, we can definitely start to tune into the helpful emotions and thoughts and then start, practice. in them, if I turn up to training on a day, and I'm feeling sort of, you know, really excessively nervous, and I'm feeling less confident, how do I bring myself back to a better balance for me? If I find myself feeling incredibly positive and complacent, how do I sort of bring myself back to a little bit of that jeopardy that I want to bring in that sort of allows me today. So we kind of practice that stuff, the robust confidence, you know, I think that is all about regularly tuning into your training and looking at your, again, great, great performances and starting to own the reality that you are a consistent factor in all of your best performances. But what were the particular ingredients that contributed to that. So really allowing you to look at the physical, the technical, the mental factors that were at the heart of all of your best performances starts to build a strength foundation, it doesn't mean that you think you're the finished article, but it does mean that you start to hold yourself accountable to realising the impact of the training that you've done. I've invested all this time, I am naturally strong in these things anyway. And they've been strengthened further. So these are at the heart of my belief that I am this kind of explosive, powerful performer or I'm hugely, technically proficient under all sorts of conditions, or I am a great boat mover, who is able to work with any number of people to help bring synchrony and harmony to that hull and make us move in a way that other people can't so, you know, whatever it is, it's looking for that evidence that they are your strengths. You're not saying they're better than anyone elses. But you're that, you know, you're absolutely looking at looking at owning them, and still wanting to make them stronger. From the kind of, you know, the right now focus, just regularly asking yourself, you know, on a training day, what's right now, I'm about to do this session, what's the right technical focus? What's the right feeling to emphasise? How well can I stay in the moment? And you know, in some sessions, you'll definitely not want to stay in the moment you want to distract yourself, and you just want to get through. But other sessions kind of go right now, today, it's one stroke at a time, and I'm going to practice that. So there's way there are definitely ways of being curious about, you know, how you can get psychological growth within the training that you do, and as a result of the training that you do, as well. And it's just taking that little bit of extra time to give the brain some airtime. Because training programmes typically give the body quite a lot of it.

Patricia Carswell: 32:18

So that's all quite systematic, but as kind of quirky human beings, as we all are, presumably you get people falling back on things like superstition. Did you encourage, discourage or just sort of stay neutral on the kind of lucky pants?

Chris Shambrook: 32:36

I would regularly deride people who relied on superstition, because to be honest, if it was down to the lucky pants, don't bother doing the training. Yeah. However, if you want to use some form of ritual, that is competition-specific, that helps you remind yourself of your reasons for having a robust confidence. If your lucky pants, you know, happen to you know, have sort of, you know, actually, it's not the pants, because actually, the person in them has these strengths and I've got these qualities and you know - but this, you know, I always feel an extra degree of control and comfort when I'm going through my pre performance routine... most superstition stuff fits into the control component of the challenge mindset. So I start to bring familiarity and regularity to a point of pressure by I have a controlled routine, that builds me up to the performance, and then, you know, seeing how well I can carry that into the performance. So, you know, as long as people were recognising that, you know, yes, there's ritual, but I'm not relying on the socks or whatever. That's, that's the main thing, but they can become a really important sense of feeling grounded and in control. At a moment when you're likely to suffer from the outcome hijack and everything your, you know, your brain is telling you about, you know, why are you doing this, you know, are you really going to get the result? Well, there's a great bit in Steve Redgrave's autobiography about, you know, on the start line of the length of the Atlanta final, you know, on the morning of that, he would have want... you know, he's thinking, God, I wished you know, something had happened where we don't have to race - I wish someone had given me an excuse not to do this, you know, and he's, you know, the greatest competitor ever having those thoughts, which are inevitably there, which ultimately become irrelevant, because the routine starts to happen, the warm up start to happen, and you get into your space of owning the performance, you know, before the gun goes or before the boot goes down. You're owning your performance at a certain point, but there's the point of purgatory before that where you kind of going, oh God, this is terrible, why are we doing it?

Patricia Carswell: 34:34

I think we can all relate to that. So your work now... you don't work with the rowers anymore. You work with business people. Tell me what you do now and how the work that you did before translates across.

Chris Shambrook: 34:51

Yeah, fortunately from about sort of 2000 to 2003 onwards, because of the sort of, you know, the role with rowing being 60 days a year, I was always doing a lot of work in other environments, other sports anyway and a high degree of that in the commercial world. But now having kind of stopped the rowing stuff, I do a little bit of work with a golfer, which is the only sport work I do, I'm doing a little bit of work with the Olympic Federation as well in the build up to the next Olympics as well. But most of the work is commercial. And, and it's just really interesting, because, you know, having had a, a deep immersion into the world of high performance rowing, you understand collaboration like no one else, you understand the madness of pursuing a result, when you've actually only got control on the performance, you understand the important blend of mind and body, and how the sort of, the the physical strength and the psychological strength when combined are really powerful. But if they're out of sync, you lose some of the some of the benefits. So in the commercial world, there's a huge amount of stuff we do at Planet K2, which is all about helping people in the commercial world understand, recognise and accept their performance environment, which has pretty much been on the field of playing and competing every day. So therefore, if that's the case, what do you need to do in order to ignore the scoreboard and focus on the daily performance when everything is telling you, you need the result every day so that... you know, there's far more frequency of outcome hijack in the corporate world than there is in you know, it's far more acute than in high performance sport. So we do a huge amount really, to help help teams collaborate and understand what it takes to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts and really understand the conversations and the kindness, the shared mental models that when they're in place, allow talent to to, you know, be optimised and coalesce towards a brilliant, a brilliant collective output. And individually, loads of stuff around helping people you know, really look at a holistic approach to performance, making sure that mentally they are understanding themselves and and sort of setting themselves up accordingly, making sure mind and body are looked after in harmony in unison. You know, pretty much if you think about what sits at the heart of a training programme in sport, there's a technical component, a tactical component, a physical component, and a mental component. There's a support team around that. And then you know, there's the tools and the equipment that is being used to develop. So we just bring that approach into the business world, we help people think about their ongoing technical development, their ongoing tactical development, get to see yourself as a performer. Technically, and tactically the business world tends to do a huge amount. But it doesn't tend to do so much on the mindset and the physiology or the or the physical side of stuff. So we just bring in a much more holistic approach to, you're a performer in a high pressure, high demand environment. This is what performance readiness looks like for you. So you can step onto that field of play every day, confident and curious to find out how well you can bring the best of your develop talents, to the particular challenge that sits in front of you at the moment. So lots of great fun we have in, you know, across a lot of different corporate environments, different commercial sectors. And we've been doing that since 2003, as well. So it's, it's been a great privilege to have the, you know, high performance, business environment, high performance, sport environment, and working in both of those areas, and sort of seeing the similarities and differences, primarily as a function of you know, that stuff about the ratio between training and competing.

Patricia Carswell: 38:07

So if someone listening is working in the corporate environment, and perhaps they're managing a team, and they feel that there's work that can be done, what sort of things do you offer? Do you do workshops, or kind of one to one work? How does it work?

Chris Shambrook: 38:20

Yeah. All sorts of things. So we do work within teams, and we'll take them through a kind of a whole team development team effectiveness programme, you know, so let's start from scratch and work with you as a team, why do you exist? What are your measures of success that you're working on that show you you're getting better at being the team that you want to be and need to be? What's your daily mindset and behaviours that show that each of you is signed up to contributing to this team, so we'll do a whole kind of team effectiveness, sort of reset if you like, getting into role clarity. And and that can work in any number of forms. And, you know, obviously, over the course of the last 10 months, we've been able to do everything virtually. And through the power of zoom and (other platforms are available!), we can work with the leaders of the team to be the head coach, and put into place the kind of the team effectiveness programme, or we can give the occasional, you know... There's a whole load of content on the Performance Room that we run as well, which kind of .... if you don't want to talk to us get on there. And there's loads of stuff that you can just kind of download and start using it, you know, and apply it as a team. And I think, you know, we'd encourage people to sort of say, make your team effectiveness programme a collaboration rather than the leader doing something to the team. When everyone is invested to kind of go, right, we are all involved in making our team better together, that's when stuff becomes much more like a crew in rowing. It's everyone's responsibility to make the boat go faster. It's not just the coach's job to tell everyone what to do. So you know, it's that sense of, we're all responsible for team performance, not just the leader.

Patricia Carswell: 39:52

Do you find it as enjoyable working in that environment as you did in sport?

Chris Shambrook: 39:58

It's very different. So the time that you get available when you do get time in the corporate world, you're given a chunk, and you have the opportunity to really work with people. And so you know that and they see it as something quite different. And it adds value because of the way it's a contrast, the sport work was always a challenge, because you know, actually, given the volume of training, you're always time poor, so you're looking to sort of carve time out, beg and borrow, the coach is gonna drop a session to do something. So yeah, it was just a different challenge. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to sort of embed stuff within a very sort of, you know, detailed, developed, effective programme of training, and I really enjoy seeking to add value, where it's just you in the spotlight, and people are kind of going go on then make us better. Both of those bring equal sort of worry and delight to them.

Patricia Carswell: 40:49

Now I've got a bunch of questions from listeners. So we will start with some of these, you won't, I think, be surprised to find that there were so many questions about the erg. And I before I ask them, I'm curious to know if this was as much of a bugbear for the elite athletes that you worked with as it is for ordinary club rowers.

Chris Shambrook: 41:11

I've certainly talked to people about erg phobia in the past, but I think just because of the volume of work that's done on it. And, and also it is, psychologically potentially a very different instrument to the experience of being on the water, just the ... there are psychological differences that, you know, potentially mean that you connect with the clock more than you do your body. And in the boat, you connect with your body first, and then you know, everything else is feedback afterwards. So there are definitely differences that, you know, some people liked, and some people found more of a challenge. But definitely, you know, there was a lot of the athletes are really, really skilled in the international squad at sort of managing the erg, even though you know, there are some of them who definitely manage it a little bit better. And some of them who sort of do it, sort of with with greater resistance.

Patricia Carswell: 42:02

So the first question about the erg really kind of fits in with that. So it's someone saying, how do I overcome my irrational fear of the erg? I know my body can do it, but my head goes to pot when I see the monitor. And yeah, that's that's the thing, isn't it? It's the monitor.

Chris Shambrook: 42:18

Yeah, think whether you flip the monitor away completely, and just do a session based upon your perception of effort. And you know, or get someone to cox you through something so they can see the clock and you can't, if it becomes a partnership with someone else. And all your job is to do is focus internally, focus on technique, focus on rhythm, keep the self talk going, respond to the calls, you will be able to learn what that kind of monito- free performance looks like on the erg. And then you can start building confidence in your ability to regulate your own performance on that particular version of rowing. So, you know, I think there's an awful lot in that. I also think what what I've talked to people an awful lot about in the past is because of the temptation to be much more fixed, fixated on rates, and and the kind of the clock, spend much more time being really clear about kind of the race plan. And again, if you if you haven't got the cox calling you through it, you know, how confident am I that I can just stick with a stroke by stroke approach. And I know the technical calls, I know the rhythm, I know the rate. So I don't need to see the clock to know that I am absolutely on this race plan. And I'm looking forward to seeing how well I can stay with each stroke and respond to how I'm feeling. And and sort of, you know, use my internal internal sort of feedback rather than the external feedback as the main source of confidence. It's those kind of things. So and definitely, you know, do the occasional training session where the clock isn't present and you go on feel. And you've got you've got heart rate, you'll have all the data afterwards. And you'll be able to have a look at well, what happens when I free myself up from the tyranny of stroke by stroke. Oh, my split has gone up a bit.. sorry, my, yeah, my split has changed. And you know, I'm not holding it. I'm not holding, you know, all sorts of unhelpful thinking potentially comes in. Oh, my God, this is getting harder. I don't think I can see. It's ripe for unhelpful thinking.

Patricia Carswell: 44:20

And I'm sure actually, for a lot of people, there are probably sort of self limiting beliefs that could be busted that way. Because you might actually find that. like you said a minute ago, if you're listening to your body, rather than focusing on on the monitor, you might actually find you're capable of more than you thought you were, you know, you may have thought that there was a number beyond which you couldn't go and perhaps there is...

Chris Shambrook: 44:42

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say you know, if if you've got someone who you row with regularly who you know you're matched with, why not get them to be the person who's going to stroke you through a clock free ergo, - your job is to follow them like you would in a boat.

Patricia Carswell: 45:00

I think that's a great idea. Oh, and I have a top tip actually back at you, which is - this came in from one of my listeners who said that a facemask fits perfectly over a monitor if you're doing that, so...

Chris Shambrook: 45:11

Yeah, absolutely. If you know in a boat you love following other people. How do we get how do we get that into your ergo performance? Because that's the thing when it's the erg, it feels much more self generated. And psychologically for many people, that's very, very different. You know, actually, if they sit behind someone, kind of go great, I'm following you. I'm backing you up. I'm with you all the way I'm not letting you down. It's a very different psychology rather than Oh, my God, here I go, this is me against the clock and I'm testing myself, I wonder how well I'll d,o you know, just this that entire thought process shift for the people who like stroking the boat, you know, chances are the erg fits for them a lot better, they like that kind of I'm in the spotlight, watch what I'm gonna do with this kind of thing. They're just more used to managing that kind of being in the spotlight and being the person who is required to sort of, you know, set it up and be metronomically brilliant for everyone else to feed off.

Patricia Carswell: 46:07

So in terms of the erg test, I know, this is something that can reduce high performing very, sort of well functioning adults into a nervous wreck. And I know myself, I've found in the days leading up to an erg test, I found that every niggle and injury I've ever had has miraculously reappeared. So how do you cope with the fear? I mean, in my own case, I think it's probably a fear of giving in to the pain or the nausea or whatever it is, I think that's probably my fear. But how do you cope with that?

Chris Shambrook: 46:43

Yeah, so I think I probably go, I've gone back a step with people. And there's quite a few of the athletes over the last few years, we've talked about, you know, let's, let's get ready for the erg. And we'll set a gold-silver-bronze approach from the outset. So gold is, let's imagine best case scenario, you turn up you know, you're feeling on top of the world, you do your warm up, you start and and everything is singing, you know, you're on your rate, you're on your rhythm that the split is looking beautiful, it feels great throughout, what do you think you're going to be capable of, in that kind of gold scenario? So let's set both race plan and kind of outcome target for that. Now, let's have a look at silver. So you know, you roll up, you're feeling pretty good. It's you know, it's business as usual, you're feeling pretty satisfied with how things are. It's not all the fireworks, but actually, you know, this is good. I'm feeling feeling the love for this. This is going to be a good sort of representation of me and the training that I've done. So what's that going to look like in terms of both how the race plan feels and how it unfolds, but what that means in terms of splits and final result? And then the bronze is look, given the... given what I've done so far, and how well I've prepared, and what I've seen from the data on the build up, what's the minimum I'd expect of myself here? So even if I have a shocking day, what's the minimum that I expect I'm capable of given all the evidence that's available to me from the pieces that we've done beforehand? And if the other test bits that we've done coming in? So what's that going to look like? So I know I'm going to deliver bare minimum. So if I do that, and I stick with the race plan to that way, and I just express what I know, I've seen, what's that going to look like split wise and final result wise. And how's that going to feel? When you go in with that sort of nuanced approach, you move, you remove some of the fear straightaway where it's, I have to deliver this, this and this. You're going in much more to kind of go right, I'm really curious to find out how the day is going to go. And I've got options as to where I roll now. And if I if I start and it's feeling good, and then it doesn't feel so good, I've got the silver as the safety net to the gold or if I if I kind of, it's feeling sticky from the start, I've got the bare minimum to see if I can then upgrade from there. So we've now got very different ways of engaging with that same scenario. So instead of a black and white success and failure outcome we've now got, I'm really curious as to find out how well I can work with the version of me that there is on the day and see which of the bronze silver gold that I can get. And depending upon how you're feeling sometimes there might be quite a range between the gold, silver bronze, and other times it might be really quite tight. But that's where again, that just gives you the opportunity to really tune into how am I thinking and feeling what am i backing? So I don't know if that would help you remove some of the fear. But that's what I typically do. As a psychologist, I don't answer the question that I've been asked - I give you another way around it that hopefully gives you a way of you not having to ask that question for yourself.

Patricia Carswell: 49:32

I think that's actually going to answer someone else's question. I had a question about supporting a junior who doesn't manage to finish their erg test and it sounds like something like that would be really helpful for someone who has kind of stopped dead before it finished.

Chris Shambrook: 49:47

Before it finished... and you know, there'll be all sorts of stuff there in terms of you know, sometimes it's easier to stop and sort of finished and sort of fail that way rather than get a score that you don't want to see- it's a bit of ego protection potentially in there as well. The other, the other bit with those kind of things, is come up with a plan as to how you can finish better and quicker than you've ever done before, you know, so I'm actually going to get off at 750 metres having gone off ridiculously hard, and there's no way I've got anything left in the tank whatsoever. So if I'm not going to finish, I'm going to kind of finish because it's been a completely terrible attempt to do an ergo, rather than, what do I want to find out about myself in this ergo? Right, I actually want to find out what I'm capable of when I commit to following it through. And that means I'm going to make sure I set my plan out in such a way that I'm going to give myself space to grow into the session, you know, they might just need some different profiles as to how they go into, how they how they sort of try it out in a few different ways.

Patricia Carswell: 50:44

I like this, this sort of attitude of curiosity, it reminds me of in mindful meditation, you're kind of observing your feelings rather than judging them. And I think it kind of works very well, for anyone who does that kind of meditation.

Chris Shambrook: 50:57

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The curiosity bit is is liberating a lot of time, particularly, particularly, if I have a negative thought it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean I'm wrong. And I shouldn't think that way. Yeah, it's a negative thought, I wonder where that came from. I wonder what I wonder what that is giving me insight into. Yeah. And there's so many of the elite athletes are driven by fear of failure. That's the thing that kind of freed the thinking up for me as well, because I kind of go, I don't want to stop you having a fear of failure because it's a really powerful driver for you. Well, I would like you to do is enjoy your fear of failure and using it as a stimulus to really positive, intentional actions.

Patricia Carswell: 51:33

So that leads nicely into the next question. We've had a question from two different people asking about imposter syndrome. And one was asking how to cope with it. And the other was asking whether women tend to suffer from it more than men? And if so why?

Chris Shambrook: 51:49

Yes, I think I think some of the research would suggest that it's, it's reported more in females than males, but I'll say reported more, just because males may not be telling the truth. And so, but yeah, the imposter syndrome piece is really interesting. And if you look at alongside perfectionism, too, it's you know, it's really quite interesting around if you've got incredibly exacting standards, and you expect a lot of yourself and you seldom live up to those standards, and you're better at being self critical than you are at self congratulatory. You know, there's a lot of parallels here between you know, that perfectionism and imposter syndrome, so someone who's got imposter syndrome never feels like they're really kind of earned the right to be where they are, they're going to be found out anytime soon, they're not as good as people think they are, etc, etc. I think there's a lot of overlap between those two concepts. And as well as some important differences. I think, what I do from imposter syndrome, I kind of go to the perfectionism approach where there's adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. So perfectionism can be a very, very powerful force for good. And when you're feeling physically good and mentally good, this chances are that those exacting standards, the desire to be ever better this sort of, you know, the drive that comes from that can be healthy and helpful. When things are a little bit out of kilter that you get the unhelpful version of it. So I think if you know that you've got imposter syndrome, just start thinking, right? Okay, what does this tell me about me in terms of what's important to me? What does this tell me about how important it is in terms of how other people see me? And how can I start to get a degree of acceptance that those qualities that feel uncomfortable all the time actually can be potentially used in a way that says, right? how other people see me is important? What version of me do I want them to see? What is it that I'd like them to be judging me on the basis of, rather than just worrying how they're judging me based upon their view of things? And if I never feel like I've really kind of earned the right, well, perhaps, you know, maybe do a little bit more evaluation of I know, I'm not the finished article. And I know, I'm not as good as I could be. But what does all the evidence suggest I have achieved and how did I achieve that and what were the qualities that were present? So the imposter syndrome can be a bit of a call to action to look to become as good at self compassion and understanding of strengths as you are about self critical and understanding of development areas that you still want to work on. And if you can balance that out, you don't end up with just that single channel approach of always having the critical unsatisfied approach working. And again, I talk to people who say, look, you know, you are far from perfect at understanding and enjoying your strengths.

Patricia Carswell: 54:27

Yeah.

Chris Shambrook: 54:28

Yeah? So let's... if we're going to seek to become perfect at something - and perfect is a verb, not a noun anyway - but you know, if we want to play that game, we'll... but if we want to, if we want to try and perfect something, let's perfect your understanding of the strength foundation that is in place that you are desperate to build upon.

Patricia Carswell: 54:45

I think this could be really useful actually working with adult learn-to-rowers as well, because one of the things I've noticed is that people who've come in from a sporty background who've perhaps been very good at netball, or you know, football or rugby or something, they come in., and because it's a technical sport, and they're starting as adults, they find it really difficult. Now, people like me who were always terrible at sport when they were younger, that doesn't bother them, because they come in, they don't expect to be good at it. So when they're bad at it, that's fine. They just work on getting better. But a lot of the people who are naturally sporty, they panic when they find it difficult. And I think that approach could be absolutely brilliant for them.

Chris Shambrook: 55:24

Yeah, and there's a lot here in terms of, you know, the motivation that comes from competition with self or competition from others. Yeah, that's where we start to look at, if I'm really competitive, ego oriented, and competitive with other people. I'm kind of thinking about other people get better at this quicker than I do, I need to be the quickest at, you know, really getting this and I need to be the quickest at being becoming technically brilliant, you know, we're competing upon the need to develop, and we're judging ourselves relative to others, or if we're competitive with self, you know, when I did this other sport, I was really great at getting to grips with this, but this sport I'm not, you know, so we kind of... the competition doesn't help in that way. So we kind of go, right, well, let's just recognise that and say, you know, we're now competing as a current version of ourselves. And we're competing to find out how well we can bring who we are into this new situation and use our knowledge of ourself to gain a degree of mastery, you know, and, and so, so we're just trying to kind of reorder, what does success look like? And, you know, the whole competition thing, you know, is particularly important, but you know, what success here? Why are you doing it? What success what you want to get out of it? And now let's look at, you know, success is me, you know, getting to feel more and more competent and in control every week, and enjoy myself with some people who are going to guide and support me, and then, you know, be sort of crewmates along the way, as well. So, you know, sort of get a broader picture of success, rather than just this kind of narrow defined competition with self or others.

Patricia Carswell: 56:53

Now, I really like that. That's kind of related to another question that came in about masters rowers, which is whether sports psychology can help as you get older, because you're dealing with diminishing performance, and you're dealing with a body that has stopped doing what you ask it to every time you ask it. So are there other things you can do to help with the psychological side of that?

Chris Shambrook: 57:16

Yeah, with the 100% mentality that I mentioned earlier that that originally came from working with a with an ageing footballer, whose capacity was diminishing, but actually was very game savvy. So even though the overall capacity had delivered, the aim was to sort of see right, okay, even though my sort of, you know, overall parameters might have changed, I reckon I can get more out of the version that I...than I am now than I used to be able to, so that that ability to kind of fulfil current potential even though that potential isn't as high as it used to be, we can get more out of less. And that becomes the challenge. And, you know, I think what you really want is kind of age weighted PBs, really, you know, so so when I had it, when I had a VO2 max of this, I was able to do this. And now I've got a VO2 max of this, can I get a comparable performance metric, so that I'm able to sort of stay tracking with making the most of my capacity rather than I need to hit my absolute PBs that I used to develop as well. So you know, definitely reframing the goals and reframing what success is, as you get older, without doubt, you know, there is, you know, an opportunity to think about power to weight ratio, there's, you know, the opportunity to think about the impact you have on other other crew members, as well and sort of bringing more than just the physiological measures that often people in rowing will define themselves by, what's your erg score?

Patricia Carswell: 58:47

Yeah. in a strange way, when I had to sort of step back from competing for a while, when I had my cancer treatment, that was quite liberating, because, you know, after that, all bets were off, I didn't know how it would affect me in the long term, I still don't really know. But I had absolutely no expectations. So anything I achieved was a was a bonus. And now I've got a sort of new set of goals, just yet to build up from that. And that was actually strangely a relief.

Chris Shambrook: 59:18

Yeah. And it's really interesting. So you see, you know, certainly through the the talent identification programmes over the years where, you know, you've had some incredible youngsters, who actually don't know what a good score is. And their absence of the received wisdom just means they're able to do completely mind blowing things. But as we get more and more knowledge of what good looks like, sometimes it gets in the way of actually just being able to kind of, you know, break through particular standards. So you've almost got to try and ignore your own received wisdom and something like you've just mentioned there kind of goes well, all bets are off now because I really don't, I'm starting again. It's a fresh start, rather than a kind of, you know, a comparison with ormer self. And you know if a the masters level, it can be a resh start each year to see wh t this year can do in the knowl dge that I've got some prior exp rience behind me, which mig t be useful, you know, maybe tha can be a little bit more free ng - add that adds the best n xt year you can rather than b constrained by all the previo s years that have gone before

Patricia Carswell: 1:00:20

Yeah. So a question came in about young people actually, which I think is a really good question, which is how to improve their resilience when they're dealing with things like teenagers suddenly having growth spurts, so you can suddenly find that you're much much smaller than your contemporaries, but you're still rowing in age categories.

Chris Shambrook: 1:00:41

Yeah, you know, I think that's probably probably one to be setting up earlier for people, you know, so rather than waiting for those kind of inevitable things to happen, you know, if, if, earlier on we're helping people be much more aware of right, you know, personal goal setting based upon, you know, me and who I am and how I am, what does success look like for me? And how close to those targets can I get? And how can I use comparison with other people in a helpful manner. We then get a nice benefit of that competing with others and competing with self balanced early on. If we've only kind of got comparison with others all the way through as we're learning, when those spurts kind of happen, and we get more differentiation, people have only got that one source to go to that they've relied on, look at me relative to the rest of the squad rather than, well, actually, we've always been balanced in you know, we're competing with self as well as with each other, know which one you get the biggest drive from, but understand how the other one brings balance to it as well. I think if there's been that kind of work from the outset, when we get the differentiated stuff happening, so right, you know, at the moment, you're going to get far more benefit from having more of an emphasis on compete with self, finding out, right, what's the new version of you, like how well can you grow your scores relative to your growth from where you were before - this person's had, this person over here has had a different impetus - and they may have more issues with coordination from a massive growth spurt. And actually, it might, there might be some disruption there as well. So you know, I think where we've got some balance there. it allows us not just to get into this squad mentality. And and that's one of the biggest challenges in rowing. You know, the biggest things I, you know, again, from the imposter syndrome and sort of perfectionism stuff, it's very easy in a squad, to look at everyone else and pick out all of those strengths that each other person has, and kind of go, oh God, they're amazing at that they're brilliant at that they're Superman, that kind of guy. So I've got to have all of those Uber strings that they've got, and I've got, I've got to match those things. Rather than I'm part of that group, what are people looking at me to say, this is the strength they bring to this squad. So I'm going to bring that and add as many strengths as I can to it. And I'm going to use the role models of other strengths around me to grow rather than to make myself feel that I'm inadequate, because I don't match this kind of, you know, uber being that is the aggregation of everyone else s brilliance.

Patricia Carswell: 1:03:06

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now, obviously, most of us don't have a sports psychologist on on hand to work with so are the resources that you would particularly recommend if someone wanted to look into this and actually work on that side of their sport?

Chris Shambrook: 1:03:22

There would be... I would highly recommend part of the Planet K2 family, believeperform.com So Adam, Adam Morris, who's part of the team - Adam set up Belive Perform back in 2012. And we've... Adam has been part of the team with us as well for the last four or five years as well and and believeperform.com is brilliant, both from a mental health and a performance psychology perspective. Lots of great content in there, lots of videos, infographics, training programmes, there's a huge amount of stuff that Adam has pulled together that I think give everyone an opportunity to engage on their terms. And there's various sort of ways in which you can do that from a subscription perspective. So that that that's definitely one resource that I think... But there's also loads of great books out there as well from a performance psychology perspective as well. There's certainly you know, I've got the bookshelf behind me, Fran's book, so you've interviewed Fran, you know, Fran's book, there's some great stuff in there. That gives you an insight into psychology. Annie Vernon's book as well is equally sort of interesting from a from a psych point of view, written by one of the other constantly underachieving rowers! As well as Cath Bishop's book as well - Olympic medalist, classical pianist, you know, and, whatever, you know, speaks four languages or you know, serial underachiever Cath! There's lots of great stuff from the rowing community that you can access as well. So, and, you know, I think there are, you know, there's this stuff like the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences, where there's kind of an access to the sport sciences, there's the British Psychological Society, you know, if you want to get some time with someone to kind of bring it to life for you that that's also possible and doable as well and most people are doing it online now as well just because of the world we live in, and it's become a lot more accessible.

Patricia Carswell: 1:05:02

Fantastic. Well, I'll put links to all of those in the show notes. And one final question, your advice for surviving the pandemic as an athlete? Obviously, we're all coping with lockdown plus a lot of uncertainty. Most of us are training without knowing what we're training for. We don't know what or when our next event will be. So do you have any advice for dealing with that?

Chris Shambrook: 1:05:29

Yeah, there's quite a few things I've written over the last few months as well. And I'll, I'll share some links with you as well just to go through to those. But I think at the moment, the the couple of things that come to mind that are most important- this is a time where the development of self compassion is particularly appropriate. That ability to extend kindness to yourself instead of criticism, the ability to sort of have a sense of common humanity. So I'm more like other people than I'm not like them, we typically tend to sort of say, no one else would be like this, other people can handle this better. So the common humanity piece, alongside the self kindness is critical. And then the mindfulness bit that we referenced earlier, that ability to kind of, you know, be in the moment and sort of, you know, notice what is now and notice what's appropriate and possible today to sort of think about, you know, how well can I do today? And how much meaning can I bring to today? And how much kindness can I extend to myself in terms of the, you know, the quality of work that I do, and sort of celebrating what I'm able to do - that, that, that the opportunity to develop self compassion, I think is particularly important. And, you know, it's down to me, I think if we can get that sense That does fit in with that, you know, when when there is no finish line, it's really important to this, think about, can I keep doing, can I keep going? So if I know my job is to keep going with stuff that's important to me, I take more care of myself to kind of rest and recover better get nutrition, hydration in good shape. And that means that the mind body connection stays a lot better. And actually, the ability to keep going right now, and still make progress is particularly important. And also think, you know, the common humanity bit from the self compassion, you know, Zoom E gos, where we've seen each ther as well, just just the ommunity support and relying ore on other people. If we're ll doing that, it becomes- we'r all helping keep each othe going. Rather than it feelin like, you know, this is a sol pursuit. of collaboration and sort of, you know, supporting each other to keep going, sometimes giving the energy, sometimes receiving the energy, then then that for me, as well as a different way of being in a different way of working, which keeps you in the moment and keeps you sort of, you know, having that sense of finding out what you learn about yourself in this period, which none of us want to be in. But while we're here, that that is a way of, you know, making sure that from a mental health perspective, I think, you know, you're more likely to have some learning to reflect on which will have meaning to you in years to come.

Patricia Carswell: 1:08:04

That's really wise advice. Interestingly, our squad does some Zoom ergos as well. And the best attended one has been the one recently where we all agreed in advance that we'd take a five minute break at the end, go and get a cup of coffee, and then rejoin the session and just sit and have a chat and just having that connection, seeing our friends, doing what we would normally do after a you know, an outing was I think that just brought people in because it just felt like a little kind of snippet of normal life.

Chris Shambrook: 1:08:36

Yeah, yeah, that sense of community and actually sort of shared purpose is so important. And one that we you know, we're all unable to access at the moment is that, you know, the, the zoom stuff is great, but you don't get that sort of biochemical interaction where you're sitting in a space with other people who are kind of you know, they got that feelgood factor going on together, there's something really important about the kind of, you know, the, you know, the hormonal stuff that gets, you know, exchange that we're unaware of, but he's definitely a really important part of, you know, that that whole environment of feeling like you belong.

Patricia Carswell: 1:09:09

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Chris. It's been fascinating. It's been really interesting to hear all your thoughts, and to get the benefit of your advice as well. I'll put all the links in the show notes to everything that that you refer to. But thank you so much.

Chris Shambrook: 1:09:27

Absolute pleasure. And I will sign up for another Zoom Ergo fairly soon and get back on the waggon.

Patricia Carswell: 1:09:35

Now, since talking to Chris, I've been putting some of his ideas into practice, and I'm happy to say I've already found them incredibly helpful. I've experimented with covering up my monitor, and discovered I was capable of split. I didn't think were in me. And I've been thinking a lot about our discussion about how to approach the ageing process as an athlete. I'd really love to know what you thought And if you put any of Chris's advice into practice, please do tell me how you got on. You can contact me at @girlontheriver on social media and by email at girlontheriverpodcast@gmail.com. I've put details of all the books and resources that Chris mentioned in the show notes(that's the blurb you'll find about the episode wherever you get your podcast), and I've also posted links to Chris's professional websites there. Next week's episode is all about parenting and coaching young athletes. So if you have any questions about this, get in touch and I'll put some of the questions to our guests. And until then, next stroke, easy oar.