Post-Olympic Cliff – Resilience Mindset

RIDEWISER MINDFITNESS BLOG - 2550 words (allow 12 minutes)?

After it was over,?I sat totally stunned, just staring at the white canvas of the Australian?cycling team tent, totally bewildered for more than 20 minutes.

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I'm sure all four of us were just left wondering how the last few years of full-time training had resulted in running 12th?at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games 100km road team time trial. Our super-quartet had been seeded no.2 in the world and we were an?almost certain medal-winning chance on the day. Then the first?and only flat tire in all of our combined time-trialing histories had robbed us of 38 seconds and any medal hope.?

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Despite this, we had executed the most lightning-fast wheel change ever with a well-rehearsed but never-used routine where each rider slowed at different speeds while the punctured rider was attended to by the team-car. The event outcome was a shemozzle, but the resilient attitude of the riders and their effective decision-making under pressure was a show of incredible expertise. The best disc wheels, teardrop helmets, and 30,000 clicks a year of training to ride at 55kph was not enough to overcome the most basic?setback known to cycling, but the team should've won an award for excellence in mental stability.

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The experience probably accelerated our resilience skills development in that single situation - smiling for the cameras just moments later.

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Little did I know at the time, but an even more profound mental test awaited me during that Olympic campaign 2 weeks later, when all of the exciting, high-focus, rigorous Olympic routine?just stopped overnight. It was like hitting the 'off' button on a?merry-go-round.

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Familiar?lifestyle patterns are?self-sustaining

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The nature of sport is already emotionally challenging in that there's only one winner and so many losers in each race. But all the athletes, including those sitting back at home de-selected in the lead-up months (yes, it’s a thing), all have to face the end of the 4-year Olympic phase.

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The surprise is that this time can?also be the abrupt end to many important self-sustaining routines that prepared you for the largest physical and mental peak performance of your life: the?rigid?daily structure, the familiar lifestyle, the habits formed, the organised annual training?and?competition calendar - all?planned down to the minute.?

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This less reported, behind-the-scenes, and commonly?debilitating aftermath?for athletes when the?games close is sometimes referred to as the post-Olympic cliff.?Going over this cliff-edge is a potentially?disruptive experience due to the sudden loss of too much familiar routine and lifestyle patterning in a single shift. And?the effects can become exaggerated?for weeks or even months if the?athlete has other personally challenging issues going on in the background, like a personal loss or big disappointment.?

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People typically become comfortable through the?familiarity of their lives, but if there’s a sudden transition to another lifestyle pattern with an absence of mental resilience skills, then a very uncomfortable and unexpected vulnerability can emerge.

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Mental stability is tested in times of sudden transition

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Right now, in the months following the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, many athletes are navigating a difficult adjustment to the often unseen impact and transition that accompanies an Olympic period ending. And then once experiencing the jolt of such a sudden change, it’s often poorly understood and hard to articulate what’s happening in your psyche and body.

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It can feel like the ground under your feet just dropped away.?No wonder so many athletes in this uncertain time can feel depressed, or a deep sense of loss, confusion or self-doubt about who they are or what they want next, a dreadful lack in motivation, constant stomach knots, or lethargy and anxiety. And for those with personal life strains, it can be like a sea of undecipherable emotions all jumbled together.

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Most people have a vulnerability to stress in times of change, it’s just difficult to ascertain how vulnerable or stable a person is until a sudden impacting change arrives. Immediately there's a high demand for more mental coping skills such as resilience, self-confidence, determination,?self-assuredness or faith. The post-Olympic cliff can become a serious test of a person's character, their mental stability and skill-set, and their hidden vulnerabilities.

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In that sense, a big transition like the post-Olympic cliff is similar to other major lifestyle changes where normally familiar routines and patterns are suddenly disrupted.

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In contrast with today, some people may be struggling with the disruptive restrictions of COVID-lockdowns in this way too, and feel a need to boost mental strength, or to access their ‘resilience mindset’.

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Steps to access your resilience mindset

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To be resilient is to be less strained by challenging times or testing situations. Resilience can appear as someone remaining calm during relatively urgent situations, or an ability to make quick and wise decisions in pressurised moments.

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Resilience is like a fabric of interwoven mental strengths, or a psychological protective bubble, stopping negative thoughts from permeating when adversity strikes.?

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But I think the resilient outlook can also be developed like a skill, as if switching on a special mindset that becomes more accessible, once you’re more aware and understand how to practice preserving your mental and emotional stability.

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Then with the support of a strengthened resilience mindset, adverse times become welcome opportunities to strengthen our mental fabric, and we can be more agile in times of change, allowing improved management of stressful feelings, and better decision-making under duress.

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The let-down of the Barcelona 100km time-trial was character-building and it demanded mental toughness not to give up and slow down. But I didn’t want to just become mentally tougher in order to survive the hard times.

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I wanted the skills to adjust better and recover faster from the difficulties of change, more stability in my mental?functions to brace me to withstand adversity and?upheavals like the?cliff-edge. More resilience, so that a sudden transition like our restricted COVID-lockdown world may be less impacting.

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After working through several kinds of destabilising periods myself and also helping others tackle post-Olympic cliff effects, major depression, and other hardships in life, I’ve found that a more resilient outlook emerges in times of change from establishing these key practices:-

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·????????frequent calmness

·????????creating momentum

·????????connection to others

·????????set routines and plan your day

·????????choose a new goal

·????????align with your vision

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Frequent calmness

-?????????to approach daily stressors from a stable and calm mindset

-?????????to maintain a state of calm as the intensity of the day rises

-?????????to become skilled at returning the self to a calm ???

Resilience resembles a state of calm. Developing a self-sustaining ability to restore calmness is immeasurably resourceful?in any time of change. I recommend finding your own practice for establishing calmness, through calming your body first and subsequently your mind. Then practice it as a daily stable starting point. Sitting with eyes closed and listening to a mantra for 10-20 minutes each day has allowed my intensely busy, over-analytical mind to be quietened - and then I do feel empowered with more calmness through the day’s activities.

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Meditation is not everyone’s way back to equilibrium. For me, it provides a high quality state of calm and because it’s self-administered, it is less likely to alter due to changing locations or lockdown laws. Sitting and contemplating the day, pondering the horizon, a favourite dog-walk, maybe even riding a bike can be the low demand activity that allows a quieter, calmer mind. Regular practice will develop a skill for?resuming a calm state of equilibrium, but the rehearsal process also improves efficiency so speeds up recovery and restores clarity faster.

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Create more momentum

-?????????to keep moving forward through difficult times

-?????????to prioritise decisive action above over-thinking the problem

-?????????to create a change in the current situation

Resilience involves constantly moving forward despite difficulty. A resilience expert friend of mine recommends a simple formula for combating problems –

Plan. Act. Succeed.*

Once actions happen, situations can change and the movement can create a sense of achievement. This positive outcome can restore a sense of self-control and so we build confidence through actions.

After returning home from Barcelona,?I actually stored the road bike away and didn't ride for 6 months, being truly uninterested and tired with cycling at that time. It may have been a mistake, as having too much time to think and ruminate did little to change my situation. Once I started riding again, I felt my energy return, I saw the world around me which generated new ideas. I began to process emotions and found myself exploring an exciting new path, literally and metaphorically!?No matter what, movement leads the body to change, and the mind will change with it. With different thoughts flowing, new situations can emerge.?'The river needs to flow for signs to come past'.

Connect to other people

-?????????to reduce stress by dispersing the strain

-?????????to lift morale and positive perception through camaraderie

-?????????to observe or gain new skills through observing other resilient people!

Resilience involves dispersing the strain of a situation. Just sharing your concerns with others can reveal other perspectives to a situation. Collaborating your efforts with other people usually makes situations easier because the strain is dispersed. Ask questions, get another opinion, team up, share an idea, get advice, seek counsel, delegate the tasks, and plan a solution together. The Olympic puncture mishap was a sporting nightmare, but as a team of experts I think we sorted it out faster because the group’s focus and elevated morale led to a more pragmatic solution. In order to work well together, we couldn’t allow any negative self-talk to compromise the group objective. It was emotionally?easier because we had to focus on doing the job together.

In a more individual scenario, most athletes go home to their various destinations in a post-Olympic cliff period and can become isolated with their problems. Once I started cycling again several months later, I did source guidance through the help of very skilled support staff at the Victorian Institute of Sport and got my life rolling again.

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Set routines and plan a daily structure

-?????????to help direct the focus of your attention to various tasks

-?????????to create predictability and certainty on a daily basis

-?????????to instil a sense of control within your environment ('control the controllables')

Resilience can be hidden in the strength of your behavioural patterns. There is a balance needed in taking the time to restore calm, but not having too much free time and losing focus.?

Effective routines allow a set of pre-determined actions to go ahead, with less decision-making required before acting out the procedure. The structured plan of a routine can ensure more productive use of time, which can be a satisfying way to build confidence and maintain progress toward goals. As an elite cyclist, I used a well-calculated 10 minute shower routine after training rides to accomplish four critical processes in the limited time available: (1) reheat the body’s core, (2) complete a stretching sequence (specifically adapted to a confined space), (3) drink water to rehydrate, and (4) consume a liquid nutrition shake (prepared in fridge).

This 10?minute 'formula' was developed through flagging the key physiological aspects needed most of all in cycling recovery, and it was very effective at providing a structured and achievable follow-up training format, but its greatest benefit was in the resulting sense of achievement, certainty, confidence and consequently stability that came with practicing a familiar set?routine each day.?

Choose a new goal

-?????????to apply more focused attention to ‘achieving’

-?????????to lift morale by achieving small wins every day

-?????????to get focused in the moment, rather than keep looking at the greater predicament

Resilience involves having determined focus to the task at hand. Choosing a new goal and achieving the tasks toward reaching that goal can give back a sense of confidence which is important after losing familiar patterns and routines. Confidence can build quickly from becoming more competent, so choosing an achievable and realistic goal within the field of your expertise and setting the tasks to accomplish the goal is ideal.

Acknowledging small wins along the way creates a succession of achievement feelings, which builds morale and a sense of being more in control of your situation. Furthermore, the welcome distraction of focusing on smaller challenges can provide relief from constantly facing the larger problem and it consequently becomes less intimidating – increasing your resilience even more.

Part of performing well under pressure in the Barcelona puncture moment was because we were all focused on the smaller immediate goal of fixing the flat tire. We each had a specific role to play with a clearly defined set of tasks to complete in order for the team to still have a chance at tackling the competition goal.

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Align with your vision

-?????????to have a clear and final outcome in mind

-?????????to align all your decisions to one larger vision

-?????????to motivate you through the challenges of each day

Resilience involves an attitude with clear direction and single-mindedness. It can be relieving to follow a person who is confident about which way to go in chaotic situations, it’s like they can already see the favorable end result. Ask yourself what the ideal future version of you looks like to envisage what you are going to work towards. Having the outcome in mind and acknowledging it often can motivate you through day-to-day difficulties, like getting started every morning! From very early in my cycling life while racing at club level in 1989, I stuck these words in gigantic red letter stickers to my bedroom ceiling:

Think it, See it, Believe it, Do it.?

It would remind me of a bigger, better, stronger, faster version of myself becoming a world class competitive cyclist, and it gave me the starting impetus and the reviewing comparison each day for many years.?But more relevantly, reciting these words even in mind was setting up a pattern; weaving a vision into the constant background of my general thinking that this was what to strive for. A vision is a simple and clear anchor point to align with in times of adversity or change.

Later on, during the post-Olympic cliff experience, I associated with a new vision in order to work through the career transition and created a motivational cycling-health business.

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Resilience mindset

With change always around the next corner, we’re all going to find out eventually just how stabilized or vulnerable we are as people, how agile we are to adapting. So often, we are better off to prepare ourselves before the challenge arrives – get calmer, build momentum, keep connected, establish routines, visualize a better future self.

Becoming more resilient and coping better with change IS the next challenge. And to that I’m looking forward to the next transition, the next opportunity to switch my resilience mindset back on and say, “Ok, let’s see what you’ve got this time”.

Post-script: don't forget, laughter can also trigger the resilience mindset!

Rob Crowe O.A.M. is a writer, speaker, Olympian and director of?Ridewiser MindFitness cycling in Melbourne –?enhance mental fitness while optimising physical fitness through cycling.

References

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Chrissy Gordon is director of CMG Connect - Plan Act Succeed

https://www.cmgconnect.com.au/

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Relationship between resilience, mindfulness, and pyschological well-being in university students

https://research.bond.edu.au/en/publications/relationship-between-resilience-mindfulness-and-pyschological-wel

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Psychological resilience in sport: A review of the literature and implications for research and practice

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1612197X.2014.946947?amp;needAccess=true&scroll=top&journalCode=rijs20

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Building your resilience – American Psychological Association

https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience