Coaching Olympic Champions

It's no secret, the origin of the modern coaching profession started in sports to then expand into businesses, and then practically all walks of life. With this season's Paris Olympics, there may be a few lessons for coaches to learn, if not to remember and re-enact. Indeed, in time, fundamentals are often forgotten. They may well need to be occasionally reviewed.

Consequently, after hearing and reading here and there numerous biographical comments by and about present day gold finalists such as the swimmers Popovici and Marchand, (not to forget their equally talented coaches) I feel many business and life coaches could revisit some of our profession's essentials.

First and paradoxically, for all the talk about mental preparation in sports, the real story is much more about getting rid of all the stress-inducing mental and emotional programming we have received since early childhood. The resulting frame of reference, verbalised or not is that we all should try harder, push ourselves to excell, should do better, put more effort in what we do, aim for first place or better, forget all other personal needs, beat your neighbor, never give it a rest, be ambitions, aim for honours, etc. Basically we are raised by our parents to achieve what they never did, so they can get their revenge on life.

• In fact, mental preparation for championship-level sportsmanship is all but mental. Neither does it ride on emotional rollercoasters, nor is it focused on winning or concerned with measurable comparison with others.

Popovici's example highlights numerous examples of how champions develop an immense capacity to focus on all their senses in everything they do, on their here-and-now presence to their internal indicators and deep sensory consciousness, while seamlessly merging with their environment's flows and ebbs. "I'm just another guy who happens to swim fast" says Popovici with simple, minimalist modesty, a sure sign of his high level of personal self-awareness. A person of few words and little ego. Not an Alpha type.

Not to mention that in order to achieve this state of being, Popovici and Marchand put in hours, days, months and years of relentless practice. Just swimming, boring, repetitious drilling, day in and day out, until their bodies learned how to instinctively perform with plain physical, instinctive if not intuitive ease.

This preparation is not mental or emotional, It is imbedded in the flesh. This state of presence to their inner selves can only take place when the intellect, emotions and focus on the goal have evaporated out of the scope of consciousness, are out of the way of their pure, sensory flow. The moral of the story is outstanding winners learn to just be present to themselves as they perform, staying away from paralysing thoughts, debilitating emotions, and stress-inducing ambitions. This is the principal prerequisit to allow performers to be in needed sensory focus on their present active instant, the only here-and-now reality that really matters. In fact, this form of consciousness is life. It is what it takes to really exist anywhere, everywhere.

• Outside of your sensory here-and-now presence, you will miss feeling the undulating flow of air in your lungs, the regular rhythm of your heartbeat as it pulses through all your arteries, the subtle contact of your skin with surrounding elements, the joyous dance of your muscles as they skillfully do their thing, the stretching leaps and assertive contacts enacted by your far-reaching limbs, the elating sense of speed as you gracefully glide forward.

Early in his youth, Popovici's parents introduced him to Stoicism. I suggest reading Marcus Aurelius on the relentless training it takes to achieve such a state of self-less, ego-less awareness, deep consciousness or all-encompassing presence to being.

Other than practice to achieve such a high state of consciousness and reach such an extraordinary level of performance, there are no chemical tools, intellectual gimmicks, logical theories, analytical tricks, creative shortcuts, artificial intelligences, etc.

All respected gold medalists tell more or less the same story. They practice the love of their sport almost exclusively for the personal self-awareness they can develop while just doing it. The resulting intensive training process leads into a focused, inner and sensory search for graceful and artistic perfection. They carry on to the point of patiently surpassing the built-in limits they gradually uncover within themselves. Invariably, these limits are both culturally learned, either mental, emotional, or caused by excessive focus on achieving measurable results.

Business coaching

Paradoxically, much of today's coach-training and development is also very culturally programmed, focused on teaching coaching tools, theories and models, on deeply diving into emotional patterns, and on imperatively achieving tangible and measurable results to get recognition by parents, hierarchy and the system. While such a structured and voluntary approach may be useful when instructing a beginning or politically-correct, well programmed confirmed coach (or sports person), it is absolutely not recommended to accompany Olympic-level extraordinary performers.

• Total sensory focus on one's inner game is the only route to reach the high altitudes of self-achievement. And this result is not attained by painstakingly researching intellectual avenues of improvement or standardized, well-packaged learning in structured boot-camps and master-class settings. These highways are for mass consumption. Only hours of sensory on-the-job practice focused on developing personal self-awareness will get you there. To your singular potentialized self.

Olympic-level coaches actually spend more time with their sportsmen and women as companions, or people that accompany, than they do as knowledgable instructors, trainers, or teachers focused on achieving results. They spend more time sensing how their performers are exploring themselves from within than pretending to know what these need to do in order to progress. They spend more time accompanying their champions to develop their hearts and souls than they focus on achieving any form of medal, diploma or social recognition.

• For champion coaches and clients indeed, the only result worth considering is to accompany each other to achieve a shared higher state of presence, of consciousness or of human existence. Real self achievement or self realization is not just earning a gold, silver or bronze medal (even when its iron core originates from the Eiffel Tower).

Business coaches who accompany Olympic-level achievers also need to veer away from all that diverts their sensory focus from just humbly and respectfully listening. And true listening is being in the moment, present to the client task at hand, in a state of sensory consciousness, tuned into the enlightening complexity of here-and-now reality.

True masterful coaching also stays away from rigid models of dos and don'ts, from the nagging intrusion of historically learned emotional patterns, from behavioral habits based on cultural programming, from being obsessed with acquiring medals, diplomas and honors at all costs, from competitively climbing the social ladder to achieve enslaving recognition. These superficial concerns only serve to divert our deeper selves from true presence to one's divine, flowing and centered singularity. That which gives us access, among others, to our proprioception, intuition, deep kinetic empathy, premonition, telepathy, just to name a few of our more systemic and almost extra-sensory skills.

The only way to be a champion coach is to really tune into all your deeper corporal senses and the systemic information they directly provide, before any interpretation, on your here-and-now physical, totally-aware presence. This allows for the necessary consciousness that can best witness and accompany oustanding coach and client performance. And it can be learned with diligent practice to the point of making most more superficial intellectual, emotional and goal-oriented action plans totally superfluous.

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Suggested reading on masterful systemic coaching (first published in 2015) : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086G3XZGD

Suggested reading on a sensory approach to systemic consciousness and presence (Published in 2023, in French and soon to be translated) https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0CL3G93ZM

To train your senses to become a systemic coach : https://www.metasysteme-coaching.eu/english/dates-locations-and-prices/1646/i-systemic-coaching-et-leadership-fundamentals-in-bucharest-and-online/

To attend a three-day systemic coach (and manager) supervision marathon focused on developing deep-coaching sensory skills, :https://www.metasysteme-coaching.eu/english/dates-locations-and-prices/1254/iii-systemic-coach-supervision-marathon-in-bucharest/