The Secrets of How Tebogo Beat Lyles. The 2024 Olympics. Lessons and Insights into Elite Mental, Intellectual, Academic, Physical and Performance.

I am deeply interested in the subject of human potential, talent and elite performance for two main reasons. First, I am deeply curious know as much as I can about human potential and human talent as well as understanding and pinning down the science that is involved in extraordinary physical and mental performance. Maybe this curiosity is closely linked to the fact in school I loved and enjoyed biology and I studied biological science to university level. Biology was also one of the subjects I excelled the most in while I also enjoyed studying human psychology. This deep interest in understanding human potential, talent and human performance led me to taking formal studies in a subject called neurolinguistic programming (NLP). NLP is the science of human achievement and human experience. A major part of ?NLP is studying high achievers and peak performers and model their performance-related thinking, psychology and behaviour (performance programs) and using what we discover to help others improve their own performance. With NLP, we also help struggling high achievers and peak performance to bounce back from dips in their performance. In fact, NLP is used in the management and elevation of success, happiness, achievement, wellbeing, performance, results, health, relationships by understanding how the human brain works and how to get the best out of it and out of life.

Second, and not to brag, I had my own personal experiences in mental and physical performance as a student and also in extreme sport as an ultramarathon runner. The longest marathons that I have run so far were 90 kilometres, 87-kilometres and 56 kilometres (twice) and I have completed all of them. I did not get into these marathons as a professional but simply to explore how far I could go, the part of setting difficult challenges for myself. My academic life is filled with many personal great results, with many cases when I produced the best results either in my class or my stream and being in the top five 97%. Some of my results earned me academic prizes including bursaries and merit awards.

Many people related high academic achievements and top academic performance only to talent. They think that people are either gifted or talented and therefore produce brilliant academic performance and results or they are not so gifted and therefore will never produce good results. In other words, the majority of people assume or think that your academic performance and the academic results that you produce are fixed at birth and you cannot do anything to make any changes or improvements in that performance and results. I am here to tell you that this is completely false and not correct-at least from my personal experience and what I have learnt about human performance over the years.

Let me clear. I am not here to tell you that genetic potential, gifts and talents do not count; these count big time. You must have some significant gifts or talent in some field or something to excel. But those who reach the very peak of their performance maximise on their natural potential, talent or gifts. I am saying;

Actual performance or results = Potential X Strategy

In my academic life I was always surrounded by academic talent. I doubt that at any given time throughout my academic life, by genetic make-up, I was the best student or the most gifted student. I always sensed that there were always two or more people that were more talented academically. But in all cases where I excelled and beat everyone else to become the best student, it was because I maximised on my potential. Of course, at the time I had not yet done any studies in strategy or human potential, so I never thought what I was doing was actually maximising on my potential using strategy. I never linked what I was doing to elevated performance and better academic results until I started serious intellectual incursions into the subject of human potential and academic performance after completing my M.Sc. Studies at UK’s Lancaster University.

Interestingly, the basic elements of elite academic (intellectual) performance and elite performance in sport are exactly the same. There are two performance components that are involved;

1.?????? Physical performance and

2.?????? Mental performance.

These two components are not mutually exclusive and the only difference is what is measured as a key result. In sport, physical performance is the main output and mental performance is the contributor to physical performance. In academic performance and other areas of mental performance, the mental performance is the output while physical performance is a contributor.

In some sporting discipline such as gymnastics, physical and mental performance are equally important while in others such as running a 100 metre sprint, physical performance is more important than mental performance.

High performance on both sport, artistic and intellectual pursuits require both mental and physical work. Very few in any can reach their peak performance levels in intellectual performance, sports performance and artistic performance without a good combination of physical and mental work.

If you watched the Olympians in action, you must have noticed many of them engaged in some kind of mental work before getting engaged in a race or competition including self-talks and other facial and physical expressions and activities to help them focus and produce their best possible performance. And there were so many things the Olympians did in preparation for the Olympics.

In fact, most of today’s athletes and high achievers and peak performers in other disciplines and areas of endeavours are now using strategy, strategies, sports science and sports psychology to reach and maintain their peak performance levels and produce breakthrough results.

It is amazing that performance science and psychology is still not in good use in academia. Most of the psychology being taught in formal education is heavily tilted towards treating human maladies and not to enhance performance, success, happiness, achievement, wellbeing, performance, results and human life.

Noah Lyles was one of the athletes who made headlines at the Paris Olympics. On a bright note, he won a gold medal by a whisker in a hotly contested 100 metre dash. On a sad note, he was unable to achieve some of his Paris Olympics 2024 goals. Contrary to what some think, I believe his getting COVID has a real impact on his performance and there is a 50 percent probability that if had he been 100% fit, he could have done better. It is unfortunate that some are accusing Noah of having been overconfident and too showy especially just before the 200-metre race which he lost to Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo and American compatriot Kenny Bednarek.

Many people tried to use Noah’s showmanship to spite him for having failed to clinch the gold in the 200 metre race. I like Usain Bolt perspective that Noah uses his expression of confidence as part of his marketing strategy and winning tactics. Look, sports is about entertaining people and I believe showmanship is part of the game. Even Usain Bolt was also a showman although at a less obtrusive way than Noah. Personally, I like Noah’s self-confidence. I also how he accepted his successes because even without meeting all his objectives, he was still a success because won two medals including the bronze for the 200 metres in which he did not perform to people’s expectations. And hats off to Letsile Tebogo and his Botswana team, Charamba and Makarau and all the athletes who represented Southern Africa in the game. We have shown that Southern Africa is part of world’s nexus of world class athletes.

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?Simon Bere, 2024