Contents
The fragility of Biles
Psychology
Simone Biles also withdraws from the individual final
Simone Biles It has broken. With what everyone was expecting from her. He says he feels the weight of the world on his shoulders. Wow. Haven’t you been preparing for that?
Where is the emotional strength of Biles? Now is just the moment of truth. Now he could not fail. Everyone was waiting for her. We all had very high expectations of her, expectations that she had created for us. In short, we were not expecting anything that he has not done before.
The American gymnast has made a decision. But is it a good decision? Is it the right decision? The decision making it is a process that is affected by our emotional state. Can we make such big impact decisions at any time? Under any emotional state? Should I have gone ahead and ignored what I was feeling?
My work as elite athlete psychologist It is the same as with amateur athletes and exactly the same as with non-athletes: Protect their mental health and provide them with tools to better manage the demands of day to day, overcome adversity and make good decisions.
It takes a lot of emotional strength to compete, exactly the same that is necessary to live. Both in life and in sport we have to manage an infinity of emotions and the person who knows how to do it will have an advantage over the rest.
In life, as in sport, we need to think well and make good decisions. We can’t believe everything we think. We often do not think well and the real problem is that we do not know how to differentiate when we are thinking well and when we are not.
Often, despite being prepared for it, we cannot overcome some of the tests that life or sport has prepared for us and at that moment we need to manage what we have experienced in such a way that it does not leave us a open wound for life.
But the most important thing of all is that what you do, be it compete or live, makes sense. Life is demanding and you’d better live your life and have it make sense to you. Nobody gives anything away and if you put in the effort, it better be something that makes sense to you.
In the end it is very simple. In the same way that a good physical trainer helps you prepare for the moment of truth -or to live better if you are not an athlete-; in the same way that a nutritionist helps you prepare for the moment of truth -or to live better if you are not an athlete-; the psychologist helps you prepare for the moment of truth, live better and with meaning, manage adversity better and recover better after adversity.
By the way, what I have just shared is not an opinion, it is a reflection based on reality. I have been working with elite athletes, clubs and federations for more than twenty years. I have worked for the Barcelona Football Club and I am currently the psychologist for the Andorran ski federation. I have several elite athletes as clients of different disciplines, from tennis to football to motorsport or athletics. I have also been an elite athlete for a decade and sponsored for two more decades even though I no longer competed and I am a psychologist with XNUMX years of experience.
I have always approached my work with elite athletes in exactly the same way as with the rest of my clients for an obvious reason: athletes do not stop being people with its virtues and its miseries, with its achievements and its failures, with its armor and its insecurities, with its talents and its limitations, with its strengths and its weaknesses.
Their strategic, like yours, will condition their life, their results, their work and their future. Their emotionsLike yours, they will condition what they think, what they perceive, what they decide, what they interpret or what they plan. its ability to manage pressure, as yours will determine their performance. In short, Biles is as strong and as fragile as you, as me, as anyone.