This episode is in Dutch. There will also be French versions available on our channel.
Today’s topic: Olympic Challenges.
Even Olympians are human beings. In this second Dutch episode, 3×3 basketball player Thibaut Vervoort openly talks about the big price he had to pay for living as professional athlete. We also talk with Belgian Cheetah Paulien Couckuyt, who recently ran the European limit after a severe injury. She shares her insights on staying motivated during hard times. We also have the pleasure of welcoming top coach Fernando Oliva, who works closely with Noor Vidts and Kim Meylemans. Last but not least, we will discuss whether stress is a good or a bad thing. Don’t forget to subscribe to stay tuned for our next episodes
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This podcast is made by and for Olympians and offers valuable insights for anyone who is passionate about sport. Don’t forget to subscribe to stay up to date with all the insights and the next episodes and maybe some behind the scenes as well. Welcome to Olympic Minds Unlocked. In our first podcast, we talked about the importance of mental well-being and the mental health of our Olympic athletes. Today we will take a deeper dive at the challenges of elite sport and more specifically, the challenges of participating in the Olympics. When people talk about elite sport, they often talk about the pressure, the stress and the sacrifices, but isn’t that too negative an approach? If it’s all so negative, why on earth would people continue in elite sport for years? So it’s very interesting to explore today how challenges and pressures can actually make elite sport very interesting and beautiful but sometimes can also be reason for struggle. So today we are going to talk about the challenges athletes have in an Olympic year and how stress can affect the process both positively and negatively. Of course, I’m not doing this alone, so I have three fantastic guests with me today. Women first; Paulien Couckuyt, sprint star and hurdler. You became European champion in the under 23’s in the 400m hurdles. You also participated in the Tokyo Olympics with a nice 9th place in the 400-metre hurdles. I do say a nice place, but I think you mentioned that it was a bit less for you, in the months afterwards. We’ll talk more about that later. And also a nice seventh place with the 4×400-metre relay, welcome! – Thanks! Nice to be here. Thibaut, basketter, 3×3, the star of 3×3 basketball players in Belgium. You were the first Belgian pro in 3×3. You also achieved a very nice, but a stupid fourth place in Tokyo. A bit of the same at the World Cup in Antwerp To then still get a very nice silver at the European Games in 2023. And who are also, along with Team Antwerp, the very first team that could win a Worldtour on the pro circuit. For Belgium, in the name of the first Belgian athletes. Yes thank you for letting me be here -Welcome! And then the expert, the trainer today: Fernando, welcome! Just to give some context: you coach several athletes. You are coach of Noor Vidts, who finished 4th in the all-around at the Tokyo Olympics. You are physical coach of Kim Meylemans, who recently became European champion in skeleton. And you are also assistant coach to Jente Hauttekeete, also a multi-competitor and talent, we might add. You are also coach of Merel Maas, a young talent in the high jump. That’s a lot of different athletes, though. Yes there are four. In team sports, there are more. It’s four athletes, which takes a lot of energy, but on the other hand, I think the individual approach helps best. All welcome! I’m going to start with a quote from Siya Kolisi, no idea if you know him? No. That’s probably one of those sports that we probably only watch once a year, and that’s when it’s the World Cup. Siya Kolisi is a player on the South African rugby team. And he said after winning the Rugby World Cup: ‘We don’t feel the pressure. We just have the privilege of being able to do what we really love to do and inspire people from all walks of life. Ultimately, elite sport is about passion, dreams and inspiration.’ What are your thoughts on that? I wouldn’t say that I don’t experience pressure in that way. But I do think that pressure is something very positive because it also does come from dreams we want to achieve, from the challenges we set ourselves, so in itself, pressure is something very positive and we do really need that to get far. It starts with our passion for the sport and in competitions we want to go for our ‘personal best’ or get that medal. And a lot of great things come with it. And myself, I do really need pressure just to perform at my best level, so yes pressure is something positive, and it’s really nice that we can experience that and we can pursue such great experiences. Thibaut, how do you see it? It’s nice to start with a quote. One of my favourite players in the NBA is called Kyrie Irving. Who actually gave an interview about two years back to which he actually responded to that question and said: "sport or what we do should not be under such extreme pressure. Real pressure is, when you get into a situation, so to speak, when you have to provide food for your children every night and it doesn’t work out. Or there is someone sick at home that you have to take care of, which is real pressure according to him. What we do is fun". On the one hand, of course that’s truth in my eyes, sport is fun. But equally on the good side, you’re not going to come across anyone doing elite sport who doesn’t experience pressure. As has already been said: pressure is also needed. We can compare that very well with training where there is no pressure and you’re not always going to be able to perform really well there either. There’s a certain pressure needed but I think we have to be conscious of that and I think experience is one of the best ways to learn from pressure situations and be able to deal with it well. If you look at it in basketball, the industry that that you play in… For me, basketball has always been five against five, you come up in Tokyo then, you do a fantastic job, just short of a medal but you have inspired an entire country. And now when you tell people you play basketball, they ask if you play five-on-five or three-on-three. A question that absolutely did not exist five years ago. Didn’t you feel at that time that you have that privilege of inspiring people and learning about a new sport? Yes I think partly we were able to do a bit of pioneering. And I think it was especially the nicest thing that we were able to do that a bit under the radar. Certainly all the build-up to the Olympics is the moment that most of the pressure goes to the athletes. And for us we’ve been able to do that under the radar as I said and then to actually be able to inspire so many people at the beautiful moment of the Olympics to get back into basketball or to play sports, yes that was the biggest motivation for me to actually get back to those Olympics now. That was number one for me because we could inspire so many young people to play sports or to play basketball. But that does increase the pressure. What about you? We are in the 4 x 400 metres team as well and I think a lot of people are inspired in that as well, who see a group of girls making Olympic and World Cup finals, so you do feel that that’s inspiration for a lot of younger girls to achieve that too and that’s really nice to see. Do you feel that privilege, that you inspire people? Or do you sometimes feel so much more that pressure that you have to inspire people? Because there’s that too sometimes. No I think it’s classy, I do like to be someone who wants to inspire people to just really pursue dreams as well. I myself have been that little girl who had a dream to be in those Olympics, but never thought it would actually happen. So I think it’s very nice that even little kids then come and say they want that too or you inspire them. That’s just super nice. Fernando, you coach several athletes. How do they deal with pressure? I’m always very fanatical about the context to be able to understand all the words and pressure is usually a name that we give to a certain situation that is indescribable. So what is pressure? It is the expectation of the others, your own expectations, the situation, the level of opponents, commercial or financial arrangements,… So it’s a privelege to have pressure. If you experience pressure and if we give a definition: pressure is a certain energy, for example in a competitive situation or in a prepared phase. Then that means one: are you prepared? Two: are you going to have to take office in an important place? And three: knowing that the opportunities are there. So if you look at pressure like that as part of your process within top sport or within Olympic sport, I don’t see that negatively. I do see that it can affect athletes in the sense of… How do I think about pressure for example? And when you do that and the athlete starts to understand that pressure is something positive rather than something negative, you can show your strength at the point of need without any problem. There are also a lot of different types of stressors or pressures, do you feel as a coach that those types have changed in recent years? Yes those accumulate. It can be about the training quality, the financial support, the level going up. Paulien just talked about the 4×400 and the level of that discipline has improved tremendously in Belgium. So that’s a context that comes from a stressor, as we can call it. But I come back to the… You know they are not athletes, they are people involved with athletics in our case and if you get those people to think about how they think about certain aspects, for example the stressors or things that can take you out of context or out of concentration and the athletes themselves start to realise how they think about certain things, then you can do a big impact, everything is moving forward everything is visible so you are always live. Social media shows everything, like how you train, how you eat, how you sleep. And some people then get more need to post anyway and show that they are also in that viral world. But so all those aspects can be to do with performance, because that’s what differentiates us from ordinary sport. So there is performance linked to top-level sport. Those are your own choices. There are some things anyway that are linked, which is a a selection. You do that to be better than last time, you do that to win or to make progression, those are things that happen in your head, because when you start it, it has to happen. And that is also just as trainable as the physical components. To give some more context: you have different types of stressors, which are also catogerised. There are the personal stressors, there are competitive and there are the organisational ones. So types of personal stressors is for example in work-life balance, something that we see come back very often, pressure from things happening in your family, or academic obligations. Then you have competitive stressor, which is more like feeling pressure in your preparation towards a big event. Especially the months coming up, athletes are going to feel a lot of stress in preparation towards the Games or towards qualification. Stress from injuries, from expectations through,… You watch your rivals just run top times And you just get stressed by that, that’s all there. There is also organisational stress, because of your entourage, for example, who might do things differently than you would like, by logistical, financial problems or as you just said, by social media or the mainstream media. Have you experienced any such things in your career that you did seriously give up on? Or not renounced, but was a big pressure? A good pressure or a bad pressure? – It’s as you put it yourself (laughs). I do think generally a lot of those things come up that just give you real pressure as well. The biggest thing that can give pressure before the Games is that you’re doing super well and suddenly you have an injury. I tore my cruciate ligament last year, the year before the Games. So that was suddenly very difficult to accept. There’s surgery involved, you don’t know if you’ll ever get back to that level. So that was a huge stressor and then little by little it works out and you do notice that it’s all okay. But also minor injuries, then you keep your big goal, that just gives you a lot of stress because you have to get back to 100% fitness in a short period of time. You have that big goal, you want to be good, you then see your competitors who are doing well. A very big factor are those injuries, but you have to work step by step towards that goal of the Games. And who knows, you might still be able to reach your best level. Have you experienced any personal or organisational stressors? Organisational stress I did experience through the media at the 2019 World Cup, which was my first World Cup. I actually had a really top year then and was then up to my third peak for the World Cup. In the media… A journalist asked me if I could peak three times and if I could still run a 400m well. And that’s actually crazy how much stress that gives an athlete, because you start thinking about that. Is that right? He’s giving you an idea, planning something. So for me then, it was really a challenge to switch that idea around anyway: ‘No I’m still good, I’m still going to perform’. But so that was a big challenge, so the media who can be dangerous with their questions. But you really really shouldn’t let that get to you. You, Thibaut? Meanwhile, I’m thinking about these different factors, but in the three components you come across things I think. On the one hand personal, but equally well organisational. But stress is always something personal, I think. Our expert explained that just right in the sense of: Ultimately, stress is something that starts with yourself. There is the same story with the journalists d something that starts in you with yourself huh you ehm the same story with huh the the journalist actually asking a question, but you turn that question into something that creates stress in yourself. One of those examples, then seen in the competition, was actually when participating in Tokyo. The first races I felt such an energy and a stress, but I used that so positively, in the sense that I felt so much like doing that. That ended up ensuring that I had a lot of energy throughout the tournament, even though I slept very badly. Eating well though, doing your best, but you are losing weight because of the temperatures and conditions. all right you’re eating your best but you’re losing weight with those temperatures and Despite actually all those negative factors, I was then able to use that stress very positively. And now we are almost to hopefully a second participation in the Olympics and I already feel that that stress is very different. Now I’m starting to think: ‘ow we should actually confirm what have done by standing there again’. Because otherwise we have to wait another four years to maybe motivate the next generation. But then I sometimes reflect on that that you actually create that yourself. So why not go back and try to use that stress positively to turn that into energy? I think that’s something very important And then when you combine that top sport with your personal life, last year you also started playing basketball in China, for example, is that something that is difficult to combine or did that stress you out at all? Yes definitely, it’s definitely not easy. In 3×3 in the pro circuit, it’s also the case that we are away from home a lot, we have to continuously actually travel around And several things have actually come up from last year You then end up in a situation where everything around you is fine but then suddenly you’re away from home. I also have a girlfriend and that wasn’t easy either. And then I actually noticed that at 10 to 11 months, you can also really lose a lot of social capabilities, so that really top sport can also have a very personal impact. Then that’s not exactly stress, but stress factors. That has an impact on your life anyway. And for me to be in Belgium for the first two months was very difficult to socially with both my girlfriend, my family and my friends. At certain times, I even went for an hour and a half walk with my dog to have silence, because you adapt so quickly to environments to still prioritise your performance. And then you put aside your personal character or other interests to still perform 100%, but that also has its side effects so to speak. That can be positive, but that can… For example last year it was a bit more negative to put it that way, that I did seriously lose my social capabilities. Those are hopefully already back a bit (laughs) I think you guys can feel but it took its time. So top sport has side effects on you as a person, on your family on your friends, on your entourage, so definitely yes. Yes Fernando you as a coach; what specific challenges do you actually see for yourself or for your athletes in the run-up to the Olympics? For myself and for the athletes, we are human beings but we do have 2 roles. They have a role as an athlete and I have a role as a coach. So that means if you approach the athlete as a human being, so on a human level… Especially helping them to make choices and learning to become aware of how they think about certain things. So as a coach you are going to stress them, but you stress the body. You cause inflammation in the body through training programmes and through recovery comes supercompensation and then they get better, but at the same time on a mental level, you learn to control the emotions. I make an analogy from Tokyo and I’m going to use Noor (Vidts) as an example. I also spoke once to Bob Maessen from the BOIC about Tokyo. ‘Tokyo for us is like you go to the carwash. So you go with a car that is dirty. You suddenly come out of the carwash with a car that is clean, but is still the same car. But it smells different now, it feels different and people will look at you differently. But that car is still the same. So what matters to me, is that you keep realising and keep driving the same car instead of thinking you have a new car. So between Tokyo and Paris, or after Tokyo is about how adaptable you are. I call it the ‘adaptability’, the adaptability of things you do on training, even if you make context, that that’s harder to keep doing the same thing. I’m going to give you a little example. If you do a starting block, you can do a starting block with your own, you can do a starting block with your coach, or a starting block with 2 opponents, or you do a starting block during a qualification, or you do a starting block in an Olympic final. It’s always a starting block, you always do the same movement, but the context changes. By ‘starting block’ you mean ready to start? Yes so the starting signal, the starting block action, and basically you always do the same movement, but the context changes and it’s about how you deal with the change of context; that’s what I call ‘adaptability’. So if you make progression there, you can perform the same movement in all situations and that is a control of the emotions and the body. You have different athletes; you have boys, you have girls, more experience, less experience. With each athlete, how do you make sure you apply the correct way to make the athlete better? When an athlete comes to you, it’s a big responsibility. In your hands there is a future. You have to make choices for them, so that means you have to start looking at what makes him or her unique. So what are their qualities? What makes this athlete able to perform a certain movement that leads to an achievement? So the first task for a coach is actually to recognise what an athlete’s unique qualities are. And then parallel, and no less important, you have to see what kind of person it is. How does the athlete behave sight? How does the athlete call decisions? How does the athlete interact with the world? What are the stressors that take the athlete out of balance? If you identify that, then you can do things. Yes because people often say, ‘surely that must be very stressful, because you have to do this, and do that’, and others see it rather as you just told and articulated, some just often see it as an outdaing. Often we still have to try to avoid stress, but we just don’t need that stress and that challenge, to just perform better both at training, and at a big tournament? Yes I do think stress is a very important one, because stress is created by pressure, by that challenge that you actually put on yourself. And during a warm-up I wouldn’t like that initially, that stress. That’s not such a nice feeling when you’re so nervous, but then I do know that my body is really going all out, in terms of hormones, to just be the best you can be. And if I have too much stress, then I also start to feel a bit paralysed and too little not running, because you do want to have your goal so it is really searching for that optimal pressure though, that you actually have to create and really stick to your own goal of ‘this is my challenge’. What other people think, it doesn’t matter. It’s just my goal and I have to do it and focus on that, giving you that optimal pressure and then you can just really bring out the best in yourself. With me it’s always: reach for the stars that comes up because I have to have a goal. Just a bit better, because it gives me that extra something. And then I can transcend myself so stress is really something very positive actually Yes and to find that right balance, are you helped in that as a team or as individuals from the federation or your own entourage? I also have a psychologist, I did work with that. ‘Okay, what suits my personality?’ And I have just alleé the personality that needs just a bit more stress than I can possibly handle. For example in Tokyo, nobody in advance would have said I could make finals, but still I had imposed that for myself also because I did feel that that was possible. Because if it wasn’t possible at all then you would have got too much stress too. And then focused really hard on that and then I made everyone marvel of: ‘huh, who almost made it to the final effectively?’ So it does take searching with people around you on how to handle that stress and what is important with the coach. Who also sees when you are stressed and who can get me out of that or say the right things. So it does matter that you surround yourself with a good entourage to actually get the optimisation. Thibaut, do you also need stress to train better? Yes anyway, stress you need anyway as an athlete. Only you have to learn to regulate that. I think the coach explained that very nicely with the carwash story. If you could create the same feeling in every training session or match that you play, say, the final for Olympic gold. Yes that would be fantastic, but we all know that is very difficult. But you do try to create a certain competitiveness that there will still be some kind of pressure and stress, To try to recreate those moments as best you can. – Give an example. During training sessions, when we are playing match, you start to fish someone of your teammates. We often do that at training, it’s called trashtalking in basketball. That’s where you actually have to get under someone’s skin or their nails as hard as you can, so you start irritating them. We do that quite often in training, which are often mental games but also physically start pushing and pulling in other ways, because there is not always a referee, so you can still give each other a certain tension or irritation, which also often occur in competition. Because often you have a lot of irritations, especially in basketball, with factors that are not always in your control, like referees or the opposing team. And we then try to trigger that at training sessions. Do you sometimes do visualisty? I’ll just go to the future, and you’re in the 3×3 final of the Olympics, and it’s 20-20 overtime and you get a free throw and if you score, you’re Olympic champion. Is that something you play out in your head in the weeks and months beforehand? -I’d sign up for that! That would be fantastic! (laughs) Is that something you guys do? To make a habit in the moment. Well actually very funny, I think you can ask that ask any basketter, whether they weren’t at a young age or at a certain time when they were actually just on basketing, they create a lot of scenarios in their heads. That’s actually something very typical about basketball, on a square or wherever. You just have to watch it when you see someone playing basketball on their own. Then you see he’s dribbling and then falling away and then throwing and then missing, but in your head there are still 2 seconds. Until you keep missing, you’re counting down. (laughs) I used to do that a lot. And now… I’ve already had sleepless nights. Now so very specifically, not that but rather about wanting to go back there. That’s rather in retrospect then, not sleeping for a very long time after the World Cup in Antwerp because we narrowly lost overtime there by one point. I think yes 2 to 3 months I really suffered to be able to sleep because once you start thinking about that…. ‘Couldn’t I have done that moment like that or thrown it like that?’ because basket often, correct me if I’m wrong, with athletics you’re in a straight line with yourself. Of course you have the factors next to you, and the starting shot and so on, but you basically have a nice straight line laid out that you’re going to have to sprint or whatever that you’re going to have to do. But basketball is actually such a chaos of other factors like contact and stuff, which allows you to think so much about certain situations: ‘wouldn’t I have done it better that way?’ So I try not to do that too much, but on training forms, for example, we do simulate that it’s overtime and we have to make 2 more points, or we’re one point behind, how are we going to respond to that, we certainly do. Let’s maybe take a closer look at some specific stressors. We’ve talked a bit about the first one, social media is a very important one. Have you experienced social media before as a stressor? Yes, I think the hardest thing about social media is when you are injured, and you are still looking on social media at all your peers, that they do manage to go all out and they do have that specific work going on. So somewhere that does give uncertainty towards your goal, because you also do have a goal to get that medal, or you want to make that final, and surely somewhere that also hangs on your peers. So hence comparing on social media does make it a very difficult and happens quickly. And it’s kind of dangerous to look at that too much, because you also don’t know what they’re doing besides that. So the perfect picture of the other athletes you see on social media can be stressful, though. But the world is not perfect. Ultimately, you’re on social media yourself, so your competitors who are occasionally injured see the same thing with you, isn’t it then ultimately the same for everyone? That’s mutual, which is why I don’t want to put the perfect picture on Instagram either, and I also communicate it when I’m doing worse and there are injuries, that’s part of the sport. I also hope that I can use that to inspire people to come out of injury and be right there. So yes, that is indeed a trade-off. Are you on social media? Yes I am definitely on social media and I can totally relate to the fact that you start comparing yourself to the enemy, so to speak, that you’re definitely going to do that But for me, social media is mainly something that creates an ‘image’. A lot of people don’t know you personally, and they are going to look on social media and paint an image of you based on that. And that’s really the only thing I’ve had a hard time with, in the last 3-4 years. By certain posts or saying ‘bye’ a certain way to certain people, or just not saying ‘bye’ enough, or whatever it is, they’re going to form a certain opinion as a result. And I actually want to give everyone a chance to get to know me to show that I mean well to everyone. And I wouldn’t like it if people thought I didn’t think someone was good enough, nice or cool enough to say hello. But just realise that as elite athletes, we are often in a tunnel towards our achievements. And I hope they can still see that we also just see that we also just…. in the morning I go for a walk with my dog at 8 o’clock. Now it’s already halved by now. My social status is already improving a bit. Just because we can put up a good performance doesn’t mean we are different or not equally human. How do you see the the the pros and cons of social media, and let’s suddenly be very specific. What do you think about athletes being active on social media during competition? I am first going to briefly define what types of athletes there are, and then I will explain why social media is necessary. There are two types of athletes: those who want to do well and those who want to get better. An athlete who wants to do well is always going to try to show the best of himself, because he needs the others. ‘Those others’ are the norm and dictate the norm, so you have to show those others how well you are doing. And mostly they are comparators. An athlete who wants to get better can look at those others, but with the aim of learning from them. What does this person do that can help me improve my performance? And these are the athletes who usually compare themselves to themselves. Back to social media for a moment. Social media is ‘social’ and ‘media’ Media I think is a fictional world; you’re going to tell a story to people who don’t fully understand what you’re doing. That’s why you use the media, because the media is an intermediary between the public and the performers. Then you try to tell a story that shouldn’t actually give impact to you. So when you tell a journalist that you’re going to run the final, you put pressure on yourself. ‘Oy am I going to be able to run the final?’ Words are values at a certain point in time, so that’s why you have to accept that media is a fictional world, where you present yourself on social media. And you have the likes or people responding to your post and then you create a hormonal response, that’s the addictive thing. So you always need more and more and more and more on par, if I may say so. How do I go about influencing athletes on that front? Explain exactly as I am explaining it now. Part of your role as an athlete is to be social, but that shouldn’t impact you. The same in a competition. In a competition, you create the competition in your head, you always do the same thing but you create the same situation Thibaut just explained it nicely. Looking at other opponents and trying to take advantage of that. So you create in your mind the competition, the name of the league, World Cup, Olympics. It’s just a name. You just do what you like to do and how you prepare it. And the emotion and the pressure is for the parents, the family, the supporters and journalists, but not for the athletes. So that’s why social media shouldn’t play to your disadvantage, and to answer your question: I ask not to use the phone for the last 40 hours before a match. Complete isolation. In itself, an athlete often has only one chance in life, if we look at the Olympics, to effectively do something, the lucky athletes sometimes have two chances, and exceptionally 3,4 or 5 chances, which is almost exceptional. Looking at my sport, the hockey players in 2016 silver medal at the Games. And afterwards, they all said: ‘After our win against the Netherlands, we knew we had a medal, and we then all sat on our cellphones until 4am, and that’s where we actually lost our final.’ There’s no way that you are competing at the highest level and no one has been able to prepare you in advance for this moment. And you actually lose that match you’re normally only entitled to once in your life. Okay, they were lucky to have had a second chance, so I think it’s pretty that you tell athletes not to use mobile phones for 40 hours before a competition. – The impact of what others say or write about me is so great that the athlete can no longer ‘manage’ that emotion. And for me, performance goes hand in hand with control of emotions, and social media provides an extra boost to your emotions. That’s why I ask you to disconnect from the world 48 hours before and try to be busy doing what you love. Do you use social media during the competition or is that also taboo? I also heard via and for the Games or World Cup I also turn off my social media two days in advance to avoid being influenced and indeed stay confident and focus on your goal. Does that mean you won’t post anything anymore? Or will you stop checking yourself on Instagram or Twitter (X)? No indeed, delete Instagram and Facebook from my phone , but keep Whatsapp. So not just scroll more either? – No, because that could bring a negative vibe. So Whatsapp does, because I really want to engage with my entourage still, because they are a huge support If you have some stress once, it’s easy to vent a little bit, but I’m not going to do that too much either. So it’s really quite a tight circle that I keep to keep my concentration as much as possible. Yes in China they don’t have Instagram and WhatsApp. (laughs) I was also just about to say I wouldn’t get that explained back home. (laughs) -How about that with you guys? In the format we play, you often have to play quarters, semis and finals on the same day, and especially in the professional circuit. So that actually just goes so fast… social media… I don’t use my mobile phone. The only thing I do from time to time, when things didn’t go well or did go well: contact that close circle for a moment to maybe vent for a moment and then click back and move on. Actually, with us. not by social media for example, also at the European games… We get silver there, but at that time we had played all the games with 3 instead of 4. Because Kasper, our teammate, had injured himself in the first 3 seconds of the first game. And we win that semi-final, which makes you suddenly realise that you win silver, and you can still compete for gold. But then you really notice with all three of us actually that such substances are released, or certain energy: ‘we’ve already won something!’ or ‘we got a medal!’, so to speak. And because of that, we suddenly began to feel everything from the past match and past days. And then within half an hour you still have to play the final going to play and I remember that we, detached from social media, did have an awareness of how our bodies react to those certain things. And I think that’s really going to be a factor towards the future as well, to influence other factors to the best of your ability that you’re ready for moments like that. So that after winning a semi-final, you don’t suddenly find your body completely relaxing and saying ‘yes!’. But that you can turn off that stress and other factors like social media. And that is experience and a good entourage around you, to have coaches who can tell you that in advance: If you win tonight men, maintain that stress because you have to play again in an hour. So there’s so much involved in that, so social media shouldn’t really be a factor. Another really big factor is injuries. That can also bring a huge amount of pressure. Especially if that has bad timing. You’ve already had some injuries, you said. Has that ever affected you negatively as a person on your mental well-being? Yes injuries do have a big impact on your mental well-being anyway. Because for me, for example, fun is a super important driver in sport and I get that from training with my other training partners, with my coach, And from the moment you are injured you are actually taken out of that, you have to start doing it all on your own. You also have to start training more; you have to alternatively finish the same workouts AND still deal with the injuries, so your energy then reduces from that as well and it then gives that uncertainty: ‘How am I going to get out of this? Am I still going to be able to achieve that goal? Do I need to adjust that? So I do find that injuries can have a huge impact on your mental health. But I think it’s important to really just tackle it step by step and focus on that progression, have your coach make a good schedule so you know exactly what to do and not wanting to expect too much right away, but just take it one step at a time. How important is the environment when you are injured to still pick you up at that point? Very important, I think you have to look for factors that can give you energy. For example, I often get very frustrated with injuries, because then I start to compare myself to how I was before the injury. We are all in athletic shapes, where that if you have an ankle injury or a knee injury for example, still lose speed or jumping power, or all those things. And I get quite frustrated with that. Because you want to be able to jump as well as before that injury so then that always works towards something. But on the other hand, you’re also getting older. Those are very often snapshots, but in your mind there’s also a foot injury that I’ve experienced recently with me now, is there a point in your head that wants you to be able to do that again, But actually you need to be able to talk about it very well with people around you, with your family with professionals around you. And you have to think, ‘okay, that shouldn’t be the target, you should maybe be able to adapt a little bit.’ But that’s actually the most rotten thing about a top-level sports career, which is injuries,… – And wanting to compare you too much with your future or your past is really very difficult. – Not good, and a lot of frustration. I’ve also done very stupid things because of that With my foot injury, I thought I shouldn’t whine, and part of it was mental. Because you also have to go through a pain barrier or pull back certain nerve, dare to go from okay: ‘you can trust that foot or that knee’ and then I’m lying there stomping, so to speak, to actually go and recreate such a jump actually and which I realise afterwards that I am an idiot. But so that’s a very mental game, and patience is very difficult in that, but most important. We hear what the challenges are for athletes with injuries. As a coach, what is a difficult challenge for you when your athlete is injured? And how do you deal with that? And how do you make sure they don’t fall into too much of a slump anyway? Injuries are part of elite sport. If you’re driving a car and think you’re going to crash, you don’t drive. If you are doing top-class sport, you are going to have to strain your body to the extreme, so there is always a chance of injury. As a coach, you always have plan A, plan B, plan C Plan B plan C. So that means that even in a practice where the athlete is not injured, but she still feels something about the hamstring or the back, you will have to start adjusting. You adjust the entire programme, so you have to have a range of options ready. ‘How can I get that athlete to perform a movement that is as “close” as his (normal) final movement? But with the adaptation of the limitations that are there. Because ultimately if there is an injury present, or surgery, then you have a protocol and you know how long it will take until certain things will be able to be done again. Then, on the one hand, I see an opportunity to start working on other things. So you can work on your mental aspects during injuries, for example. But at the same time; you’re going to strengthen some aspects of your body, and within that process of rehabilitation you are going to approach your sport as well. With an athlete, we participated in a European Championship within the rehabilitation process. And I told that athlete to stop from the moment it hurt somewhere. And if she wasn’t in pain, she had to continue. And so she completed the competition. So you won’t actually deny injuries, but you shouldn’t always think in the ‘worst case scenario’ that this is the end of the career. You always look for an atlernative. I like that a lot. We all have super busy schedules and you never have time to work on yourself, but when you do have an injury, it’s the right time to turn that around in a positive way, and really work on your ‘core’ for once. making sure you’re just ‘reset’ mentally as well. Is that something you guys have already experienced? And of which you’re really glad you had that injury, because it helped you? Paulien nods no (laughs). You also do assume the cause of the problem when there is an imbalance in your body. Then you start working really hard on that and you will come out of it possibly stronger. But I still find that injuries often set you back a step on the road to your dreams so I don’t find much positive about it but indeed it can sometimes turn out positively. Maybe you are more optimistic in that? Sometimes I really need a wake-up call. Sometimes you are so much in cruise control and you go on and on and on, until at some point you blister you actually realise that maybe you weren’t doing the right thing. Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes I have to switch back on and make sure I’m back on track. In your head, you have the goals you want to achieve, and you just have to be continuously top for that to achieve them. In athletics anyway, to pursue the times you have in your head. So every time you have to throttle back three weeks, it does have a big impact. So as soon as you feel something, you have to back off the throttle so it can’t escalate. And then it’s not so bad. I think getting or having injuries is partly growing up. And you learn to handle your body better. When I was young, and there was something about my knee, they almost had to drag me off the pitch before I was going to stop. You have to get to know your body and I think that’s especially a very important factor and the thing that you also say: ‘can’t that be something positive sometimes?’ Yes, that’s how I try to deal with every injury by assessing how much time I have and need. Also, how can I use that problem to get mentally stronger or work more on my ‘core’? Or get back the desire to play basketball. So always try to process that as something positive. Maybe one last stressor; sleeping. You’ve already talked about it. There’s also Bashir Abdi who also had very bad sleep at Basecamp in Mito. How do you handle as a coach when Noor sleeps very badly at the Paris Games? What what will you do to make sure it improves and she doesn’t make her too fussy about it? You can also do workouts with little sleep, so you’re going to prepare for that as well. So if you organise training where the athlete is also tired, you will be able to do the same if you have to perform. That’s what I mean by adaptability; you provoke situations, for example, when a sore arises in training, doesn’t mean that that training shouldn’t be done, it should be adapted. In athletics, coaches tend to end the training with something that makes the athlete feel good But sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes on a day when that athlete doesn’t feel good, you have to try to to pursue the best possible form of the day and finish training with that feeling. The same goes for sleeping badly. In meerkamp, in the case of Noor, you keep the focus so the day before the competition, day 1 and then you have to sleep and then you have day two and those are two nights where you will really not sleep well qualitatively Because everything hurts so much or because you’re just so tired? No, your brain recognises ‘pressure’, which is energy, so that’s a play between energy and pleasure. So the day before the competition, so the adrenaline creates a certain energy that is always moving. So the quality of sleep is not always optimal and so by optimal I mean 8 hours of sleep, half of which is deep. That’s not going to happen, you already know that, so why wait for the competition to experience that? Then you do workouts where those athletes with poorer sleep quality train at a higher intensity That way, I try to mimic what might happen in competition so. So you also just said fun, energy… In top sport, athletes have to be disciplined, have to be busy with their craft, have to be serious,… Don’t we sometimes look at elite sport the wrong way? Wouldn’t we be better off looking at it in a playful way, as we were used to from a young age? We get pretty good at it, and eventually that becomes very ‘serious business’. Shouldn’t we just keep playing like when we were little kids? I don’t know how you guys are in that, because I find that very difficult. Yes I also do think that the basic fun has to remain. It actually has to remain your passion somewhere. If you get too erious -that’s what I have anyway- then I won’t perform well either. So I do try for example during training sessions just to really enjoy myself, but when I have to, at the important moments, for example the core of training or competition, you do go and taste a switch in that focus to really concentrate on your goal. So that you do get to make that combination. It’s not one or the other. Just being serious about it can also go hand in hand with fun. So you can also be focused and very good at it. Yes because Usain Bolt says competition is super fun, all games. But he does end up winning all the games, so then it’s also really fun. We give up a lot for it anyway. Do you see it as a game or more of a job anyway? I think that’s a tipping point. At a certain point, it’s no longer from home that you are dropped off with your backpack, to then go back home and be served chips. But that is indeed a switch. There are a lot of different factors involved, financial factors. If you don’t perform well, you might not have a contract next year or the year after. So I think top sport or sports is a game, but it’s just the world we live in where it has become a business then a business. And I do think we have to have fun with that and I think that’s also what makes the difference between the real top performers, and the middle motor or the ones who just don’t get there for whatever reason, you are in the sport. If money is your motivation, or you don’t feel like doing a 9 to 5 job in another company, then I don’t think those are the right motivations that can get you to the Olympics. I think just that pure joy, that engine in you, the love for the game or for what you do, that that is the best engine, but it is still business and serious. We also get privileges to do those, and thanks to Team Belgium and Sport Vlaanderen and to everyone who helps us help us to be here. And I think there’s a certain respect and responsibility there that we also have to bear Time for a penultimate question. We talk very often when we are little about these top athletes who seem like superheroes, but in the end are also just people. How do you guys see that? Is it hard to be both persons? Or do you guys just see yourselves as regular people or just superheroes? I think you will always feel yourself as a regular human being, I have anyway. And sometimes it does shock you when you see how some people look at you. After the Games it was like that anyway. When I didn’t feel bigger than I am. And the same thing you actually have with your own super heroes, you see those much bigger And when I speak to you you think ‘wow, they’re talking to me’. But I also know several of those toppers and those are really just the normal people. Those just stay the same so it’s just your perception that changes to them. But your own perception remains the same Have you ever talked to (Kyrie) Irving in real life or not yet? No unfortunately not yet, but yes I think that is indeed upon arrival at the Tokyo Olympics, you suddenly see all the top athletes, both from basketball and other sports walking around you, equally cycling, are almost doing the same drills. And that does provide a reality check. I think we need to be intentional about that. Those ‘superhero tales’ or whatever we can call that, I think that’s very nice and that we should just use that to inspire the youth. I see we are almost at one hour already so we are going to conclude. I would just like to ask all three of you just once again to convey one message to people. something that you just want to bring or something that you learned today or that has stuck with you and you would like to repeat. This is your moment. I’ve heard great things from the 2 athletes here, and I’m glad I got to come here and say something I hope I was able to tell something useful. The message I would like to give is when it comes to the Olympics, how can you manage yourself emotionally there? And if you start paying attention to how you think, you can make certain decisions behave in a certain way, and on certain experiences and is under control, because ultimately that’s your ‘why’. Because you have a certain reason why you do this, and if you always stick to it all the time, then you are always going to give pleasure, because you have chosen to do this for yourself, or to make people happy. yourself or make people happy to challenge your own, and actually to find your own values. And from there build your sports career – Yes I like that very much, Paulien? That a lot can happen though. We chatted a lot about stressors. A lot of, so to speak, negative things that you can encounter on your path to your goal. But myself, I always try, when something like that happens, to turn it really positive that it is still possible, that you do feel good even if you’re a bit sick. A lot can happen even if your road is not perfect. So I would opt that you just try to turn your thoughts positive and just really pursue your goals and your dreams. Beautiful, Thibaut? Difficult after these two nice ones (laughs). I especially liked the carwash statement, I’m going to remember that one anyway. You’re a dirty car before you go to the Games, and you go through that carwash and you’re a new car, that’s actually not the case. You stay the same car, it’s mostly just what happens around you that shouldn’t change too much. You have to keep working on yourself and what that stands for. And maybe as a final point, ultimately this podcast is about the mental aspect of elite sport. But just as much outside elite sport, you have to learn to communicate above all. That should really be a focus for elite athletes, but also for ordinary people. It’s not natural to talk about negative things or talk about difficult things. We all don’t like to do it. That’s about injuries, but also about other very serious things. But that you still find a way or persons where you can do that anyway. And find your own way, if you can communicate very well through a recorder: do that! And dare to do that! And it is especially then being able to communicate and dare to communicate, whatever you are doing. Nice, very nice. I would like to thank all three of you for coming off hie. Fernando, Paulien and Thibaut. And yes, listeners too, thank you for continuing to listen until now. In our next podcast, we will dig deeper on the strategy you can use to feel mentally feel good. And we will do this with the following guests: Emma Plasschaert; sailor, Manon Claeys; paralympic equestrian and also with Jan Dierens as sports psychologist, the expert on duty. Thank you dear listeners and until the next time!