I remember friends asking me before the 2004 Athens Games if I was really digging in and putting in extra miles now the Olympics were just round the corner. I wondered what they thought I’d been doing for the previous three and a half years. I also realised it’s hard to know what goes on behind the scenes and how athletes prepare for an Olympics. There are some persistent myths to dispel and new insights into how you can become the best you can be as advances in sports science challenge more traditional approaches.
There are five key areas for our athletes to hone their physical, mental and spiritual skills to thrive on and off their field of play this summer. These themes may not always feature in Hollywood scripts, though you might find some of them in Ted Lasso. Psychological insights are increasingly challenging conventional sports orthodoxy. As a bonus, these approaches will work well for the rest of us too, regardless of the size of our ambitions.
