SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello, thanks for tuning in and welcome to Slice of Pi, where the Pi is the psychologically informed environment, and the mission is to try and understand what that in fact looks like across different environments, whether it's sport, business, education, leisure, the military, or anywhere else where performance and well-being are of importance. I'm trying to find the elements that translate and cut across any domain as well as the interesting factors that are unique to particular performance areas. Now, this episode is going to interest you if you work in an environment where the prevailing wisdom is that you have to be all in and absolutely committed 110% to what you do, that you should eat, breathe, and sleep what you do, it should consume your whole world. The rhetoric might be about pouring 10,000 hours into that one thing in order to get better. However, you may have experienced yourself that having gone from spending, let's say, 60% of your time on your craft and upped it to 90 or 100%, you haven't necessarily seen a linear payback in terms of performance, enjoyment, or motivation as a result of going all in. In fact, some of these measures might even have dropped off a bit. Now for some people this all-in approach might work, so I'm not poking holes in it, but I do think it's sometimes refreshing to take a look a bit closer at alternative ways of looking at performance, development and growth. Take student athletes, for example. They may be in an elite or GB talent pathway, performing at the highest age grade level whilst also studying, setting exams, and away from home and learning to look after themselves for the first time. Dr. Emma Vickers is the research lead for TAT, or Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme. It's an organisation at the heart of supporting such athletes, but also at the heart of developing and pulling together research to understand how these different demands impact, affect, conflict, or complement each other. If you've been listening to the recent episodes, you'll know I've been jumping at the bit to speak to someone from Tat for quite a while. So it was great to catch up with Emma and dig into all of this in a bit more depth. In fact, if you're still here, Emma herself was an elite junior athlete amongst the top three nationally in her sport by the age of 15, and competing in Junior Olympics and international senior competitions. She was a tax sponsored athlete herself and had a first-hand experience of juggling all the training, the travelling and performing along with the small matter of completing a university degree. The perfect guest then to give us an insight into this world as well as discuss the broader topics of dual careers, building a broad self-identity, managing multiple endeavours, and the support needed to take on these challenges. As always, we'll dive into the discussion and then break about halfway for a half-time breather and reflection before shooting back into the interview and a final full-time recap and discussion. I've been using my lockdown rationed outdoors time to do these reflections, so look out for a slight change in the format to this episode at the halfway mark. Right, that's enough from me. It's time to get into the conversation with Dr. Emma Vickers. Emma, how are we?

SPEAKER_01 3:59

I'm doing well, thanks. Yeah, I'm coping well with lockdown. I'm feeling good, feeling good.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Good, good stuff. I imagine the lockdown period has not only made life quite changed for yourself personally, but also some of the task stuff. I think you mentioned over email that you're doing some kind of lockdown-specific work with some of the athletes.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah, I mean, um, all of our delivery sites are primarily universities. So obviously, with them not being open, the athletes can't sort of readily access support. So we've had to be, you know, quite creative, think of new ways of how we can uh provide that support to athletes during this period. So sort of creative ways to deliver S and C programs and physio and obviously lifestyle and psychology still happening over sort of teams in Zoom. Um, but yeah, we're trying to engage with the athletes as frequently as we can just to check in and see how they're all doing.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Are there any particularly creative ways that athletes are still managing to get their conditioning in? Must be quite difficult for certain sports.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Yeah, it is. I mean, we obviously the S and C coaches are delivering that support online and regularly sort of checking in with phone calls and things. But we've been trying to also sort of collect as many resources as we can. And at the end of each week, we're sort of posting our top five resources for athletes in this period for them to take a look at. So that covers things like psychology, nutrition, sleep. So yes, we're trying to give athletes a wide range of things to look at and keep them occupied.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Okay. So I suppose it's that old adage can you find some kind of silver lining or opportunity within the uncertainty?

SPEAKER_01 5:34

I mean, definitely. I mean, obviously the population we deal with are athletes who are also doing something else, so in some kind of education, but obviously there's a lot of athletes out there at the moment who weren't in any education before this and were full-time athletes. So for them, I think it's been a really sort of challenging period. And I think there's been quite a lot of media coverage at the moment around sort of athletes going back to school and and sort of using their time in a really sort of productive manner. And I think this period has really made athletes sort of realise how fragile sport can be and it can be taken away from them quite quickly. Um, so it's really good to see that there's loads of sort of webinars, resources, and support for athletes during this time to cope with that.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Yeah. Well, I absolutely cannot wait to dig into some of the TAS stuff and what TAS does in a wee bit. But I thought it would be great to start off because a little birdie tells me you actually were an athlete yourself and competed at a very, very high level. I think it was it in table tennis.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah, so I started table tennis when I was seven years old. So I've been playing for some 22 years now. So yeah, like you said, I represent.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

You still play?

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Yeah, I still play. Um, not internationally anymore, or not certainly not as many competitions as it used to be every weekend, but I'm still training frequently and it and and I'd say now I've switched more to a less competitive and more about sort of keeping fit and then staying in touch with everyone in the sport and enjoying it a bit more.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Some athletes, once they've hit those heights, they find it hard to keep going, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Yeah, no, I definitely feel that it does feel difficult, and I think that's probably what stops me from wanting to play as many tournaments because you know, you see all these young players coming up, and then you know, you enter a tournament and you face them, and it's sort of that fear that, you know, actually I'm not I'm not as good as I used to be, and these players are now better than me. So I think that fear is there, but you know, I'm I still enjoy playing, and I think that's the most important part.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

So what when was the the pinnacle then? Where did you where did you kind of peak in terms of your performance and the level at which you were playing?

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Um, I think for me it was quite I peaked quite young. So I was number three in England when I was about 15 years old. All right. Um, and I played sort of world championships, European championships, youth olympics at that sort of sort of age between like 15, 18, 19. So I was playing for the senior England team then. And then I went to university and probably engaged a bit less with the England team for maybe a year or so, but still playing as much as I could. So yeah, say for me, it was probably about sort of 19, I would say was probably my sort of peak age.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Okay. And when you were at university playing at a very elite level, but also trying to manage your academics. Talk talk us through how difficult that was or how challenging that was. What how did you find trying to manage both of those two sides of you?

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Yeah, I mean, obviously it can be a really challenging. I think for me, I probably didn't realize until now I'm looking back how much effort actually was. So, I mean, I used to obviously go to my lectures all day and then I would travel an hour to my club every evening and an hour back. And looking back, I'm like, how did I travel so much in the week? Like, how did I have that drive to keep doing that? You know, and the people around me, sort of in my house and my flat, like none of them were doing that. I was just on my own. So looking back, I do wonder how I did it. But I think for me, sort of moving into university was quite a big decision. So I had this decision whether I would go and train at the National Training Center sort of full-time or attend maybe a local university or go to another one of my choice. Um, so I kind of went against that and I went to the university I wanted to. And I think looking back, that that probably did negatively impact me a little bit. Okay. Um, I wasn't really around sort of high-level training, and maybe the governing body sort of, I think they maybe viewed that as a bit of a lack of commitment on my part because education was important to me. So yeah, I think there were sort of positives and that my university was great, the support was amazing, the scholarship program was really helpful. But then there was that downside that the sport environment probably wasn't as good as it could have been.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Okay. Do you think that from your own personal experience that plays into maybe some of the motivation around what you do now? Maybe around not having athletes have to choose between those two things? Because it sounds as though you kind of had a choice there between one and the other, and it doesn't sound like there was a middle ground.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Yeah, I mean, the the ultimate aim that we want to achieve with athletes undertaking a dual career is that they can follow sort of their chosen educational, vocational path, whatever it might be, alongside their sport. So obviously there's some situations where that might be difficult, where the sports training centre is, I don't know, in the south and they want to attend a northern university. There's obviously going to be some limitations there. But you know, we want to get to that optimum point where that athlete can choose whatever path they want and they don't sort of downplay that in any way or choose another educational path that's maybe deemed to be a bit easier, a bit more flexible. The ultimate aim is that we want the athletes to undertake something they're really passionate about.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Well, let's quickly just before we get into that, just want to understand how the transition for you out of elite competition went. So when when was the the moment that you kind of decided that you were going to focus more on the academics or you're going to transition out? Talk, talk us through that.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Um, to be honest, I don't think I've ever had that moment where I've said, oh, that's that's it now. I'm not I'm not an athlete anymore.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Like I've never thought in my head, oh, I'm now a retired athlete. Um for me, I've sort of, I would say it's been like a quite a lengthy process where across maybe a three or four year period, I sort of stopped playing as many tournaments, I got a new job, maybe I just trained one day less a week, you know, something like that. It was sort of a really, really gradual process. And I'd say there's been a couple of times where I've maybe picked it up a bit more and played more things, and then I've not played any tournaments for five, six months. So for me, I've never really had that moment where it's like, you know, I'm I'm retired now. I don't know if I'm I'm in denial about that or or not, but but um, but I'm just still enjoying playing, and it's quite rare for females to even continue playing table tennis beyond the age of about 18, 19 in this country. There's actually very few females who make that sort of transition from that junior to scene level. I don't really know why that is. I think maybe the support for for women's table tennis beyond the junior level is quite limited, and if you want to make it, you really probably have to move abroad. Um, so I I I do often wonder like, what is it about me? Why am I still playing now? Why am I so connected to it? And others have just given it up years ago. So so yeah, I like you said I probably haven't really had that moment yet.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

And does the does the engagement, the sport, does it does it help to be involved in in other aspects? Are you are you still involved from a coaching capacity or yeah?

SPEAKER_01 12:30

So I've done quite a lot of coaching with Tobinus England over the last couple of years. So I've been coaching the junior age squads, and I also was a player coach at two Commonwealth Championships in India. So yeah, I have been sort of quite involved in the coaching aspect, and I've recently started coaching a young girl at my my club as well. She's only eight, so so I've recently sort of got back involved with it. So I've done all my coaching qualifications and things. So I I can see myself being involved in that side of it probably for the years to come.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

That's interesting. Do you think that having that coach side as well maybe puts less pressure on the performer side of the identity? You're also a coach. So I don't know what I'm trying to get at here. Is is the the coaching helpful? Do you think?

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah, no, I think I think so. But then again, I think it has been difficult at points because there's been points where maybe I've been coaching people and I've thought, you know, probably I'm still good enough to play in this competition myself. And maybe I'm not at that point where I can fully say, you know, I want to pursue being a coach because I'm still sort of dipping in and out of playing. So for me, that has probably been a bit difficult over the last few years. But I would say I'm moving to a space now where I'm more sort of comfortable with saying, Yeah, I'm probably more comfortable with coaching now.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah. Reminds me of some of you hear some of the hypocrite tales about football managers who who have only recently retired and jumped jumped into training thinking they can still mix it with the uh the big boys. So, okay, let's let's go on to talk about TAS. So yeah, when did you so at what point then in the journey did TAS become something that was on your radar?

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Um, so it actually was on the TAS programme for quite a few years during my time doing my levels and the university. Um so I had this awareness.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Okay, so you were you were a TAF TAS athlete yourself?

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Yeah, so I had this awareness of obviously who they were, what they did, what level of support they provided. But then the point where I became involved with them was probably during my PhD. I actually became part of their athlete advisory group, which is a group of TAS athletes who are from different sports, different parts of the country, who meet to basically discuss the program and discuss the positives and how we can improve it. Um and it was that point they found out I was actually doing a PhD that was kind of like was quite similar to their area of work and looking at student athletes. So I started to develop a few things for them. I did a few sort of bits of infographics and things like that. And then yeah, eventually I just started working for them when I when I'd finished. So it's had a gradual process from being a task athlete to to working for them.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

And in terms of the role that you do for them now, what what's the scope of that? What does that cover and what are you responsible for?

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Um, so my role technically is nationally for research. So that part of the role generally involves coordinating all of the research we provide. So we've got a couple PhDs running at the moment, we've got uh nine masters projects running, and we've also an expert partner on quite a few European Erasmus projects. So it involves quite a bit of sort of interaction with how those projects are are getting on, and it's just about driving the research forward, really, and developing as many research, much research as we can, developing partnerships, uh new projects. So yeah, the research side of it is relatively new. And then the other side of my role is to actually oversee all the support we provide to the FA.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

So we currently provide support to around 300 female footballers who are part of like the FA's talent programs. Part of that is the Women's Super League Academies. So part of my role is to sort of set up those academies and link them with uh one of our delivery sites. And then the final part of my role is sort of to look at our education pathway. So we're developing a few qualifications, trying to expand that area that we that we work in.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

So just three jobs then within the one job?

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Just three. But I enjoy, I absolutely love working for TAF.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

And um, within those three jobs, do they do they take up an equal amount of your time or do some kind of tend to flare up at certain points in the year? How do you juggle with that?

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Um, I definitely say they flare up at different points in the year. So, for example, with the football side of things now, that's sort of tailed off a bit because the season has ended. The academies will submit a proposal for what they want their next year's season to look like in the next week or so. So that will start picking up slowly. But this time during lockdown has been a really good time to actually get some research done and to start looking at our qualifications and get all of that done as well and going through the right processes with First for Sport. So, yeah, I would definitely would say it does shift quite a lot throughout the year.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Okay. And that education pathway.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

When you say an education pathway within TAS, what does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Yeah, so we provide something called a talents athlete lifestyle support qualification.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

So essentially what it is, it's a four-day course where a practitioner or a person will come and learn about what it's like to be an athlete, what their athlete lifestyle will look like, and actually how to deliver one-to-one session with an athlete. So we'll look at things like communication skills, and then we'll look at topics like transitions, anti-doping, dual career, things like that. So that's a level three qualification that we run. And we're actually expanding that out to a level one and two.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

So for people that don't necessarily want to be a lifestyle practitioner but just want to learn more about the role in a more of an informal basis. And then we're also looking at developing a master's qualification as well in sort of athlete well-being and lifestyle management, something in that remit. So that's something we're working at the moment with Northumbria University on. And then the part that I'm primarily responsible for is to develop a qualification around athlete transitions.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

So, yeah, so that's been really, really interesting for me because obviously that's was part of my PhD. So something I'm really passionate about. So the qualification is essentially with anyone who wants to understand a bit more about athlete transitions, the very specific demands, how they prepare, what challenges they might face. So we're looking at things like how to support athletes through transition, educational transitions, so moving into university, out of university, athlete migration, maybe to the US, uh, junior to senior, obviously, retirement's a big part. And then we're also looking at some of the more unique transitions athletes face. So, for example, moving into motherhood and para athlete transitions, talent transfer, that kind of thing. So, yeah, it's a really sort of unique qualification. There isn't one similar to this. So that's yeah, that's really been one of my focuses over the last couple of weeks is to try and get this done.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

It's interesting. What I was hearing there is I suppose for for someone like myself or or anyone else within sports psychology or just has a wider interest in this type of thing within sport, when you think about athletic transitions, yeah, you maybe don't appreciate actually how many different varieties of transition there may be. I mean, you've just listed out the transition in and out of university, within education or non-education or migrating to the US. So there's actually many, many different transitions happening.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Yeah. And we've tried to make the course as kind of interactive and as possible. So we want to use like real life examples of support programs where they've gone wrong, where they what they've done really well, pulling out bits from them. So we're trying to make it as real, you know, as real as we can. But yeah, it's generally for anyone who really has an interest in transitions and wants to work with athletes through them. So in our TAWS qualification, we just sort of generally brush over the topic and how to support a transition. We don't talk in detail about some of the very specific demands, challenges, unique ways they can prepare. So that's what this qualification will do.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

A few weeks ago we had uh Leon Lloyd from Switch the Play on the podcast. And he was talking about how in some organizations or cultures talking about transitions, they don't want to hear about it because they want the athletes focusing on their sport in the present. Is that a kind of a battle that resonates with you? And and how do you kind of how has the conversation around that changed over the last few years?

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Yeah, no, definitely. Uh that's definitely uh relevant. Um, I think over the last couple of years, I think people are coming more and more aware of the challenges athletes face when they retire. So the the struggle to find a new identity, the mental health challenges, you know, reintegrating back into society. So, you know, what we really encourage is that dual pathway. So you can be a high-level athlete, but you can have another focus as well. It doesn't necessarily have to be formal education, it could be that you're learning a new language or you're doing a course online. It can be anything that that athlete's really interested in. I just think developing sort of that identity outside of sport is just absolutely so crucial. And I think in some sporting environments, it probably is still deemed as being something they shouldn't do. So, particularly professional sports. And when I say that, I'm thinking about male football, for example. Yeah, it's still an environment where it's probably deemed not sort of the norm. And that's probably something we need to break within that culture.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

And is that, I suppose, a key, the research being a key strand in that? Is the research, is the research about trying to build a evidence base for the value of building dual careers, dual identities?

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Yeah, definitely. And there is research that is being done at the moment that's actually looking at whether doing education alongside high level sport can actually benefit your sports performance. And I think when we have the research in this area, I think that would be a really great buy in for sports to say, actually, you know, if my athletes are doing a course one or two days a week or in the evening doing an online course, that's actually going to benefit them on the pitch. So we would really encourage that and we would Help organise that. So I think as soon as thoughts sort of hear that that performance gain can be made from having an alternative identity and focus, then I think that would encourage more to do it.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

And obviously, it's as responsible practitioners, we want to make sure that that evidence is there and it's designed in the right way. But just from an anecdotal perspective, just from your own experience, I know you mentioned that having the two things happening at the same time was incredibly challenging. But when you look back, do you do you look at what was happening in the your education side of life and you think, actually, you know, that transferred quite well, or that really supported, or that allowed me to detach from performing for a wee bit? When you look back, can you see those positives?

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Definitely. I mean, if you, for example, had a tournament on the weekend and you didn't particularly do very well and you came back, came back to university on that Monday morning, you've got lectures straight away at nine o'clock, you know, straight away your focus has shifted on something else. If you're a full-time athlete, you're gonna just sit there and reflect on that in a negative way, and that could probably, in the end, sort of influence your mental health or well-being. So for me, definitely just being able to say, okay, that's parts now, that's over, I need to focus on this now. In the end, that that definitely had a positive impact on me. And it's probably the reason why I think maybe I have stayed in the sport for so many years is that I have just had a really nice life balance and sort of the two have worked really complementary with each other. But then I actually saw an article the other day from Hong Kong and it describes the dual career as almost like this complementary distraction, which I thought was a really nice way of putting it.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

I suppose there what you've described there is the education still performing a valuable role in the context of the sport. But equally, I suppose it can happen the other way. You might dwell less on a bad essay score or an exam score that you thought maybe you should have done better in because you then have your your sport or your training to go to.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Yeah, I think it just gives you some perspective in that, you know, that sport doesn't mean everything to me. There is another thing, there is another part of me. So yeah, I just think it gives you some life perspective having two parts to your life.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

So, what are the really common challenges? What are the the patterns and the themes that you you see crop up again and again when it comes to people trying to manage their dual career?

SPEAKER_01 24:21

Um, I mean, loads of things really. I think there's quite a few things that can really sort of negatively influence your dual career experience. I think one of the main things that's quite a personal thing is is that motivation to actually do a dual career. You know, sometimes I think athletes can feel that they they're pushed into it or they have to do something, they have to have this backup plan. And actually, when athletes view it in that way and they're not really motivated to do it, it can actually negatively influence their sport and academics. I think something that's really important is finding that thing you're really passionate about, you're really interested in, you want to you want to commit time to. I think too many athletes might just rush into something and say, just do like, oh, I like sport, so I'll just do sport science or something like that. I think finding that, you know, what you're passionate about is really important and that will just positively influence everything in your life.

Half time reflection

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Right, time for the halftime oranges and a pause to discuss what we've just heard. But before we do that, I mentioned at the start that there's a slight change of format for this episode. Since I've been using my outdoors time to walk and reflect on these interviews, I thought it'd be apt to do this segment using this outdoors backdrop during half time. So let me introduce you to King George's Park in Wandsworth. This is the place I often go to pause and think about my day, my week, the future, a podcast interview that has got me thinking or just to blow off some steam after a challenging day. Just to be clear, I recorded the park separately to this voiceover, so I'm very sorry to ruin the image of me sat on a bench with all my recording kit looking like a bit of an oddball. It was here that I reflected on one of the things Emma mentioned. It was her sliding doors moment where she had a choice to make between going all in on table tennis or whether to go to university, and whether to go to a university near the National Training Centre or a university that she actually wanted to go to a bit further away. What struck me was the level of commitment some of us have to make at such a young age. These sliding doors choices, whether to double down in your performance area, whether to balance it with university, which university to go to, closer to the National Training Centre, or the challenge of one based further away. These are enormous decisions to make at such a young age, and ones which can have a big impact on where your life may head. My partner is a doctor, and it reminded me of the commitment many make to following this journey even from as young an age as 15, deciding whether to take separate sciences so as to prepare for your science A levels, so as to give yourself the best chance of getting into medical school. You then can study for five years and spend another two years in foundational training and then choose what type of doctor you want to be. This could equally apply to the pathways of some accountants or architects or those pursuing law or teaching or nursing and many other careers. We may make these enormous commitments at such a young age before really knowing who we are. Maybe this is why retraining in your career or pivoting into a new direction can feel so hard, because we've invested so much for as long as we can remember into that thing. It's been a part of who we are for so long, a product of enormous decisions we made at a very young age before we truly knew ourselves. I suppose if you are listening to this and on such a journey, maybe we can take some comfort in the fact that so many of us are in the same boat. None of us have that crystal ball and can tell the future. At any stage of life, whether that's in high school or university or in the working world. It made me think of some of the principles I've learned recently from ATT in Russ Harris's book, The Happiness Travel. The idea that our worlds change and may look very different over the course of our lives. We might thrive at points, we might struggle, we might get promoted, we might get sacked. But as long as you have a set of values to guide you, these values can help direct forwards into this unknowable future. In effect, you can kind of take hindsight and dwelling on the past out of the equation. As Harris says, quoting from the book, you never know in advance whether you will achieve your goals. All you can do is keep moving forward in a valued direction. The future is not in your control, but what is in your control is your ability to continue your journey step by step, learning and growing as you progress and getting back on track whenever you wander. Now I'll leave a link to the book in the podcast description in case you are interested in finding out a little bit more about ACT. But for now, sadly, it's time to leave King George's Park. But on the bright side, we get to return to the conversation with Dr. Emma Vickers. It's interesting you mentioned that motivation point. There's a, I don't know whether you've seen it, there's a documentary on, I think it's on Netflix called Last Chance You.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

Okay. No, I've not seen that.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

It's based in a junior college in uh America and they've kind of positioned themselves as the college to go to for athletes who have dropped out of other colleges.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Interesting. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

And they need to get their qualifications back up so they can get their athletic career into a good top NCAA team, etc. And I I don't know whether this is just me just kind of imprinting my American stereotype of their system over there, but it did strike me that a lot of those athletes were very unenthused about the education side of things. They just saw it as a tick box in order for them to advance their athletic career, maybe because of the system out in America, because everything is kind of done through college. Whereas over here in the UK, the university system feels like more of a choice. Whereas if you did want to just focus on the sport, you could go to an elite cricket academy or rugby or football and not go to university. You could just go straight for it.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Yeah. I mean, like you said, the the setup in in the US is that the sport and the education is very much intertwined. Um, and to become pro, you almost have to go through that collegiate system. Um whereas you're right, in the UK, the two are quite separated. And I think that probably has a benefit because it means you can switch off and go from one and one to the other. I don't really think there's been any much or any research that's actually looked at the sort of well-being compared to the athletes in that system, compared to the athletes in our system, and whether there's any differences there. I think that would be really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Could be a good idea for a project that.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

I'd be happy to accept an acknowledgement on that.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

We'll put you on the end of that.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

On that paper when it comes out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Add it to my research gate. Um, but yeah, so what about we'll just turn towards transitions because that's where your experience, your PhD, your passion kind of lies. Talk talk to us more about the work that TAS are doing around transitions and and how can you help work with athletes to make that smoother or less traumatic or less friction?

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Yeah. I mean, definitely the transition to university is one of the main transitions we have focused on in the last few years. I mean, it's a really, it's a really challenging time for athletes because it's actually the time in their athletic careers or their lives where the most amount of changes are happening. There's loads of different coinciding transitions. So not only are they moving into university and moving to maybe a new a new city for the first time, they might even have never lived away from home before. But they're also quite often in in a lot of sports, they're also making that jump from development to that mastery level as well.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

So junior to senior transitions. So the two together can be a really big change for athletes. And actually, what we know is that some research suggests that up to one in three athletes could actually drop out of the university in their first year, and athletes are more vulnerable to dropping out than sort of the general student population. So there's obviously this sort of large number of changes happening at one time, which is almost like turning into this perfect storm. So when athletes move into university, there's obviously a lot of changes they experience. So, particularly in their sport, like I said, they might become this mastery-level athlete, they might have a new coach, they might have to adapt to new teammates, they might suddenly have an increase in their sports demands. So they might have to play for the university, for example, they might play for a club and they might play for their country. So they've got three sort of different sports demands there conflicting with one another, which may lead to potentially becoming injured or feeling burnt out. So managing sort of the amount of sport the athlete is doing in that first year, I think, is really important. And you've obviously also got sort of changes at that psychological level. So if we're looking at an athlete who's sort of moving to university at that traditional age, so sort of 18, 19, they're sort of moving from being, you know, an adolescent into an adult and suddenly they're looking after themselves, doing their own washing, cooking, and they've got to make sure that they're, you know, making the right meals so that they're able to train enough. Maybe their parents have traditionally done that for them. So that's something they need to sort of consider beforehand, maybe start preparing for that. And obviously, I think one of the big ones as well is at the social side of things. So when athletes move into university, it might be the first time they've ever sort of they might have traditionally just interacted a lot with their athlete groups and suddenly they're introduced to a lot of people with different backgrounds, different objectives and perceptions of life. And you know, that can maybe skew their perceptions a bit and skew their priorities, and they might get involved in, you know, it's obviously going out and that whole culture of drinking at university, and that they might not have experienced that before. And we do see quite a few athletes who move into universities are really high-level athlete, and actually they become involved in that, and that sort of shifts the whole priority, and suddenly sport isn't the most important thing anymore. So they're just a couple to name. I mean, there's lots more, obviously, the academic side of things as well, being in that environment where they've got to be a bit more proactive, take ownership of their own sort of development, do their independent learning, and obviously they've got to fit that around their training and make sure that they can balance all of that. So, yeah, there's all these demands happening at one time. And where tasks would fit into that. So we would obviously provide the athlete with a lifestyle advisor who they can meet with before university or just after they arrive, and they can sit down and obviously map any sort of areas or skills they think they they need to develop. So maybe they need to develop some ways to manage stress, or maybe they need to develop some ways of how they can more effectively balance or manage their time, or maybe they need to map their whole sort of year in advance, their whole sporting and academic calendar, and pick out some specific hotspots or phases in the year where actually, you know, I've got a lot going on there. So what can I do beforehand to help manage that? So I think it's just being really proactive instead of sort of managing it at the time. You need to sort of think ahead, I think.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

Yeah. I mean, you use the the analogy of the perfect storm.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

And I don't think that could be more apt. Yeah. I mean, I've just I've drawn a big storm cloud in the middle of my my pad there and all these different lightning bolts coming off the side, whether it's a a lifestyle change, like you said, like a geographical change, a change from living with family to to not, a change from being kind of spoon-fed your education as you tend to be from GCC to A level to suddenly it's really all on you to manage that workload to manage that organization. And then you've got all the stuff on the sports side as well, new coach, new teammate, new club, the friction between club and country. There's an enormous amount there. Yeah. And so I imagine just having that person that you can sit down in a room with in your first month at university and go, right, this is what's going on. Map it out, draw it out, what are the skills that can help you support through that must be enormous.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Oh, definitely. I think the lifestyle advisor is a really integral part in an athlete's life, particularly at that period. One thing we do find at TAS is that a lot of people enter the program and they they don't really understand much about what lifestyle support is and what how it can benefit you. I think sometimes it's just sort of perceived a bit as a bit of as like a tick box. You know, I've done it, I've met them where I've spoken about what I should speak about. But actually, I think if athletes really had a good knowledge about how this person can help them facilitate their development and empower them to sort of manage their lives beforehand, I think that would be really, really integral.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

The time management one's quite big, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Yeah, definitely. I think managing your time as an athlete can be challenging and different sports as well, it looks very different. So, for example, you might have a winter sport athlete who's actually living abroad for six months of the year and then living in the UK with six months of the year, you know, their time is going to look very different and their the way they prioritise their time will be very different. I think there's often a misconception that a dual career is sort of 50-50 and that you balance your time equally, but it's absolutely not. I mean, you could be sport 90% of the time, education 10%, and then in a couple of months' time it completely reverses. So it's definitely just understanding when and how to make those shifts.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Yeah, I think that's a more general interesting insight about life actually and this idea of a work-life balance.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

Obviously, in the TAS world, a work-life balance is quite often the balance between university and elite sport, but other people that might be listening to this might be balancing their family and work or work. And, you know, there's an enormous amount of people in the city now who are high level in services industries, but also performing quite well in in amateur triathlons on the side. And they almost take their sport as seriously as a professional athlete and they're trying to strike this balance. And I think the the misconception around this work-life balance is it's this kind of razor's edge, this fifty, like you said, this 50-50 or 30-30-30 pie chart that you just maintain constantly, but it's actually this flexible moving beast, and and having the ability to upweight something when it needs to be addressed and being able to downweight something else, that's quite important.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Yeah, I definitely think having that skill as a student athlete is absolutely integral and something they should sort of understand before they embark on that process. But something we want to look at as well is how can we learn about jewel careers in other contexts? So obviously, we know quite a lot about the sport context and being an athlete and being a student or working and being an athlete, but we don't know much about other jewel career contexts. So maybe like looking at art or music, something like that, or dance, you know, what is it like to be a really talented musician? You're practicing, you know, several hours in a day, and also being a student as well, or having a job as well. You know, there's probably things we can we can learn from that side that we've never really thought of before.

SPEAKER_00 39:39

Yeah. And hopefully the cultural context, as in the kind of acceptingness of being able to do multiple things, have multiple careers or multiple sides to your identity, is something that is starting to loosen to become more accepting. So, for example, management today, which is a an enormous publication within the business world, they partner with a recruitment company called TimeWise. And every January they publish a list of 50 people who are managing dual careers or who are working flexibly.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Um, so I think it's kind of three, four days a week type pattern.

SPEAKER_02 40:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

And they yeah, so they they have a big publication that goes out in January, and it normally gets picked up by a lot of the traditional media and certainly the media within the kind of business and marketing world. And they spotlight certain people who are doing it really well. So people you might traditionally think of as the kind of Maggie Thatcher types who are only getting four hours a night's sleep and they're just drilling all of their time into that one thing. They're actually chairmen of companies, but on the side, they're also non-exec directors or supporters of the National Theatre or the National Ballet, or they've got another side hustle, another project that they've got going on. And it just kind of starts to challenge the preconception or the stereotype of the successful person, regardless of what domain that is, whether it's sport, whether it's business, doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think there's there's more things we can learn from those contexts that we've never even sort of picked out before. So yeah, I think that could be an interesting area of research in the future.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

What are your favorite personal examples? Or not maybe personal examples isn't the right terminology, but what are your favourite examples of athletes out there who've managed to keep their education or keep their job going on the side of their athletic pursuits?

SPEAKER_01 41:28

Well, I mean, there must be loads of sort of high-level, um, high-level athlete examples at the Olympic level. I mean, there's examples of Olympic level rowers being doctors at the same time. And so can you even imagine the demands of managing being a doctor day to day and then training in the evening or in the morning? I mean, that must be incredibly stressful, but probably also really helpful in terms of being able to switch off. So, yeah, definitely those kind of examples are really inspiring to look at. But yeah, I guess, I guess there's some examples. I mean, I don't know that personally that the names of these people, but definitely in like the football world and things like that, people who have just gone out of the box and said, you know, actually I want to have an education, I want to do something else. I'm not going to follow what my teammates are doing, I'm not going to pursue something else. Because I think, you know, it it takes sort of that person to sort of step out of the box and say, you know, I I want to do, I want to be someone, uh, other than an athlete. So I think we probably need more people to to do that, to to break that culture of, you know, sport has to be everything. If I wanna if I want to be world championship, world champion or Olympic champion, sport has to be everything. I think if more people step out of that box, then more people will engage in in other things.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

Okay, right. So I think a good time to ask the question I ask everyone on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

There's certainly no right answer to the question, but I'm really fascinated at the different angles and different spins that people are bringing to this question. It's it's all to do with the name of the podcast, the Pi, the psychologically informed environment. What does a psychologically informed environment look like? What does it mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 42:57

I guess for me, it's it's an environment that really absorbs and implements sort of research and theory. So it's really said, okay, I want to do something to improve this environment. So I'm going to look at what information is out there for me to do that. So I guess within that environment, it would mean that someone is driving that, someone is consistently looking at what research is there and how we can input that back in. So I guess there would be this almost level of awareness of how specific populations might think or feel, or you know, how can practitioners engage with those specific populations to optimize the whole sort of environment and situation to get the best possible there can be. So yeah, for me, that's probably what it means. But I think there's sometimes there's a barrier to doing that as well. So, for example, if we look at the dual career world, there's been an absolute explosion of dual career research over the last sort of 10 years or so. But it's been in quite small pockets across Europe. And actually it's not really dispersed very well. Um and, you know, at the sector level, I don't think many, I don't think many um People, for example, working in a sports scholarship program would would understand that there's 50 Erasmus jewel career projects currently happening at the moment. So I think it requires someone to really sort of enable that transfer of knowledge and research to happen.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

So for you, the I've just written, I've just drawn it's a you've kind of what you've described there's a bit of a feedback loop in terms of a Pi having a mechanism, whether it's inbuilt into the system or whether some person, an individual person is driving it, but is constantly reflecting and unearthing research insights from that environment that helps then inform how that environment is then structured for people to perform well and to have optimized well-being.

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Yeah, no, I definitely think that that's that's definitely what I was trying to say. Um it's not the easiest thing to try and describe, but but yeah, I definitely think, like I said, it needs someone to drive it. And you obviously need to also assess whether what you're inputting into that system is is having an impact. So it's no point just testing out a new thing and then not not finding out whether actually it's had an impact on the athletes or the performance or well-being of that population. I think it constantly needs to be tested as well.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

And then you, I suppose you also mentioned, well, if that's what an optimal pie mechanism looks like, then you need really good high-quality input to put into it. And then you've you've noticed some of the barriers around actually bringing some of that research together so it can be used. Has has your kind of journey through what you're doing made you a bit more of a, let's say, pragmatist in terms of bringing together data? Because it's very, very hard to have a, I suppose, your kind of your perfect randomized control styles in in this world. Do you have to kind of be quite proactive, not manipulative, but kind of entrepreneurial with how you put together studies and research in order to create this evidence-based?

SPEAKER_01 45:55

I think so. I mean, me personally, I'm not a very sort of numbers or quantitative focused researcher. For me, I'm very much qualitative. I'm more interested in the thoughts, experiences, opinions of people. But something we've tried to do at task, we we obviously we have a system, a jewel career system in place, um, and we also do research as well. So we're quite unique in that we have the two and we can sort of test new things in that system. I think that's probably what separates us from some of the other dual career systems across Europe. We're always thinking of new ways we can we can implement our research. So, what we've been working on for the past two years or so is a database of all the jewel career research that's out there. Um, so basically, what we've done with that database is we've we've got all the research that's been conducted in Europe within the field of dual career, and we've basically written the academic article into a really sort of short practical summary that maybe a coach or a teacher or a parent or athlete could look and actually think, well, that's really interesting. I might try that. Because I think often that academic literature is a bit of a barrier and then puts people off quite a lot. So as soon as you frame it in a new way, it can actually invite a lot more people to try and test that research. So that's something we've been working on for the last few years, and we're looking to launch that this year on our website.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

So managing that academic, you I suppose the researcher side of you has to have that academic lens and way of writing. But then knowing that eventually you want that research to be applied, you want it to be taken in and consumed by your the your population here of your career athletes, that also needs to be transferred into a more palatable or interesting or persuasive use of language or content in order for that to be as impactful as possible.

SPEAKER_01 47:38

Yeah, definitely. I think far too much academic research just sits in a journal and doesn't go anywhere. What the whole point of research is obviously to help people and make programs of support better, influence people's experiences to make them more positive. So I think it requires someone to say, yeah, I've got this academic research now, I understand it, but this is how I want to translate it to make it more user-friendly for different people to access.

SPEAKER_00 48:01

Amen. I think there'll be many, many people listening to this uh podcast will be nodding on with that, uh nodding along with that, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 48:09

I think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

Well, look, thanks so much for for spending some time to share some of your insights. I've been really chomping at the bit to find out more about TAS in the last few months, having spoken to some other people on the podcast who've been talking about this area. So it's been really interesting and valuable to dig into the dig into some of those areas. So thank you for that. If um people want to learn more about yourself, about TASS, to follow what you're doing online, where are the places online that people can keep up to date with with yourself and TAS?

SPEAKER_01 48:41

I'd probably say we're most active on Twitter. So TASS's Twitter account is at talented athlete. So we're always sharing sort of news stories about our athlete, different resources, the research that we're doing, where to find the findings. We also tweet about our newsletters, some of the results of our athletes and things like that. So I definitely say TASS Twitter account is probably the best place to keep in touch with what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 49:03

Great. And yourself, what about if people want to know more about what Emma Vickers is up to?

SPEAKER_01 49:07

Yeah, so I tweet a lot as well. It's my sort of primary social media that I use. So my Twitter account is at Emma underscore Vickers91. So yeah, you'll also find a lot of talk related research on my Twitter account as well.

SPEAKER_00 49:21

Great. Well, look, thanks again, Emma. Best of luck with supporting all of your athletes through this this period. Already sounds like the proactive stuff that you're doing with the lockdown piece of content is is you're already putting a lot of effort into that. So good on you and uh best of luck with uh the next few months and and the future beyond that.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

Well, thank you. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 49:42

Cheers. Thanks, Emma.

Full time reflection

SPEAKER_00 49:44

Right, if you're still listening, thanks for sharing another slice of pie with me. If you're listening from an Apple device, a review on iTunes would be hugely appreciated and will help others discover these conversations and bring the insights from people like Emma and other guests to a wider audience. So, what is worth reflecting on at full time? The first thing that came to mind for me, because it's been popping up everywhere in high performance sport, or at least certainly in those that I follow online, is this growing role of performance lifestyle advisor. A quick Google shows that as well as TAS, the English Institute of Sport has them, as do UK Athletics, Loughborough University, Sport Scotland, Sport Wales, and probably many others as well. Now, if you'd like to lean in more to knowing about this field, I know that Elliot Newell at the English Institute of Sport has done a couple of interesting podcasts on both the Sports Psych Show and the Magic Academy, talking about that, so maybe you could go and check those out if you wanted to find out more. But coming back to looking at how different environments organise themselves, and I'm going to put myself out on a limb a bit here, and there may be lifestyle advisors listening to this that disagree, but for me, this role or function really reminds me of the HR function in businesses, and that when working well, they provide a great resource for employees to access support and transition into new roles effectively. Another parallel with the HR function was Emma mentioning that sometimes there can be a lack of understanding of how this function can be of benefit. And in business, you may often see people struggling at work completely unaware that there's this entire function dedicated to trying to help you travel shoot problems or just to provide social support. The other thing that stood out for me in the conversation was this notion that in many environments, still, if you want to develop a dual career, you'll probably be going against the grain of social norms and the acknowledged blueprint that everyone else is following. Emma mentions that it often takes someone to put their hand up and say, I want to be more than just an athlete. However, if the received wisdom within a sporting culture, organization, a business or a club is to focus everything on that endeavour, and most people are doing that, just from a peer pressure, a social norms perspective, however you want to describe it, that probably requires a lot of conviction. A bit of bravery, maybe, maybe even a strength in knowing who you want to be, to go against these norms and take control of the direction your life should go. It reminded me of Leon Lloyd's story from episode 3 about he was interning in the ticket office and shadowing the Leicester Tiger CEO during the off-season, while most of his teammates were on holiday blowing off steam. At the moment, developing a dual career is not the norm in many worlds, therefore you have to accept that forging your own path may be seen in some quarters as abnormal. Looping back to the reflection at halftime, I suppose all we can do is look at our values and where we want our lives to go and trust that by enacting these values we are living a meaningful life. Finally, thanks to all those getting in touch over Instagram, Twitter, email, and LinkedIn. Please keep the thoughts, questions, and ideas coming. If any of this sparks anything for you, I'd love to hear about it. Until then, thanks again for listening and have a good one.