SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hello and welcome to the Slice of Pie podcast with me, Pete Jackson. It's the last one of the series, and very fitting that we round off series one with someone who has had the longest career I've spoken to so far. In the worlds of psychology, working across clinical settings such as psychiatric wards, businesses and exec coaching, and the small matter of four Paralympic Games as a sports psychology support staff. In this last episode, we put the psychologically informed environment under the microscope with Dr. Jonathan Katz. Former fencer turned coach, former counselling psychologist, turned sports psychologist, and veteran of four Paralympic Games. Team England head coach for the 2010, 2014, and 2018 Commonwealth Fencing Championships, BPS accredited supervisor, and business and executive coach as well. That's some CV. It was great to hear a first-hand perspective from someone who has lived through the first wave of interest and adoption of psychology in sports and has that panoramic view on how the profession and industry has evolved over the last 20 to 30 years. We discussed the impact of the Tokyo Olympics moving to 2021 in forensic detail, examining the implications for younger and older athletes, those closer to retirement, the access to training and preparation facilities, and the communication web between national governing bodies, the British Olympic Association, and the IOC, amongst many others. As always, we'll have a half-time and full-time reflection, but I'll chuck in another signpost this week. And I've never done this before, but if you wanted to jump directly to Jonathan's definition of the pie, you can find it at around 10 to 12 minutes before the end of the episode. It is incredibly well thought through and detailed. There was a brilliant triangular diagram to accompany it, which I had the private pleasure of seeing over Zoom. And I would encourage anyone working at a systemic or organizational level to have a listen to this particularly. And feel free to send myself or Jonathan any thoughts or feedback on it. Jonathan Katz can now be accessed in Twitter form on at Drjon J O N Katz, K-A-T-Z. So feel free to reach out to him andor myself. I'd be dead interested to hear any reflections. Right, catch you in about 25 minutes for the first half discussion then. In the meantime, let's get into it with Dr. Jonathan Katz. Jonathan, how are we?

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Hi, hi Peter. I'm very well, thank you. And and yourself?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Very well, thanks. Very well. How are you navigating this period we're living through at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Increasingly comfortably in that it's a little bit more familiar as time's unfolded and sort of managing the changes to our routines, I guess, and setting up some new ones which are helping by and large pretty well and uh finding ways to progress and to be as effective as I can personally and professionally in these times.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Yeah, it's a funny old time. Is is there anything that's that's kind of fundamentally changed for you that you've seen as almost a bit of a an opportunity as a as a positive? Is there any little rays of light you're you're taking from it at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Prior to this time, I was blending online consulting with in-person consulting anyway. And this opportunity has confirmed not only is it possible, it certainly can be quite productive. And and that's been a nice takeaway from where we are. And I I guess also having a little bit more time to consider things. So that time that might have been spent traveling between places is now spent perhaps preparing for or reflecting upon what I'm doing or what I have done.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Yeah, that's nice. A bit more time to navel gaze, to to reflect, to consider, to have a think about things. In the spirit of reflection, I think it'd be really useful for those listening for you to do a bit of reflecting on your own journey up until now. I I don't know whether it's able you're able to give us a quick hitchhike through your career up until this point and and where you've got to.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Well, I've I first took my hitchhiking, I took out my hitchhiking thumb um in uh within two of over two parallel journeys. One was a sporting journey, which I'll come back to, and the other is in the field of psychology. And I I did a a training in psychology, and I did that in in two cultures and countries, in the UK and the states, and ended up working for a number of years in in clinical settings in a psychiatric hospital. And alongside that, I also did a PhD in applied psychology. Coming back to the sporting world, I'm offensive by sport, and uh I competed in that sport, and I became a coach, which was brought forward because of injury, and like all good sports people, I disobeyed some of the medical advice of never to do a sport ever again, and found a way to to navigate the sport and get fit and healthy, and that's where coaching took over, and then I blended the areas of uh sports and psychology when people I knew in the sports world wanted psychology support. And uh I did that, became an independent consultant, and and currently have three broad strands to my professional journey in sport performance, training and supervision in a wide sense of those terms, and in business coaching. So that's where my my thumb on the side of my professional road is taking me.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Great. You mentioned there the the point at which there was suddenly, or not suddenly, but maybe gradually, a requirement or an appetite for more of the psychology within sports settings. Do you do you remember the the period in which that started to become more prevalent? When did that that appetite seem to kind of take off a wee bit more within sport?

SPEAKER_02 6:54

It started to take off when I was doing more sports coaching and I was doing so, I was receiving informal inquiries around sport. Also, as I was working professionally in the clinical sector, I was I was realizing that I wanted a bit more of a balance to my experience from one end of poor mental health or well-being into people who were perhaps seemed to be very well motivated and productive. And I did that. And at the time I did a supervised experience or a part of a supervised experience with Bases, and that that really cemented that progression where I could see that I could generalize all the learning and experience I'd accrued before into the sports world, and then add to that in that world. So that's probably a brief thumbnail summary of, I guess, about a four or five year period.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Yeah, so as you were doing more within the sports coaching side of things, added to the the day-to-day stuff in clinical, and maybe an appetite for for something at the other end of that that spectrum, that's kind of arisen, the the motivation to go into it. But what about the the opportunity? Have you noticed over the last 10, 15, 20 years a more general increasing in appetite for psychology provision within sport? When, and if so, when when has it kind of really kicked on?

SPEAKER_02 8:36

The period I was talking about would have been in the mid to late 1990s.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

And my impression at that time is that sport psychology was considerably less visible than it is now. And the visibility that I saw at that time, it was a reactive approach to a particular need. Not necessarily a crisis need, but certainly somebody was saying, I'm struggling here, or I'd like more information about a certain work. Or in my case, I was talking to an international fencer who what appealed to them was having a psychologist who understood their sport very well, which meant that the integration of the psychology into the sport was a little easier for them. I mentioned that because that's one of the key changes that I've seen in, I guess, that period of time since, which is where psychology is now seen as an equal part to supporting performance, supporting all the stakeholders with within the performance environment, rather than a bolt-on, which it had been. So, yes, it has changed. Opportunities have widened as a result. And I think certainly the structures in in the development of people working within sport have also correspondingly evolved to increase that narrative.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

It's interesting you mentioned that integration approach. One thing that I seem to be reading more and more of now, or seeing quite experienced people in the field talk about at conferences is how the traditional, let's say let's call it the canon of sports psychology, your breathing, your self-talk, relaxation, that type of stuff, your traditional mental skills, they are things that can be integrated into coaching development. And therefore, do we do we support the coaches to learn those skills to pass on to athletes to free the new, let's say, the new generation of sports psychology up to do maybe slightly higher order stuff, maybe working in culture, for example. Is that something that you've experienced or you have a point of view on?

SPEAKER_02 10:55

I can certainly have a view on that. There's a point though you mentioned earlier around this integration. It's something which I'd already experienced of psychology being integrated into a support service within clinical and psychiatric settings. So it was it was surprising to me that it wasn't universal within sport. So that's that's what appealed to me in that point. Moving on, you you're asking about the role of the coach and how coaches are supported. I I think for me, one of the most important evolutions has been the what I term, and I think the literature refers to as the coach-athlete unit or the coach-athlete relationship, where the certainly in individual sports, the coach spends by far and away the greatest time with an athlete, more so than any psychologist. So it's crucial that the person in that role can be an influencer and supporter of the psychology, and that comes from their own training in their own coach development, as well as having support themselves. So I see the role of the psych often having direct support with an athlete, for example, but also indirect support with an athlete through a coach. And finally, the coach being the client and them seeking how to progress and grow and develop as people, as professionals in their in their fields.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Okay, that's interesting. So the integration there I'm I'm hearing is kind of got two strands. There's the integration of psychology within potentially the coaching development, the development of coaches, but also the integration of psychology not just with athletes, but actually in supporting the supporters.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

Yes, yes. I think that's very important because one of the professional attributes psychology can provide, not necessarily not necessarily uniquely, but certainly it is prevalent, is the capacity to have perspective and offer areas where people can grow, reflect, and develop. Perhaps also maybe in within, say, of a very busy training program, may have a little bit more capacity to see the wood for the trees, if you like, and and can then help to complement that perspective with the coach's perspective that produces, I think, um a more resilient, more robust, and I think hopefully a more healthy context for the athletes themselves.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Yeah, that's interesting that that aspect around being that I suppose that person that can take a bird's eye view, seeing the wood for the trees, is something that's come up a couple of times on the podcast, certainly in relation to consultancy. And in the business world, quite often you bring in consultants for that kind of impartial, fresh perspective on an environment or a way of working or an organization. Do you think that's that's kind of a key role or a key part of being a sports psychologist these days within a team environment is to have that one foot within the environment and the culture, so you're part of it, but also one foot out, so you can be that impartial observer as well?

SPEAKER_02 14:24

It's the short answer is yes, and there are some caveats, I guess, to that, which may come out as we continue our conversation. I I think I think the the training and development of psychologists really emphasizes the role of reflection and looking at understanding process as well as content, and that I think stands us in good stead to keep that one step in and one step out image that you you mentioned. I think alongside that there's a sort of a professional dilemma for consultants in in psychology, which is how much knowledge do you need to know about the domain of your client to be effective? And I guess if the role is one of helping the individual grow as a person and have that wider lens, then maybe having slightly less detailed understanding might be helpful in that. Similarly, in terms of engaging with clients, I think having a sense of what the world looks like from the client's point of view, be it the business person or coach or athlete, I think is important as a bridge in that dynamic.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yeah, it's interesting how that knowledge, that intimate knowledge of the sport or the culture or having slightly less knowledge can be certainly can be spun two different ways in the marketing of services. And you know, I saw this for years and years in advertising before I even stepped into sports psychology. If we were working with an automotive client and we'd never worked with an automotive client before, we'd go into the room and go, Do you know what? We don't actually have much experience in this category, but we think that's a real benefit because we can bring fresh perspectives from another world. Of course, if we already had an experience within automotive, we'd kind of sell the opposite. I suppose there's probably an element of truth and certainly value in both perspectives, but I think I find it's interesting that what you were talking about there can also be wrapped up in how we sell our services.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

It certainly can influence that um uh that business packaging part of our services. And I think I'll add perhaps a third lens, which is even if as a consultant one has in-depth knowledge of one's the environment of the coach or the athlete or the client that one's working with. Also having detailed knowledge of other performance settings, be them in sport or business, provides a point of reference or comparison whereby perspective can be gained and saying in the sector that the client is working in has certain challenges they may face. Those challenges may be met in quite different ways in another sector, and thereby bringing some cross-referencing of information. So I think over time, having breadth and depth is is the, I guess, one of the professional tasks that requires ongoing management and maintenance.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Oh, that's really interesting. I like how I've summarised a kind of a dichotomous view on what we were talking about, and then you've come back in with secret door number three, uh, which is this other view that actually having knowledge of that environment, but lots of other environments as well, can help you maybe triangulate or or compare what's going on and give you maybe a slightly broader view of the dynamic or of what you're studying. Um, also lends a nice segue into I think the next part of the conversation because, in terms of having seen a lot of different environments, you've been to how how many Olympic Games was it? I've attended four Paralympic Games. Four Paralympics? Yes. Four Paralympic Games. Wow. And uh I'm sure that's giving you an enormously kind of broad perspective across all the sports as as well that happens in a Paralympics. Um, I'd love to dig into what goes on in that type of in environment, the Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games, because it's quite unique, right? If you're traveling for an away Paralympics, if we take London 2012 out of the equation, um, although I'm sure that probably had its own challenges as well in terms of a home game. But if you're if you're traveling away to a different game, there must be so much you need to prepare for in terms of the knowns and unknowns of that environment.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Uh yes, it's it's a multi multifaceted uh environment. And uh just to broaden the lens of my perspective, I've worked with individual athletes from the Sydney Games in 2000. So I've worked with people going to Olympics and Paralympics. The away games is a challenge, as is any major event, where the practicalities uh from the travel logistics, the time zone differences, the climate uh variables, the uh level of pollution or otherwise is is a factor. So those are quite big picture items, if you like, and provide, if you like, the the backdrop to the process. My understanding is that uh games becomes notes can become finalized seven years before it's delivered, with the exception of the Tokyo games, which is something we we may or may not talk about a bit later. And that means that organizers at Paralympics GB or the BOA and others would have been working towards preparing for the games for at least seven, if not eight or nine years, going out and then building up an infrastructure for the holding camp or preparation camp, which may have multiple geographic sites, and then the games themselves. So there's a very wide picture around the organizational structure. I guess, secondly, within that is what makes the games quite distinct from, say, in World Championships, is that a governing body is one of many. So, for example, there might be 15, 16-ish um governing bodies within Paralympic sports who come under the Paralympics GB umbrella and the Paralympics GB talk to the games organizers. So there's an organizational and communication infrastructure that is different to other single event championships. And some sports, people in those sports may not have had that experience, and that could be the first-time athlete, but equally the first-time support person, the first-time coach, manager, etc. So there's a wide range of learning to be done in those settings.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Yeah, that's super interesting. I hadn't, I do know what I hadn't even considered that. I mean, obviously, the the way that the language around Olympic preparation is always referred to as a cycle. But I always assumed they were, you know, you do a games and then you you look forward to the next cycle. But it's interesting there that actually the lens is a lot wider than those four years. It's as soon as you know the Olympics is going to be staged there, you have that seven, eight, nine years to prepare for that. Games whilst preparing for the games beforehand, which is interesting. I didn't I didn't know that. And then the all the machinations behind the scenes, politically, funding-wise, the way that coaches and managers within those different governing bodies would have to talk to the Paralympics umbrella, British Olympic Association, IOC. There's so much communication there that needs to happen, which is super interesting.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Yes, it is. I just wanted just to give you a brief example to illustrate that. Great. I was sitting in the athlete village doing some work at the Beijing Games in 2008. Concurrent with doing that, I was preparing materials for the upcoming 2010 Winter Paralympic Games and also some of the formative work for the London 2012 Games whilst delivering in Beijing. So that gives for me, gives, I guess, a sort of a real example of those layers and time frames colliding in the play one place in time.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

It's amazing. Yeah. A British support staff member in China working on the immediate challenges within the Beijing Games, but also simultaneously thinking about back in London for 2012 and then the World, I can't remember where the Winter Olympic Games were in 2010. Was it Soshi?

SPEAKER_02 23:22

No, the Vancouver.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

The Vancouver Games. Yeah. Yeah, geez, that is that is incredible. That's a good anecdote, that. So well, let's lean into what happens at these games from a support personnel perspective or from a psychological perspective. How how can we help athletes prepare for a completely, I was going to say completely unknown, but there's some gnomes, I suppose, a completely different environment to which they're they're used to. What are the things that we can do to help prepare them for those environmental challenges?

SPEAKER_02 23:51

I'll contextualize the challenge in this way.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

In that a number of sports psychology interventions frequently rely on or utilize the athlete's prior experience to help them inform then a new experience. And for some of those athletes, there isn't any personal prior experience that they can have from which to generate information. So the first challenge is to gain accessible information, and it's useful to consider breaking the environment down into what I feel might be more meaningful or user-friendly chunks. One of those is the athlete sport, their own competition and the performance delivery of that. The other is the wider environment and where the athlete shifts from being I'm a member of this sport and I identify with this sport to I'm now someone who comes under the rubric of Team GB or Paralympics GB. And within that, there's the athlete village and the holding camp, which I mentioned before. So one of the ways I've certainly done this in the past and is to break it down into bite-sized steps and to state that the performance side, what the athlete does on the track, on the field of play, in the velodrome, on the shooting range, wherever the sport happens to be, that is the most familiar to them. The field of play, the dimensions, the environment, the rules and regulations, etc., are largely unchanged or totally unchanged. What changes is the packaging around it. So instead of having your sports, you'll have the country, you'll have a media presence which is wider than sports. And this will vary across different sports. Those sports that have a very big media profile that will be similar. Those sports that tend to have a quite a select meat media profile find themselves in a much bigger space with regards to, or potentially a much bigger space. The athlete village is for the Olympics, is somewhere around 12-ish thousand athletes, probably with everybody else, a similar number of other people, including sports staff, support staff, and then games officials. So you have a town of a number of thousands of people, and you're potentially in that town, it has a dining hall that's open 24-7. It has a transport mall, and all those things are fantastic, but they also come with considerable constraint with regard to security and accreditation. So your your movements, where in other events you might be freer to move from accommodation to dining hall to venue, here you would need to show accreditation into the dining hall, even though you're in the village. When you come back into the village on the transport, you go through security. So although the heart of your activity is the same, all the packaging around it that you need to negotiate is quite different. So the challenge in its summary is to insulate the performance from all that packaging.

Half time reflection

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Right, time to break for half-time oranges, a black currant Lucas Aid, or a handful of jelly babies. A big thanks to John, not John Katz, but a different John on Twitter who posted his half-time snack. Not a slice of pie, but an incredible slice of cake. I absolutely love that, and happy 50th birthday to you, John. If anyone else out there is enjoying a half-time cupper, a pie, a cake, or other little mid-podcast treat, feel free to reach out. I'd love to know what you're all doing with these half-time breaks. Anyway, for those of you cracking on, here's what we heard in the first half. We heard that integration, whilst in clinical settings has been developed for some time, we are still integrating this process within sport. We heard that breadth and depth of experience is a career-long professional goal and task of a consultant, psychology, business or otherwise. In order to gain both deep contextual information about performance environments, but also a variety that we can use to cross-pollinate patterns, observations, and learnings. And we heard about how we might go and prepare for something with a host of unknowns, like sport in the current climate, or specifically next year's Olympics. First of all, what experience individually and collectively can we draw upon? Next, let's chunk it down to the relevant bite-sized accessible pieces that we can pull apart, analyse, and potentially create plans off the back of that analysis. For example, the individual demands of my sport, then the context of being under the rubric of Team GB or para-team GB, then the holding camp within the host city, or the wider culture of the city and the country where you'll be performing, and then the media presence that pervades through the entire piece. In my head, it's kind of like an onion, drawing concentric circles outwards, starting with the most important context, your context, the performance situation, and working out from there. I'm always looking for unexpected links on Slice of Pie, and for me this reminded me bizarrely of the classic big interview situation. I've spoken to a few performance psychologists who, like myself, have worked with business clients on preparing for big interviews and performing in this kind of synthetic situation. And what Jonathan said here really resonated. I. I suppose it's the idea that this new environment won't feel as novel and shocking if its component elements are practiced or experienced beforehand. In the same way, there are things that you can do to practice interview questions and simulate in John's words that different packaging. As a sidebar, that interview with Katie Warriner is well worth watching. It's on a YouTube channel called Optimum Nutrition, and in fact, as you're here, I'll be mentioning it again in approximately 35 seconds in the second half. Well, that's enough discussion for now. Time for the second half with Dr. Jonathan Katz. Yeah, that's a nice, I love that sound bite, insulating performance from all the packaging around that. That's a really nice, really nice soundbite. It's interesting you you picked up on the constraints around where you can go within the Olympics. Because I watched an interview with a sport psychologist called Katie Warrner, I think it's Katie Warrener, recently on a podcast where she said at the 2012 London Games, she was working with an athlete who is a big Liverpool fan. And on one of his rest days, he actually went up to Liverpool to watch a home game. And that was part of him kind of switching off from his sport and decompressing, etc. And that that really helped and ended up winning a medal. However, at the following games in Rio, that couldn't have been further from an option because of all the security and the constraints around movement.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

But I think also that tells partly the difference of home games versus an away games, but also the wider country and the wider environment and logistics in the country and ease of travel. Certainly, as a British athlete in the UK, getting onto a train or traveling would is fairly usually normal. So, yes, there are some differences between the home games and the way games. What remains constant are the structures and infrastructure that is, if not identical, certainly similar across games.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

So we mentioned before the kind of the uncertainty or the question marks around Tokyo. So I think officially they've said they're going to do the Games next year in 2020 run. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 33:21

That's my understanding, yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

So at this moment in time, what kind of big challenges does that throw up compared to a normal Olympic cycle? What do you reckon we're going to be dealing with as an English Institute of Sport, as an Olympic association, as a Paralympic association that we haven't dealt with before because of this move?

SPEAKER_02 33:43

There are any number of challenges that emerge and they stem from the wider organizational structure at the IOC and organizing committee level through to the structures you mentioned within the UK, right down to the individual athletes, coaches, and their preparations. If I work from the athletes out, if that if that makes sense, I've heard I've had a couple of conversations with one or two people and I've seen some information. And one of the biggest reactions or responses when there was a period of doubt where a number of sports or events were being postponed, and the games was Tokyo still saying it's going to run this year. There was a lot of anxiety, I think, to still prepare an environment where people weren't able to access preparation facilities and then question that. I saw a post from one athlete who has been struggling for fitness following an injury. And for them, and there may be some others who may have been a little bit shy of form, this gives them a time to rehab, recover, and regain that. The flip side of that are those people who were on form and really on track. How do they maintain that for another 18 months? And also there were the I have a degree of sympathy for the more mature athletes in age who were and are planning to use the 20 games as were for their swan song, if you like. And they'd built their retirement and their lives post-games. And the question is, do they put that on hold for another period of time? And I think there was one person I read who actually said they chose not to. And they couldn't see themselves be able to generate that for another 18 months. So it's really changed, if you like, the trajectory for some people. I guess from a wider point, the question becomes: how does training occur when access to resources is wide is slowly opening in different parts of the world? I say this because uh there was an interview, I think, Thomas Bach in the IOC. If not, he, it was said that um the opening up of uh the qualification process for the games will only occur when everybody can access those opportunities equally. That presupposes that the coronavirus is affecting the world equally, and we've seen already that's not been the case. So I've heard mutterings, for example, that some people get an unfair advantage because they could get back to training sooner. So it's it's beginning to, I think, add some challenges into the preparation readiness, and and I think also for some people, there's going to be uh the important being mindful of preventing injury when they get back up to speed to competition level. And if I may, there's also particular demands for athletes with disability or illness where their risk with this with the virus may be greater than non-disabled athletes. And with it and within the different range of disabilities, the different range of classifications within para sport, for example, the impact on this and the medical support of that, I think, is going to be quite considerable and challenging, even beyond that, or the non-disabled athletes and staff.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

Geez, well, do you know what? When I asked that question, I thought I would have been putting you on the spot a bit there, JK, but that that was a hell of an answer. And a fantastic way of just painting such a colourful picture, if you like, of a kind of cornucopia of challenges and different factors and and variables that that are going to arise because of this this big change. One one thing that you brought up there, which I thought was super interesting, was how in different geographies, different teams, different athletes, different organizations are going to be able to get back up and up to speed, back to training quicker than others. So, in my head, for example, I've got a rowing team in my head, and in that that country, they can get back on the lake to train quicker than athletes in another country, for example. That obviously has an advantage because of the rules and the legislation and the policy within those countries being being different. But also got me thinking about how, in general, one thing that you keep reading reading about in high performance sport, high performance business, high performance anything really is the search for those little advantages. And probably most famously, probably in our world, you can think about you know British cycling and marginal gains, you know, the idea that there were we got to a point where athletes were so similar and the training opportunities were so similar, nutrition was so similar that it would the advantages were to be sought from all these tiny little gains and advantages around the around the satellites, around the the edges, if you like. However, with the kind of the chaotic disruption of this Olympics, certainly in business, when you have such a kind of chaotic disruption, that does also provide a very fertile environment for opportunity and for seeking advantages. So I wonder whether that is something that we might see around Tokyo next year is stories coming out from different governing bodies, different teams, different coaches, how they've managed to pivot and respond to this challenge in a way that they can get their athlete training at the best particular or the best possible way within the circumstances compared to other organizations that maybe have not unlocked that level of creativity in reacting to the chaos.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

I think at the heart of that good observation, Pete, is I think the notion of um two concepts that are prevalent in psychology, one being uh fixed and growth mindsets, and the other is in the wider sense, is uh both response to threat and capacity to see opportunity, and then within the opportunity to have the creativity to adapt. I think for me, I'm using the term fixed mindset here to refer to individuals or governing bodies or organizations that have a relatively rigid structure of how they do things and their capacity to shift and change may be there, but it may take longer because they don't have within their fabric of the system the space to flex and so on. I think also if people in response to a threat become anxious and scared, they may tend to withdraw and avoid and stick with what they know. Whereas others who might see this as an opportunity to say, I still have a goal, I still have an achievement if I talk from the first person, and my goal is to still perform at my desired level, although be it's a year and a bit later on, the way in which I want to do it is not open to me. Either look for other ways andor indeed create ways to still achieve that. I think creativity, flexibility, and a growth mindset, I think are going to be prevalent and useful attributes and psychological attributes going forwards. I I can certainly see that the competitiveness and the competitive nature of elite performance is looking to find an advantage in the context of the Olympic ideals of equality and fairness. Those create tension in the environment. But I think the tension has the potential to provide energy, and it's how that energy is used. I think links to those points I made about the opportunity and creativity and growth mindset.

SPEAKER_01 42:56

Yeah, I think that's a really good point, actually. The point you made at the end there is seeking those advantages, but also seeking them within the sphere of the Olympic ideals, uh, which is something I hadn't considered when I first asked that question. So I think that's a really, really good point. And the other thing you you mentioned there was the kind of the response to threat and whether that results in you not wanting to change, whether you have the creativity to adapt. And it just got me thinking about some of the swimming training videos I've been seeing popping up on social media. Helen Davis, who was on the podcast a few weeks ago, was part of those leaving the charge, putting bungee cords attached to their house and attaching them to themselves as they swam in a stationary pool in the back garden. And she'd even create she'd even created a kind of bungee cord home swimming club. And I think they had like a little kind of community social media thing where they were sharing different ideas of how to train. I mean, that that's a great example, isn't it, of of still trying to innovate your way out of a very tight spot.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

They they are I've seen a number a number of sports are doing that. I know in fencing, for example, there are the creation of uh fencing dummies to practice some activities against in the context of Zoom and other platform media where there are training sessions and fitness sessions, etc., looking to maintain an edge, maintain interest, and for the wider sport, maintain fun for the younger members and the newer members of the sport so that as clubs become more open, there are the members to keep them alive and hopefully they can uh thrive.

SPEAKER_01 44:40

Yeah, that's an interesting point there. About actually this period we're living through is obviously a big, big change and something to react to for elite athletes. But in the meanwhile, we're also trying to bring in younger athletes into our sport and get them engaged with it. So I suppose at the other end of the chain from the elite athlete world, we're also wanting to engage young fencers in wanting to do that sport and trying to find creative ways of for them being able to do that while we're going in and out of this cycling lockdown, which is quite interesting. So, okay, we're going to pivot to the question I ask everyone on the podcast. It's about the name of the podcast, the pie, the psychologically informed environment. A huge term, one that almost would be impossible to decode and summarize within a few sentences. But what does the psychologically informed environment mean to you? What does it look like to you, JK?

What does the PIE mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 45:37

I I quite agree. It's a huge subject to summarize in a few sentences. I shall do my best to do that. And I have, in my mind, at the core of a psychologically informed environment, the idea that every client or athlete is first and foremost a person. And as a person, they have their own histories, their own uh social environments, family environments, uh, romantic environments, and wider family environments. And the the sport or the performances they deliver is in part a reflection of who they are as an individual. And therefore, the process of how performers go about doing their job, how support folks support them in the process is as much about, and I'll use a term not often used in the performance world, how the supporters care for the well-being of the person that then in turn helps to reinforce and support the sporting performance and ultimately the performance in competition. So a couple of key terms there for me are there's a notion of a wide definition of emotional intelligence, which is recognizing the individual needs of the person and supporting those concurrent with the performance demands, that well-being and performance need to become much closer bedfellows rather than a view which might have been performance at all costs, in quotes. I'm looking to directly challenge to challenge that. I guess, in summary, the center of a psychologically informed environment, there needs to be what I would call, in quotes, a human language, which promotes the emotional and the personal appreciation within the performance setting, rather than treat the performance setting as this thing which is one is separate from the athlete in quotes the rest of their life, and secondly, dispenses with the view that the athlete must put their sport first at all costs or at any cost. That's my attempt as a brief go at a psychologically informed environment.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

Well, I think to keep any interpretation of a psychologically informant environment under 20 minutes is an amazing attempt. So thanks for that. The image that you were building in my mind there as you were talking about it was a kind of maybe it's because I've been playing it recently, don't ask me why, but Jenga. That there's, you know, if you imagine this kind of Jenga blocks, and some of those pieces are labelled performance-oriented pieces, and some are labelled well-being-oriented pieces. If we ignore one or the other, then the tower's got a greater chance of tumbling down, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:49

Agreed. And I I I would add to that image, I would add to that image in two ways. One being I I would look to develop and create a much wider base than pinnacle for stability and growth. And secondly, however, however well engineered the different pieces are, there still remains space between the pieces. And for me, it's in the space between the pieces where the person's inner experience, emotional experience occurs. And that's why that space needs to be reinforced. Otherwise, it slowly can degrade the joins between the different areas of a person's uh life.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

Wow, that was good to riff off of my very poorly or very basically created mental image on the spot there. And uh, well, thank you for improving it for me. So developing that wider, that's something else that's come up weirdly on the podcast a few times about developing a kind of a wider base, a kind of a distributed base of skills, of growth, of identity, etc. And then I love your point there about those spaces in between the pieces are quite often where those kind of emotional or um those critical experiences happen, experiences happen, which I think is really interesting. Um, well, look, JK, I know we had so much else on the discussion guide to talk about. We might have to get you back for a part two um in the second season because there was there was loads I think we were going to discuss around career supervision and how that can happen within sport and and business, supporting the support staff as an enormous topic in itself, away from just supporting the athletes, but supporting the sport staff as well. So we might have to get you back on the podcast if you uh if you were keen um at some point in the future to talk about those things.

SPEAKER_02 50:44

I would be I'd be very happy to use the the metaphor right at the beginning to take my thumb out again for a second a second hitchhike.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

A second hitchhike. Well, very rarely on a hitchhike do you get to your at your destination in one trip, do you? So um so the yes, brilliant. Okay, well, that's agreed. Uh we'll hold you to that. Um look, thanks so much for spending some of your your time to share your um incredible insights and and experience um over so many years within the clinical domain, the sporting domain, um, as a coach, as a psychologist. If people want to keep up with what you're doing, why where are the places online that people can keep up with, Jonathan Katz?

SPEAKER_02 51:25

I'm still emerging online. So I I I have I have a LinkedIn presence and I have an email address presence if I can provide. And that is JcatzKatz at benm.co.uk.

SPEAKER_01 51:42

Just great. Well, I will also post the link to your your email address and your LinkedIn profile on the podcast description. So it's really easy for people to get a hold of you if they want to. Um thanks so much again for um spending some time today to talk about that. Really, really enjoyed it. Best of luck with everything in the in the next few weeks and and few months, and uh hopefully talk to you again soon.

SPEAKER_02 52:06

That's that's great. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Pete, for the for the opportunity invitation and um for for being my fellow traveller on this on this journey this

Full time reflection

SPEAKER_02 52:15

morning.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

Right, thanks again for sharing another slice of pie with me and the last and twelfth slice completing the first season of the podcast. If you've dropped in for this episode or have listened to multiple episodes in the series, please feel free to reach out over LinkedIn, Twitter, email, or whatever your digital platform of preference is. I'd love to hear any thoughts or reflections that you've taken away from this episode or the series in general. And if you haven't done so already, please drop a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes, as this really helps others discover these discussions and lets the wise words from people like Dr. Jonathan Katz reach more people. So, what are we taking away from that last episode? As I mentioned at the very beginning, I was thrilled with the detail and depth with which Jonathan went into his construction of the pie. At the top of his triangle or pyramid, and almost akin to an iceberg, we have the performer, what most people will see, and at the very top of Olympic sport, what the whole world sees. In the next layer down, we have the person and personal context behind the performer, their values, their ambitions, their hopes, fears, etc. And as Jonathan refers to in the podcast, at the bottom of the pyramid, we have the foundational and wide base, the current stage of psychosocial development, their psychological needs, are they being met here? Are they getting a sense of belonging? Do they feel supported or loved? And knowing these three layers of the athlete lets us make decisions about how we might build or support within our or their environments. We can ask questions such as how do we support and care for the well-being of the person? Which helps support sporting performance and the performance and competition we see at the top of the iceberg? How do we build emotional intelligence in order to recognise the individual needs of the person and those supporting them concurrent with performance demands? And in the centre of the pie, how do we develop a human language that promotes emotional and personal appreciation within the performance setting, rather than seeing the performance setting separate from the rest of their lives? Well, some great questions to ponder there, and with those thought-provoking nuggets, I'll leave you for this episode and indeed the first season of Slice of Pie. Thanks again for listening and catch you soon for season two!