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. Some people say mind coaching is a dark art. I think people just don't understand the power of the mind. So this is their opportunity to get some education. And I'm your host, Dave Diggle.
In this episode 47, we're going to look at downtime. Taking time out of your sport. So as we hurtle towards the end of another year, I can't believe today's December the first. We're coming so close to the end of the year, people are looking to take time off. But we've got to be careful. We've got to be really conscious about how we handle downtime because we've been so full throttle all year, the minute we take our foot off the accelerator, we're either going to stall or we're just going to crash. So we want to make sure that we coast our way through this silly season the best way possible.
So it's that time of year when many sports are talking about the end of year or the end of season. You may already have had your end of season finals. You may already be on time off. So as an athlete, what are you doing with your time? I'm sure previous to this, you were spending most of your day fully engulfed in your sport, in your preparation. You must have spent a lot of your day thinking about sport, thinking about, what do I need to do today to help me get my objective tomorrow? Making sure that you're physically prepared, technically prepared, and obviously, from our perspective, mentally prepared. So what do we do when we come to this time of year where everybody, well not everybody, most people around the world are about to shut shop, about to stop everything. The momentum just dies. I talk to all my athletes about making sure their mental machine is still ticking over. It's still idling along at a speed that creates that traction and momentum that they want, to get to the start of next year. Because we know that traction and momentum equal progress and consistency. So if we come to a time of year where the majority of people are beginning to stop and slow down and they're looking forward to that, not having to get out of bed that early in the morning and go running or not having to coach anybody or they're going to take one, two, three, four.. maybe even more weeks off.
I know living here in Australia between the middle of December and the end of January, it's like a ghost town. Everything just shuts shop. Yet in my mind, that's a great opportunity to make the most of that quieter time. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about what do we do from the athlete's perspective? What do we do as a coach during this downtime? And what do we do as a parent? Often as a parent, when we've got these elite or professional athletes that we don't see all year, all of a sudden they're hanging around a lot more. And so we start to see behavioural traits. Maybe we don't see what we think we should see. So all these kind of things can add to the emotional weight of that downtime and the efficiency of that downtime.
Now, I'm not arguing that we don't or shouldn't have downtime. I think it's incredibly important that we balance our life. So we do have some downtime. And many of you who've listened to my podcast or attend some of my live trainings or clinics will know I often talk about the 'off' athlete as much as I talk about as the 'on' athlete. So from my perspective, from a mental, emotional and cognitive perspective, I think downtime is incredibly important. It's just as valuable to the athlete as the 'on' time. It's about quality, not quantity. So this off time needs to be managed just as efficiently. If it's just as valuable to us, then we've got to put just as much thought into how we manage it.
So as we know, this traction and momentum equals our progress and our consistency. So if we don't allow our body to keep that idling, our mind to keep active, our progress to keep edging forward, then we will stall. And we know just how hard it is to get something that stopped moving again. As appealing as it might be for you to think, 'That's it, I'm going to lay with my feet up. I'm going to lay on the beach. I'm going to do nothing. Going to eat what I want to eat. I'm going to stay in bed until I want to get up. I am not going to go to the gym. I'm not going to go running.' As appealing as that might sound to you, I ask you, and I urge you to initially think about, 'Okay, if I have to start from a stopped position, how hard will it be for me to get that moving again?'
And as you think about that, and I know from my perspective, and many of you know, this time last year I broke my foot, so I took six months out of running. What I do when I'm trying to think, when I'm trying to process, I go for endurance-based running. So when I couldn't run and I did come to that grinding halt, it's taken me another six months just to get that momentum back up and going again. Of course I kept my mind active, of course I kept my body fairly fit. But that endurance-based running, that was gone, that was a thing of the past and I had to start again. And that has been incredibly difficult. Even knowing what I know, that has been incredibly difficult. So I urge you to think about how you handle this downtime.
So what I've got here for you today is five key steps that we need to consider when we approach this downtime. And I've also got eight key things that you need to ask yourself. So let's start by working through them. So the five key steps is designed specifically to keep that, that ticking over that engine in your brain and in your body, keep that ticking over so we don't have to start from a stop position again.
So number one is keep the engine ticking over. So I tell my clients to have between 20 and 40% of their normal training interactivity. So if you think about the last year where you've had probably between 80 and 100%, where you've got either competition or competition preparation time, what we're going to do is half that. We're going to look at between 20 and 40% of the effort that you put into your training to continue to do that. So pick key things, things that you not necessarily enjoy, but you know are integral to your sustainability in your fitness, in your mental agility, and for your sport specifics. If you're a cricket player, there will be different specifics that you want to do during the downtime than if you were an ice skater or a formula driver. So everybody has something specific to their sport that are key to their fitness, key to their mental agility. So between 20 and 40% of your normal intensity in your training, that's number one.
Number two, set the silly season to learn something new. Not revamp something you've been doing all year or not to think, you know what, I do this all year, so I'll just keep thinking the same way. Learn something new. Stimulate your brain, stimulate your understanding of your sport, of your body, what the mental necessities are for you as an athlete. So either: research it on the internet; go and do a course; go and speak to some key people; attend a course that's specific for you, or specific for you as an individual or as a sports person. So set yourself, however long you've got off, to learn something new.
If you've only got a couple of weeks downtime before the start of the new season, then maybe it's just research, maybe jump on YouTube, go and learn some new techniques. Broaden your perspective.
If you've got six to eight weeks off, go and find somebody to talk to, somebody who's unique, somebody who's going to challenge your thought processes, somebody whos going to make you think outside your familiarity.
If you've got longer than that off, which not many sports do these days, back in the old days they used to take three to four months off. These days you don't often hear about athletes who are taking that period of time off. But if you are one of those very few sports that do that, then I urge you, go and learn something new. Go and do something that's quite challenging and enjoy it. When I say challenging, I don't mean, Oh man, I don't want to get out of bed and do this. I hate this, this is horrible. Not that kind of challenging, but something that's going to stimulate you, that's going to keep that engine ticking over, keep that fire burning inside you.
So the first one was keep the engine ticking over between 20 and 40% of your normal training intensity. Number two was set the silly season to learn something new. Change is as good as a holiday. Try and stimulate your brain to do something. Think some way that you've never thought before.
Number three is keep your communication with key entourage people. The people in your entourage that you've put around you, make sure that you're on track with those people. Make sure you keep that communication level up. You've probably worked all year to ensure that your communication style was efficient and effective. If you stop that now, then come next year, you're going to have that degree of awkwardness, where you go, 'Yeah, what did you get up to? What did I get up to? Oh, you know what? This is different. That's different.' That initial learning process again, that may just be a conversation, however, you don't want to start from that position again. You want to maintain the level of openness and communication with your entourage team.
Now, when we're talking about entourage teams, of course we're talking about the coaches. And that could be your physical coach, that could be your training coach, it could be your strength and conditioning coach, your technical coach. Those are the key people that you want to keep that communication open with. It needs to be the physical side, so if you're talking to your chiropractor, if you're talking to your physiotherapist, your nutritionist, all these. And especially over the silly season, our nutrition tends to take a bit of a bump to the side. So make sure that you keep communicating with somebody like that, that's going to help you keep on track. None of us want to get back into training at the start of next year and go, 'Wow, I put five kilos on. I didn't need to do that. I can't fit into the vehicle anymore,' or, 'I can't fit into my outfit anymore.' So you need to make sure that physically you're on track. And having the right nutrition helps mentally as much as it does physically.
And that feeds into, watch what you eat and watch what you drink. We all tend to get that socialisation when we're training throughout the year and competing; athletes are renowned for partying hard so they can work hard. And in many sports that balance sometimes gets skewed during times off where they don't have the balance enough to go, 'I've worked really, really hard so I'm going to reward myself and socialise with my friends.' It becomes, 'I haven't done anything during the day, bang, out I go and I'm going to go crazy.' Now that's not everybody, but it does tend to happen. We don't tend to have that same degree of discipline with our rewards process during the silly season. So make sure you're cognitively aware of that. Make sure that it's not just something where everyone's going out and doing something and you just follow with the herd. It doesn't take the body long to get out of kilter when it comes to the physical side of it. So eat smart and if you're going to drink, make sure that you do it in a way that you can manage that.
The other side of that too is, again, we kind of get caught along with the crowd when we go out and we celebrate during off time and we're rewarding ourselves. But don't forget, what you do during this period of time will stay with you when you go into next season. So if you're an athlete and you're in a sport that you need to be selected to represent your country, and during the silly season you were banged up for drunk and disorderly, that's going to have an impact too. And again, in today's instant world, somebody will take a Snap, or put it on Facebook or on Instagram or whatever it is, and bang, that's affected next season. So be conscious of all of those things. Make sure that you're still managing, make sure you've still got that mindset of, 'You know what, this is my profession. I'm an elite athlete. I need to make sure I maintain my momentum. I'm still an athlete during this period. I've got to take downtime, my off-athlete time is important to me, but I don't want my off time to affect my on time.' Does that make sense?
And number five is we want to make sure we evaluate the year that's just gone past. We don't want to get to the end of it and go, 'Wow, that was great, let me just enjoy my downtime,' and then forget all the lessons that we could have learnt from the last twelve months. We want to make sure we get every piece of meat off that bone. We want to make sure that we've learnt every possible lesson we can so when we go forward, we're smarter with that. We've learnt what we need to do. And because of that, every year with my athletes, I go through a 20-point checklist of what's happened over the last 12 months. I look and evaluate everything that's gone on, their approach, their communication, their results, their interactivity, their motivation, their consistency, just to name a few of the areas that I focus on. So I have a 20-point checklist I go through with every athlete and every season.
What I'm going to do now is go through eight of those that you can do with your team, with your coaches, during this downtime. Because we know we cannot change or replicate that which we do not first measure.
Those of you who journal, and I hope that's all of you, those of you who journal know that we need to look for patterns, we need to look for what's happened so that we can either replicate it or change it. So we cannot change or replicate that which we do not first measure. So that process, this end of the year process, is critical even if you don't journal throughout the year, which you should, but if you don't, this end of year evaluation process is critical for learning from the year.
So the first question I want you to ask yourself is, and this is from emotional, just from internally, just looking at the year, going back, right, look back from here over the year: how was the year for me? Was it better than I expected, was it worse than I expected or was it what I expected? So once you've got a handle of that and you recognise, well, you know what, that was much better than I expected this year, or that didn't go the way I wanted it to, or you know what, that was on par, that was expected. I did everything I wanted to and nothing more, nothing less. We need to ask ourselves why. Why was that better than I expected? Or why wasn't it as good as I expected? Or why was it ho-hum, it was just what it was? We need to understand the why. So again, we're just looking at this from our perspective, either the athlete, the coach or the parents. From my perspective, what was this year like?
Number two is, the old faithful: what worked, what didn't work, what would I do differently? So we need to look back over the year and again, if you've been journaling all year, you'll have a really good sense of what this is. So if we look at the year as a whole, what worked this year? What did I do that really, really was great? I couldn't ask for it any better. It worked perfectly. What didn't work? When I look back over this year, there were quite a few ditches in the way that my approach was. There was a few gaps. I didn't do this particularly well. That didn't work well. I forgot to journal, I forgot to do my preparation funnel or whatever it is. I didn't do my physical conditioning until it was too late and I realised that I wasn't fit enough. What didn't work? What would you do differently? If you had the Doctor Who time machine and you went back over the year, what would you have done differently? That's a real key question. If I got to do this year again, what would I do different? And it doesn't matter when you ask yourself what worked, if everything worked. If you tell me and said, 'I could not have asked for a better year,' I would want you to look for, okay, what would I do different? How do we have that growth mindset? Even though it was a great year, I want to make it better. I want next year to be better than this year. Even if you became world champion this year, I want next year to be better. So how do we do it different? So what worked? What didn't work? What would I do different? And we need to look at that analytically. It's not an emotional thing. This is results-based. This is action-based.
Number three, did I set an adequate enough objective? And if I did, did I achieve it? Or did I set it too high? Did I set it too low? Or did I set it just right? We want to understand about our projection. The same way as if we were doing a budget for a business, you'd want to make sure that budget was as good as possible. And we need to learn from that budget so that next year we don't, either overspend or underspend, or get to the end of the year and have no profit. The way that we set our objectives as athletes is no different. And did we set the right goals to achieve that? So when we did our decision matrix at the start of the year and we plotted our objective at the end, and then we built our steps in between, and our action steps, were they the good steps, were they the right steps? Did you over-stretch in some areas and under-stretch in others? We need to learn from that so that when we do our decision matrix this year, for next year, we need to learn what we need to achieve, how we achieve it and the sustainability of that achievement. So did we set the right objective: too high, too low, just right? And did we set the right steps in between those goals so that we can achieve that?
Number four, how did I handle challenges? Either it be injuries, competition or travel? How did I handle those challenges? Did I handle them with too much emotion or not enough emotion? Did I handle them methodically or didn't I handle them at all? Did I just ignore them? Did I stick my head in the sand? When you ask that question, it gives you a good insight into how you handle pressure-testing situations. So if we look back over the year, there's going to be some of those pressure-testing situations, whether they are just competitions; whether they are injuries, niggling injuries or big injuries. Were they living out of a suitcase, going from city to city, town to town, whatever it was? Different pitch to different pitch, different rink to different rink? Whatever it was in your world, how did you handle those? Look at it from, again, an analytical perspective. Were your emotions too high when something didn't go right? Was there no emotion at all? Could you not get into it, did you feel disconnected? Did you just try to avoid it, stick your head in the sand and go, 'It will go away, or someone else will deal with it.' or did you methodically work your way through it and learn something? Take the time to look at your year, your season, whatever it is, and go, 'Right, let me plot those challenges, let me look at the results from that. How did I, either as a coach, an athlete or the parents of an athlete, handle those situations? Could I have done it better?'
Number five, what did I learn about my team? Now I talk a lot about building the right entourage team around you, at the right place at the right time. And as you grow as an athlete, you need to make sure that you constantly reevaluate those people supporting you. What did you learn about them this year? Did they perform as you wanted them to perform? Did they overperform? Did you go, 'Wow, don't know where that came from. They just stepped up when the chips were down, they stepped up and they pulled me through it.' Or did you learn, 'Wow, when the chips were down, they came down with me. They came tumbling.' We want to make sure that we put the people around us to fill those gaps, so we're a consistent, solid unit going forward. We don't want any of those chinks in the armour. Because the higher we go, the closer to the pointy end of competition, the pointy end of performance, the more those little chinks in the armour become visible. So we want to make sure that as a team, we're on the ball, we've got everything we need to do, we're a solid unit. If you look back over the year and you think, 'Well, you know what? That was a challenging time and Fred didn't step up to the plate and we couldn't find him. He didn't really deliver.' Is that the right person you want with you as you go forward? Or you might go, 'You know what, Sally did a phenomenal job. She just came into her own.' How is that going to make you feel far more confident if we come across that situation in the future? You'll know that she can handle it. Know your team, know the qualities of your team, know that they are the right people for you. They might not be the right people for you, they'll be the right person for somebody else. This is not about you giving somebody a job. This is about putting the right people around you at the right time, as if your life depended on it, because your career does. Was that the right dynamic that you wanted? Did it have the right energy going forward? Did it come with you or were you dragging it? Or was it moving along and it was dragging you? Understand the dynamics of your team. How well do they communicate? It's not only about how you communicate with them, but how they communicate with you and each other. If you're put into a pressure situation where you travel as a team, again, we're highlighting people's individualities. It's a lot to manage. Get it right and it's a diamond. Get it wrong and it's a rock that will pull you off track.
Number six, how effectively did I manage my time? Was I too busy being busy? Was I twiddling my thumbs? Or was it just right? Again, if we look back over the season, how often did you feel flustered because you just didn't have the time to keep up? Or how often were you sitting there thinking, 'I should be doing something, I just don't know what it is.' Managing our time is a critical aspect to creating consistency in our performance. We don't want to be over exerting ourselves and we don't want to be under exerting ourselves. We want to make sure that we stoke the engine and keep it moving consistently as it chugs along, along the path that we're creating for it. At any given moment, you want to know that you've got enough in reserve to push through something. But you don't want to be holding back so long that you miss your opportunities. Fill your time effectively, and not just with stuff to fill time. Fill your time with stuff that is going to be productive for you as an athlete.
Number seven, did I adequately reward myself? Now, the same way you would have had challenges throughout the year, you would have had successes throughout the year. Whether that be you've learned a new skill or you become world champion, and whatever it is in between. As long as you know that it's worth it, when you achieve something, you reward yourself, you acknowledge it. Be it verbally, be it physically, be it as a group, or be it as an individual. When you reward it, your brain kicks in and goes, 'I don't care how much hard work that was, that was worth it. I'll do that again, I'll buy in. I'm there. I'm part of this team.' And if you do that with yourself and you make sure that you reward yourself, we can create that continuity, that consistency with traction. That gives us the momentum forwards. If we don't reward ourselves – and we've talked about this numerous times on podcasts, in articles and videos, I'm a huge believer in it – we make sure that we buy in where there's a relevant reason why we do what we do. Once we've got that relevance to what we do, then the rest of it is creating momentum and going along with it. So did you adequately or did you over reward yourself? Did you learn a new skill and go and buy yourself a house? That makes the next step really difficult. If you go and win a major competition, you've already bought your house for learning a new skill, what do you do? Do you buy a city? So we've got to make sure there's a relevance to that, and it's a balance. You learn a new skill, go out to dinner, take your partner out to the movies, and as long as you acknowledge that's why you're doing it, your brain will kick in and go, 'That's cool. Thanks. Thanks for acknowledging that.' You know as well as I do, if you work really hard and nobody acknowledges you, then it comes a point where you go, why on earth am I doing this? So acknowledge, recognise, create traction, create momentum.
And the last question, number eight, what did you learn about you this year? What are some of the key things that you probably never recognised before? Like the red cars, they were always there, but you've never paid attention to them. What have you learnt about you? What are some of the really cool and exciting things that you just hadn't acknowledged? What are some of the areas you may need to work on? What have you learnt about you?
So let's recap all of those different areas. So we started off by talking about the five key strategies to creating effective downtime.
To keep between 20 and 40% of your normal training intensity, so the engine is still ticking over.
To set the silly season, to learn something new, go and stretch your mind, stretch your imagination. Do something physical that you probably wouldn't do during a normal season, without being crazy and hurting yourself, but go and challenge yourself. Make it exciting.
Number three was communicate with your key entourage, the people around you, your coaches, your support specialists, your parents. And again, throughout the year, you've probably travelled so much or been so busy that you've probably not stopped and looked and gone, 'Thanks. Thanks for being great parents; thanks for driving me to the gym six days a week, to the physios or all those kind of things.' Make sure that you acknowledge those people.
Be very conscious of what you eat, drink and how you behave. Remembering that what you do during your downtime doesn't always have the same structure that you have during normal training and can sometimes get a little bit out of control if you're not on top of it.
And do your end of year evaluation for yourself as an athlete, for yourself as a coach and for yourself as a parent of an athlete. Make sure you learn from the year so you can do it smarter next year.
And those eight key questions you need to ask yourself were, how was this year for me? Was it better than last year? Was it better than expected? Was it worse than expected? Or was it just what I expected?
Number two is the old what worked? What didn't work, what would I do different? We cannot change or replicate that which we do not first measure.
Number three was, did I set a good objective? Was it too high? Was it too low? Was it just right? Did I do my decision matrix? Did I have the steps in between just right? What did I learn about myself when I did that? Did I set it too hard? Did I set it too easy? Or was I on the money?
How did I handle challenges? Whether those be competition, whether it be injury, whether it be travel. Was I overly emotional? Was I disconnected? Did I stick my head in the sand or did I handle it quite well? And if I did, how did I do that? How could I replicate that if I need to?
What did I learn about my team? Who in my team stepped up? Who in my team did their job as I would like them to? Who in my team maybe needs a bit of support? Or who in my team is performing way and above and do I need to give them a bigger, better job?
How effectively did I manage my time? Was I too busy being busy? Was I too busy being lazy and not doing anything and twiddling my thumbs and thinking, I should be doing something. Or did I manage my time just right? Did I get the best return on investment from me?
And did I adequately reward myself when things went right? Have I got my brain to kick in and buy in because I've recognised it and rewarded it for doing all that hard work?
And the last one was, what did I learn about me? What did I learn this year about me that's either really positive or something to work, on so that I can do it again next year or smarter next year?
So this silly season, as we come to the end of this podcast and hurtling towards Christmas and time off, I want you to think about doing it smart. I want to make sure that when you start your season next year, whether it be a two week break, two month break, or whatever it is, that you hit the ground running. That you hit the ground in the way that you want to be ready, prepared for next year. That you're excited about next year, not dreading, 'I've got to go back, and I've got all that hard work.' I want to make sure that you've done this better this season than any other season.
I hope you've enjoyed those key areas. I will put in the show notes, those five areas of strategies to manage and those eight key questions for you.
So until the next episode of Brain in the Game, train smart and enjoy the ride. And have a fantastic downtime, but smart.
My name is Dave Diggle. I'm the mind coach.
