UKLA Chair Blog # 87
A couple of weeks ago I watched Emma Raducanu come from a set down against France's Diane Parry to secure Great Britain's place in the Billie Jean King Cup Finals. The final couple of games were tense as she had a 5-2 lead in the final set and had two match points on her own serve, only for the French woman to come back to 6-6 and bring the match to a tie break. Raducanu won that convincingly and it was reported “she held her nerve”. It is a nice turn of phrase, but it is much more likely she kept her focus through many hours of mental preparation. All top sportspeople practice this – Michael Johnson (for younger readers, a sprinter who won four Olympic gold medals and held the world record in the 200m and 400m) says he has run world class 200 metres races thousands of times – in his mind.
Maintaining the right mental focus before and during races is critical. Every race needs to be approached with the same rigour in terms of the race strategy, assessing the conditions and planning the start regardless of the result of a previous race. Results come from a performance that has its basis in focussing on doing the right thing and maintaining proven procedures.
In Race 7 at the 2018 Master Worlds I lost focus. Having won both races the previous day, I was in a great position at the start of the 2nd beat as I headed left towards a dark cloud. As the advantage materialised, I would have been able to tack and cross ahead of two of my nearest competitors into 2nd place but instead I thought there was even more to be gained by heading further towards the cloud. I was fooled into thinking I had superior tactical awareness through over-confidence instead of doing the rational and usual thing. I bowed to irrational behaviour and as a result lost ground. Luckily, I recognised the behaviour soon enough, but it was a timely reminder to avoid that type of thinking for the remainder of the regatta.
Sailing strategy and tactics is not governed by rules that result in defined outcomes, but more about positioning that improves your chances and limits risks. As soon as I start to think that I can predict the outcome, I’m dead. I remember losing a J24 National Championship on the last leg of the last race with this behaviour. Well ahead of our nearest championship competitor and closer to the favoured left side of the course, we thought we were in full control of the conditions and the race. As we headed back towards the centre of course with our competitor, another boat approached on starboard and we had to decide whether to “duck” them and perhaps lose a couple of boat lengths or tack back out left away from our rival for the championship. We choose the latter, after all the left was favoured and we knew best. Shortly afterwards the wind started to back further through 120 degrees and we lost both the race and the championship.
Conditions are unpredictable and one needs to sail like they are. Don’t do the obviously wrong thing. Doing the right thing often comes from experience and from practice but I do three things that help re-enforce the lessons learnt and ensure that mistakes are not made time and time again.
The first and most important is mental rehearsal or visualisation. Sail a race in your head, visualising starts, sailing fast and rounding marks, remembering the imagery, the sounds and the feelings.
The second is to talk to myself (sometimes out loud) and keep reminding myself what to do the “normal” or “routine” way. Under pressure one must perform the same routine in the same way. These are moments in which to do things the same way as normal because pressure has a habit of making you think a poor decision, is rational, rather than irrational.
My third technique to keep focus and avoid getting distracted, is to use the words “focus on next steps”. I use this anytime I feel my thoughts are starting to get distracted by events around me. When there is lots going on in a race and lots of scenarios, it is easy to think too far ahead rather than the next step.
These types of technique allow performances to be almost subconscious, despite distractions and immense pressure. And it is probable that in this way, Emma Raducanu closed out on her win.
Snippets
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