Psychological Training - The Barrier to Humility

Sailors have to develop a special relationship to their environment and their fellow competitors. There has to be a good deal of humility in front of the weather gods and in respect of other people's safety on the course.

Yet humilty is also something we need to nurture in order to learn and grow at what you can call a natural rate.

The first thing about humility which is difficult for experienced sailors is going through the basics and polishing off little systems which otherwise we can take for granted in the ego swing to try new things, to focus on the big wins, to talk about low hanging fruit and to put pressure usually on a high pressure start and high pressure roundings to pull results up by the shirt collar!  Ok I say to my advancers in sail school, I can teach you a few tricks now, but it is the basics of weather sense, trim&balance, sail and rig setting and course-to-sail which you will come back to every time to polish and to polish.

The first step in doing this move to humility, which yes I find hard too, is to realises that in the sport of sailing there is a lot of 'chop water, fetch wood', Before a race or when rigging the boat for the season, we go through check lists. If we have gone through our check lists, we mayve have another check again, and we maybe add some small points to that check list. If we then have time in the dinghy park or the pre race, we think about the weather forecast and actual weather signs on the water, and we think about adjustments for that or maybe just maybe trying something a little new.

When you do have time then, after all the brassware is polishded for the day then and only then is there time for And no just take one thing, It could be time then to shake down crew choreography for take-downs or to shorten the backstay cascade system.

Humility then continues. We remember then Rule 2, general sportsmanship, and rule 14 - avoid collision if possible, beyond being right. We kmow some people are beginners or less competent, and yes we know there are arrogant chancers who will misuse rule 14 and people's timidness about the 'wee room' whcih stops them protesting, to their bully boy advantage. Then humility comes as an approach to the weather. Do we actually have more wind than our number  one genoa ambitions? Then we come to what is now the blue peter time, 4 mins out, and what are the fleet doing? Are they late or early? Bunched or spread out >? How does this influence our plan for a tight boat end start or to get a text book safe, third way down the line start?

Now we read things. We take a slurp of coffee maybe, now is not the time to make circumstances seem to fit out plans, now is time to move on if they dont. In essence then this is the attitude we take further in the whole race, with each change in fortune. Very good boats which make bad starts, and we are talking second rack starts, have an uncanny habit of clawing back top ten places and not having discards as high as the teens. An advantage of a bad start, is that once we have cleared our wind, as we must, taking more pain or hopefully easing ahead by a nose....sorry an advantage of a bad start as I was saying is that you can read the fleet and the first shift, and take another look at tide and wind strategy. A lot of mid line boats will be tacking around to clear their wind, and others will be pinning each other out of actually using the wind shifts. In effect a major part of the fleet is slowing the whole game down by its sheer 'tactical viscosity' . One deal here for the 'come back kid' is that you can make fewer tacks on the first beat in order to get to the correct side, probably use the shifts more to your advantage, amd then most likely come out with a better mental picture for the run and the second beat which can then drag you up dozens of places.

Humility here too in outset!  If you are short crewed, to a point of not being competitve, then why not offer your crew to some better boats who maybe miss one or two, and spread out your spies? Another option is to get up on the right hand side of the extenstion of the line, do a fake start out of the way of everyone, and watch the fleet from the best seats in the business? Soon you can tack up beyond the lay line and keep yourself clear. If you are far short crewed, motorsail it up to keep pace with the fleet. Being flicked off the crew in a nationals for the first two days once gave me a wonderful chance to work alongside professional course officials laying marks and observing the fleet. I heard almost no shouting in the top 5 boats round the windward mark, and no mistakes, just differences in times to hoist.

Humility comes then with of course less than shining results and also a result or podium place pulled by lady luck more than our own endeavours per se on the water. We take stock and go through what we did badly with objectivity and out lady lucjk and the fuck up fairy to one side a little, avoid blame storming and look at how the system with the skipper at its asthmus is peforming. It is the skippers decision to race, and his decision too on how hard to push his crew or if he is wise, how to match your manoevres to the crews ability. Gybes are usually the weakest point in the whole chain where a canny helm will adapt to his crew of the day, hung over or scratched from the harbour side as they may be.  You will choose to do fewere manoevres and take time about them, or for example carry out an early take down and white sails gybe rather than a more ambitious last minute gybe and drop at the mark.

We are humble to the sea and to misfortune if there are breakages, and indeed we remember Rule 1 each time we set out and do not just pay a hailing lip service to that rule, we instruct our crew to be ready to down tools and give assistance. The sea is very large and man is but a small barnacle on a wooden plank.

Dropping Your Shoulders....More Sports Psychology

I think the biggest change in my overall enjoyment of sailing as a sport was when I won the first race I ever helmed in a keel boat. There was a healthy tension and a great crew, with the owner tweaking the boat to get optimum speed. I felt both butterflies in my stomach, but I felt I could drop my shoulders and use my years of dinghy sailing experience and nouse as would-be-tactician over many years to do my best and cooperate with the crew. We won by a country mile. 

I am currently on an evening management course  on understanding and tackling stress - emotions, motivations and peri-conscious thought patterns which disturb our performance and ability to handle the challenges life and work present.

The course is a superb distillation of a large body of work done by pyschologists and clinicians over the last 60 years. ( I studied two years in Pyschology at University btw) . Towards the end of last night's course we were introduced to a concept of  "esteem and confidence silo's" which was kind of a Eureka moment for me when I thought back to my sailing career and those around me.

The Assymetry Between Confidence & Esteem 

I think we all know people who are very practical and able to get things done, often to the point where they are outright irritating and or even overbearing. The equation though is not that they have necessarily high self esteem.

The theory here states that self-esteem is something which feeds into self-confidence, but not really the reverse. There is a non reverse proportionate, or assymetric relationship. The gas filling you get in self confidence from feeling good in your 'soul' is largely a one way street.

Self confidence is closely linked to our ability to react and handle the world. Self esteem is a deeper premises from which we find the root to our opinions and starting point for how we then go on to experience the world and take the learning experiences which lead to self confidence. There is a slight feedback there though, some leak from Silo 2 to Silo 1. But the second silo of self confidence will not back-fill, and it can get pretty full - there is almost a one-way valve, we fill up but it does not go back out and as the pressure builds to act apparently 'assertively' we can appear increasingly arrogant and aggressive.

So appearing to be highly confident does not mean that a person has high self esteem, and can mean the exact reverse.....

Self Esteem then gives us our outset , our ego- articulated values, long lasting inner feelings about our selves, and unwritten life-rules  - not only how we steer our own lives but also of course how we interact with others. How fulfilling these encounters, relationships, overcoming-of-challenges and interactions with the world are depends mostly on our self esteem and not our self confidence per se.

Think Sailors!

Now sport and not least sailing is a very particular part of our lives. For many of us from 'Anglican' countries, sport is the only real outlet for adrenaline spun competitive spirit. We are stiff upper lip and to be honest, a little pussy-whipped in our offices and oh-so-safe work sites. In sport we often expose an underlying self esteem and display a different self confidence than in the very emotionally inhibited and temperament neutral careers we live with.

You can then think about your own sailing and those of your erstwhile helm or crew or competitors and start to recognise that many who exhibit self-confidence are actually quite abrasive and are not really fulfilling the spirit of sporting. I suggest further that they are not actually being very fulfilled emotionally, and that they need to have a series of little wins within races and grab wins and flout their glory when they can if they are good sailors. This is often the loud-mouth, bully and outrigh cheat and every club has at least one in their fleet.

An alternative type is the "frustrate". Someone who make bold desicions, often doing a course side flyer, trying to roll a better competitor on the run, or gybe setting and the like when they just can't carry it off. Worse they are intolerably bossy and often ill tempered with their own crews.

Eternal Orgasms of Unfulfillment

The same thing is true of shopaholics, these two types of helms are not being fulfilled by an inner sense of well being from the sport. They have a need for pushing and being arrogant is the symptom of that. They need small wins and the feeling of being in control to feed into their quite weak ego system. They need small ego boosts all the time to feed their mean-machine outset and under developed self esteem.

What is Positive, Sporting Self Esteem in Sailing ?

The best people to see positive self esteem in the context of our sport are actually eager  new beginners believe it or not. They can be a little irritating in the club house of course, always pointing out the obvious, asking 'stupid' questions and talking excitedly about their minor improvements and incidents on the race course as if they were in the Americas cup.

Back up here you cynics!!  These types of people often come into sailing as adults with a great deal of life experience and fulfillment, or a children with optimism and enthusiasm. They come with the attitude " I can learn this, I can master step by step, and I can enjoy this beautiful sport".

We as more experienced sailors need to learn to learn again, and come with a new set of inner feelings which maybe force us to jack down our self confidence, eat some humble pie and go back to admitting we are learning. We also need to question, as I often point out, if we are enjoying the sport and competition locally on  a weekly basis? What are we seeking through sailing and are we feeling fulfillment?

Driven and Fulfilled by Competing 

This does not mean you have to leave behind you those things which drive you - for me originally it was loving the experience of racing, and hating to lose. For others it can be the rush of the start, or coralling their crew or following the rules as if they were the letter of the law so to speak.

Think realistically about where our sporting self esteem lies and if the silo is actually much emptier than our self confidence. Consider further then that if we are over confident we need to seek values and goals which feed our self esteem and not try to find short cuts to 'quick wins' or pushing other people around.

High self well being and esteem with low self confidence is then a matter of learning experiences and seeking out mentors and sailing courses which can help you overcome the nerves, the mental blocks and the lack of eye-hand coordination you may have.

Sporting Spirit and Your Ego

I think personally that sporting spirit is then very closely linked to your self esteem, and that self confidence and ability on the race course is a following positive result from having a good set of values and feelings before you step foot in a boat.

Sporting spirit means respecting the rules, your competitors and most of all the crew around you. It means conceding small battles in order to win wars. It means congratulating people who beat you in the last tack to the finish line, or get water on you at the last rounding. It means dusting off your failures and accepting them as learning lessons and defining these then as challenges to overcome by learning and experience. It means dropping your shoulders and enjoying your sport.

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This concept of the two Silos lies a little deeper in the 'soul' than the concepts of assertiveness on the racecourse but are a better start point. I think I have blogged on assertiveness on the race course a couple of years ago, will see and republish or update that.

360 Mental Prep' for the 2016 Sailing Season

, 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.