Eddie Jones has transformed the England rugby union team since their inglorious failure at the Rugby World Cup last year. Under his leadership the team has won their first grand slam at a Six Nations for 13 years and whitewashed Australia 3-0. Among the changes Jones made when he took over was the appointment of former England cricketer and qualified psychologist Jeremy Snape, who flew out to Australia before the three-match series to help the team prepare.
Snape founded his consultancy Sporting Edge in 2005 to “share the practical tools which fast-track success in business, sport and education” and he has worked with various businesses, the England cricket team and Crystal Palace, who reached the second FA Cup final in their history in May. Snape specialises in the “mental side of high performance” but what does he actually offer to athletes?
Is the role of the sports psychologist more widely accepted than it was a decade ago, when you set up Sporting Edge?
Definitely. I think sport psychology is the final frontier in performance. From the mid-1990s there was a decade of fitness, then there has been a decade of data and analytics, and now the next decade will be about optimising the mindset of players, teams and coaches. It’s a natural progression driven by technology because it’s easier to measure physical attributes and also with the negative stigma around getting psychological help, people have been reluctant to reach out. Ironically, when people reach the very top we often hear that it was their mental game that led to their success. With so many world champions speaking positively about their mindset training now it has created a new drive for people to find out what they could achieve.
Did you encounter much initial scepticism to the concept of sports psychology?
Yes. I think it’s natural. Our society celebrates iconic celebrities who are billed as gifted, talented and perfect so it’s a contradiction for those people to express any doubts or vulnerability. After winning the first IPL in 2008, I found out that Shane Warne had an exit flight booked for me after two days of the training camp in case I started waffling too much theory!
Whether it’s a business leader or a sports star, the road to mastery gets steeper and more hazardous as you progress, so we are all bound to experience fear of failure or setbacks as we push ourselves further. The scepticism has been replaced by fascination now and it’s seen as courageous, not a weakness, to explore the mental game as readily as we do the physical one.
Were there significant differences in the responses you received from different sports?
Different countries and different sports have cultural norms, which mean they will either embrace or resist open conversations around topics like psychology. In general the Olympic sports lead the way, as does golf, and then in my experience, cricket, rugby and football follow in that order. This is only my experience but I think football still sees itself as ‘different’ – that is a barrier to embracing new techniques.
Are Olympic athletes more open because their opportunities only come around every four years and they need to be especially focused?
Not sure. Maybe it’s cultural or more one-on-one type meticulous planning rather than a ‘team’ dynamic, which makes this more complex. The longer performance cycle would probably add to this too.
How much time is spent in demystifying the principles of sports psychology?
All sport is best when it’s kept simple, which isn’t as easy as it sounds given the amount of analysis and scrutiny in the modern game. Part of my role is working with the players and coaches to focus on the things that underpin success rather than being swayed by the emotional turbulence of winning and losing. By bringing the control back to them, we can create a clearer and more rational plan for success. We all want instant success but if you have the patience to develop quality long-term plans and focus on thorough preparation in the short term then you have a chance of reach your potential. As a former international sportsman, I know the importance of translating the theory into practice so that performers have something to try, practice and perfect as quickly as possible. I think most academics realise that the bridge to the applied world is a crucial one.
What are the latest key scientific discoveries and how can they help with athletes’ state of mind, such as coping with stress?
Recent developments in functional MRI scanning and neuroscience show us that our self-talk isn’t just an invisible meaningless cloud, it actually creates connections and structures in the brain which if reinforced repeatedly, create a kind of broadband connection between thought and success or failure. We therefore have a responsibility to ensure that our thinking habits are as healthy as possible. Learning concentration routines are a key skill, which athletes use to insulate themselves away from the crowd, the prize money or the opposition’s fans and stay focused on their game – mental strength is something that can be trained and developed like physical strength.
The idea of being able to work on mental conditioning as much as physical conditioning is another crucial issue. Is there enough time to do so as the vast majority of training within teams will be predominantly physical rather than mental, so how do you address that?
Yes, true, but there are mental skills running through every physical session – decision-making, understanding team strategy, confidence, focus, communication etc. When coaches place emphasis on these it really adds impact, the challenge is that they appear harder to ‘coach’ and that’s where a sport psychologist can help a coach to find new ways of reinforcing psychological skills.
It can be developed in the way a coaching message is relayed, it can be getting feedback after a skill session to check understanding or it could be facilitating a team discussion in a meeting. Forward-thinking coaches know that this is the way to engage players and build awareness and accountability. Ultimately every coach needs leaders on the pitch so they need time and practice to develop their leadership skills so that they are there when they need them under pressure. So there are a few questions – how can we integrate ‘psychology’ subtly into every session and rather than just planning a normal week by habit – would the occasional ‘psychology themed’ session be more useful than another physical one. If there are 150 physical sessions in a season – how many are mental?
How do British attitudes to sports psychology differ from other nations?
I’ve found some cultural differences across countries, regions and sports but ultimately it comes down to each individual and a balance between the amount the individual wants to stay ‘closed’ and how much they want to win. When you get someone who wants to be their best, they won’t leave any stone unturned but others would prefer to live with their anxieties and limitations rather than take a risk in exploring something new. As part of our research at Sporting Edge we have interviewed over 100 top performers in world sport and the very best have found a mental strength that others don’t even know exists.
What lessons can be learned from Leicester City winning the Premier League as underdogs and, in contrast, what can we learn from Sarah Taylor’s resignation from the English cricket team and her public acknowledgement of anxiety?
Leicester was the perfect example of a team putting team success before personal glory. The excitement of doing something special would have galvanised their individual differences, focused their minds on strategies and roles, and maintained their physical training until the very end of the season. Contrast this with a team with cliques and personal agendas who don’t want to play a certain shape and let their training and focus drift, as they have nothing to play for at the end of the season. For Leicester the hardest thing will be maintaining that hunger and selflessness when so much in their lives will have changed.
Sarah Taylor’s insights into anxiety are nothing out of the ordinary; many top performers are their own harshest critics and are motivated by the fear of failure rather than the satisfaction of success. We are primed to avoid loss and the higher you go in your career, the bigger this drop seems. After interviewing World Cup winners about their emotions as the whistle blew, they report ‘relief’ – pretty neutral really. The key thing is to acknowledge and maintain a healthy drive, to put in the work in for yourself and your team and to be hungry to learn as you go. A common theme in the world’s most successful performers is that irrespective of results, they have an insatiable desire to improve.
Given elite performers are driven by this fear of failure and feel an overriding sense of ‘relief’ after they winnng, how should real success be measured?
So much of our identity is made up of what we do as a job rather than who we really are. This means we are desperate to be considered a ‘success’ and not to have let anyone down – that brings with it the ‘relief’. If we stopped to enjoy the struggle, the sacrifice and the challenge more, rather than just the result, we would see that this is actually where the fun is. I think you appreciate this after retiring! Sport is defined by results though, so we have to accept that our careers will be remembered by those moments of truth.
• This article is from The Agony and the Ecstasy
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