SPEAKER_04 0:09

Hello and welcome to the Slice of Pi podcast with me, Pete Jackson. If this is the first time you're tuning in, thanks for dropping in on this episode. And for those of you coming back, you'll know that the Pi in Slicer Pi is the psychologically informed environment. And the mission is to try and understand what that is. It could be business or sport, a professional football academy, elite gymnastics, or swim England. And my guest in this episode, Hannah Stoyle, has worked across all of these different environments. Hannah is a HCPC registered sport and exercise psychologist and the founder of Optimise Potential, a sports psychology consultancy based in London. Hannah wears many hats as well as doing her PhD at University College London looking at athletes and eating disorders. She is also the lead sports psychologist for Swim England. She works as a sports psychology consultant for Millfield School, delivers sports psychology content for UK athletics, and is a sports psychologist for Reading Football Club Academy. Pretty impressive resume. In my conversation with Hannah, her passion for all things psychology is evident in any age, any competitive level, or any sport. However, I was particularly struck by her enthusiasm for developing young people and her insights into how elite academies, national governing body pathways, parents, coaches, and other support staff can support our young athletes as they navigate the whirlwind roller coaster of childhood, puberty, adolescence, and young adulthood. Therefore, if you're a coach, a parent, support staff, or even a young athlete, this episode will be particularly interesting for you. As always, we'll talk for about 30 minutes, pause for a half-time breather and a little discussion before diving back in for the remainder and a full-time discussion at the end. Right then, it's time to get into the conversation with Hannah Stoyle. Hannah, how are we?

SPEAKER_03 2:16

Yeah, doing well, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

How are you navigating this period that we're going through at the moment?

SPEAKER_03 2:22

You know, it's been up and down, I won't lie. Yesterday was US Mother's Day, so I feel kind of far away from my family in one sense, but also so grateful for Zoom technology and just being able to connect to everyone virtually in a way that, you know, I don't I spoke with more of my grandparents in this time than I think I ever have. So that's been really lovely on the other side. So I think it's been a time of reflection on what we're grateful for, but also being kind of open in that it can be really hard. It's we there are personal things in our lives that are tricky, and then professionally it's about being kind of newly creative in how we work with athletes and how we get our work done day to day.

SPEAKER_04 3:02

Yeah, bit of rough, bit of smooth, bit of light, bit of dark.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:06

Yeah. Well, so I'm I'm glad to hear that there's at least a few silver linings emerging there. I was just going down the list of your various responsibilities at Swim England, Wedding FC, Milfield's Millfield School, just the small matter of also doing a PhD at UCL at the same time. Must be a part of you that's kind of enjoying a little bit more time at home to uh to address some of your uh your responsibilities there.

SPEAKER_03 3:31

I mean, absolutely. It's one of the things I actually always talk to kind of new up-and-coming sports psychologists is that you know, don't underestimate the travel time. I'm based in London and it's actually there's just not that much strictly here, even if Reading is kind of a London-based club in a way, it still takes me 90 minutes to get to. So, you know, not having that commuting time can be really, really helpful on a day-to-day logistical level. And I think as well, we're because we're forced to work virtually, so much of my work that was virtual before, people are really buying into, well, this is how we have to do things now. And really going, okay, how can I make the most of virtual work? And how can I not just go, this is kind of a temporary means to an end until Hannah travels up to see me, but going, how do I sink my teeth into virtual work and actually go, this is how my sports psychologist and I work together, or this is how Swim England produces work. I think that actually realizing that this is what we do now has been really helpful. And I'm really lucky that actually I finished my data collection for my PhD in February, which I didn't know at the time was by the skin of my teeth, but turns out it was, because I'm really grateful that's finished. So I've been able to, less commuting time means an hour to two to three hours each day to work on the PhD, which has been a bit on the back burner since it was an Olympic year before this all started.

SPEAKER_04 4:52

Yeah, that's great. So the PhD transition from data collection into writing is actually lockstepped quite nicely with all this time at home.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:00

And the other thing I heard there was this perception of video conferencing or or let's say generally using online as a tool for consultations or apply practice, going from more of a, oh, that's a constraint on the normal way of doing it to, well, this is kind of how we do it now. So let's try and find the opportunities, the positives, and how we can use it as best as possible.

SPEAKER_03 5:25

Absolutely. And I think that in sports psychology, because you just never live where all your athletes live. You know, my role at Swim England is to support, you know, I have many roles, but one of the roles is to support our performance squad, which is our top squad of athletes, and they live around the country. I will never be able to be there all the time for each every in each and every one of them. And my role at Swim England doesn't fund me for it to be a full-time role either. And so actually getting really good at how we be creatively using online platforms just means I can be more places at once, really.

SPEAKER_04 5:56

Yeah, I'm sure anyone that's following the Swim England social media profiles would be loving the the little animated videos yourself and Helen Davis are doing at the moment.

SPEAKER_03 6:06

Oh, thank you. Yeah, we've worked really hard on those, and it's been really enjoyable to work with Helen, of course, but you know, we also just really relish in this idea of how do we make sports psychology accessible? And having the constraint of two minutes and 20 seconds as dictated by what videos can play on Twitter, it's been excellent because it's gone, you know, we're not just delivering sports psychology to our kind of top-tier athletes, but we have to deliver sports psychology on a level that's digestible for our 10, 11, 12-year-olds all the way up through our 20-year-olds at all different levels and all different kinds of understandings of sports psychology and for parents and coaches and all these things. And I think that you get really good at something when you teach it, right? And I think that this has been a real excellent challenge for Helen and I to go, how do we teach about sports psychology without having a full hour, without having, you know, it's not a workshop where they're in front of us and can ask clarification questions. We have to kind of preempt as many questions as possible right off the bat.

SPEAKER_04 7:02

So talking about things that, or talking about elements that might help you engage with engage sports psychology material with different population groups. You've mentioned they're obviously making content accessible and working with people of different age groups. Also, another thing that gets commented or mentioned quite often is having had a previous life of competing yourself, so having an empathy with athletes. Now, you had an athletic career before transitioning into psychology and sports psychology. Did do you mind talking a wee bit about that and then how you how you came to discover sports psychology and how you transitioned into that?

SPEAKER_03 7:42

Yeah, absolutely. So I had kind of uh two separate sporting careers of my own. So I was a competitive gymnast from very, very young until about age 12 or 13, which doesn't sound old, but it means I did a lot of gymnastics. Uh, and then I got injured, I hurt my knee. And then kind of in combination with physical injury, but also I really couldn't, I don't want to say couldn't handle, because that's not how I talk to a client now, but it's kind of how I would describe myself. I couldn't handle the fear in a fear-based sport such as gymnastics. I didn't feel, I really struggled overcoming kind of mental blocks and fear of a four-inch wide beam. So I when I had this physical injury, my mom had been a swimmer growing up as well and said, why don't we swim? You know, let's let's move away from this, let's go into swimming. And I'd done a bit of swimming actually as rehab for previous injuries in gymnastics. And so I left a squad of gymnastics, which was a really, really difficult transition and influenced me greatly now as a practitioner. And then I started swimming and I liked it a lot. And I liked, I actually liked the monotony of it. I liked there was no fear in it. People often say, why didn't you become a diver? And I went, I wanted, I wanted boring. I didn't want to go in every day going, can I do it? Can I face these fears? I wanted to go back and forth and just work hard. Um, so it was it worked out great. I had actually I moved to I started at a huge club and then very quickly moved to a much smaller club due to my family moved across the country. And it was amazing. I was part of this tiny kind of grassroots club in Texas that's been there for almost 70 years now, which is a long time for the US. You know, I grew up there with a really supportive coach and they helped me transition to the NCAA, and I was an athlete at a division three school called Kenyan College, which is a swimming powerhouse, actually. And the wonderful thing about that is we had really rigorous training and really fast swimmers, but in the division three context, which means that athletics and academics really had to go hand in hand. Um, you know, you really ended up with a situation where my coaches understood that academics was a huge important factor in my life, and that if I wanted to study abroad, which I did, and how I ended up moving to London eventually, is I was able to just go, I'm not swimming next year, see ya, um, and went abroad. And so I had this kind of amazing career where I'd come from gymnastics, so had this like intense discipline from that, transitioned into swimming where I ended up at a decent level, you know, national standard, which in the US is pretty decent, and you know, then competed for the NCAA, which is all about teamwork and fun in that sense. And so I think I really got to embody a lovely range of the competitive experience. And that really allowed me to, when I transitioned out of sport, to realize that I, you know, I actually fell in love with psychology first. And it was actually through, well, my journey into psychology is slightly off topic, but I'll tell you that I, because I went to a university that allowed me to study whatever I pleased in the first two years before deciding to firmly study psychology, is that I majored, which means which what which we call in America and what you what you study on, what your degree is in. I I did Arabic and Spanish and political sciences first, and I actually had aspirations of working in international relations and foreign affairs, um, and actually had an interview with the CIA when I was about 17.

SPEAKER_04 11:07

Um right, okay. Are you allowed are you allowed to reveal that?

SPEAKER_03 11:11

I don't know, it's a good question. We can we can decide if we need to cut that out of the podcast.

SPEAKER_04 11:14

Okay, I don't think they'll be listening.

SPEAKER_03 11:17

Um so I was really interested in that. And so I went, um I actually finished my time in high school in in Israel. I then spent the summer after my first year at uni in Morocco, and I was really interested in kind of the politics of the Arab world and understanding the language and people there. And then I really got into it and I realized it was actually at a much more micro level that I was interested in all of this. It wasn't the international relations nation to nation, but actually the stories of each person involved. And then I had this epiphany about two days before my second year at union went, I think that's psychology. And so I went, hold on, and actually had to call my union, went, you know, all those courses I signed up for in Arabic and political science, I'd like to change them to psychology. I actually kept Arabic for one more year and Spanish. But I actually transitioned into psychology, realizing that's where my love really was. That then allowed me, because I was taking these language courses, I then went, well, I'm gonna go live in southern Spain for a semester because it meant that I could, southern Spain is wonderful in that there's not as many English-speaking influences. Um so I lived in Granada, which is a smaller city in southern Spain. And I, and I actually vowed that I wouldn't travel into other bits of Europe in that time. I was really strict with myself. I only spoke Spanish, and my Spanish got really excellent. But and I joined a triathlon team, you know, I did all these things that was away from my traditional swimming experience. And it was really international. And I did my second term of that year in London because I needed to fulfill all of these psychology requirements I hadn't done yet. But all that said, it meant I could do all this studying in different contexts away from swimming that made me realize how much I loved sport for the sake of sport, and that my interest in swimming was not necessarily well, I always say I I'm a good athlete. I just happened to choose swimming after gymnastics. Gymnastics gave me a great base for any sport. And so I really then went, actually, as much as I love psychology, I think the people I relate to most are athletes. And so what do I do about that? I'd gotten interested in kind of understanding eating disorders and disordered eating in sport as well, in a kind of abnormal psychology class. So I kind of went, well, I might, I might want to do sport psychology. I've heard that's a thing. And the US actually is a little bit behind, is a really negative word, is doesn't have as many specific courses in sport psychology. But the UK really does. So in the in in the US, there are some, but a lot of times there were kind of PhDs in education, specializing in sport psychology, and it just wasn't quite the pure sport psychology route I thought I was looking for. So I ended up coming back to the UK where I'd been in my third year of university to do my master's and you know, kind of never looked back.

SPEAKER_04 14:06

It's so funny, isn't it, how at the time when you're doing all these things, looking into the future, all you can see is uncertainty. Yeah. But when you turn the lens back and you look at your journey, all of those pieces of the puzzle seem seem to kind of fit in and make sense.

SPEAKER_03 14:22

Absolutely. Well, I think for me, the the uncertainty was fine. I I always, my mantra in my life is create opportunity. So for me, it was I don't know what's next, but if this next step like potentially could open a new door, whether it's learning a language or traveling or taking that course or whatever it is, that creates opportunity. So that made a lot of sense to me, even in even in the moment.

SPEAKER_04 14:45

Yeah, it's funny that I'd I've I've written two things down on my my pad as you were you were going through your journey. One was variety and one was opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_04 14:54

You've gone through you've gone through from spinning dangerously in the air to going up and down a 50-meter pool.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:02

I love this quote. I wanted boring at that time. Give me boring, I'll work hard, I'll do it well.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 15:10

You've moved across lots of variety in terms of where you've lived. You moved across the country as you've as you mentioned, spent some time in Texas, spent some time in Spain, in London, going from studying Arabic and Spanish to political science, from psychology, then interest into sports psychology. Do you think that kind of that variety and that interest and that sense of wanting to take opportunities in a wide schmorgas board of kind of life's opportunities, so to speak? Do you think that's kind of played into who you are and how you practice now as a psychologist?

SPEAKER_03 15:45

Oh, absolutely. I think because of that schmorgers board, which is a great word, um, I think it I think it means I don't feel confined by the bureaucratic red tape that is sometimes that you need to go through when getting a degree and when becoming qualified. Because I did it with an interest in so many other things and without, well, it was a direct path in the sense that I didn't end up with too much kind of gap, it wasn't direct in that I I didn't feel like I could only study psychology to learn psychology. Um and I really felt that I knew if I bettered myself as a human being, that I would bring that into my practice. And I and I believe that firmly now. So if I think, you know, some sort of challenge in my own personal life is relevant, whether it's finding a new therapist for myself or it's embarking on a new creative task, you know, such as learning calligraphy or whatever it is, you know, I'm I'm a big believer in kind of practice what you preach. And I want to, if I bring kind of a confidence into my practice, I know that my clients benefit. You know, if I want my clients to be confident in what they do, I need to be confident in what I do. And to me, that confidence comes from continual learning and knowing that my coping mechanism is knowing that I can always learn more and there's always help out there that will kind of enable me to do that.

SPEAKER_04 17:05

That's interesting. That that bit about practicing what you preach. When you're when you work with let's take from England, for example, or actually, let's take any consultation, any sport, it could be any athlete. When it comes to that practice, what you preach, how does that, do you think, transfer or communicate itself to the client? Does it happen in quite small ways? Is it just the kind of the professionalism, the proactivity in which you handle that relationship and use resources? How do you reckon that that comes to life in terms of them getting that from you?

SPEAKER_03 17:38

Yeah, I think it's I can capture it in some examples. And I think one of the ways is, you know, at Reading, for example, when they're out on the pitch practicing, I have no hand-eye coordination. I may be very athletic, but I have never really played a ball sport before in my life. And so I'm out there and I'm like, well, you know, it's quite embarrassing to kick a ball in front of all of these amazing young footballers. But I'm like, fine, you know what? If I'm going out there and they need a bunch of balls that have gone over the fence, I will go and collect them. And while it's not strictly always in my job description, it's realizing that if I'm kind of preaching, like, let's be part of this team, let's make sacrifices, let's be there for each other. Then like little actions like that can go a really, really long way. You know, I've stood at the side of a pitch with freezing toes for you know many a time. And I think that that can be really important. And not everyone's always afforded that opportunity, but I think that's but the so the client should feel that they know me, but actually, in the nicest way they don't, you know, that professionalism is still there. They don't really know about me. You know, I didn't tell them when I got married, they don't really know about my swimming career or gymnastics career. But if they were to ask me, did you face difficulty swimming? They may have known I'm a swimmer. And they may know, of course, I face difficulties in a general sense. I want them to have that general sense that they know me, but I don't need them to know the details. If that makes sense, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 18:58

I think you've almost perfectly described a lot of the literature around personal declose uh disclosure, personal disclosure within the counseling or psychological relationship. And yeah, it's it's that having that ongoing reflective barometer of how much am I sharing, is it appropriate, what effect am I having on the person that I'm working with? And is is it help is this disclosure helping to build the relationship? So yeah, I think all of that makes perfect sense. And talking about working with athletes in that consulting one-to-one environment, I'm just wondering how often, and this is just within the context of the podcast, how often issues to do with the environment come up within your conversations with them?

SPEAKER_03 19:43

I think the environment is kind of a perception, right? You know, what do we, where does the environment stop and start? And I think that's really important. So I mean, I think it, you know, if I travel abroad with the, you know, some England junior team, is the environment that they've been picked, you know, for this international squad for the first time is their environment, you know, their home club. But then also what about their parents? You know, most of these athletes are underage, and so the parents create a massive environment. So I guess that I always say my mantra is to be an ally. I want to be an adult in these young people's lives as an ally to them. And so I think that that is a lot of how I see my role in any environment because I think young people often get the short end of the stick by being told, well, you're young, so you don't your feelings are somehow invalid. And I'm there to go, your feelings are valid, let me help you sort them and be the most productive, best version of you. But I think that the environment then can extend quite in a nebulous, almost messy way beyond the sporting context very quickly. And I think that can be sometimes where sport psychologists start to feel worried. And one of the things I started to notice is I actually had a client recently who I've known for a long time, known her for a long time, but not worked with her necessarily one-to-one, but she's kind of been involved in squads and travel I've done. And she said, Nope, do you mind if I tell you about my boyfriend? I know it's not related to sports psychology, but we're having some issues. And I was like, of course, because that is part of her environment, if that makes any sense. So I think that that's a really important thing to nail down is when we talk about the environment, what do we mean? And are you willing as a practitioner to extend your definition of the sporting environment to match that of your clients?

SPEAKER_04 21:27

That is that is super interesting. And let's, do you know what? Let's dig a bit deeper on this because you're the first person to have dug into this, has asked the question, where does the environment stop and start? Which I think is an incredibly interesting one. Because I suppose when, as psychologists or practitioners, or people interested in the organizational elements of performance and well being, when we use the environment, I suppose in our mind's eye, the perfect version of that is a business or an organization. It's for Walls that the athlete or the performer steps into, they step into their environment, you know, when they go to work or when they go to compete, and then they they come home again, they step out of that environment and they go somewhere else. Right. And what I'm hearing for you though is actually in terms of the athletes that you work with, particularly some of these youth athletes, their environment is quite transient. It's it's everything, it's the organization that they're dealing with, but it's also their parents. It's the physical spaces. So their environment might change week to week if they're going to different clubs and competing in different pools. And but it's also the relationships in their personal lives as well. So is that how you kind of you see the environment is not just this place that people step in and out of. It's actually everything orbiting this athlete or this performer's life.

SPEAKER_03 22:48

Yeah, I think absolutely. I think I help them create this ability to step in and out and create these guidelines for where it stops and starts. But I don't think that they are organic guidelines. I think they are ones that we create together. And I think I would also add that so much of the environment that they're in is the fact of like where is their brain development? I think not enough is paid attention to that, you know, of adolescence and in a sense of brain development lasts until about age 25. How can we not take that into account when both in both research and practice? For example, we know in from adolescent psychology that peer approval is the most important thing to an adolescent. But then we're kind of asking, we're kind of saying, oh, coaches, you should pick captains, or coaches set these guidelines. You know, there's little things that we also we don't include in the environment. And I think one of those things is actually brain development and where where they're at in that sense. Where I think there's a physical space and also a developmental place in terms of the kind of environmental constructs. And I think that you'd be doing a disservice to your whole athlete without really kind of going, okay, so you know, actually a classic example is someone's nervous before a competition or a game or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

You know, that's why most people come to me. They go, I'm I'm nervous, I lack self-belief, I lack confidence. And there's an element of sports psychology in which you can do some really good deep breathing. You know, that's not saying there's not space for that. And that can calm the nerves for a moment. But until you kind of go, you know, is a reason we're nervous have to do with an expectation that was planted by a parent or a coach or where you are developmentally in your brain. How can we separate that? How do we really help someone move forward and make the most of a situation if we're not really taking into account all of these factors that make up who a person is and who they are behind the blocks or on that pitch?

SPEAKER_04 24:50

Don't suppose you take much interest in the Sarah Jane Blakemore stuff around the adolescent brain.

SPEAKER_03 24:56

Love her. Well, she's also at UCL.

SPEAKER_04 24:58

Is she? Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:00

I have to admit, I I have spent a moment, uh a time or two in her in her lab meetings, and I do love Sarah Jane Blakemore's work. So I think that she's been also really influential in how I've thought about. I actually really like that she comes not from sports psychology, because I think sometimes in sports psychology, we start to treat 16-year-olds like adults because they end up quite professional in many senses and lots of sports from kind of 16, 17, 18 years old on. And what's great about her work is she goes, they're adolescents. Let's not forget that.

SPEAKER_04 25:29

Yeah, it's it's interesting that you all know this loads better than than I do, being able to spend so much time with her. But it's interesting that a lot of the work that she's done shows that if we consider the environment as a thing that people can move in and out of, as adults, we very much force adolescents into our way of doing things. So our view of the environment in terms of when school start time should be, our expectations of their behavior and their decision making, et cetera, et cetera. So kind of in the context of this podcast, it's it's almost like we build a lot of environments that are not really that sympathetic to, as you mentioned, the the biology of an athlete in their teenage years.

SPEAKER_03 26:13

Oh, absolutely. And I think that's actually I I had a really frank conversation with a fabulous athlete that I work with, and she's an adolescent, and we we were talking about this idea that how can grown-ups forget what it's like to be a teenager? You know, what happens in that time? And one of the things that she was really reflecting on is that things would kind of, you know, she obviously came to me when things weren't going well in her sport. We've really improved, things are really looked up, and then she kind of goes to the director of her sport, and this director feels a need to remind her that things might go wrong again. And there's this funny need for an adult's in many athletes' life to go, you've done a good job, but but it might go wrong, but make sure you keep working on this. There's this inability I'm finding to just fully celebrate some of the things that have been done by our young people because and there's like this this real need to go, but what if they almost like rest on their laurels? Or what if they forget it's like they're not gonna forget that things can go wrong. These are professionals in many senses of the word, but this need to constantly tell young people, wait, it might go wrong, or wait, have you thought of this? It's it's a harshness that we don't do to other adults. You know, if you know you tell me that you know you put a podcast out last week and it's had a certain number of listens, I don't go, that's great, Pete. But but remember, next week, if you don't keep working hard, it might not go as well. And we constantly do that to young people. And I think that's something that we really have to realize as part of their environment is this constant criticism. And even from well-intentioned, well-meaning people, including myself, I think I have to reflect on this constantly, but we don't do it to other adults. So by forcing young people into our scenarios, we're almost saying, hey, adolescent, you are a dysfunction, a dysfunctioning version of me, but they're not. They're not dysfunctional, they are separate. You know, they are a different stage of development. So why are we forcing a square shape into a round hole, as they say?

Half time reflection

SPEAKER_04 28:25

Right. Time to break for half time, to pause for breath and maybe put the kettle on if you fancy it. I quite often suggest a cup of tea in the middle of these episodes, but obviously I'm blissfully unaware if anyone out there has actually done so. So if you're currently making a tea at this moment in time, please drop me a line. I'd love to know whether this actually happens. Anyway, aside from my tea ramblings, what have we learned so far? I have to say Hannah's mantra to create opportunity has really stuck with me, evidenced by her fear in gymnastics giving rise to the opportunity to lean into something completely different like swimming. And I love this down bite that encapsulates that transition in I wanted boring. I really like her take as well on our new normal, that sometimes we don't know how much better change could be until huge disruption forces those changes. And then we see and understand the potential benefits of these new things in a new light. That these times might bring big, useful changes that were previously thought of as too radical or lacked political or cultural support. But like her online webinars and animated videos she is doing with Twim England, these are things are now being trialled and may even come to eventually be welcomed and valued by the culture and seen as a consistent within that world. There's a nice link here to a book I read a long time ago called The Shock Doctrine by author and activist Naomi Klein. She argues quite convincingly that big changes, really big changes, can only come in the wake of shock. This shock may be on a societal level like a world war or an act of terrorism or a pandemic, let's say, or on an individual level, like an illness, a bereavement, job loss, ended relationship, etc. etc. She argues that the chaos and instability that these moments generate create the fertile ground for big, personal, group, or societal changes. For those listening, you might reflect on the changes that might have come about at societal level following the twin shocks of the pandemic and the death of George Floyd. But you might also reflect on the personal changes that you have been able to make yourself or plan to make in the wake of the destabilizing forces of this bizarre year that is 2020. Anyway, that's enough for now. See you in another 30 minutes or so for the full-time reflection. In the meantime, let's get back into it with Hannah Stoil. So I think that's a really interesting, really interesting viewpoint there in terms of the rhetoric that we project onto young. Sometimes maybe it's even with we're not seeing that athlete, we're seeing the younger version of ourselves, and we're projecting what we desperately want to take to younger versions of ourselves. But I suppose that's just my own personal conjecture there. But um, I'm wondering whether on the flip side in some of your roles with from England or Reading or Milford, lots of environments there with young athletes bubbling and full of potential, whether you've seen some really good ways of organizations or those particular environments actually accounting really well for the needs of young people and putting things in place that actually give them the opportunity to thrive. I don't know whether there's anything that you've noticed in particular that's worth worth mentioning.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

I I really I do like Swim England's model that they don't start too young, you know, having come from gymnastics, I think start very early. I do like this idea that they have these kind of regional camps up to age 12 and then 13, 14, 15, 16, there are some national camps you can be selected for. But one of the nice things about those selections, there's an idea that we're gonna select these kids, but we're not saying these are the next Olympians, these are not necessarily the next Adam Peaties, they are just wonderful kids who have worked hard, who have swum fast, who, you know, are leaders in their own clubs and they're gonna come to our events because a fast 14-year-old doesn't make a fast 24-year-old. So they don't really care. The point is if you bring in Sarah from a club in Exeter, and there's 200 kids in the club at Exeter, if she comes to a national camp and learns a different tumble turn or learns that sports psychology is a thing, she goes back to her home club and kind of leads by example by going, hey, I learned this at a national camp. And whether or not Sarah decides to make swimming her lifelong passion and project, that's up to Sarah. But the club or the coach or a parent might remember what kind of lessons came back. And I think that's really nice. I think the idea that we're trying to pick out superstars from a young age can be really difficult and harsh psychologically on many young people and parents. So I think Swim England does a nice job that way. But then also I really like their, I always get to travel with our junior team and you know, just go on trips, and it means that they know that these athletes know what it's like to travel with a sports psychologist and what I do. So whether or not I'm on that GB team or I'm at the Olympics, they know what to ask of the sports psychologist who's there. And hopefully they have a bit more confidence in going, hey, I know what a sports psych does, and I don't have to be afraid. There doesn't have to be something wrong with me to go talk to them. I can just go over to them and go, hey, I need this and that, or you should know this about me, or just nice to meet you. So I think that the effort that Swim England makes to make young people aware of sports psychology is done really nicely in a really stepping stone type manner. And I think it one of the things that that Reading has done is also the incredible autonomy they've given me over my role. You know, I came in the first time and gave a workshop on goal setting, which is fine, which is a lot of times how we all start. But I really said to the coach, and I who's an awesome guy, and he said, What can you do? What can you offer? How are you gonna best support my players? And I said, Well, actually, a ton of one-to-ones with just even 10 20-minute check-ins throughout the day, just so I get to know them and we can talk and they have someone to kind of offload on, has become incredibly valuable. So my role there is very in the first of maybe two times I meet them, it's kind of more formal needs analysis. But by the time, you know, if I meet them in September, by the time we get to, you know, this time of year in April, it's a quick, hello, how's this? How's that going? Oh, is that teacher still bothering you? Yeah, you know, how'd you play in the last game? Oh, you're really angry at the defenders, got it. You know, just a very quick kind of informal catch-up can just mean that they have a place to let go of some of that stress. And I think that autonomy that Reading has given me over my role has really seen great dividends from these players who are just have a place to be themselves and to talk about what they need to talk about. And they they have this much needed kind of outlet.

SPEAKER_04 35:24

I think that autonomy point's really interesting. And okay, let I really want to talk about that point. But before we do, just quickly a note on the Swim England story you just told there. What I was hearing there and saying that we're not bigging these kids up to be the next Olympians is what I was hearing, maybe I'm assuming this, is there's more of a focus within that culture on maybe the enjoyment of the sport and the growth and the learning, opposed to putting on kind of big expectations of performance. Would would that be right in saying?

SPEAKER_03 35:59

Yeah, I think in the early stages of the talent pathway that we have, there is a real focus on creating kind of a whole athlete. Um, and they use something called they, you know, British swimming came out with the optimal athlete development framework. And as part of that, it separates out, you know, what makes a great person, athlete, and performer. So recognizing we want people who love swimming. You know, that's what we want to create. And then we can translate that into an athlete who works hard and is resilient and then gets on the blocks of the performer, carrying that love and enjoyment throughout racing. So I think that's fair. And I think that swim England is a nice way of at least attempting to not push high performance at a really young age, create high performance in the sense of it's there for the opportunity. You know, it's there's a formal structure, and and swimming is a unique sport in the, you know, it's it's objective, right? If you are faster than the person next to you, you win. It's really, it's simple in that sense. And so realizing those things, I think that if you if because of that, if you don't maximize kind of enjoyment of it, the grit and the determination that it takes to be a swimmer can turn many kids away. So they have to be able to enjoy it, to want to fight for those incremental gains. And that's a lot of what I think we try to do as a pathway. So when they get to age 18, 20, that they really are professional, but also people who haven't been forced to do this.

SPEAKER_04 37:23

Yeah. And I suppose that's why we call them performance pathways, not performance cliffs.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 37:28

We're not pushing, we're not at some point just pushing someone off a cliff and going, right, this is the full 360, everything high performance you could ever want scariness.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:39

The whole point of the pathway is to layer in the appropriate amount of information, support, challenge along that pathway to keep very talented individuals who've got maybe slightly different relationships with that that sport enjoying it and motivated and wanting to win. And and I suppose it's it's about as much what I heard though is it's as much about not losing someone who could be great for the wrong reasons than also developing all of these people to make them better.

SPEAKER_03 38:11

Absolutely, because we are going to ask these young people eventually to make sacrifices. Being great requires that. You know, we're gonna say, actually, we want you to give up football for swimming. We want you to give up your Friday nights and your Saturday mornings, we want you to give up certain things. But we can't ask that unless unless they love it. And I think that that's a really important thing to understand when you're working with with young people is they have to love it. And you can't force someone to love something if you haven't really shown them all the wonderful things about the sport.

SPEAKER_04 38:42

What are the the characteristics of a youth athlete that has all the potential to be great that you've noticed across those different environments that you've worked, whether it's athletics, swimming, gymnastics, football, middle school? What have you noticed are the kind of the commonalities, irrespective of sport, that you spot in a young athlete and it makes you think, geez, they've got a good chance?

SPEAKER_03 39:13

So one of the first things I think is an ability to communicate what they what they're feeling. And obviously that's a bias lant as a psychologist. I'm often asking for that. But I think if a young athlete can say, you know, actually to me, I always invite my athletes by saying, you know, I'll give maybe a spiel of what I what I've kind of captured of what they said, and I say, now what did I get right? What did I get wrong? And you know, inviting them to kind of say, actually, I don't think that was quite right, Hannah, or I'm actually I think about it this way. And I think an athlete who can communicate what they're not liking or they're really liking about their environment and their and their experience is really helpful. And because if you you get an athlete who just exists and doesn't have either the confidence or, you know, kind of ability at this point to kind of say, hey, I'm aware that something's wrong, or I'm aware that something's really right and I want to capture it. I think that's been a really good place to start. And awareness is always what I start with. So, you know, I say that awareness is kind of the key to unlocking someone's mind. If they don't, if they're not aware of what they're doing, it's it's hard to get started. So we have to build this awareness. So I and I also think that a young person who understands how they learn is also really important. I was working with an athlete who I really, I really enjoy working with, and we were talking the other day, and she's been having a lot of trouble with motivation, and we talked about how you know, how do you learn best? And we went through all these things about actually when she's given intense breakdown of a training plan and all these things that have to get done, she shuts down. She goes, I it's so much, I can't do this. But if she can actually just go, all right, I'm gonna get from A to B and I trust my coach to get me there, and I just have to show up each day and put my my full effort into each thing I'm told in each moment, she's like, awesome, let's do it. So knowing that and then communicating that. So going, okay, this is how I learn, and now I can communicate that with a coach, is so much of what's going on in a successful athlete. Because if you also have someone, because you need to have them make sacrifices, but those sacrifices have to feel like a willing choice. So I get athletes who are just willing to go through the uncomfortable, and that's also great. That really creates success in a really lovely way if you're just willing to tolerate that uncomfortable, as we always talk about. But there's another level of going, okay, but why can't I tolerate this level of discomfort or that level of discomfort? What am I aware, aware of in myself? How do I reflect and then communicate that? Because there's nothing wrong with not wanting to get up at five in the morning. Not many people want to get up at five in the morning and go swimming, but kind of being able to go, what's going on there and who do I communicate with to say that really allows then their support network to actually move them forwards. Because it's fine to say they have access to a coach and a sports psych and a nutritionist and a physio. But if they don't know how to really utilize and communicate with each of those, who cares if they're there?

SPEAKER_04 42:18

It's not just putting someone on a production line and letting them go down the conveyor belt and being stamped with various parts of the performance machine, nutrition, SNC, psychology, et cetera. You're looking for someone who engages with that machine, who has the awareness to ask questions of it in some points or to understand how they learn best or how they're going to thrive the most within that, within that environment or that machine.

SPEAKER_03 42:43

Exactly. And I think that in every environment I've worked in, you know, it's that it factor of kind of asking that question and really kind of, you know, a lot of my athletes who I find most successful ask me about why I got into sports psychology because they've never heard of it before. And they're like, wait, wait, wait, really explain it to me. What are we really doing here? Why do you do this? Why are you here? How can I use you? And that's really what I see in most successful athletes is that and they, you know, they come to you when things are right and things are wrong, and they communicate what they're thinking in a way that's that's above the rest.

SPEAKER_04 43:18

How do you answer that question? I'm gonna put you on the spot here. How do you, if they if they say, How can I use you?

SPEAKER_03 43:23

So I basically I actually, in many a way, that I would explain it in a workshop to coaches. You know, I say there are two parts of sport psychology in my world, at least that's how I see it. There's a mental skill aspect. Um, you know, there are tools and tips and tricks that you can have in your tool belt, breathing techniques, self talk mantras that we can use, things that you can have, cue cards to remind yourself of when you think, what if it all goes wrong? That you think what if it all goes right? You know, little tips and tricks and mental skills that we can have. And then the other side of sports psychology is using me to bounce ideas off of that I'm an ally to you. To come to me and go, hey, I was thinking this. And for me to make the connections with you about why do we even need those mental skills? Why are we even beginning to think about we don't want to be here today? Or we're really we're so nervous we feel sick to our stomach. Why is that happening? And if we use kind of, you know, the example I often give is, you know, maybe think of psychology as lying down on the couch, you know, talking to someone, there's actually that element to it. There's a talk therapy element.

SPEAKER_04 44:28

The surprise, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:29

Exactly. So I think that, you know, if you're willing to engage in both, then we can really get somewhere. And then the way I often I also talk to clients or coaches, whoever I'm talking to, is I always say, I think it's 15% of success in any therapy comes from an optimism that the therapy will work. And that is incredibly powerful, I think. So if I go into a sports psychology session, especially an early one or a first one, I often will give a really tangible tip or trick, a mental skill that really gets a buy-in from that client and goes, oh whoa, that's really cool. You know, that's kind of hard hitting and shifts something and how I'm feeling each day. And once I get that buy-in, I actually do my second session, much more about really listening, really getting to know the person. I actually kind of don't do an initial session of just fact finding. I actually make that usually my second session if I have the time. And so I often kind of say, you know, you've kind of bought into sports psychology last time by learning mental skills. Now let's go into a little bit more of the talk therapy and shifting core beliefs and understanding that you are not an island of a person that all of your environments influence you and that where your brain development is. And I bring all of those things together. And whenever I explain anything to a client, I always explain the science behind it. And I think that's a really helpful thing as well. So if I say, hey, this is what the literature says on imagery, or this is what Sarah Jane Blakemore says on brain development, I will tell them about the book and I'll, or I'll send them the book, or you know, we'll talk about it as peers in many senses. Because as I said earlier, you know, our young people are often treated that their experiences aren't valid because they're young, but they're it's their experiences, it's their version of the world. So I would be, you know, it'd be wrong if I said, hey, here's what the science says, and therefore I know what works for you. It's like, well, here's what the science says. I want to know your thoughts. And that's also a lot of how I work.

SPEAKER_04 46:28

So we've got basically there's there's kind of two sides here. There's the I've got some, I've got some stuff. We can educate you on that, we can put that in your tool belt, that's all good. And then this other side, it's collaborative, it's integrative, it's us talking, but it's about us collaborating together to find those areas where I can be helpful.

SPEAKER_03 46:50

Exactly. Because you want to make yourself redundant, right? At the end of the day, I want them to go away and go, yes, that was fun to work with Hannah, but I don't need her anymore, at least not day to day. I have the ability to reflect in a way and use tools that she's taught me. And that's that's what she wants. There's also a huge element of every time you're in any environment is creating really autonomous athletes because that's what we all enjoy as human beings.

SPEAKER_04 47:16

It's the classic kind of perspective from some models of psychology of can we teach them to be their own therapist?

SPEAKER_03 47:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:23

So they can be autonomous, so they can be self-sufficient.

SPEAKER_03 47:26

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because I think also in a world where there's not enough funding for everyone to have a one-to-one every week for an hour in a lovely office, that's also really important. You know, you have to realize you work in sports psychology and not clinical psychology.

SPEAKER_04 47:39

Yeah. Okay. Well, we're going to end for a put you on the spot once, gonna put you on the spot for a second time.

SPEAKER_03 47:44

Go for it.

SPEAKER_04 47:44

And end with a question that I'm asking everyone that comes on the podcast. And as you will probably, as you know, there's absolutely no right answer to this question, but super interested in the different viewpoints and angles and perspectives that people bring to this question. And that question is what does the pie, what does the psychologically informed environment mean to you?

SPEAKER_03 48:08

Yes. So I thought I have two angles on this. I think one harkens back to exactly what you were just saying, that sports psychology is more than mental skills. And that's really important for any club that's hiring a sport psychologist to realize that, well, many of us first degree was in psychology. It's changing slightly as the pathway to becoming a sports psychologist evolves. But realizing that we can offer kind of a talk therapy method as well as mental skills, but we're also informed on mental health. So we may not be mental health practitioners, but we are normally really informed on. I mean, you have to ask each sports psychologist. But for me, you know, my eating disorders research is makes me an expert on eating disorders. You know, that's what my PhD is on. And so realizing that I understand that world is really important. Now I don't treat people with eating disorders, but I do understand it. So there are questions that can be asked. So knowing what a psychologist does, I think is really important. But I think there's another side to this that a psychologically informed environment is one that provides support even when it's inconvenient and even when it doesn't fit stereotype. Because I'm I find everyone talks about wanting to support an athlete, no matter what, if they're going through kind of low moods or depression or anxiety, whatever's happening. Every coach you talk to, every organization says, of course you want to support them. And then I come to them and say, they're gonna need two weeks out of training. And that's really inconvenient to them. It's really not what fits in the kind of model of what they want. What they would like to have happen is the psychology support means the deploy me, they don't have to think about it anymore. I work with the athlete and day to day they just see improvement. But sometimes we have to step backwards first. And I think that that can be a really important element of knowing actually, this might not be convenient to you. It might not be convenient to this athlete's performance, but we still have to provide support. And that beyond that, you know, it doesn't mean that I think one of the most important examples I ever learned from is I had an athlete who was depressed. And one of the reasons it took us so long to realize was that it doesn't look like classic depression. She was still getting up every day and she was still, you know, had basic hygiene because she was doing her sport. But actually, if you took away the sport, a basic hygiene would have fallen all away, except for the fact that her sport was swimming, and so then she was clean every day. And there was this kind of mask around it. So I think the psychologically informed environment is one that supports an athlete, no matter if it's inconvenient, and supports a coach for that matter. Because sometimes coaches need it as well. So a coach can't go to a competition because of mental health reasons. We just go, well, that's okay. We don't say that's really inconvenient for me, because it will be inconvenient. That's kind of here, no, there. We just have to kind of move on. And then the ability to go, gosh, that athlete is non-compliant, or that athlete, all that athlete needs to do is stretch her hamstrings every day. Why won't she do it? Well, maybe it's not that she doesn't want to. Maybe there's an underlying depressive factor that means that she can't. And I think that's really important as well is it may not look like an athlete not getting out of bed, you know, if they're having a psychological issue. It might look very different. It manifests totally different for different people. And I think a psychologically informed environment has to understand those different manifestations.

SPEAKER_04 51:33

Okay, so a psychologically informed environment is one where we know what sports like is and what it isn't. So we know the parameters there. It is delivered even when it's inconvenient. It supports athletes, but also supports his coaches and the support staff that are circulating around the performers and also integrates mental health as well as performance.

SPEAKER_03 51:59

Oh beautifully said, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 52:01

Sounds good to me. I'm sold.

SPEAKER_03 52:04

That sounds good. If only we could, you know, sometimes we need unlimited funding and resources to implement, but I think we can at least start it, yeah, you know, for free.

SPEAKER_04 52:13

When yeah, if we if we manage to bottle up and sell it as a patient, we'd be very rich people.

SPEAKER_03 52:17

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 52:18

Um, Hannah, thanks so much for spending the time to share your your insights and experiences across all of these different environments and your amazing zigzagging journey to where you've got to. Um, if people want to find out more about what you're doing, follow you on social media, where would they be able to follow you online?

SPEAKER_03 52:37

So I have a personal Twitter and Instagram page that I sometimes put out sports psychology related things. So on Twitter, that's HStoil, and on Instagram, I'm Hannah Stoyle. But perhaps more interesting is the Twitter and Instagram pages of um my consultancy, which is optimize potential. So at on Twitter, that's OP underscore sport underscore psych and Instagram is optimize underscore potential. And then also my website is optimizepotentialsport.com. And you can spell that with a Z or an S if you're American or in the UK, um, for the website there.

SPEAKER_04 53:12

Oh nice, got the SEO covered.

SPEAKER_03 53:14

Exactly. I was like, I gotta nail that down, but I think um, and actually on our website right now we have a button that links directly to some of the videos that Helen and I have been doing for kind of support during COVID-19, as well as an infographic that I did with one of the Sports Like trainees that works with me, Serena McLeod, that deals with self-compassion and using self-kindness in this time for athletes who might need a little additional support during COVID-19.

SPEAKER_04 53:41

Great. Well, I'll put all of those links in the description on the podcast anyway. So it should be super easy for for people to find those. And look, thanks so much again for spending the time to share your share your thoughts and insights and uh best of luck through the rest of this uncertain period. I hope you continue to find those little slices of of opportunity within what we're experiencing at the moment.

SPEAKER_03 54:04

Cheers, I appreciate that. There's always opportunity if you look.

SPEAKER_04 54:07

Oh, that might be the sound bite for the episode. Okay. Sounds good. Thanks, Hannah.

Full time reflection

SPEAKER_04 54:14

Right then, the final whistle has blown on this episode, but what are the pundits saying up in the studio? For me, one key thing I took away was Hannah's perspective on developing the whole athlete and her reference to British swimming's optimal athlete development framework. There's a lot of discussion in sports psychology across the board about developing the person as well as the athlete. And this discussion may not be new to many of you listening, but I really liked Hannah's sound bites around we want people who love swimming, not those that feel that they have been forced to do it. And with that love, we can take that and translate it to athletes who can work hard, who are resilient, and then get on the blocks as a performer, carrying all that love for the sport with them. Carrying all that love for the sport with them. That's an incredible standby. I love that. In terms of developing this love from a young age, you can see in many development pathways now that we try and take the pressure off winning at a younger age and focus on things like growth, development, and the learning of new skills. You may, like me, have also witnessed or heard rumblings about this from others in the sport world. For example, I was at a charity dinner a few years ago when the keynote speaker, a decorated rugby international, spent a large chunk of his speech warning against some of this thinking. That by taking the onus too much off competing or winning, we blunt the edge of competitiveness too much. And actually, maybe we are forgetting that winning is also fun as well. And I totally get that perspective. Competition is at the heart of sport, and great champions blend their love of the game and learning and growth with a fierce determination to win as well. So it's really hard to delineate the two. But what comes across very clear in Hannah's points is that we know so much more now about how the brain develops in childhood and adolescence, and we are armed with so much more information with which to make more appropriate decisions at each stage of that pathway. What level of information to give, what levels of challenge and support to offer, what specialists like psychology to bring into the mix, and a whole lot more. Interestingly, the British Swimming Document on Optimal Athlete Development is freely available online and it's a great insight into how an elite system manages their athletes, from a person to the athlete and the performer point of view. So I've left a link to that document in the podcast notes. Definitely give it a read at some point. Well, that's it for another slice of pie. Thanks again for listening, and watch out for the 12th and last episode of this first series when it's out next week. Take care and have a good week.