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 that little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is a learning curve, one that no longer can we ignore as part of the development of our athletes and our coaches. I'm your host, Dave Diggle. In this episode 40, I'm going to recall a tour I've just been on and the three key things I on tour. Now, as a professional mind coach, I get the opportunity frequently to travel with my athletes to different competition venues. That sometimes is within Australia, here where I live. It could be in the UK, the US. More recently, I went to Malaysia, and I went to the Sepang F1 Racing Circuit with one of my clients. Now, given that opportunity to go there and be involved not only in his preparation, but watch what goes on on a much bigger scale was a great opportunity for me to see and to gauge how our preparation is going. When we arrived, we arrived on two days before the event, and the whole idea of these are test days.
If you're not involved in in Formula Racing, normally they have a couple of days before the actual racing begins, so the drivers can test the vehicles. We knew that this driver of ours could drive. He'd done particularly well in in some of the lower categories. He'd raced at this venue, but never with such a powerful and large vehicle. So the expectation for him to perform was huge. So our preparation before we got there was to be able to take some of that high intense emotion out of that expectation. Then you know as well as I do, if you have a huge expectation on yourself, you raise the anxiety inside. If we raise our anxiety, not only does that have an impact on our ability to think, It has an impact on our ability to manage our emotions, but it also has a physical impact on us, too. It enables our brains to dump more adrenaline in our body so we don't have as much control over the finer details of our performance. It's an important strategy for us to be able to lower our anxiety, and we do that by allowing the athlete to see, although this is a big deal, although this can be a make or break decision in his racing career, we needed just to put it into, You know what?
This is just another day in my professional career. It's the next step in my evolution. Yeah, it's big. However, it's just next in line. We did that incredibly well and probably better than I had anticipated, because when we got there, this venue, this Sepang circuit, it was a real professional outfit going on. There was TV crews, there was professional sponsors, there was all the perks that come with a professional racing series. There were three key things that I walked away from this event with a better understanding of, and something I think you out there listening to this could benefit, too. You may not be involved in motor sport. However, the same philosophies apply irrespective of what sport you're involved in. The number three thing that was really key to me when I walked away and I thought people should be incredibly aware of this is tradition Remission doesn't mean restriction. What I mean by that, a lot of these key foundation sports have a very established path that athletes are told they have to follow. To a certain I agree that holds true. You have to go through certain racing categories to be able to go on to the next one.
I get that. I understand that there are some practicalities and logistics involved with that. There's also a financial aspect to that, especially in motorsport, where you have to be able to afford one before you can afford the next and so on. There are some constraints that are natural and ingrained into the sporting culture and philosophy. However, One of the things I observed that many of the organisers, many of the coaches, many of the managers were talking about was this is the path that you have to follow. And any of you who know me would know my first question would be, but why? Why do we have to follow that path? What is the benefits of us choosing to go down the path that everybody else is going down? When I asked that question, very few people had logical answers to that. Most of them turn around and go, It's just what we do, or, It's what everybody else has done, or, So and so did it that way, and they got a great result. That's cool, too, because we need to profile. If someone's done something and they've done it really, really well, then we're smart, If we profile that person, we learn from their successes, we learn from their mistakes, and we ensure that we don't follow that path and make those same mistakes.
However, take on board those things that have worked. There's another side to that, though, and that is not every athlete is the same. Some athletes are driven by adversity. I have a couple of athletes who I work with, and I know I can name a couple in the past that have been very high profile who have looked for the adversity in their performance in order to drive them forward. That back against the wall, you've got no other options other than come out fighting has worked for them. They've adopted that strategy. Now, from my perspective as a performance mind coach, that's playing Russian roulette to a certain degree because you're relying heavily on an emotional reaction in order to get you fired up, give you traction, and give you that momentum. We know that an emotion, albeit strong and powerful, doesn't have a great deal of clarity or direction. It's like a little explosion going It goes off, and you're not really quite sure where it's gone unless you're really clever and you shape that charge to go in a specific direction. These clients I've worked with in the past have had a very hit and miss relationship with that back against the wall strategy that they've adopted.
Sometimes it has not only worked for them, but it's been a massive impact on bringing the crowd on board with them. There's a very famous Australian tennis player who utilises that strategy every time. He performs so much better when he's lost the first one, sometimes two sets. And he comes out fighting that underdog mentality I've got to knuckle down and I've got to get over the line. And it's worked for him on some occasions. However, as he's got higher up the tree and there's been more better players that he's played, that Russian roulette has cost him more games, I believe, more matches than have won him. I understand that we need to adopt some people's strategies. However, not everything works for every single client or athlete. If you're the person who does like to come out fighting, then cool, adopt that strategy. If you're the client who likes a familiarity, who likes the continuity and consistency, then having a tighter structure and one that's tailored towards you is far more beneficial and productive. What I mean by this is, sure, there's a strategy and there's a path that everybody else has followed and a well-trodden path, and that has some benefits to it because you know what to expect.
But if it doesn't necessarily fit within your learning style, your performance style, your emotional integrity, and your drive and traction, then why follow it? If there's no rules to say you have to follow that path, then tailor a path that fits you better. There's no reward to get to your destination and then go, Wow, that was twice as hard as it needed to be, but I've done what everybody else had done. You want to get to the end step, your end objective in the most efficient, the most effective, and the most rewarding way possible. And that has to be by tailoring your path, your way. Now, bringing that back to what I learned in Sepang was many of these drivers from a lot of the other different teams were heavily invested and ingrowned into following the path, following what everybody else done. And What that did, from my perspective, what I watched and what I observed was it slowed their progress down. It was almost like they were carrying baggage with them because it wasn't tailored towards them. It wasn't specific enough towards them. It was like Yeah, well, 75% of this works for me.
The other 25%, hey, it's just tradition. I have to carry it. I have to go that way. I have to do X amount of races in this vehicle before I can go to the next vehicle, or I've got to race this track before I can race that track. That's not necessarily the smartest way to progress. So it's a balance. It's a balance between what specifically works for you and what do you have to do. So what do you want and what do you have to do to get that? There's going to be some things that you have to do that you don't necessarily want to do. However, as I said, there's no rewards in having to do everything you don't want to do just to get there. There's not always going to be a mental, emotional, or cognitive benefit for that. We're going to get some degree of mental toughness. However, if you're going to make it that tough, that arduous to get somewhere, and you don't get there because it gets too much, then we've not achieved our objective anyway. So we need to be smart about that. So number three, tradition doesn't mean restrictions.
Set a path that's right for you. Set a path that feeds and meets all the needs. However, feeds and meets your needs as a primary objective. Number two was professionalism. Now, the client I work with is a very professional athlete and has been involved in this motor sport for a couple of years now. He's come a long way between the years where he was in go-karts to now racing in formula vehicles around around the world. In that short period of time, this young driver has become not only more mature as a driver, but more mature in his approach to his sport, too. And he is far more professional than when I first met him. Part of that is because he's realised this is his career. But the other part of that is he's adopted this environment. As he's grown through the ranks and has started to immerse himself in more professional environments, he's assimilated to that. And humans are pack animals. When we go into a different environment, our natural mentality is to assimilate. We don't want to stand out. Unless we're really cocky and unless we're really out there and want to make a splash and we're really comfortable in our own skin and very confident, our first step is to, Well, let me just get in here.
I don't want to rock the boat too much. I want to see what the layer of the land is. I want to see how I fit in here. And we assimilate to a certain degree. We give a little bit of who we are over and adopt a little bit of who they are. So that mixing, that emotion goes on at the early stages. Seeing what you're doing as a professional, if you act professionally, you're more likely to see the professionalism in what you're doing. When we arrived at Sepang, as I said, there was film crews. These mechanics were incredibly good at what they do. They were treating this driver like he was an F1 champion. That had a massive impact on his confidence. It had a massive impact on his ability to communicate because he saw his role as being a bigger, bolder, stronger role than it had been when he was racing just domestic and very amateur. By him seeing the professionalism, by him having the TV crews around him, seeing his mechanics doing their job and knowing what their job and working incredibly well as a team, having the team manager and owners come over and talk to him about their expectations and what they want my driver to go out there and demonstrate, not only physically, but also as a branded product.
He then assimilated to that professionalism. He drove better. He held himself higher and with more grace and more professionalism. And the way that he communicated not only with his team, but the people around him was far more professional. Now, we had a situation that occurred where a driver who's been racing in this category for a couple of years, who's leading the tournament, was intimidated by my client. He was intimidated by my client for a couple of reasons. One, because we'd done such a great preparation in getting ourselves to the stage where by getting in the vehicle, we knew what we needed to do. We knew how we needed to perform. We knew what specifically worked for us, what we needed to focus on, and the outcome, the objective that we wanted. We treated it as though it was any other racing event. Consequently, Although my client had never sat in one of these vehicles of this power and this category, first time he went out there and tested, he got what's called Purple Laps, which means he was the fastest on the track. This intimidable related these racing car drivers who, for want of a better expression, have a limited growth mentality.
They saw this new rookie come in who's cool, calm, collected, professional, very focused, Very clear, very concise, got out there and was contesting for pole position. And in fact, the first race, my client was on pole position. So this meant that not only was my client focused on what he was doing. He was very clear, had the right patterns and the right triggers. He knew what his job was. The emotion wasn't overwhelming him. He was also inside their head. So these other drivers had my client in their head, which made them less focused on what they were doing. This gave my client a far greater advantage. So what we did then was we recognised that, we rewarded that, and I made sure that my client was aware he had the right to be there. If we go one step back and look at that tradition, what the rookie doesn't normally come in on debut and win a championship. So there was this expectation, well, you're new here, you're coming, you're test, you'll go away, you'll come back next time a little bit more confident, and then we'll worry about you. But because we didn't choose to do that path, we didn't choose to do that, well, I'm a rookie, so I'll hang back and I'll just learn.
We chose to go and go, right, what works for us? How do we get our outcome? How do we get what we came here for? That was our focus. That was what my client did and did particularly well. And that not only enabled him and gave him traction, it also derailed those other drivers. They had followed the tradition. They were once the rookie and eased themselves into it. We chose not to do that. So we needed to recognise, reward, and see that we had a right to be there. We were good enough to be there, and we were going to go out and do what we needed to do. So we needed to see the professionalism and use that professionalism. That is what enabled my client to step up, to see that as a right. I have a right to be here. I've done all the things I needed to do to get to this point. One of the really cool things was, as we sat down and debriefed after the first couple of test laps, was my client turned around and goes, This is great. I love being here. This is where I love to race.
But I can now see the bigger picture. When I was a young kid, this is what I looked up to. Now I'm here, the doors have been opened. I can see so much more. I can see so many more opportunities. I can see where I'm going. And this has just made me even hungrier to keep learning. And that was really cool because I watched other athletes, and I've seen other athletes in different sports, get to that point and go, But this isn't what I thought it was going to be, or this is bigger than I thought, or you know what? I've looked forward to this for so long. Now I'm here, I don't know what to do next. My client chose not to do that, and that paid dividends. So number one was tradition doesn't mean restrictions. Number two was the professionalism. High expectations, however high output. Number three was a physical thing. So physical conditions shouldn't change your mindset. As I said, when we were landed, we live here in Australia, which is obviously a very hot country. However, when we got to Malaysia, it was a different intensity of heat. It was, one, incredibly hot, two, incredibly humid, and one minute, it could be bright sunshine.
Within 30 seconds, it was like torrential rain and then bright sunshine again. Those conditions are very, very difficult because they shift and change what your plan is. However, we need to keep our mindset and our eye on our task the whole time. When those conditions changed, the other racing car drivers panicked. I remember walking down the pit lane and watching some of these young drivers as the rain bucketed down and their eyes became saucers as they were like, We've got slicks on. And then in come the mechanics trying to change tyres over, so to get the wet weather tyres on. And these drivers, you could see they'd been derailed. No longer were they confident, no longer were they on path for what they'd told themselves they were going to do. When I got to my client, I reminded him of the Ant path. And if any of you have been to any of my trainings, read some of my articles, and I think I've even mentioned it in some of these podcasts, the whole concept of an ant who creates a path from between where their home is and where their food source is. That path is the most efficient path they can have between home, food, and back home again.
When I talk to my athletes, I talk about, Okay, this is where we are. This is where we want to get to. What's the most efficient and effective path for you to follow? Let's make sure that's the path that we choose. Of course, things change. The rain came. That path that we had planned changed, where other drivers became so derailed that they were panicking. They were asking more questions. They were calling their team managers over and go, What do I do now? Now that we've got this, what's my new plan? Trying to make it up at that time. All I said to my client was, What do we need to do to get back on our path? We had a very clear structure. We had a very clear path that we were following. And instead of reinventing that path because something had occurred, it began to rain. All we had to think about was that small deviation of, Okay, this is still our path. This is still the most effective thing for us to get our outcome. What do we need to change? What's the one, maybe two things that we need to change? We don't want to throw the baby out the bathwater.
We don't want to reinvent the whole path for the day or our objectives or our approach. We just need to change one or two things to get it back on track. And because of that, my client was cool, calm, and collected and went out and done particularly well. The upshot of the whole tour we was on was my client was on debut. My client had never sat in one of these high-powered vehicles before, had never driven one, let alone raced in one, and he won. He went out there in a field of people who have been racing these vehicles for over two years, some of them, and beat them. Yes, he's a great racing car driver. Yes, he's talented. And so were they. What made the difference, what gave him the edge, was his mental preparation, was his ability to keep focused and to manage his emotions. Where everybody else was highly emotional, was reactive, he was responsive and in control, giving him the advantage. So the three things that I think every athlete can learn from and that became incredibly obvious to me during that short tour was, one, tradition doesn't mean restriction. Choose a path that works for you.
Tick all the boxes you have to so you can do what you want to. Two, treat it like a professional outfit. The more professional you treat it, the more professional you'll feel, the more focused you'll be, and you won't see all of the things that are not working. You'll see more of the things that are working. That red car philosophy. Buy a red car, you see more red cars. If you focus on the professional, this is what I do for a living. This is what I'm good at. This is what this is going to give me to move forward, my next step. That's what you'll see. Number three, don't let the conditions derail your path. Make sure all you're doing is going right This is still my path. This is still the best option for me. What do I need to do to get back on track? What's the one, maybe two steps I need to take to get myself back on track? So the upshot was we had a great trip, we had a great tour, we had a great result. And what it's done is open the doors for this client to now race in bigger, better, faster cars around the world.
He's taken a massive leap forward in his ability to become a professional racing car driver. Those opportunities were given to him, and what he chose to do was maximise on them. Hope you've enjoyed this podcast. I hope you've got a lot of information from this and see the relevance to whatever sport you're involved in, whether you're the athlete, whether you're the coach, or whether you're the parent, or a support specialist. And so until the next episode of Brain in the Game, train smart and enjoy your ride. My name's Dave Diggle, and I'm the mind coach.
