Hello and welcome back to Brain in the Game. Brain in the Game is a podcast that's been specifically designed for athletes, coaches and parents who are out there looking to do their sport just that little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is a crazy look at a crazy world of smart mind. I'm your host, Dave Diggle.
In this episode 57, we're going to look at the athlete's life on the road, the travelling professional athlete. Now, most athletes strive and dream about being that professional athlete that's always competing and getting paid to do what they love to do. Now, when I was competing, which was way back in the 80s, we used to compete almost every month in a different country. Being growing up in the UK and being so close to Europe and of accessibility to all those different countries to compete with, it was a great time to be an athlete. However, the travel and the accommodation wasn't what it is today. The world of a professional athlete today is so accessible. The globe is so accessible. Many of these athletes are on the road constantly. I know teams that are on the road for 48 to 50 weeks every single year.
That's a huge commitment when you're travelling with people and you don't have your familiarity around you, that can affect you mentally, emotionally and your performance. So that's what we're going to look at in this episode of Brain In The Game. We're going to look at how do we do that smarter. So what are some of the issues these travelling athletes who are seeing the world and getting paid handsomely to do it, have to deal with? Now, I know some of you are thinking, really, if they're upset about having to travel the world, then boohoo on them. But the reality is it can be a very difficult existence, living from hotel room to hotel room, from airport to airport, from bus to bus, and travelling with people that you wouldn't normally select to spend your time and your days and nights with. And that often has an impact mentally, emotionally, on the athlete. There's been many articles written in some few TV documentaries done by a former British cricket player on depression that cricketers suffer from being on the road so frequently, so it's not something to be taken to lightheartedly. So we're going to look at some of the practicalities of travelling.
We're going to look at some of the key things that a behavioural consultant such as myself can help athletes manage that time away and get the most out of it. Because the reality is, when you finished your career and you look back on it, the last thing you want to do is go, wow, that was way too hard. And I didn't get to enjoy or achieve what I could have achieved because I spent most of my time upset and depressed about being on the road. So let's look at some of those practicalities. What are some of the realities of the difficulties athletes face being on the road? I've already mentioned that depression is one of them. And I say when I was an athlete back in the eighties, I competed for Great Britain. My first international was 1979, where travel was really different. Airport travel was a difficult process to negotiate. Today, plane hopping and country hopping is what we do. I leave next week and for three weeks I'll have over ten flights from country to country and before I come back home again. It's just what the professional athlete of today has to deal with.
And if the professional athlete has to deal with it, as coaches and support staff have to do the same too. So not performing the same way as you train would be the most classic complaint I get from athletes. It's not like how I prepare at home. When I get to a different venue, it feels different. It looks different. In actual fact, it is different. So I can't train the way I want to train because I know when I get there, it's all going to be different. That's one of the complaints many athletes make about life on the road. Another one is they're not being able to do their preparation when they're back home and they're in their normal training environment. They have set up systems around them to be effective and efficient at their preparation when they're on the road. They may be living in hotels, they may be travelling in buses to and from venues with the rest of the team, so they don't get that opportunity to do their normal preparation. The emotional connection to home, the familiarity to home, the people they know, the places they know, and when they go to a new venue, whether it be in another state or another country, the loss of that familiarity shifts their focus and their mindset on their preparation and that feeling of being comfortable and confident.
And let's not underestimate the disharmony that can happen with having to share a hotel room with somebody. That reality is you probably don't even like those kind of strains and stresses can cause massive disharmony amongst team dynamics. And I've actually witnessed many teams completely dismantled the flow of their performance by the in team fighting. And that's not only the performers, the competitors that's support specialists, that staff that's coaches. When you have to share hotel rooms and buses and airports and plane seats with people that you don't always see eyeto eye with for long periods of time that can cause a massive amount of disharmony in the team and ultimately completely derail their competition preparation. There's been many teams, again, I'll reference cricket because they do spend a great deal of their year on the road. There's been many times that we've heard teams have absolutely fallen apart, not because of what they're doing on the pitch, it's often what's going on behind the scenes. So learning how to travel as an athlete and travel with your team can have a massive influence on the way that you perform. So let's get into some nuts and bolts.
What we're trying to do here is minimise the disruption. We're looking for familiarity, we're looking for comfort. What we're looking for here is a system, something that fits you, that you can apply irrespective of where you are, what you're doing and who you're with. When I'm working with my clients, I frequently reference the military. The military have got this down pat. Doesn't matter where the conflict is in the world, they can arrive, drop, set up, and they have everything they need around them in order to do the job they've been sent there to do. The military camps often have their own complete infrastructure. Doesn't matter whether they're in the desert, in a jungle or in the Arctic. They set up and everything they need to be able to do their job comes with them. They're aware of what it looks like, what it feels like, and they're completely familiar with everything around them. So they can go and focus on doing what they need to do. And look, the reality of that is, if they are not focused on what they do, they stand the chance of being killed. So there's a huge investment in making sure that every single time they go somewhere, they only have to focus on their job and not wonder, well, I'm not used to this or I'm not used to that, or that's really unfamiliar, or I don't know what to do here because this is nothing I've prepared for.
We can learn from that. We can utilise that structural approach that the Ministry have in our sporting context. So number one is know exactly what works for you when you do want to perform. What are those familiar things that you have around you? What are the constants in your preparation that you're going to want to take with, you? Know, your preparation, what works for you, why it works and how it works. Get really familiar with what gets you to be the best athlete that you can be. When you understand the dynamics and the environment around that, that makes it perfect for you, then we can start to rebuild that and make a travelling pack, something that you can take with you with enough familiarity and comfort that when you get there and you set up, you feel as though you're at home. You feel like you've got everything around you and everyone around you that you need to have around you so you can perform. It sounds really logical. However, very few athletes actually take the time to recognise what makes their environment the right environment, and then beyond that, take the time to create it and preemptively build it for anywhere, anytime and anyhow.
So let's unpack that a little bit better. What are your training requirements? So if you train at home and what you do is I hope you go out and do your bounce exercises. Or you go and do your preparation maps. Or you go and do anything that you would normally do to make your training and your competition feel right. Know exactly what they are. Make a list of them. And also not only make a list of what you do. Make a list of why it's important to you. We want to have that emotional buying, that connection to it that makes you go, doesn't matter where I am in the world, I am going to make sure I have that with me. What are your dietary requirements? I've just spent a great deal of this year travelling through Asia, living in Australia. I have a very set dietary requirement. I know what I like, I know what it tastes like, I know how it like it cooked. Those kind of key things that make me feel comfortable travelling through some of the Asian cities and towns that I did do this year. Didn't have any Western food.
Now, I'm not opposed to trying something different. However, if I'm going somewhere to perform, if I was an elite athlete, I wouldn't want to be trying something that could end up making me feel sick, making me not feel comfortable. I'd want to keep familiarity. So know your dietary requirements. Know if you take supplements, take those with you. You're going to want to take things that you normally use. You don't want to think, okay, I'll get there and I'll find the equivalent because you may have adverse effects from that. Want to make sure that your dietary requirements are as normal and as targeted as you normally have. What are your physical requirements? Do you need a specific kind of training? Gym weight, gym, diner bands? Are you looking for a specific kind of chiropractor, physiotherapist, masseuse? All these kind of things that you need and use at home. You want to make sure that sure, you can't always take your whole Entourage team with you. However, know what you need and why you need it. If you're a racing car driver and you have a masseuse and a chiropractor to keep your neck and your body in trim for the GForces, then you're going to want to make sure when you're on the road that you have accessibility to a similar kind of support specialist.
How do you normally transfer yourself around when you're at home? Do you normally have a car? Are you normally on a push bike? Do you normally run? Do you commute on the train? These things are going to be different when you go to a different state or different country. If you want to create that similar kind of comfort zone around you, that familiarity, then you may need to look at if the team travel at 02:00 and I actually want to get there at 01:00 to do my preparation, I may need to organise better transport because that's how I prepare at home. I take longer to prepare. Look at your downtime. What do you normally do when you're at home for downtime? Do you meet friends? Do you go to the movies? Do you spend just time alone when you're on the road? Having that downtime is just as important as having the uptime and again, maybe even more. If you're travelling with a group or a team that you don't normally spend all that time with, having separation time from them is going to be critical to keep you mentally stable again. Recognise what do you do for downtime?
Is it music? Is it movies? What is it for you? Recognising those key aspects of what systems you have around you that makes things work is a critical aspect to keeping familiarity. Again, I want you to constantly keep in mind that military drop and set and go. If you had to drop, set and go, what would you want in your drop and set up? So once you recognise all the key things that you need around you to make you feel comfortable and familiar, we got to start doing some preparation long before we get to the venue. So if we're travelling from state to state within the same country, then the reality is, many of the key things that you have at home, you'll probably be able to get locally. However, if you're travelling overseas, many of those key things, many of those key aspects of your preparation may not be accessible to you or easily accessible to you. So you may need to do some research before you leave. Again, I spent a lot of time in Asia and my dietary requirements, I had to preemptively research where can I get to a market and get fresh fruit, get free fresh vegetables and use those kind of research processes to make myself feel comfortable enough to get there, drop, set up, go and get my dietary requirements and feel as though I'm eating healthily?
So we're talking about foods, we're talking about resources. So, chiropractors, masseus, physiotherapists, acupuncturists, all those kind of things that you use at home. A preemptive Google search will allow you to know exactly what and where you need to go and research that. There are so many forums online these days for expats in different countries. Often you can find things very easily those hidden little gems that are going to make your life a lot easier. You may even be able to preemptively order them online and have them delivered to your hotel. So when you rock up to your first hotel, a lot of the key things that you're going to need in that country are already there waiting for you. Think about language travelling through Asia. If you're a Western speaking individual going to somewhere like Asia, many of the areas didn't speak English. Within our apps on our phone these days, our smartphones, you can get a lot of translators. When I travelled through China, these translators saved so much time, effort and aggravation in ordering food, ordering taxis, ordering whatever we needed to order within the hotel. Those kind of things. Again, preemptively loading those on your phone is going to make you feel more comfortable, more prepared and more familiar to your environment.
Things like knowing when you're going to leave. So you say we talk about having a funnel process, a seven to two funnel process to prepare for your competition. The reality is that same process can be used for your travel. If you travel frequently, then you will have a preset funnel that you just go through that process, ticket off, have all those key strategy processes around you the apps, the food, the online organising of maybe your food or your dietary requirements, your supplements, your support specialists around you. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Feeling comfortable? Yes. When I get there, I know what I need to do. Drop, set up. So we're building familiarity and efficiency, and especially in the hotel and travel part of our athlete on the road. One of the key things for mental stability is not only knowing when you get there that these things are going to be comfortable for you and going to be familiar for you. It's knowing when you get there and when you're going to leave. We want to make sure that we are focused, we are on task while we're there to do a job. If we're there to perform, we want to make sure that we're the ultimate athlete we can possibly be during that period.
We don't want to be thinking, how long have I got to be here? Oh, man, when is this going to end? I've been here for a whole week. And blah, blah, blah, blah. If you turn around and say to yourself, right, I land on Tuesday the first and we fly out on Wednesday, or whatever, bang. Your brain knows what period of time it has to stay engaged. If it's open ended, then you start to think about, when do I leave? If you know specifically when you leave, your brain can switch off and go, okay, cool. I know when I'm leaving so I can focus on what I'm doing right now. And that might sound quite simple, but from an emotional perspective, especially if you've got family back home, that's a big step to take. Recognising when I land, the job I've got to do and when I'm leaving, it's a project, not just an open ended travel, travel, travel. We want to make sure mentally and emotionally, we're taking care of that welfare within our athletes and ourselves. The other thing is we want to do is tech up. Now, as I said back in 1979, when I first competed and I travelled overseas, there was no such thing as mobile phones or smartphones or cell phones, let alone computers or portable computers.
We didn't have accessibility to those things. However, today, that can help make life so much easier. Things like Skyping, your family, you know, Skyping your friends, keeping that contact with people back home, making that familiarity, that downtime, that you spend a comfortable time, a connecting time, so you're not living in the pockets of the rest of your teammates. 24/7 so make sure again, if you've got a smartphone or a tablet that you've got Skype on it, use whatever works for you to keep in contact with people. Connectors. Again, travelling through different countries, there's nothing worse than getting there. Going to plug your smartphone into charge up and find you don't have the right connectors. Know what the electrical currency is, know what the wattage is, know what you've got, where you need a transformer. Make sure that when you get there, you can set up again, irrespective of where you are in the world. Charge your phone, charge your tablet, and you can then make sure that you're in contact with people. One of the things that I've started travelling, and again, this was something that came from the time I spent in Asia. I have several USBs with movies on them and music on them, because if you're in a hotel room and they don't have any English speaking channels, most of them still have a USB inside of modern TVs.
You can play music or you can watch movies, things that are going to make you feel more comfortable, more familiar. So have a couple of USBs with movies on them that you've put on now. Headphones, that's something that many people forget to take, but it's great for the plane, it's great for if you're sharing a room with somebody and you are Skyping with your family, you want to have headphones, you don't want to have to share your conversation. It's not good for you, it's not good for your family, it's not good for the guy you're sharing the room with either. So all of these kind of techy things need to be well and truly thought about before you leave. Now, if you're a seasoned traveller, you've probably learnt many of these key skills along the way. However, if you're a younger athlete or just about to tip into that professional travelling world, these are key things that you can have set up long before you go to help you integrate into that world. Time zones are a classic. I can't tell you the amount of times I've rocked up in a different country with a different time zone with an athlete and they've hit the jet lag and it takes them days to recover.
Now, I don't suffer with jet lag purely because of the preparation process I go through, and this is what works for me. So number one is prepare yourself. If your time zone is dramatically different from where you are right now, spend the two days before you travel, edging yourself towards that time zone. So the disruption isn't quite as dramatic as it could be. One of the key things I've used is what we talk about presleep. So you sleep during time zone adjustment. I use, obviously, a lot of hypnosis with my clients and I also use hypnosis for myself to keep my mind in that very precise time zone travel. Set a normal pattern. Now, when I'm at home, I have a very early morning pattern I follow. I get a better set time and I start my day irrespective, whether it's a Monday or it's a Sunday, that same process. So when I arrive in a new country, I want to create that familiarity, that consistency. So I instantly get into doing exactly that same morning pattern. My body clock adjusts very quickly. A mistake many athletes and coaches make is when they land, they go, I've got a couple of days to adjust, I'm just going to sleep.
And you don't get into that normal pattern. The pattern that's working for you back home, if you get up at a certain time at home, get up at that time when you get to the venue, the other side of the world, wherever it is, make sure that you have that consistency and familiarity. Set contact times with people. So there's nothing worse than you being fast asleep middle of the night, and your family or your friends or your partners trying to Skype you or call you or text you. Not only is that traumatic for them because they can't get hold of you, it breaks your sleep too. So preparation of letting people know what the time zones are and the likelihood of when you'll be able to contact them. Another key thing for when you're travelling is on a plane, make sure you've got earbuds, you've got eye masks and don't sit up. What you move is for the whole time, make sure you get I haven't seen the takeoff on a flight for years. I literally get in, sit down, sit down on IMAX, on earbuds in, and I'm asleep while they're doing the safety reading and trying to tell everybody what to do when the mask drops and how to buckle their seatbelts, I'm snoring I'm out there.
And that's a habit I've got into, so I know it's a trigger. And a funny story from that is when I took my family to Bali this year and my youngest child had never been on a flight before, so I wanted to watch her face when we took off. But I was so conditioned to get on a plane, putting a seat belt on, I'm on earbuds in and going asleep. I sat down next to I put my seatbelt on and I struggled to stay awake. This was the middle of the day. It was just such a habitual behaviour for me, such a trigger, that I actually struggled to stay awake. I literally watched her take off. I saw the look on her face, how excited she was, and I was out. It's a great habit to get into. So we also want to make sure when we're preparing, we think about our health. We've talked about dietary requirements, what about our health medication, familiar medication. If there's headache tablets that you normally take, take them from home. If there's allergy tablets you normally take or sprays, bring them from home. If there's normal prescriptions that you have to have filled, take extra with you.
Travelling through Asia, some of the key components on the back of medications, I could never read. So I had to make sure that when I needed something, I had it there. It was familiar, it was comfortable and I felt safe. I'm sure that the local stuff was just as safe, but I wouldn't know. Don't really want to take that chance, not if I have to perform, doing my job. I have to rock up irrespective. I've got people relying on me. If I was the competitor, even more so, making sure I had those familiar things around me, that I was prepared. I knew that I could rock up and do my job. And if something adverse happened, I could always rely on the pack that I brought with me. Some people like to travel with their own pillow and I get that there's nothing worse than having a restless night's sleep when you've got to get up and perform the next day. It's something I don't do. However, I've seen many athletes travel with a very specific style of pillow to ensure that they sleep well. That's a whole different aspect. And if you're prepared to take that on the plane, go for it.
One other thing I do travel with is a wet bag. The big sealed bags that you normally have if you're a canoe or you're camping, to not let things in or out of the bag. Now, I do that for a very specific reason. Often I travel to very hot countries. I get hot, I get sweaty, my clothes get sweaty. I often go to the gym in these different hotels and so I have sweaty gear. If I put them in my normal luggage, my clothes start to smell the same and it's not a very pleasant smell. So having a wet bag enables me not only to keep the smell out and the damp out, but it also allows me to segregate my clean clothes and my dirty clothes. And that's something if you're travelling frequently and for long periods of time, can be really beneficial to help you keep things as fresh as possible. So all this comes under preparation. We haven't even got to the location yet, so we want to make sure that preparation is part of our preparation funnel is we have a list, we pack early and we know exactly what we need.
All of this comes back to knowing your preparation, knowing how you as an athlete perform the best and we want to create that perfect environment around you. Irrespective of where we are now. Something that we haven't spoken about is issue management. And I did turn on and say people travelling with people they don't normally spend time with ends up with conflicts. Want to make sure that we have balance. If we have to spend the time with people we don't necessarily want to spend the time with because they're part of our team, we want to make sure we do that in a quality way, not a quantity way. Make sure that you got things that you can do. I had a client recently come to Sydney and spend some time here and being part of that team for a long extended period of time made things certainly difficult for them. So when I would have my sessions with them, I'd say, right, let's go for a walk, let's get out of that environment, let's get out of the team dynamic and get you thinking differently, seeing different parts of the town. And so you have that time to calm down and relax and spend time thinking about you and yourself.
So when you go back into that team, you're more likely to have an easier transition, better communication and put up with each other a lot better. Making sure that you have that downtime and away time is important. Again, that comes back to the research. I spent some time in Shanghai this year and one of the key things that team owners told us was don't go walk in the streets. Crazy stuff happens. So you don't want to get up in the morning in somewhere like Shanghai to say, oh, I'll go for a Wanda. Things may happen. So you want to be able to research where's a good place to go? Do I need to jump on a bus and go to somewhere like the venue and walk around the venue? Do I need to go to a local shopping mall where it's a little bit safer and I can walk around there? Knowing those key things that you can get out and get your headspace in a good space is key for your mental and emotional stability too. So issue management know what works for, you, know, how you balance it. However, things don't always work the way you want them to work.
Know exactly what the process is, to go through the process with your management or the coaches to eliminate any further escalation of the issue. Be aware of that. Be aware of who would I talk. To who's the person that would be able to correct something if it did start to fester and be able to nip that in the bud long before it becomes an issue. So there are some key things that we've looked at here and none of them have to do with any specific sport. It's all about managing your environment. It's all about being familiar and comfortable with what makes you good at what you do, what makes you feel familiar and comfortable, what gives you the best return on your investment so that you can go and do what you do the best way you do it without worrying about what you're going to eat, where you're going to go. How am I going to spend a month in a hotel room with this guy that I don't like? How am I going to be able to travel and not feel when I get there that I can't perform physically because I'm mentally and emotionally fatigued?
Travelling as a professional athlete is just part and parcel of what we have to do in today's world of sport. Being able to do it in efficient and effective way all comes down to preparation, preemptively building your ideal environment around you and then knowing what you need to do to take that environment everywhere you go, pack it up, drop set and go. I hope this has been really interesting for you and a different take on what it is to be an elite athlete. I hope there's some key things that you can take away from this and add to all your already developing environment. There'll be things in this I'm sure that you probably haven't thought about. And if we can think about them now, long before they become an issue and you have to correct them, then it's going to make your life as a travelling athlete a lot more pleasant and a lot more productive.
And so, until the next episode of Brain in the Game, train smart, travel smart and enjoy the ride. My name is Dave Diggle and I'm the mind coach.
