, A hundred books and articles on boat preparation, winterisation, sails and rule interpreations and just a handful on mental preparation. Of course there are many tomes from general sports psycholgy. Does sailing differ in what sailors need ?
Perhaps there are some nuances which require some special prep, but I think that many concepts, lectures and books from all kinds of psychology and indeed philosophy are worth delving into, and often especially if they do not have the word SPORT in the title or on the front page.
Today I wanted to consider one aspect or approach to better mental preparation and understanding yourself and perhaps individuals in a team. I have been on a series of evening sessions on a course for stress management in the workplace -how managers can better understand the causes of negative stress and set action to lift the team morale, focus on defining challenges, encourage objective problem solving and help the individuals come to terms with what is causing them stress or why they are making negative contributions to the team effort.
Understanding Stress on the Race Course
Stress has different facits and different ways of exhibiting itself in the sport. Firstly it has to be said that a positive stress is a force for good - it can come out of a very negative situation, but in being able to resolve that situation under pressure ( a good recovery from an avoidable broach for example) or admit the mistake and be able to learn from it, then you have been able to use the stress to progress your experience and ability.
Negative stress though is really what we have to address first so that we can turn challenging situations and conflicting emotions into positive stress in future, or avoid becoming stressed about racing.
Negative stress eats away at your own ability to perform and the team morale. One negative team member can set a bad atmosphere and as helm and leader on board, your own demeanor will often set the tone for the whole boat. There are different causes of negative stress and we want to look at some possible causes on boats.
Root Causes of Negative Stress in Sport
At the very root of these though is your outlook on sailing, and where competing fits in with the principles you live your life by. For we amateurs, sailing should be a recreational activity - something that absorbs us and takes us away from other stresses in life. It should not be something which contributes a lot of take out stress you might say, nor should it be something we get stressed up about as we make our way to the club or marina on a wednesday night.
How does negative stress feel? Well of course it has both pyschological and physiological symptoms which really kind of resolve you could say, in our gut feeling. We have elevated levels of hormones and stress chemicals like cortisone, which lead to higher blood pressure, elevated heart rate, and often a hyper focus - we begin to ignore peripheral stimulus and become very focused on few stimuli and choose correspondingly few actions. We often behave aggressively. Alternatively we can go the other side of the ' flight or fight' and become withdrawn or freeze up in our ability to act and be sociable.
Stress chemicals and the body's reaction to them can be quite appropriate in many sports such as sprinting perhaps and actaully help an athlete perform. Winch or pedestal gorillas (like I used to be) aside though, being in this fight or flight mode is detrimental to sailing performance over quite a low threshold. One problem is that the body often learns, like pavlovs dogs, to associate a situation with a stress reaction and this can become an ongoing unconscious problem for you.
I suffered pre race nerves terribly for several years myself, with a classic 'body in a state of alarm' and it began to become automatic when I got near a sailing club. It always reached a peak during the start sequence, where I was by that time either in a very aggressive fight mode, or a state of becoming stilted and frozen. I realised consciously that it was negative, and reckoned that I should just focus on my sailing skills and try to start without any hassle. That cured it by in large over the course of the first half of a season, although when helming I still get some of this and can loose focus on the timer completely and call for sheet on too soon.
I observe with my current owner I sail a Melges 24 with and many other helms that there is stress around the start and even getting out on the water.
You have to go back to ask yourself what life principles you are living to, and how that is coming out in the stress you encounter in the sport. If you are used to pushing at work and being successful, then you may be frustrated in your own and the team's abilities and results on the race course. Or you can be making up for a boring, unrewarding job by coming out to race such that racing is a substitute for competition and success in other areas of life.
Sailing appeals to me and I know other sailors too, because it is a sport you have to really use your brain and body to master, that it often a complete escape from other stresses and distractions in life in beautful areas often, or at least from a very different perspective of your home town and coast. It is also tapping into an age old 'brotherhood' now including women at the highest levels it has to be said, but the wind and the points of sail were the same hundreds of years ago when folk first raised canvas or skins up a mast. There is a continuity of shared skills and language which has feeling of tradition despite sailing on todays carbon appendaged regatta or round the world machines.
So the first place to look for signs of negative stress is in your life principles, your ego and how you approach sailing as a sport. It can be like a guy I sailed with who was very nervous of starts, usually being way back, and then avoiding the slightest risk of collision as he sailed the course. He ended up giving up racing and reverted to just cruising and last I heard of him, he was a far happier man, finding new challenges and enjoying quality time with his family. More likely for you though, if you are experiencing negative stress and physiological symptoms then you want to try to learn assertiveness and treat sailing far more objectively, but you will need a set of tools to do this.
Stress and NATS
No, not the national championships. Stress leads often to Negative Automatic Thoughts. Situations we expose ourselves to or that occur outwith our control, can create this conflict with our life values as presented above, or challenge them thoroughly due to the nature of the fight or flight response. One outcome of feeling stressed is that we can develope negative automatic thought patterns. These can be based on our perception of ourselves in that situation - " I always mess up" " Why can't I be better" " My team do not follow me" . We can often bring these NATs with us from other areas of our lives. If we are experiencing stress at work or in private life, then that can of course colour the way we think and feel about our sailing.
The trouble with NATs is that they are AUTOMATIC and self reinforcing. NATs can recurr and stregnthen a stress response physiologically as our subconscious switches on our fight or flight response. As with most psycho-physiological processes in us, our bodies actually learn to react quicker and potentiially to a smaller stimulus. So it can become a horrible viscious circle where some stress leads to NATs which lead to more stress, which lead in turn to a heightened stress status next time we approach the situation such as a start or a mark rounding, or a cheeky competitor who challenges us in port-starboard situations. If we dont realise this and act upon it we may be locked into a difficult cycle.
Breaking the Wheel of Stress
We have to break this wheel before it breaks us, and in work or relationships it is important to seek help if stress starts to really adversely disrupt our lives.
The first method most general practictioners will recommend is to remove the source of stress, immediately. This can be a temporary measure of course. For the sailor this may mean deciding to take the team on a booze cruise on saturday and skip wednesday racing. Or getting someone else who is really competent to take over the helming for the next couple of races. Or sailing in the non spinnaker class. Or it may mean that you call T on the whole season if you feel that you simply aren't enjoying racing because of the stress you encounter.
The next step is to reappraise your philosphy to sailing when you are taking time out, and to set yourself simple goals to overcome challenges. Also to seek help, tips and instruction in how to achieve these skill oriented goals. For me the last year I have thought about the 'burn time - go' approach to starting as a stress reducer. If I or we are OCS sometimes then at least we have tried our technique to the limit. For another sailor it may be that we go back to basics, maybe sail a dinghy sometimes with an instructor or do some extra crew training nights and stay out of the heated end of the start line for a few races.
Also we need to arrest these NATs which will exacerbate our feeling of negative stress. Are they rational? usually not.....Are they constructive criticisms_? most often the opposite, they are exaggerated self doubt. Being simply aware that we are 1) stressed out a bit 2) Prone to NATs and a negative spiral from them, is enough to help us stop them in their tracks
Is Stress Always Negative?
As I mentioned above, there is positive stress. This is the excitement and anticipation of the challenge. In sport it does involve some fight-hormones but it is how we control the level by avoiding running away with our negative feelings that counts. A level of arousal which is manageable heightens our awareness, and prepares our bodies for physical action. When it spills over into bad feelings, a loss of control over our heart rate, and an overly 'blinkered' awareness of our surroundings then it has become negative stress. We should learn then to recognise the signs and symptoms of a stress level which is rising too quickly and will become negative stress.
We can also learn to recognise this in other people in our team, or competitors. Furthermore we can also begin to see ourselves from outside a little more.
Boats which win races on a regular basis often say , like many other sportsmen, that they hate to lose....at some point though they have been able to turn that frustration into a positive motivation to becoming better by learning, training and making fewer mistakes while competing. They have turned a negative stress into a positive "we will not fail" is really what they mean. Being at the back of the fleet is bad, we feel bad but we think of ways to learn to get better, rather than just blaming luck and going out again and failing over and over, which leads to a sense of fsilire. The same can be said to be true of always being in the top five, but never winning a race. If you sail with a negative emotional loading then you are unlikey to get better.
Techniques for Tackling Stress Levels
As mentioned you can of course decide that racing is just way too stressful for you and give up. Well that is no way for us really to proceed ! What other methods are there?
Life Matching / where does sailing fit into your life vision and principles? Can you put it into perspectiive?
Goal Setting/ What are your weaknesses, and how can you set small goals to work around these?
Pre Race Relaxation and Meditation/ If stress from your job or just the drive through riush hour to the club is affecting your racing, then use the 'go to your happy place' with a relaxing 3 to 5 minute favourite music track and some slow, deep breathing. Try to get to the boat early and sit below or somewhere away from everyone and take those few minutes out and clear your mind of everything by thinking of your happy place and concentrating on the music.
Removal of Blocks of Stress Stimuli / you should identify what really stresses you out in detail. For many sailors like me it is the start. For others it may be mark rounding or gybing or knowing the rules. Break it down into what causes you most stress and think of a way to remove as much of that block as you can. Proximity to other boats at the start in a usual clustered 'boat' end start? Go start at the other end, or start late and tack off to port. Worried about going over early? Try the burn time-go technique and add 5 seconds or so to your 'sail to line' time just in case and see how it goes. Or as mentioned above, can the whole next race and go crew on someone elses boat who is better than you.
Focus on positivity. Speak out loud and praise the crew when things go well, while accepting that ok, we did a little mistake there, we're not sailing with Russel Coutts here, lets learn from that, this is what went wrong team yeah, lets try to do it better next time, pracitice makes perfect......
Debreif yourself and your team. Sit down with your crew after the race, preferably on board out of ear shot of other boats and have an objective appraisal, starting with the positive things, and allowing for input in a 'round robin' discussion going round the cocpit or cabin, one crew member to the next in line. Write a private log or blogg these days, and then consider publishing the positives and sharing it on social media with your crew. Note points which you could improve on. Focus on the practical and not the way you felt.
Tackling NATs / write down your NATs ! List them. Let them roll. If you are more influenced by negative feelings than obvious verbalised thoughts, then try and describe them. In so doing we become aware of them, and suddenly they seem like you have found the skelf or thorn which was causing you pain, so now y ou can remove it.
Summary -
Good performance in sports is the net result of experience and that is no truer than in sailing. When we experience problems and challenges, then we can unduly load ourselves with stress and negative feelings and these can reinforce themselves with nasty little doubts and unhelpful thinking. We need to arrest this process, and use objectivity to improve while also recognising that some siutuations will be stressful, but in a positive way which increases our experience and makes us learn more.
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