24-year-old recently posted on Instagram about the challenges of life as an elite athlete after missing out on selection for Tokyo
www.cyclingnews.com
Horrible.
There's no industry demanding top performance to make your living but sports.
Since childhood.
A rising topic lately and it's about time to be addressed through the entire continuum of development and across all levels of activity.
Although on the one hand I'm glad the topic is adressed more, something about it still doesn't feel right - in all areas of society. It's always this "okay, you don't need to perform 24/7 every day for 15 years, it's okay if you take a time-out somewhere in between, get help and then you come back stronger."
But what if someone doesn't come back stronger? What, if it can't be rather easily fixed with some therapy? What if it's a life-long struggle against demons?
Also I feel with this "mental health" sticker everything gets thrown into the same basket (lol, you probably can't say it like that in English...), when there are huge differences between the individual problems.
Okay, so much for the general topic.
About sports, I think there are a few specifics, one being that it's something most people get into while they are really, really young - in cycling rather late actually, but in other sports often at the age of 4, 5, 6, and often they have parents who really care about sports a lot.
So, basically, this becomes their whole life, before they have a chance to discover anything else. Everyone they have a closer connection to is involved in this world. They often don't have the time to persue other friendships more closely anymore, their best friends are often pretty involved in the sport, too. Their parents are. When they get home, the talk in the family will likely be very much centered around this topic (that's at least my experience). Either the parents will be really interested in their child and what it does or, expecially in smaller sports, they themselves have a history in that sport, so they get really invested.
So, the good thing about it can be, the child starts to get a positive body image because it sees how strong it is, what it can do, and it's not as dependent on what other people think of it (especially at school, grades and cool cliques can be less important than for other teenagers). But on the other hand they can start getting really dependent on their success in this sport, because they basically have nothing else in their life.
It gets very hard to develop an identity separate from the sport. It also gets very hard to develop a self-image that doesn't involve sportive success. And in many sports it also gets difficult to not srutinize your body under the criteria the sport sets. (Apart from weight issues, also injuries can weigh on you heavily - you can feel very vulnerable and helpless if you depend so much on your body working perfectly. In many sports you will get supported through bad times, but in others you won't, especially for instance in sports like football, where there's an abundance of talents just waiting to take your spot.)
Anyway, what is intrinsic motivation here? After all, is intrinsic motivation not often internalized early expectations from your parents or other people close to the very young you?
I think for many athletes it's quite hard to seperate themselves from their parents. This is certainly not behind all the mental problems, but to me it seems to be a factor. Many are still really close to their parents in their 20s or longer.
They also have learned to be extremely disciplined and often to
not listen to their body. That depends on the coaches of course, but in many sportive environments, and I think the US gymnastics of past years are only the most obvious case here, you learn that pain is good, that you shall not stop because something doesn't feel right, that you cannot trust your own body feelings. Basically exactly the opposite of what every child is told in sexual abuse prevention.
Often you learn that you have to listen to other authorities, the coaches, people who know better, that you just have to
do it, you have to keep the schedules, the instructions. In the best case this forms strong, disciplined individuals who can work hard and don't need a direct reward for everything. But of course, if not applied with enough empathy - and the empathy is often lacking in coaching, not least because they are very ambitious individuals looking for personal success themselves, and also because they themselves have been taught like this - it can also lead to young people who don't trust their own feelings and learn to just "function".
All in all - sports even on a youth level, even in environments which don't appear to be at the highest level yet, are often not very nice environments. They can be a source of happiness, but they can also teach young people some very wrong things.
An additional topic are the athletes who are always great in their sport, they are always the best on youth level, they never learn that it's okay to fail, that failure doesn't mean death but that you can survive and find happiness again. Everyone is applauding them for their success - so how can they learn that they will still be loved when the success isn't there?
What can be done?
In my opinion there are several steps to at least help a bit:
- Make young people trust in their bodies. Make them take injuries seriously. Don't say "Indians don't cry, boys don't cry, pain is just weakness..., it's nothing..." to children.
- Don't make them focus on one sport / discipline too early, I know that's difficult in many sports, where hours and endless hours of routine are necessary if you want to reach the top, but if it was my child, I would always try to get them involved in a few other things / sports as well, and I think someone like van der Poel shows that this is a good thing, that having fun and doing different disciplines is something that can really give motivation.
- As parents: Take them out for an occasional party, shopping trip, nature weekend, whatever...
- As parents and coaches: Don't say things to them that make them constantly link their self-image with their success in sport.
- Societies can help by setting up programs which help the transformation from athlete to other job-taker. If someone has been a very good athlete in a young age, but then "didn't make it" for whatever reason or has to give it up before they make a fortune, don't make them see that as a failure, but show them how they can use what they have learned in other areas (if they want to), for instance they will usually have learned discipline and hopefully also self-responsibility, or maybe they learned about nutrition or such things...
- Teach them how to stand on their own feet: Some athletes are great at this, because they went to training camps early, trips to other countries or places, where they had to organize themselves. If however you put them in a boarding school where everything is done for them and they don't learn how to cook or wash their things or think of things themselves, if all that anybody cares about is their sportive performance, that is of course not very helpful.
Regarding top athletes: I think that is way more difficult. Most of the self-image has developed by then. Of course we should stop shaming people for bad performances - well, in my eyes it's okay to joke a bit about it as long as it's clear that this does not mean the athlete as a person has failed, that it's just a certain area that's affected - but honestly this aspect is very difficult. Of course sportive competition, pro sports, get everything from judging and rating. Once you have taken that path, it's clear that you will be judged - and in public.
In my eyes it makes it even more important that the athletes are prepared when they reach that stage, that they know they are worthy as people and that sportive success just comes on top. That just because people say bad things about them, that doesn't mean they are bad. But yeah, that's difficult for someone who takes all his strength and ambition from the positive reward they get for a success/ win.
Basically, the attention we give to the winners, is a two-sided sword.
(I am writing a book which deals with this topic on a fiction level, hence my interest in this and the long post...)
www.cyclingweekly.com
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram