SPEAKER_02 0:12

Hello and welcome back to Sky to Pi, where the Pi is the psychologically informed environment, and the mission is to understand it, whether that's sport or business, the military or the performing arts, or any other environment where performance and well-being are a hot topic. One guest that has helped us understand a little more about the Olympic environment is Elliot Mule, formerly senior pathway scientist at the English Institute of Sport, and now senior athlete support advisor at UK Sport. Elliot joined us in episode three of this season, season two, and as that can happen sometimes with these conversations, we covered so much ground that we filled two episodes worth of insight and reflection. If you haven't checked out the first part of the conversation, I'll leave a link to that in the description, and it's well worth a listen. But without further ado, let's jump into part two of our conversation with Elliot Newell.

SPEAKER_03 1:13

Because you're working with what I was hearing there is, you know, there's psychologists, there's physiologists, there's coaches all working within that pathway scientist team. Do you end up becoming quite fluent in each other's skill set? Are you able to turn to your physiologist, Powell, and pose questions based on knowledge that you have about physiology and vice versa, they're free to pose questions to you based on their knowledge of psychology?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Yeah, yeah. It's a really nice environment to work in because even though people have specialisms, um, you're not necessarily defined by having done that. There's a recognition that you aren't a specialist SNC coach that is helping out talent from an SNC's perspective. You may have been an SNC coach, but now you have transitioned into a broader talent scientist. And we might lean on you in particular moments for the expertise that you have, but there is a will and expectation from all team members that we all get involved in other people's work. So very rarely do we have projects that are as specific as the psych one I described before. So when that arrives in the inbox, we kind of look around and go, well, Elliot's the psych in the team, he should probably take this one. Um, but quite often it might be um more generic stuff that needs a number of different perspectives to try and solve. Because I guess if if the solution to the question that's being asked is you need a psychologist, then if you're the sport, just go and get a psychologist. Um whereas if your question is around navigating the complexities of talent development and talent management, then then there's a whole host of different expertise and viewpoints that can come in. And and it is quite tough. Like I still described myself as a psychologist for the first two years in the team, and it's only uh in more recent times that I've settled more comfortably on the idea that I'm not a sports psych anymore. What I am is uh a uh a scientist and and a people developer and a system developer. And so yeah, it's uh it it's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 3:25

Yeah. What I'm hearing there is you're kind of you're kind of like the A-team, really. You know, there's a there's an I'll take that there's an interesting, difficult problem that needs solving, and you need uh a variety of different skills. Um, so you go to the A-team.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Yeah, I like that. I like that. Uh our boss, uh our boss is a great guy called uh John Alder, and uh John often refers to us as the Avengers.

SPEAKER_03 3:53

And uh when there's a I went a little bit more retro, but yeah, yeah, just for the younger. If you want to be more contemporary, yeah, Avengers.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Yeah, yeah, which I can't like.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

Yeah. So I mean you've mentioned a lot of things there around transitions and people coming in and out. You also mentioned having, I think it was in Canu, if you've got a really large demand there, having some support in order to match it. In terms of your experiences so far looking at performance, looking at well-being within these systems, very big uh broad question coming up. How how do you see the relationship? What's your kind of perspective from your experience in the in the relationship between well-being and performance?

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah, I found um probably since 2016, I think it was, which was provoked by the Jess Varnish case at British Cycling. I found that that led to a really unhelpful narrative of well-being or performance.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

And I I always struggled to really connect with that because I'd always operated in a way with athletes where you'd get to know them as people and you would support them as people. And I one of the big things I used to talk to paddlers about quite a lot was like, what's your day today? Like, we can't have 10 out of 10 days every day. Sometimes you're gonna turn up and you're like, I've probably got a max seven out of seven out of seven day today. Uh, you know, like if you if you can only produce seven out of ten, then let's get seven, you know.

SPEAKER_03 5:33

And so there was always like a Chris Shambrook talking about this before, this idea of a hundred percent mentality. Yeah, yeah. I really like it.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Yeah, it's brilliant, and it's just because it it always started a conversation around how are you? And where are you at, and what energy reserves have you got, and what motivation do you have, and what's weighing you down, or or or what's building you up? Like we have to acknowledge that everybody has a uh a level of mental health, a level of well-being that changes day by day and changes within days, and we have to manage our performance expectations accordingly. I found even from like a physical perspective, like you chat to someone in the gym and they're beating themselves up because they're not lifting as much as they did a few weeks ago. And they're like, Yeah, but have you seen your training load this week? Like, I'm surprised you're able to lift anything. So, putting that into context, helping athletes recognize from a physical perspective their bodies are going to be able to produce different things on different days. It's not a linear thing, it's not like it just gets better every day. Also, from a psych and what learning a well-being perspective, like what does what does a great day look like today based on what we have available to us? So it always felt really bizarre to me that we would have a conversation about well-being or performance, because I'd never really perceived doing performance as something that was separate from doing well-being. Um, I'd always perceived well-being to be the foundation of performance. And if you take it from a physical perspective, as I just described, but if you also look at uh nutrition, sleep, stress, and before you even take in the psychological variables, it just doesn't particularly make sense that you can have the two separate. But what it did do was provoke a really good conversation, I think, that people within the system had, and the system kind of had to have with itself, would be what do we do when people have attributes that are contributing to such a high level of resilience and such a high level of tolerance that they are able to produce high levels of performance whilst also struggling from a well-being perspective or produce performance that is harmful to their well-being. I I wonder to what extent that may have always been the elephant in the room. But it did provoke a really good conversation about that and brought that to people's people's attention. But in in in true, I was gonna say true British fashion, but I wonder if it's more of a human condition. Um, we find it easier to talk about complex issues in in overly simple ways. So we then what fell out of it was this really unhelpful dictomy between uh performance um and uh or well-being, but I always see it as performance and well-being. So there is a reality to high performance, I think, that it is not necessarily conducive to high levels of well-being in a lot of moments through that journey. And you can look at that from multiple perspectives, but if you think about the choices and sacrifices that athletes need to make to pursue high performance, not all of those things are going to mean that they uh maintain high levels of well-being. There was a video about British Rowan that was on Sky Sports not so long ago, um, and John Collins was talking about how everything was so linked to the performance at the Olympics that it's it's quite an emotive interview. He he starts crying during it because he's just trying to get across that if I win a medal, I can then bring that back to my family, and it almost makes everything that I've been through and that I've put them through worth it. And there's a there's a certain reality to that. That I think if you put people in positions where they maintain optimal well-being throughout, then we might not yield the performance outcomes that we we desire. And the other bit is around this this rebound effect, where quite often it's okay to have significant challenges, and it's okay to feel bad, and it's okay to uh experience negative emotion or dips in well-being. I think that's okay, but broadly we've got a perspective uh on life where we try to promote only the positive and reduce all negative to the point where we are at risk of diluting the experience people have of life.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

It is an all-encompassing rough with a smooth, good with the bad kind of environment. And what I notice about people that pursue high performance is they are chasing the smooth and they are chasing the good. But with those high levels of good, also means you need, in in a lot of cases, equal, equivalent negatives. So there's a whole host of research that talks about people that end up being successful in sport have experienced significant setbacks, sometimes life setbacks, sometimes sports-specific setbacks. And quite often they'll point to those experiences of challenge, uh, those really negative experiences as things that were developmental and in some cases transformative, and um put propelled them on to greater success. So I was concerned for a while that um where we would end up in the high performance system would be that we would prioritize well-being to such an extent that we never had those those highest of highs anymore.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Yeah, you're you're afraid to really put people in the in the in the dark waters. Yeah, because you're you're worried about the effect that they might might happen might have on them, and yet that is such a uh critical element to uh to training is to take yourself into some some tough places. And getting a delicate balancing act around that is is not easy. But I think having the as you mentioned, having the the bigger picture to go actually, you know, it's not one or the other. This is an interacting, it could be you've got some blocks and your well-being is your kind of your foundational bit. It could be, you know, this kind of self-perpetuating circle where one informs the other. I mean, you know, if you're doing well at your sport, if you're continually putting yourself into some horrible places in training, but that results in you uh winning, that self uh uh efficacy, that competence is going to feed back into well-being.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

Um, and so that there's a there's a lot of messiness to it as you've you've outlined. And um I think just the the other thing that you uh you pointed out there is just having the uh the realization or the uh the kind of the the realistic uh and pragmatic outlook that this uh lifestyle, this high performance lifestyle is in general not conducive to wellbeing. But by having that perspective, that can take you places because if you know that you go, okay, well, if that's true, then what does that mean for how we support athletes? Um are there any cracks in the pavement where there are people falling out of the system where they need support either to come back in and be better or supported out of it? Because I think, you know, from a system perspective, uh particularly with with British Olympic sports, I mean, one of the things that the Jess Varness case has highlighted for me, and I don't know her and I don't know the people involved in that case, but uh it's just highlighted the very stark employment contract difference between that performance um reality and uh the performance reality in in most jobs where you have a contract, and if someone wants to let you go, you've got a three months notice and you've got time to work out the next thing. Whereas in sport, there are places where actually just that those contractual um elements aren't in place, and then that that could that can create issues, um, as probably highlighted by that that case.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

So yeah, and I think um what what it does is is is is provoke meaningful conversations like that, because if you if you take a if you take a stance on performance, for example, and and you you you mark a line in the sand and you say, right, this is how we pursue performance, and you get pushback on that. And you get pushback for legitimate reasons that you are operating in such a way that people are severely damaged, um, or people are having significant and largely unnecessary negative experiences being part of your environment. Like you can you can take that pushback, and it's right that we move back and draw a new line in the sand. But what you can't do is just keep moving back, keep moving back. So it encourages you to think about well, where would we draw a line in the sand? What is acceptable and what is not acceptable? So the high performance system at the moment recognises that there are some things that are just fundamentally unacceptable. So you can't just ditch athletes, you can't cut people's contracts without um giving them prior notice, you can't bully, you can't intimidate, you can't fret. Quite a lot of this stuff, I think, may have been happening without the leaders of the high performance system really recognizing that that was the culture that was being fostered in some parts of the system. So it does encourage you to draw a line. And one of the things that come from that is then how do we then action meaningful change? So one of the lines that has been drawn, and and I've been fortunate enough to be part of this project, is to say we draw a line at bringing people into the system without informed consent. Draw a line, it's not acceptable for people to come into a performance environment or to be put on a performance pathway without having a clear understanding of what it is, what it's gonna take, what it's gonna feel like, what does it mean to go into the dark waters or to visit the well and what's it gonna take from you to manage? But also what is acceptable, what is unacceptable? Where do you go when you need help? What do you do if you think it's pivoted into bullying? Um, and all of those things. So, like there's projects that have now taken place that are clarifying where those boundaries are. And part of the thing that I'm now working on is a high performance induction for for all athletes coming into uh world-class programs that means that they are fully informed. Um, gone are the days I think where you can pick little Johnny up from wherever he is and say, look, you this kid could be something big, he could win us a medal. Let's just bring him in and and then um and then we'll almost manage him like a like a commodity as opposed to person. And then the other line that's been drawn, again, as part of this broader transitions project, is we we never want to anyone to leave the high performance system feeling abandoned, alone, scared, and confused, intentionally or unintentionally. And I like to think poorly unintentionally, that happens. Like we don't need to search that hard to find stories and examples of people that have thrived within performance environments, have been hugely successful, but then that moment of transition into retirement or or when they can't do their sport anymore, they've got nothing else to fall back on. Um so like that that just can't be a thing, can it? So like um with we're we're there's also a branch of of the high performance system that's working on well, what does a great package of holistic, uh sufficient support look like for athletes that are coming off of program? So when I talk about holistic, I mean that uh your broad well-being and future prospects need to be taken care of, not done for you, but you need to have financial affairs in order. You need to be able to move on to an education or or a career, you need to be able to find appropriate trans or be provided with appropriate transitional support that takes care of your well-being and your mental health whilst you progress uh into that new stage of your life. Um, one thing we've not really considered before, which is is I'm really glad is part of the conversation, is the detraining effect that has on the body, how athletes um or former athletes have relationships with their body, how they have relationships with exercise, physical activity, and other sports. You know, there are so many amazing athletes that have had knees, elbows, necks, toes, fingers patched up and stuck together so they can represent our great nation and be successful on the international stage. And like they then retire and they might have got away with their dodgy ACL because they've had super strong quads because they were exercising every day under the guidance of a world leading SNC coach. Well, they don't have that anymore. So, how do you look after the bodies? So there's just a whole load of stuff that it's um it's it's it's an amazing and pivotal time in in the high performance system because these are the questions people are asking, and there's a real commitment and plan to do better and be better for athletes in this space. Where I I hope certainly in the next few months and years when this starts to get laid out, by the time we hit Paris 2024, we'll be a not just a phenomenal performance system, but a genuinely phenomenal performance and athlete-centred well-being system as well.

SPEAKER_03 19:49

Yeah, brilliant. Uh fantastic to hear um as well for for those of us on the outside looking in to the uh, you know, the EIS, British Olympic system, etc. etc. It's it's great to hear that that's the kind of the intention. And uh what I was hearing there about is uh once you've drawn your lines, you can start making decisions. So if you know what isn't and isn't is sorry, what is and isn't uh acceptable, then you can start making decisions and you can start uh highlighting uh or drawing up potential areas for change that might not have been thought about before, even if they're quite small. I mean, on the face of it, that informed consent piece could be seen as quite a small piece, but it's automatic for us. Yeah, yeah. If you know the expectations of your behaviour, what's going to be asked of you, you know, how that might impact your finances, how might that impact your future career opportunities, etc., at the outset, then you've got that kind of clarity going through. And it it just reminded me of uh an absolutely amazing series on Amazon Prime called The Test, which follows the Australian cricket team after the horrible controversy with ball tampering in Cape Town and um Cameron Bancroft, Steve Smith, and Dave Warner being asked to leave for 12 months, and Justin Langer coming in as the new head coach. And he spends so much time at the outset of his contract with Cricket Australia getting buy-in and consent from all the new players within that squad around how they're going to behave and how they're going to win back the Australian public's respect and their love through their behaviours. And they they draw some really distinct lines between, you know, what is abuse, what is banter. Actually, we're we want to be high-performing cricketers, but we want to be good Australians as well. So this kind of decided thing of good Australian. And that journey through the eight episodes is really it's really interesting to see how him repeating that over and over and over again, it does make a difference. You know, that squad at the end of the series does look and behave a lot differently to the one that he inherited. Um, and I think a lot of that comes that came. Down to that kind of informed consent. And he also think which I think is quite interesting, he got kind of buy-in from some of the key guys and the captains in terms of drawing that up. So that was you know, in terms of your social identity stuff, they were all kind of buying into what that culture should look like.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Yeah. Um so I think some it's I was gonna say, and I think there's like a meaningful performance impact as well, isn't there? And uh for for those in the system that are a little bit um skeptical or or think that it's a distractor from performance, I think there's a growing body of evidence to say that some of this stuff can be really helpful in pursuing performance goals. And I know that the EIS performance pathway team, led by Joe Harrison, has really tried to drive that message across the system and to break the wheel, as it were, of this um perception that if you're doing stuff like that, it is an add-on, it's an extra that can ultimately be cut away when things get tough. And I think it's easy to do those things when the the going is relatively smooth. I think when people are under significant pressure, that's where you tend to see what they value most. And it's trying to make this part of the performance conversation. So we don't just do high performance because we've got all the gear and all the scientists and all the coaches. We do high performance because we understand processes, we understand human experience, we understand transitions, we understand the life narrative, and this is all part of what we're trying to create. And some of your listeners might have seen on social media there's a EIS campaign called More to Me, which is trying to bring this across as well. It's like you're not just an athlete, you you can be so much more. And what provoked me to think about that was um when you were saying about Justin Langover talking about what does it mean to be a good Australian and how do we win back the respect of the public. Well, quite often that will be not just winning, but how you win and how you behave and what's the reality of how you've pursued that performance. So I've got no doubt that people were buzzing when we came back from Rio with all those medals. But I imagine there were a ton of people in the public that when various stories were coming out, were like, oh, do you know what actually don't like that anymore? Is it is this worth it? It wasn't worth it. So yeah, we have to have like a broader definition of what success is.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

Um yeah, it's almost a philosophical point, isn't it? It's what does success for us look like? Um and I I suppose how that is measured will impact all layers of the system. So if previously it was all about this number of medals and we're getting lottery funding, this is how it's spent and this is what we're aiming for, if that's the kind of the only blunt measure that you use, then that that can start to over time reveal aspects of the system that that isn't conducive to these other parts. Whereas if, like you said, if the the measure for success is meaningful growth, which leads to world-class performance, and you've got that nice balance of of the both, then then maybe it leads to to some different outcomes.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And um I've mentioned John Alder before, um, my boss, but one of the things he always says is that uh performance is a human endeavor, and what captures the mind and the heart is the the story, not the outcome necessarily. So uh we have to pay attention to that if we are gonna have a meaningful high performance system that that really does do its bit in bringing the nation together and inspiring people and creating those amazing moments that that people love to experience and to to relive over and over again.

SPEAKER_03 25:47

Jeez, that's a good soundbite, isn't it? Performance is a human endeavour. That might might even be the title for this episode.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Uh no, I'm in danger of giving John Alder more credit than I like to give him.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

We'll have to reach out and get get his consent.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

He uses his soundbite. I'm sure he's robbed it from somewhere else. None of these things are ever uh are ever new, are they? They they find themselves back around again.

SPEAKER_03 26:10

Well, uh I think this is a good good time to ask the the question that I ask everyone on the podcast. What does a psychologically informed environment mean to you, Elliot?

SPEAKER_00 26:19

I think a psychologically informed environment, it actually means a lot to me because you know when I talked about the river and I talked about the direction, one of the things that I've been supported to do is to define what that um end goal is, the purpose of my work is. And within that is defined to support people to create psychologically informed environments that enable everyone to thrive. So that's kind of like my my North Star where I direct. So this idea of a psychological environment, psychologically informed environment means a lot to me professionally and personally. In terms of like what it looks like, I know that there's quite a lot of ambiguity on it, but I think that the components of a psychologically informed environment have been reasonably well defined. So one of the defining characteristics would be that it operates using a particular psychological approach to the work that's being conducted, or might lean on a number of psychological models or theories that guide the work. So that helps to raise awareness of the psychological needs of the group, and importantly, means that you don't really need a psych, you just need people that are equipped to manage the psychology in their work. Another feature would be that it emphasizes staff training and support. So quite often you're working with people. So in my world, it would be coaches or sports scientists, and these people are ridiculously qualified and know exactly what they're doing, but quite often there's a big gap in people's training around the psychology of how they work with stuff. So a psychologically informed environment requires informed and well-supported staff that work coherently as a team. So I don't think you have a psychologically informed environment if, for example, an athlete is going to the coach and getting one message that is being told something different or managed in a different way by the physiotherapist, for example. So they're often working with psych in their work, but like I said, they haven't got that formal training, so there's some support there. The other bit would be psychologically informed environment works with the physical and social spaces that are available that promotes healthy and constructive interactions. So that's usually underpinned by some sort of psychological formulation, but there's always a deliberate attempt to try and understand well, pick when people walk into our space, how are they interacting with it and what's the impact that has on their emotional, cognitive, and uh and and behavior that state and behavior? So, like a really simple example of that is that um we did a formulation on an athlete. Uh, one of the strategies was to help her manage her own stress in the mornings. So we manipulated the physical space that meant that there would always be an interaction with the coach before she walked into the gym.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

And that that was just our way of trying to be psychologically informed. The two other I'll whiz through these quickly, but the two other kind of bits as far as I see it is one is that a prior a psychologically informed environment will prioritize relationships. So we'll look at the quality and and quantity of quality relationships and we'll work in a way that builds, promotes, protects, and manages those relationships. And then the final bit is that um it creates time and provides a process for reflection for the staff team. So usually there's a process where you gather information, you'll generate some hypotheses using whatever psychological theory or model you're using, you go out and you test that in practice, you examine the impact and then you'll tweak, and then you'll do it's just that continuous cycle. So uh yeah, I realize there's a lot there, but I think um it's really important to offer some sort of um underpinning of what a psychological informed environment is because I find quite a lot of people that I speak to kind of crave that. They they understand it's important, they could describe it really loosely, but it's quite difficult to pinpoint well, what would I do in practice that would then help the environment that I work in to be more psychologically informed.

SPEAKER_03 30:28

Yeah. No, I I really, really like it. Your five key five key slices. I remember going to to Pizza Hut on inset days um in secondary school if we had a day off and we'd get a mini pizza from Pizza Hut, we'd always always just have five slices. So you're you've got the the mini pizza there with um using a psychological approach which not only uh gives you something to underpin your work, which is important because you know why you're doing it, because there is a model, there's a theory with tons of literature behind it, but also raises awareness within that team or within that organization, actually what the needs are psychologically for those uh performers and for the performance uh uh training staff, which is your second point. And I always think that's a really important uh point to bring up, not just that all of those staff uh are working together, but also they're supported as well. So if all of these uh support staff are also uh performing and uh and living well, then they've got more to give to the athletes that they're they're working with. Your physical and social spaces, this is the first time this has come up, and I think this is a really important point. And in Chris Wagstaff's book on the organizational elements of sport psychology, he he notes this as a specific element within um organizational support, which I think in the book is called human engineering, which sounds like real dystopian and kind of George Orwell um type thing. But it is it's the realization that there are physical aspects to our day-to-day, whether they are the physical environment, the travel, the like you said, the kind of the when you interact with someone on your journey through a a gym, for example, that will have an impact, even if it's something as as fundamental as light. My mother was a head teacher, she was part of a an arch big architect rebuild of her primary school. And one of the most the the biggest conversations was how are we going to get the amount of light that these kids need? Because that's such an important part of their well-being is to get enough light and not to be studying in in in these kind of dark rooms all the time. So it's something that can get looked over. Um but I think that's a really important point. And then you know, obviously, kind of relationships and I suppose this process with reflection is something you could almost kind of uh throw as a net on top of all of your other points, as this kind of a continual uh reflection around all of these other points are is this working? Yeah, is there any is there anything that we need to improve within relationships, within physical social spaces, within how we support staff, the underpinning models. Um so I I love it. Yeah, and and you're speaking out big time on this.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

And in the spirit of offering another sound bite, there's something as just as you were mirroring back to me, point four about relationships, is uh something that Ken Ravitsa used to say, which is um athletes need to know you care before they care what you know. And one of the things that we definitely did in Canoe was we would always see the relationship as the key or the the the opener of opportunity for learning. So the relationship would fundamentally be the secure base from which the athlete can then go and explore the learning opportunities you're trying to provide. If they don't fundamentally trust you or themselves or what you're asking them to do, then they get triggered into this kind of survival state, which means they might well get through the practice, but what they're going to learn from it probably won't be that helpful in the long run. So relationships um I think everyone kind of nods to and realizes is important, but probably don't appreciate um how critical they are to learning as as much as uh probably they could do.

SPEAKER_03 34:13

Athletes need to know you care before they care about what you know. God, love that. Um, of course, there's the um on the BPS side of things, one of the key pieces of reading for trainees is the um the counseling handbook uh for sport and exercise psychology by Hemmings and Katz. Um and they note in the intro of that in counseling psychology, the number one impact on the perceived success of the support was the relationship between the the client and the and the practitioner. So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

I remember being told um you are the intervention by my supervisor, which filled me with dread because I was like, Well, I know mental skills training works, I know counseling works, I don't know I work. Yeah, but that spirit of like bringing yourself completely to the work and being all in and building a relationship as the key driver for change rather than the practical stuff.

SPEAKER_03 35:07

Great stuff. Well, look, thanks so much, Elliot, for joining us. Amazingly, we've been talking for quite a long time, and there's so much left that we could have talked about, but um you know I've really, really chuffed with the the level of depth that we got into some of those bits there. So thank you so much for for coming on. For those that want to keep up to date with what you're doing, where they where can they find you online?

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Uh you'll you'll find me on Twitter mostly. Uh it's at Elliot Sportsci. And for anyone who's interested in some of the outputs of our performance pathway team, we have a performance pathway learning hub that uh people in the UK can sign up to that has all the articles and workshops and recordings of our uh events that that people can view. So you can see that on uh performance pathways learning hub.

SPEAKER_03 35:57

Great. Well, I'll post all of those links in the description of the podcast so it's easy for people to find those. Well, look, thanks again. Absolutely loved joining you for you kind of shiring us down the down your river and going off on on some of the forks and going going through some of the rapids along the way as well. It was a very enjoyable ride. Thanks again and uh best of luck with with with everything going forward. Thanks, Pete.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

It was a pleasure. Thanks for

Full time reflection

SPEAKER_00 36:22

having me.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

If you're still listening, thanks for sharing another slice of pie. Again, loads to take from the conversation with Elliot. I really like the concept of the 100% mentality, which I first came across via Chris Janbrook. It's this idea that if you feel like you have 7 out of 10 in the tank today, in training or competition, then your goal is to get 7 out of 10, to maximize what you have on the day. And it's a concept I've always really liked, so it was interesting to hear that crop up again in this chat. Another reflection focuses on Elliott's comment: a lot of high performance domains are not conducive to high levels of well-being. And this seems to be borne out by research. Meta-analysis by Gutenberger et al. in 2019, the authors concluded that the prevalence of mental health symptoms and disorders in current and former elite athletes may be slightly higher than in the general population, but they did say it remains difficult to make valid comparisons. So, okay, let's assume high performance domains aren't conducive to high levels of well-being. It begs the question, why is that? And the paper by Gutenberger offers a myriad of potential causes, and there's so many it would take a long time to get into all of them. So I've left a link to the paper in the episode description if you're interested in reading it. However, I want to kind of zoom out a little bit, and my overarching reflection really links back to the very first episode of Title Pie with Mustafa Saka and his 2x2 framework with challenge and support. And this framework would suggest that the very high levels of challenge required in high-level competition, in high-level performance, also requires high levels of support in order to maintain that well-being. And this then links into another quote from Elliot, which is this notion of not just winning, but how you win. And its neighbour to language around inverted commas acceptable versus unacceptable success, and some of the great writing on this by Kath Bishop. Well, another great episode there. I hope you took away something from it. Thanks again for listening, and until next time, have a good one.