TRANSCRIPT
Every four years, people around the globe get the chance to tune in to the top athletes competing in sports they'd never usually see.
For the audience, getting a rare glimpse at the top synchronized swimmers or modern pentathletes is a bit of fun.
But for those athletes, its a rare opportunity on the global stage.
Academic Fellow at the University of Melbourne Courtney Walton says that comes with pressure.
“There's obviously going to be a lot of excitement, but there's also going to be a lot of understandable and normal anxiety around how they're going to perform, some of the expectations on them, whether that's from family and friends, their sporting bodies, media, and then of course, from themselves.”
So how do athletes deal with that pressure?
Professor of Sport & Exercise Science at the University of Canberra Richard Keegan says a stress response can begin as athletes are getting ready to compete.
“We're pretty much starting with the basic stress response. Can I cope with what's being put in front of me? And if I can't, is that bad? And so those two stages we tend to go through and make an appraisal. If you've made that appraisal that you might not be able to cope, and that's quite scary, then you're gonna dump out basically a bunch of cortisol, adrenaline, and the kind of hormones that will give you a boost of energy in that moment. You're activating kind of fight or flight networks.”
Those hormones can cause physical changes.
“One of the things which I think really influences athletes is that you get muscle tension that wasn't there before because we kind of primed and ready for something important. But we haven't normally trained and competed with that level of muscle tension.”
Professor Keegan says a different part of the brain can be triggered, too.
“When we perceive a big problem, we tend to fire up a big problem solving brain, the frontal cortex of our brain, which is terrible at controlling our body. Most of the sort of procedural memory is actually buried deep down in the sort of cerebellum and other movement areas. And we don't want to be sort of writing new code for that or stepping in and taking control of that, we want to let those things happen.”
To avoid that stress response in the first place, Dr Keegan says preparation is key.
“Athletes tend to go into that moment feeling happier and less stressed and less likely to clam up if they've actually played through what happens next, you know, in different scenarios. What happens next if I win, because that can come with a whole bunch of trappings and obligations. What happens next if it doesn't go that well.”
Most Olympians who compete won't make it to the podium - and for those who aren't successful, it can be devastating.
Dr Walton says athletes need to prepare for life after the event.
“Olympians who had something to turn to after the Olympics, fared much better. So whether that was study, next tournament, planned holiday, they were all kind of processed in similar ways, and that having something to turn towards was really helpful.”
And that future planning doesn't necessarily diminish performance.
“There's always been such a focus that sport is, for an athlete, absolutely everything. And I think we're getting better now at understanding that sport is a short term career. And so we're getting much better at investing in things like education while people are an athlete or learning a trade or developing a business. We're getting more understanding that doesn't take away from performance or motivation or desire. It's just balancing it in a more helpful way.”
Professor Keegan says the pressure is part of the Olympic experience.
“When you put people in that setting, an awful lot comes with that now. You get all the the eyes, the coverage, the discussion afterwards, social media. You're kind of often looking at people who have been the best in the world at what they do, and suddenly you're up against them. All of that becomes part of the problem you're trying to solve. And it's quite a unique, interesting problem. But in some ways, who is just the best in completely sterile, cold conditions is not at all what the Olympics and things is about.”
